Inherited Wounds: Tend the Land, Heal Men (with Roy Arthur Blodgett)

Jason Lange: All right, and welcome back, everybody. I am super pumped today to be joined by Roy Arthur Blodgett, who is a naturalist and poet and a cool guy I've been getting to know over the last couple years, as he's been an integral part in the Labor Day retreat I've been leading out in Northern California, which we'll kind of be talking about exactly how he's involved in that and what an education it's been for me, and the way I've seen it really impact the men that we've been bringing out there. And in general, I just want to kind of get to know him. And he's been involved in men's work and has a really unique, I would say, in my experience, take on the world. And so I'm just really excited to be here with you today, brother.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah, likewise. I really appreciate you inviting me on here. It's an honor, and thanks for making the time for it.

Jason Lange: Totally, totally stoked. So I'd love, you know, we were just talking before the call of, you know, many hats you wear and whatnot, but to give guys kind of a. A take on your experience of men's work and kind of what you find your attention moving to these days in your life in terms of what you really care about.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah, thanks for that. You know, my relationship to Mensworth, it's, It's interesting. I, I, it wasn't something I thought about a lot until I was in my kind of early to mid-20s. My relationship to masculinity, all of that stuff, started to become more salient. I realized that there was some kind of incongruence between the, the kind of man I wanted to be and how I was performing that in the world, I guess. And I simultaneously wanted to be the toughest in the room and the softest, you know? You know what I mean? I wanted to have the full breadth of, of expression and, and I realized that sometimes that those things were diametrically opposed and difficult to, to manage at once. And, and so that was kind of the beginning of an inquiry into masculinity and my, my relationship to it. And I thought about the kind of men that in my life that I liked, and often they were the kind of softer spoken, confident, but not arrogant men in my life. And. And often there are also people that spent a lot of time outside, I realized, and that was always kind of a place where I found solace and. And where I just felt the most myself was in places like wild places, deep wilderness settings. And so, yeah, that's kind of been the intersection, I would say. There is, like, this relationship between our relation as humans, our relationship to the natural world, and then how that then ties in with masculinity. Those are things I've been exploring for a really long time at this point, you know, the last 10, 15 years, to varying degrees of. Of awareness about it. You know, I think the inquiry started before I was like, cognitively analyzing the experience, right? Yeah, but definitely, at least for the last 10 years, it's been a pretty strong inquiry in my life. You know, these days. It's interesting because we were just speaking about this a little bit before we started recording this last, like, really since the. The pandemic, the beginning of COVID in 2020 or so. And then really, particularly since 2022 is probably the period of time in my life where I've spent the least time around men, which is really. Has been interesting, um, because it's just. In many ways, it's just circumstantial. It's just the people I live with are not men. And. And I don't. I don't. The kind of work I do is so all over the place, and it's often solo. It's often, you know, as an individual. And so I'm not like, around other men in the workplace very often, that kind of thing. And. But. But it's interesting to. In some ways, I feel like I have almost like this outsider perspective. I'm like, observing masculinity in this moment in this nation, which is a pretty grim thing to observe. I think you could probably agree with me about that, at least in the over culture. And so, yeah, that's a bit of a tangled mess in response. But it. That's just to say that, like, the kind of salient experiences I'm having right now around masculinity or like, feeling a little bit more settled in my own masculinity, a little bit more confident in that, in my own expression of it, and really observing the world around me and asking a lot of questions about what. What do we need to do right now to respond to this moment? Because something's is clearly needed for those of us who have a more embodied, like, soulful expression of masculinity to step into this Moment.

Jason Lange: So, yeah, and I feel like this is a great gateway. I'd love for you to share a little bit about your kind of journey in terms of connecting to land and nature, in what it brought.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Right.

Jason Lange: What it brought to you as you developed and grew from a boy into a man. Because I think there's going to be some strong things we can point to and that, you know, you talk about in your teachings with our men as well, around disconnection from the land and the very real impact that's. That's been having. But yeah, what kind of, you know, what was your experience growing up of the land and, you know, how did you interface with it and what's it brought to you?

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah, you know, it's interesting because growing up, I grew up in an inner city environment. I grew up in Santa Rosa, California, you know, right in the middle of the city. But I was. I was always obsessed with the natural world from. For as long as I can remember, particularly reptiles and amphibians. I wanted to get out and find snakes and. And I still do. I'm still, I still love that, and it's still a big part of my life. But that was the kind of original thing that, that brought me outside was the desire to go out and find critters. And, you know, I had a pretty, A pretty difficult upbringing. And you know, especially through kind of my, like adolescence, my young adult years or really approaching adulthood, was in a pretty abusive home environment and was recovering from a lot of. Of significant trauma as a, As a child. That occurred to me as a child. And the place where I just felt the most well was just outside. And so a lot of times I would ride my bike out, out to the parks, you know, and on the edge of the city, or I would take the bus out to parks and, you know, walk out to these parks on the edge of the city. And I just spent a lot of time outside alone. And it's at a certain point in that, you know, again, originally the pursuit being to go find critters, I realized as a byproduct of that, like, oh, I feel different out here. Like, my nervous system is really different out here. I feel. I feel much more alive, much more switched on. And it was really this experience and this, this realization of, you know, my. Because I wasn't in a very safe home environment, I was kind of walking around guarded all the time. Right. You know, like, my defenses were always up. And when I would get out into these spaces, after a couple hours that would start to fall away and I Would, I would open, you know, and, and my, my vision would go from this to that. And, and, and I could, My senses were more fully alive. Like, like food tasted different out on the trail than it did in the kitchen. And, and I mean that literally. Like, it was, it was a pretty profound experience. And so, you know, that kind of. I also had a lot of really profound experiences with like, wild animals in the wild, in these places, and seeing critters, like creatures and observing them and having them approach me even. And I was, I was confronted with this feeling of. All my life I had kind of received this message from osmosis, just from the culture that, that humans are a scourge on the earth, you know, that we're just destroying our environment and we can only cause harm. And my experiences around wild creatures was that there's a lot of grace and a lot of curiosity, and that felt incongruent. And so I started asking questions about what is the role of this, of a human being? Like, we're animals. What, what is our. How do we fit into all this? And how do we have a healthy relationship with land and with ecosystems and with wildlife? And that, that brought me to a lot of questions around like, indigeneity and relationship to culture. And I realized that so much of, of modern society is built around consumerism, of course, and, and so much of that is driven by this profound longing that, that I believe all of us in the kind of modern civilization, so to speak, possess for relationship. And not just relationship with other people, of course, but relationship with our environments, with other species, with. With our food. And in every one of these extensions of relationship in modern society, there's, There's a disconnect that, that really creates this positive feedback loop, right, of dissatisfaction and again, this deep longing. And so a lot of the work that I try to do now with people and getting people outside and into wild places is helping them to. First, helping them to see the land and, and, and see. See patterns in the land and see. See the ways in which our management, or lack thereof impacts land and ecosystems and seeking to empower them to enter the conversation on their own in an empowered way. Because one of the major responses that people have when they, when they start to become aware of this like, disconnect and they're, and they start to feel this longing to reconnect is there's a lot of hesitation, there's like a fear, there's that fear of causing harm. There's the awareness that we've caused harm and that that can translate to an apprehension and, and I'm really about helping people to feel like they can get in there and get, get grimy and generate some feedback and learn from that. So again, a long winded response, but hopefully that gets a little bit at the heart of all of that.

Jason Lange: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what I'm really taking away, particularly from that last piece and what my experience of you has been is kind of awakening participation that nature is something we actually are a part of and can participate in.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: And yeah.

Jason Lange: Are not separate from. And it's a relationship that like any relationship, takes tending and is interactive.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Right.

Jason Lange: And what you said about, you know, learning to teaching people to see the land, I mean that's one of the great joys of working with you on the retreat is, you know, I'll maybe source this a bit in your poetic side, but you're an incredible storyteller and you tell a story of the land in particular that, that we're immersed in that it's kind of a matrix moment in a sense of, you know, there was me walking through those forests before I had received this transmission from you. And then after. And after it's like, wow, I can see the story of the land now and once I see it, I can't unsee it. And that in itself was quite transformative for me to see. Okay. This is the impact of the relationship we've been living at least since, you know, the industrial age here of the last couple hundred years and the very real ramifications that is now creating. And this is, you know, what one of the great joys of the work we've been doing together is the parallels we can see behind, and we've talked about, of dealing with the ramifications of how we've treated the land and even in our own selves. Right. Our lineages, our families and what are we willing to take responsibility for and how are we going to, you know, work that. Because, you know, this has been a theme I've been talking about recently. It's like, even if we didn't necessarily cause the damage, if we don't take responsibility for it, who will? Right. And it doesn't necessarily just fix itself. I think that was another really interesting thing I got from you is, you know, there can be this kind of fantasy of like nature can just. But yeah, no, actually it's been quite a long time that we've been living as humans in relationship to it and it's a co creation and I'd love for you to kind of. Yeah. Just speak about that experience. You've had and maybe even some of the stories of the land that you've learned in your studies and in your growth.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah, yeah, thanks for that question. It's a, that's a rich one. And I appreciate that reflection from you too about just the kind of before and after experience of before you've heard the story and then after and how it changes you. And there can be a lot of grief connected to that too, that I want to acknowledge. Because as with the story of patriarchy, as with the story of so many of these systems that we've inherited that, that bear a lot of harm, We inherit it and we're suddenly aware. And what do you do with that? There's something that Aldo Leopold, who's a great ecologist, he wrote Sand County Almanac and he kind of came up with the land ethic. And he said one of the penalties of an ecological education is to live alone in a world of wounds. And that's true. And it's true that as my awareness of land grew, my experience of delight and just pure joy of being outside shifted because suddenly I realized that a lot of these, these ecosystems, these wild places that I thought were just these pristine wild places were actually really impacted and really needed, needed care and attention. And so that, that was a shift and it's important to acknowledge it. But again, in that I, I feel empowered to like, as you say, into the conversation to remember the relationship and that, that that is the case because we've, we've been in this co. Evolutionary relationship with, with our ecosystems for a long time at this point. And as ecosystem managers, that's, that's one of our roles as a species. And, and so yeah, here, and here where I live in Northern California, a lot of that has to do with the relationship to fire. And of course the metaphors there are, are profound and layered and we could go on there forever. But essentially many of the ecosystems around where I live have been in relationship to fire for millennia and particularly anthropogenic fire. So fire caused by people and California's indigenous people had a very different relationship to fire and to obviously to ecosystem management than, than we do in the modern area and in the kind of settler area era of California. And one of the first things, major changes that happened as settlers kind of imposed their will on the land here in California was suppressing fire and preventing the first peoples from burning. And before that, you know, in the indigenous management era, for at least 10,000 years, likely much longer than that, millions of acres of California were burned every year and always in these, very often in these very low intensity burns, basically, because when you're burning on that basis and on that scale, you're managing your biomass such that it doesn't accumulate. And so the scale of the fires that you're creating are, are smaller, they're, they're lower intensity and they actually have a really profoundly regenerative impact on the land, especially on, on oaks, which are very important trees in terms of biodiversity. They support the broadest array of biodiversity of any, of any trees. And so this regular deposit of ash, the oaks loved it, many of the other native food plants loved it. And, and so there was this effort to manage the land, to arrest this, this process called succession, which is a kind of familiar trajectory through which ecosystems change over time. And we think of like when we, when we're in a meadow or when we're in a forest, we often can, can just kind of assume this is a meadow or this is a forest and this is what it's always been and this is what it will always be because we, we live in these small human lives, right? But yeah, the reality is those things are constantly changing and they're changing in a slower timeline. But over time, that meadow could eventually become a forest. And it does so on this familiar trajectory. And so here in California, a familiar trajectory would go from kind of oak woodland or oak savannah habitats, which again, support this incredible biodiversity. Over time, those will, those will often shift into what we call a closed canopy conifer forest. You'll have, usually Douglas fir trees will come in, in the understory of these oak woodlands and they can germinate in those shady conditions under the understory. And their objective is to grow straight up, they grow really fast, go, go straight towards the, the light and the canopy and they'll pierce the canopy of these hardwoods. They'll, they'll send out these big lateral branches, they'll shade these hardwoods, these oak trees and kill them. And what you'll get if that happens is a climax conifer forest and you lose about 80% of your biodiversity when that, when that change happens. And so California's indigenous people were very aware of this cycle. And because their food system was reliant on that biodiversity, their management practices were to arrest succession at oak woodland, essentially oak savannah, coastal prairie. These, these other ecosystems that support this high, high biodiversity before it could shift into that. And the way they did that was by these intense, these small, intense intensity burns. Because the fire would come through, it would, it would kill the encroaching conifer trees which are not resistant to fire and it would preserve these hardwoods which are resistant to fire. So that's kind of the, the pattern that we saw throughout, throughout California and in many of the other western states as well. And now we're living in the reckoning, you know, of, of fire suppression, of 175 years basically of fire suppression. And you know, you see these massive fires as, as we all have in the news and for many of us in California firsthand, and they are unfathomable. You know, I mean, we're talking about fires over a million acres footprint. It's, it's hard to fathom that kind of scale. And they're creating their own weather systems. You know, you've got fire, tornadoes ripping through a wall of fire, 100, 100 foot flames. You know, that, that kind of stuff is, is happening. And it's happening because a number of factors, but a large part of it has to do with suppressing those earlier practices and the accumulation of biomass, the accumulation of fuel. And it's a similar thing to our experience of modern masculinity. We're living in the reckoning of this inheritance. Right. And it's the same thing now with, with our relationship to land in the west where, you know, we didn't, it wasn't us that made the decision to, to start this regime of fire suppression. Right? But now we've got it now we're here and we're the ones in control of it and we're the ones that have to manage it and figure out what to do next. And the reality is it's not so simple as just let's just start burning again because again, you have all that fuel load, you have all that biomass, you have all that accumulation. And so what first has to happen is a lot of, a lot of composting, a lot of decomposition and a lot of really what I feel is a lot of again, reckoning with the inheritance. And I mean, of course the metaphor is right there. You know, it's the same, it's the same with, with men's work. We got a lot of, we've got a lot of grieving to do simultaneous to stepping into what's, what's needed now.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, oh man, every time I hear the story just kind of gives me chills in terms of the parallels. Yeah. You know, again, even that, that reckoning and even that word debt you used, right. There's 175 years worth of debt we kind of have to work through. And I think at the Bigger cultural level that is part of what we're reckoning with, with kind of traditional, patriarchal, masculine, that yeah, we didn't cause it. Right. I didn't, I didn't own slaves, I didn't dominate women. But there's repercussions to that in that whole system. And there's repercussions within ourselves of, you know, in some sense you can think of trauma as accumulated debt, right. That the, the, the culture wants to sell us. The thing that makes you have to not think about it, oh, just buy this thing and you'll feel better versus actually having to do that kind of like, like you said, raw and often full of grief work of really coming into contact with the reality of the moment and situation, whether we're talking about the natural world we're part of or whether we're just talking about ourselves in the secession we're part of, in our lineage. Right. That oftentimes, you know, part of the work I'm passionate about doing with men is, Is really surfacing sometimes the pain that goes back generations that just wasn't dealt with. And it's not necessarily someone's fault, they didn't have the tools or whatever, but the moment we kind of become aware of that, of, oh, I am carrying this pain, this trauma, this trigger, whatever, only I can do something about it, even if I wasn't the one that set it into motion. Right. And I think this is the kind of hard truth a lot of men are being faced with, of how up for participating in that process are you really? And I think that's to tie it back to some. What you were talking about. Part of what I enjoy about the transmission you create around the land is to not be afraid of that participatory process that actually get. The only way this is going to work is if we kind of get our hands dirty in some sense, are willing to make some mistakes and get engaged, get activated. And that's something many of the guys that we've worked with over the last couple of years, many men come to the work I lead feeling alone and disconnected. Right. And I tend to focus more on the relational aspect of that of kind of getting plugged into other men. But yeah, part of where I think we have such a synergy is that matters with the land, with the very fact that we are part of a system. We're not on top outside of it. Right. Which is kind of that more scientific, rational, Descartes thing that was kind of pushed on us that we're now having to rediscover the reality and truth of. Of no, we are simply part of a system and we're an integral part of it, like you said. You know, part of my background is in integral studies. And this guy, Ken Wilber, I studied with. Right. He always talked about the goal is to promote the greatest depth for the greatest span. And what I hear the. That managing the ecosystem, that's what it's all about, right. That it's like, well, yeah, we could let a thousand furs grow, or we could prioritize some oaks, which actually has so much of a bigger ripple effect into life and what's possible in the resiliency of the system. And that was something I just like. It was not part of my reality because I, you know, I kind of came up in the 80s the.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah.

Jason Lange: Proto environmental movement. It was just like, leave it wild, let it do whatever. It's totally.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah.

Jason Lange: And it was totally ignoring the reality of. No, it takes consciousness. It takes consciousness to kind of manage it. And doesn't mean we know the right answer, but there's certain patterns that nature reveals that we can then support.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, the parallels are so similar too, with all this, because it really is the same thing. It's the same. It's the same stuff we're confronting. Right. We're confronting dominance hierarchies.

Jason Lange: There we go. Yep.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: And, you know, it's. It's the. We think of like, you know, the, The. When the settlers came to. To Turtle island to North America, they didn't come seeking to understand it. They came. America, we have to. We have to acknowledge, is a. It's a Eurocentric concept. It came from Europe. It was imposed on Turtle island on, On North America. And, and so we. We didn't come. Our ancestors didn't come with. With an. Seeking to understand so much as seeking to impose their. Their conception, their preconception. And, and so again, it's. It's part of that relationship, part of that. That participation is. Is about listening. It's about, like, seeking to. To ask a lot of questions, seeking to get to know the other. And so it goes with, again, with, with masculinity, with. With this inheritance of patriarchy.

Jason Lange: Right.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: It's like we need to do a lot of listening. That's. That's. That's a. That's a big. That's a big thing about it, right, is learning to listen to women. You know? You know, that's a. That's a. That's one thing. Right. That's. I'm sure that there was A point in your life where you. Where you recognized, oh, whoa, I need to. I need to listen to women a little bit differently, you know, And I. I certainly had that realization at a certain point because. Because again, through. Through just the cultural osmosis, that's not the me. That's not the messaging we're receiving. And so it requires consciousness, it requires participation. And. Yeah, it's just. It's so profound, the parallels there. And. And so much of. Again, I think that it works because underneath that. That will. To impose, that will to dominate, again, is actually emptiness. It's. It's a desire for. It's a desire for relationship. And so if we can get past the. The fear of that and start to regenerate, the. The desire for complexity, you know, that you speak to that. Ken Wilber's speaking to this. This depth and span, you know, that's an embrace of complexity is how I see that. And we find that that's actually what's. That's what's satiating. That's what's. That's what's satisfying. And anyone who has ever, you know, grown a garden will tell you that the. The difference between going and. And harvesting a ripe tomato from the vine from your garden that you. That you grew versus going to the store and buying one is a big difference, you know, and for anyone who hunts will tell you that the experience of. Of hunting. Hunting that deer to feed your family that season is a really different thing than going to the grocery store and buying. Buying some beef ground up in a little plastic package. You know, it's. It's so different. And the kind of gratitude, the kind of depth that you feel from that, again, it all speaks to that. That longing for relationship that we're primed for. We're primed for it. That's what we're. As a social creature, as. As these beings with profound capacity to recognize patterns and to explore them. We need that. We need that to be.

Jason Lange: Well, I love that, right? The. The growing your own things, that being involved in the creation of your meat, it's being part of the process, right? It's, again, it's that connecting to, oh, I'm part of something that is so easy to be disconnected from. And we're being fed it more and more and more, right? This kind of frictionless existence where I can live in my apartment, order everything, and it just shows up and I don't even have to see a human. Right?

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah.

Jason Lange: That was never possible back in the day, right? We had to be actively engaged with Others, we had to be actively engaged with the land. And I think the lack of that is something I've seen is part of what causes a deep depression in malaise in men. Because then it's like, if I'm not part of the process, I have no way to impact it. And it's incredibly disempowering, in a sense. And one of the real things I've seen come alive with men in the land work we do on the retreat is shit. I do have a capacity to impact my choices, my body, my being. It really can make a difference, um, in ways that I think sometimes we don't realize. And it doesn't have to be like the huge global NGO kind of like it could. You know, it happens at these small, small levels sometimes, but it brings something back alive for us men in that. What you're saying about listening, man. I've been on my high horse about this one in the. In just that, you know, it's so clear to me when we don't. When we haven't developed, particularly as men, the capacity to hold complexity and be in relationship, we default to power over to dominance. I'm just gonna tell you, it's this way. It actually takes a real type of growth and development to be in relationship.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Wow.

Jason Lange: You want this. I want this. How are we gonna find something that works best for everyone? That's harder. That is harder work in the fantasy. So many guys are being sold right now in this kind of resurgence of, you know, old masculinity is simple. It's simple. This is the way it is. And you can just make the choice and assert your will. And that's what being a man is. And I just love that you brought up listening because, you know, a lot of guys will sometimes have a reaction to that word. Oh, that's soft or that's feminine. And it's so not. Because what it really is is awareness. It's taking in information, using that information to then make some kind of discerning judgment, ideally in service of depth and span. Right. And so that observational listening capacity, to me, that's actually incredibly masculine. It's. I'm gonna take in the big scene, so then I can make the choice of the deepest impact for the greatest good or whatever that might be. And, you know, that gets me all excited here to maybe pivot a little bit and just bring in. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about, you know, your love of poetry, which in some ways I could see. I can start to see how you Know, that's related to a type of listening and observation and then in a way consolidating into some kind of transmission.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah, thanks for that. Poetry has been such a wellspring for me, and it wasn't something I really grew up around. My parents weren't interested in poetry or anything like that. And really, what kind of generated my initial interest in it was my older sister, actually, who also has had a profound impact on me, you know, as. As a. As a. As a strong feminist, a leader in. In her own way, who really awakened me to a lot of these. Of these inquiries in some ways. So huge credit to my sister Rachel. But she. She's a couple years older than me, and around the time I graduated high school, she and a couple of her friends who were all students in art school, were writing poetry together. And I just thought it was cool. I was like, this is. This is. This is cool. They're writing poetry. I'm like, I want to. I want to read this poetry. And. And so it started this inquiry into an interest in poetry. I started finding other poets that I liked, started reading Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry, these. These amazing kind of naturalist poets. Mary Oliver, you know, and. But it didn't really occur to me to write my own poetry until one time I was hanging out with my sister and her friends, and we were talking about poetry, and one of her friends, Allison, said, well, Roy, do you ever write poetry? And I was like, oh, no, I've never really. I've never really tried. And she's like, well, you should, because you're a poet.

Jason Lange: And.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: And. And I was like, huh. I just kind of. I didn't. I don't even think I really responded. I just kind of, like, shrugged and. But I went home that night and I wrote a poem. And then it was like this. It was like a dam broke loose. I just started. I just started writing. And it was terrible, awful poetry, you know, as it often is for someone who's starting out. But. But I loved it. It was such a.

Jason Lange: It a. Was such.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: It was. I realized that there are all these things latent in me that wanted to be expressed. And, you know, my relationship to poetry now is. Is interesting because I. I kind of. I'll go months sometimes without writing a single poem. And. And I've learned to just trust that. I used to have judgment in myself for that. Like, oh, I'm not writing. I'm not. That means I'm not paying clothes close enough attention.

Jason Lange: Or.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: That means that there's something deficient in me I'm not being disciplined enough. But, but I don't really have that kind of relationship with poetry. You know, there, there a lot of the great poets will say you have to keep the appointment. You have to show up every day and write. And I respect that. I respect the discipline, but it's not for me, it's not the way I write. I, I, I write when I need to. And when the poem arrives, it's usually, I don't know where it comes from, but it's usually fully formed and I, I just, I write it down. You know, sometimes it's in the, it's in a voice memo on my phone or it's in the Notes app, you know, or something, but it's, that's how it comes. And, you know, there's this thing that Leonard Cohen said about, about poetry and that really resonates for me, and he said, poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. And that feels really true to me that when, when things are, when my life is burning well, when I'm, and when I, what I, what I interpret that as is when I'm able to metabolize my experience as it's happening, poetry comes, and I can't do that all the time. I'm a, I'm a highly sensitive person. I'm often filled with, with grief and despair at what I'm seeing in the world and overwhelmed by it at times. And there are other times when I can, when I can hold it and metabolize it and, and make something from it, something emerges from that, Something creative, something regenerative emerges from that. And for me, that's often what, what my poetry is. And, you know, it's, it's, it's an interesting thing because it does feel very wild to me. There's a relationship for me in, in terms of like, the natural world, the wild world and poetry, because I don't know where it comes from. It feels unpredictable. It feels, feels like a wild God of its own. And, and I love that about it. It's, it's been such a, it's been such a boon to my life. And, you know, reading the work of great poets is, is, is such a profound gift that I wish everyone had the same kind of access to, because I, I know that, you know, poetry is, this isn't exactly the, the high point of poetry in the world, you know, in terms of, like, in terms of, like, daily readership. Right, right. I think that there. There have been other eras in human history where people embraced it more in the mainstream, a lot more. But it's. It's such a profound gift. Yeah.

Jason Lange: Yeah. Oh, man. Again, it's great how that ties right into the listening, even in terms of. You listen to yourself. Right, right. Sometimes something needs to come through, and that's a. That's a capacity. And again, what I love about something like poetry and, you know, in different work I've done, I often support this is, you know, art itself is a process. It's like our. It's a metabolism. It's how we metabolize our grief, our trauma, our fear, our experiences, even the good ones. Right. The overwhelming beauty or awe. It's. It's the way we work with it to create a relationship to some kind of experience. And the creation of art is healing. It just. It's healing. Right. It's that participatory. Participatory process, just like in terms of working with the land. And it's something one of my teachers. Yeah. Would have us do on retreats. Right. Sit down and, like, write a poem. I'm not a poet. I can't do it well. And then guys come to share it, and the first thing I. They say is, oh, this is crap. And it's like, no, no, no, no. This is the truth of your heart right now. This is the best you got. There's no need to minimize that. But it's incredible, the transformation it can create. And again, you know, in a sense, it's that same. What I would say can be a deeply powerful process of kind of sitting and listening and feeling and then concretizing it into something deep that's a transmission of that experience. And again, you know, I'm not nearly as well read as you, but something beautiful about poetry is in a very short amount of time, you can feel deeply connected to someone who had an experience, God knows when and where and in what context. But it's. Oh, I. I feel kinship there. Right. I feel gotten or. And that in itself is another antidote, I think, to so much of the loneliness and isolation and this, you know, we're not part of thing that so many men that I work with are really stuck on. And just the idea that, you know, to slow down and listen and. And express that. That is a type of tending in a sense, of our inner world, just like we need to tend the outer world and.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah.

Jason Lange: I just love how these two things clearly interact in your world, in life.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it's so true that this. This, like, interior exterior, you know, duality that you're describing is so alive in. In poetry. It's. I used to lead these. These outings we. We. With a friend when we were in our early 20s. We called it bioregional orientation. And it was like these free events that we'd put on where we had people would come to, like a, you know, a state park or something. We'd take them on a hike. And then in the first half was like a naturalist interpretive walk. Kind of like what, you know, we've done, you know, where as we're walking, I'm kind of interpreting what I'm seeing in the land and trying to help people understand what's happening. And in the second half, we'd stop, we'd eat lunch, and then everyone would fan out and sit and just write. And then we would all come back together and share what we wrote with each other. And of course, there's so much of, like, the exterior things that we were learning about in that day or as expressed, you know, through these poetry, through these interior offerings. And there's always so many powerful parallels that emerge. And there's also something that you said, too, when you spoke about, you know, art is what helps us metabolize our experience. And I think that that's. That's very true. And it also. It just brought something to mind for me around culture, which I think is all of this that we're talking about relates to culture. I always feel that that is the role of healthy culture is to help us frame and metabolize our experience. And this is part of what, again, what would I feel we're lacking is that many of us are. That we live in modern civilization. We're bereft of culture. We have these proxies, society, social networks. These are not the same things as village, as culture, as community. And they don't serve the same functions at all. And so, again, what is required for real culture is that messiness is the participation is the getting in there. And I feel, again, this, again, ties into relationship with land. Because there's an interesting thing that happens when you start to look at indigenous cultures and indigenous communities where the lines.

Jason Lange: Between.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Cultural customers and ecological function blur. You know, where a lot of the cultural customs, like, for example, prohibitions that certain indigenous cultures might have about only fishing at this time of the month or hunting at this time of the month, these also serve these ecological functions, right? Because there is no distinction between the human community and the. And the broader ecological community. There's a, there's a, it's a given that we are embedded, we're embedded in that system. And that is always true. That's, that's the, that's the big illusion that we have to confront. Right? Is that like you said, we've got Descartes and we're, we're so, we're so past all that stuff and we're beyond it, man. We're like way up here looking down. And as men again, we're conditioned to live in our heads and not in our bodies so much of the time. And there's this reintegration, there's this, this reintegration that I feel is needed in all of these levels. You know, I think that as we seek to, to know our places, culture is like a, an emerging byproduct almost of that, of that inquiry, in my opinion. So it's, it's, it's an interesting confrontation because again for so many of us displaced from our original homelands, right. It's like my, my ancestors were not from North America. And you know, in my own like inquiry into ancestry and like into in like what. Who were my indigenous ancestors? At one time my ancestors were indigenous to some place. Who were they? What were their customs? And you know, I can seek to, to know those things and yet at the same time I don't want to impose those things where I live now because it's, they're not from this, this place. But at the same time I don't want to go and appropriate the customs of this place. Right. And so what is, what is in all of that for me is that there must be something emerging, must be something new, there must be something that needs to be lived into. It's, it's, it's a, it's going to be a process, a generations long process, process for all of us. It's not going to happen overnight.

Jason Lange: Man speak in my language here. And that reminds me of another beautiful thing you talk about. And our co creator of on the Land We Work is a long term vision for it, which the scale of which is we're talking like hundreds of years. And I think that's another thing that is missing in a sense is as we've moved more and more towards immediacy, media gratification.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah.

Jason Lange: There's this lack of, I'm part of a scale, right. An actual time span that you know, certain things, you know, back in the day, to create them, it would take more than one generation, would take generations. And for a lot of us we're Disconnected from that. And again, part of the story, I think you eloquently kind of reconnect us to both on the natural landscape and inside of ourselves is it can't all happen right now.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah, right.

Jason Lange: Like, it actually can't all, no matter how badly we want it to. We're now part of a process, and all we can do is show up and do our part and try to kind of create the conditions that it can keep going. And our work as men, I think, is very similar to that. And, you know, the.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: The.

Jason Lange: The men's work, I'm lit up by the way we get to integrate teachings like yours is about what is the culture we're creating. Because so many men, the culture we're given of masculinity is just fucking terrible. And even more than that, it's to. To judge it less. It's just not sufficient enough for the complexity of living. It's inadequate. That's a great, great way to put it.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah.

Jason Lange: And something is being called for, something more. And, you know, men's work, men's retreats, getting into the land, these are all really core pieces of it that we're all having to figure out together. And it's not perfect, and there's learning for all. All of us along the way, but it does reignite something. And I feel like, really, you know, one of the great joys I have of the work I do is seeing men come back alive. Just like. Like, literally life force coming back into the system in a way that, you know, land management, you can see. Start to see the impact, you know, last. Last year, I mean, it was such a visceral thing. We worked the Manzanita, right? And it was like, once you see it, it was like this thing was under attack. And to liberate it was like, unbelievable that I could see the impact it was having on the men. And they still talk about it of, like, that was so wild, and that was so crazy. And some of the stories, you know, of guys realizing that it does take care and it does take intention around all of this. And so, man, we're gonna have to do this again, because I feel like we're just barely scratching the surface here. So I want to have you back on, and I really just want to ring the bell for men, you know, if you want to come meet Roy, come. Me, get your hands dirty? Like, quite literally.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah. Let's get out there.

Jason Lange: A couple weeks from now, we'll be in Northern California at the Labor Day retreat. I lead, and it is one of the most impactful parts of the retreat. I get feedback on every single year.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Now.

Jason Lange: What that kind of before and after of the men is and just what the feeling of, you know, a simple medicine, I think for us guys is just to get our hands dirty, offline in nature, with each other, moving our bodies. I teach a lot of stuff in my weekend and that does a lot of it right there. There's just something really potent about that that I think a lot of men are malnourished around and I really thank you for helping to create and co create that experience.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: It's such a, such a privilege and an honor and a pleasure. So I really appreciate the invitation to be involved and yeah, I look forward to it. I look forward to it. Each year that we do this, it's, it's richer and deeper.

Jason Lange: So yeah, I got some ideas kicking. So I'm, I'm going to be in touch with you around some things too.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah.

Jason Lange: What, what's the best way, Roy, for guys to, you know, keep up with you in terms of just.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Yeah.

Jason Lange: What you're doing in the world?

Jason Lange: Thank you, man. Incredible. Thank you for that.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: My pleasure.

Jason Lange: Yeah, feeling that. Really feeling that. Well, Roy, man, it's been an absolute pleasure. Looking forward to seeing you in the flesh in a couple weeks. Here, I'll drop your website in the notes here, guys. Definitely reach out. And until next time.

Roy Arthur Blodgett: Until next time. Thanks again. Jason.

Jason Lange: If you're interested in working with me around dating relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to evolutionary men Apply.