Creative Sojourns

Sila Sojourns specializes in journeys which have a creative or personal development focus (for eg. photography, writing, art, yoga, music, meditation, etc), which we are referring to collectively here under the banner of “Creative Sojourns”. We also offer “regular” natural history-focused adventure trips – either paddling, hiking or skiing.  View our scheduled departures to see if any Creative Sojourns are currently being offered for this coming season.
“Our strings are tuned to the same pitch as the earth, our rhythms are as graceful and ineluctible as the four quartets of the moon. We are – every one of us – a force of nature, though sometimes it is necessary to relearn consciously what we have never forgotten: the truant art , the nomad heart.”

(Jay Griffiths)

“I arise in the morning
Torn between a desire to save the world.
And a desire to save the world.
That makes it hard to plan the day.”

(David White)

“If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred.
Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self.
There is no place to hide, and so we are found.”

(Terry Tempest Williams)

“The great sea has set me adrift.. It moves me like a weed in a great river.
Earth and the great weather move me have carried me away
and move my inward parts with joy

(inuit song)

“Countless times this river has been bruised by our bodies – liquid fossils of light.
We shed our ghost skins in the current then climb the bank, heavy and human.
The river is a loose tongue, a folk song. At night we go down to listen – stars like sparks from a bonfire.
We take off what we are and step into the moon.”

(Anne Michaels)

“I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the message of my heart upwards. I pray to them because I believe in their existence,
the way their songs begin and end each day – the invocations and benedictions of Earth.I pray to the birds because they remind me
of what I love rather than what I fear. And at the end of my prayers they teach me how to listen

(Terry Tempest Williams)

“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground of our feet, and learn to be at home”

(Wendell Berry)

“We have a beautiful mother, her green lap immense, her brown embrace eternal, her blue body everything we know.”

(Alice Walker)

“Earth, isn’t this what you want? To arise in us, invisible?
Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly There’s nothing left outside us to see?
what, if not transformation,is your deepest purpose?”

(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Numinous North

Tombstone Territorial Park

photography

"Numinous" is defined as "of or pertaining to the spiritual and supernatural". How often have we looked at a landscape and felt a degree of transformation or elevation? How is the process of walking through the landscape a numinous journey, and how may photography be our personal reflection of this experience?  Through this workshop, we will explore how an image may be our vehicle for sharing the numinous qualities we discover in the wild.

Trip Details

Sparked by Autumn Splendour

Primrose Lake

Art, photography

Join us in this exploration of the creative impulse, inspired by the crimson shades of the Yukon autumn and the remoteness of this mountain valley. Come experience the perfection of our vibrant autumn days, with all your senses, before the long exhale of winter. Enjoy the comradery of women creating together.

Trip Details

Primrose Light

Primrose Lake

Music

Join us in this exploration of the sacred, in the land of the midnight sun. Through sound and silence, and in the sublime sub-Arctic light, our senses will awaken as we immerse ourselves in the beauty of the Yukon wilds and  allow the natural world to awaken our innate connection to all beings.  And through music, movement and stillness we can experience the natural world in a profound and joyful way.

Trip Details