Bear's Blog

Every summer the School has a Retreat in the wild. It’s a time of celebration and completion for the graduates as they present their final projects and a big party for the School community. In The McKay Method^® classes we focus on the human physiology; at the Retreat we explore other kingdoms – plants, animals, and earth forms. In the past we have gone to the Big Horn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming, and the WD Ranch in Big Timber, Montana. This year graduate Linda Thurston and her husband Nathan Varley, wolf biologists, took us into Yellowstone National Park for some adventures with the animals. 

The buffalo were rutting and we were up close and personal to a herd of hundreds, separated by some sagebrush on the side of the road. The males were making grunty, growly noises and possessively stalking females that were close to mating time. An old guy limped along on a badly healed broken hind leg, and youngsters cavorted. A few took energetic dirt baths, rubbing and rolling on their backs with great satisfaction. We were close enough to see their blue tongues as they grazed. We also saw an osprey grieving over its dead fledgling after the nest fell from a great height. Baby elk mewed like kittens. And we spotted two wolves, one ripping into a fallen baby buffalo, trying hard to separate the leg from the rest of the body (we were at a safe distance with spotting scopes for this spectacle!)

We did a shamanic journey to honor the buffalo, eagle, bear and wolf. The journeys were powerful, and afterwards we gathered in our “animal clans” to discuss our astral adventures, the messages from our animal friends, and the essential nature of each species. Each person created prose about their animal to offer during a ceremony held under a mother tree, overlooking the Gardiner River.

The presentations were inspiring; the graduate projects touched on how energy healing can be used in conjunction with physical therapy, Chinese medicine, sound healing, working with horses, Feng Shui, and the challenges of growing older. The official graduation ceremony took place at Arch Park, the entrance to Yellowstone, on a beautiful summer’s day.

As we drove through the Park at dusk, the light was magical and the energy quite different than just the feeling of open land. This vast tract of intact wilderness had an amazing quality that is hard to describe; you felt your place in the order of things, that we are a part of something much bigger. There was a difference between those buffalo roaming wild and the buffalo I saw in a corral as we left town. Like humans in a built environment, the animals in the corral had lost some sense of identity or spirit. We humans need to reconnect to the natural world to remember we can still live a “wild life” anywhere, anytime.

-Bear McKay