A short recount of The Beginning of Hawk Circle

Before the camp was born, there was a vision quest.

Four days in the wilderness, without food, with just enough water, and lots of deep meditation and introspection. I was pretty young, but asking for the universal life force to give me an insight into the future, into my purpose for being here on this earth at this particular time.

It was spring time, but the first couple of days were rainy and very cold. The nights were long, sitting, sleeping little, and waiting for dawn. I unraveled my life and felt Spirit waiting around, as if testing me to see if I was ready for what was to be revealed.

What I saw, felt and understood, was a vision of a future where the peoples of the earth were in massive confusion, pain, suffering and change. I didn't see anything specific, but storms, disruption of our social world and daily lives was prominent. There was fighting, and fear in everyone, and many people were lost, in both a real and a spiritual sense. This vision was powerful, intense and scary to me, just 21 at the time, because it appeared so much larger than my own experience and skill to handle.

I saw many other things in my quest, that helped guide me to the work you all are familiar with in our programs. But it was this overriding vision that started me in this life. It was still years away from the time in which I would run my first camp, but my training had begun. I took courses in wilderness survival, wild foods, native skills and crafts and earth philosophy.

The name of our camp and our organization, Hawk Circle, comes from several sources. The influence of William Ackerman, the guitarist who founded Windham Hill Music, was with me as I wandered the coastal mountains of Central California was considerable. Hawk Circle was the name of a composition that he wrote that captures not just the beauty and power of a hawk in flight, but also the depth of it's soul as a predator, as the keeper of balance.

Another source was the sheer volume of hawks that made themselves known to me in the first few years of my training. I saw hawks in trees, in deep blue skies, in thorny brush and hovering over grassy meadows. I learned many things about hawks in those days, mostly from being around them, feeling them looking at me, and seeing their beautiful yet terrible eyes. I waited while they waited, hunting and sitting in trees over grasses, and we shared something that I can't describe.

In the days the followed, I saw how the circling flight of the hawk allowed it to spiral up a column of warm air, called an updraft, and with each pass, rise higher and higher. When it was high enough, the hawk would fly in any direction it pleased, and it could use very little effort, just gliding easily. No flapping.

I thought about how our camp, our programs, were like the updraft that a hawk needed to grow and ascend into the sky, with each skill learned, each expansive experience pushing awareness higher, until the young 'hawk' could fly anywhere it needed to go.

It was the right image, concept, philosophy, for our work. The name "Hawk Circle" has passed muster, for 17 years. And the journey continues......