A group of women sit in a circle by a crackling fire, meditating to the beat of a drum. We have done a range of ceremonies this day, including protecting the delicate ecosystems of our mountains that are threatened by fracking. Here, at the end of our time together, we hold space in quiet company, each of us powerfully envisioning the future we want to create rather than the future that is currently being constructed for us. Right outside of where we sit, one mountain has already been destroyed with over 80 fracking wells. We are consciously choosing to reject the dystopian reality that we are now all living. This fossil fuel extraction nightmare is *not *what we want for our present and future. The drumbeat ends, and we open our eyes. We pass around a rattle, and each of us takes a moment to share our vision and shake the rattle. A vision that people in our state will begin protecting the earth and turn away from over three centuries of fossil fuel extraction. A vision of herb boxes and free healing herbs on every street in a local town. A vision of the end to fracking and resource extraction across the US. A vision to save the mountains we have been working magic for this very day. A vision of a children’s camp, children playing in a clean river, and learning how to be connected with nature. The visions kept coming, and as we share, we build upon each other’s vision. When we are done, we release the container of our sacred circle, and as we do, we send the energy of all of our visioning out into the world.

Why does visioning matter? Because we have to tell a better story–a “right” story. Tyson Yunkaporta takes up this idea in his new book Right Story, Wrong Story, where he argues that the stories that we tell ourselves deeply shape the reality that we live in, our relationship to the land, and our relationship to each other. Right stories, as he writes, are not about a single objective truth but rather about cultivating right relationships. Right story comes from groups living in right relationship with each other and the entire landscape around them, shaping a relational narrative with the land. The wrong story is propaganda; it is arguing for a single truth, it is in the language of greed and profit, and it separates the people from both land and spirit. Wrong stories are how we’ve gotten here, and are pretty much the cause of the Anthropocene and this dystopia we all find ourselves living in. There is no single right story (as there is no single right truth), but there certainly are plenty of wrong stories making their rounds right now.

Consider a wrong story and a right story for where I live in Western Pennsylvania:

• Pennsylvania contains the Allegheney plateau, a geological formation that allowed for the development of extensive and profitable fossil fuel reserves, including coal, oil, and gas from the Marcellus shale, Utica shale deposits. This makes Pennsylvania a fossil fuel powerhouse, allowing a range of extractive and industrial activities throughout the last few centuries, including coal mining, steel production, and now, natural gas and fracking. The Homer City Redevelopment Data Center takes advantage of cheap and abundant fracked natural gas produced in our state to power a 4.5 gigawatt data center, producing massive computing power to fuel the AI revolution. This state, full of rich resources, can continue to fuel modern industries, ensuring the United States’ energy independence and supporting regional job creation (For more on this story, see our Governor’s news release).
• Pennsylvania, with its beautiful Appalachian mountains, is home to one of the most ecologically diverse and rich ecosystems in the world, an ecosystem that offers food, medicine, and all of the resources that many species need to survive. We recognize the past industrial and extractive legacy of this land, and we have worked hard to end this legacy by cleaning up pollution and acid-mine drainage, ending mountaintop removal and fracking, and ending all fossil-fuel extraction in the state. For the health of all who live here, Pennsylvanians find more value in fostering diverse ecosystems and in leaving the remaining fossil fuels in the ground. Our beautiful and majestic grandmother mountains are flowing with clear streams, vernal pools, and even rich bogs full of unique plants and insects. Throughout the whole state, with many diverse ecosystems, people come together to enjoy these lands, protect them, and live in harmony with them. This philosophy has created a range of interconnected local businesses, including forest-grown woodland plants (such as sustainable ginseng and black cohosh), regenerative agriculture, and a bustling regional food system.

Right now, we in Pennsylvania are fighting that first story–one of many wrong stories. And because this is the story everyone tells and is embedded into the narratives of the region, it is literally the only lived reality that people can see. I have witnessed the power of the wrong story here–the wrong story is the one each person shares, the only reality they can even envision or accept. That fossil fuel extraction, living in the extraction zone, will somehow lead to better economic realities for them and their families. Yet we have centuries of evidence that this is simply not true. Fossil fuel extraction jobs as my ancestors held–mining, logging, steel mill working–and now fracking–are not good jobs. People believe the wrong story and hold onto it so firmly that they can’t even envision another story, even when the legacy of fossil fuel is blatantly obvious and harmful to them and their families. So how do we begin to tell the right story?

Regenerative gardening, part of a right story

In order to start exploring this idea, let’s consider the role of stories in human culture. The stories we tell ourselves are the stories that shape the present and future of the world. Everything in the world that is created by humans is an idea in someone’s head before it becomes reality. And now, due to social media, AI bots, and mass media technology–other people can easily get their own visions in our heads. Western civilization is full of dystopian fiction and dystopian visions–and those stories and words are quickly becoming our stark reality.

We are bombarded by these visions–and the most important thing for fueling that kind of dystopian magic is that we keep giving it our attention. Then these outside visions can essentially engage in a form of psychic vampirism where our energy fuels their visions. When it has your attention, it has your energy (an issue I took up in my “ditch the screen” series of posts). And let me tell you, 2025 has been just awful. I can’t speak for other countries, but here in the USA, we are living in a dystopia that is worsening by the day: the continued dismantling of the social fabric that binds our country together, fighting against these awful data centers and fighting fracking, the deregulation on pollution, an all-out assault against the environment, and crossing the first set of climate thresholds, all of the social injustice and hate.

Our activist group just learned the Homer City Data Center/AI Fracked Gas Power plant will emit….4,000,000 tons of Co2 every hour--which is a massively revised upward estimate from the 17,000,000 tons of Co2 a year we had first heard. I have been in a real funk about it all. I am talking to a lot of magical people–and all of us are feeling it, and everyone is struggling with this exact thing–the massive wrong story–right now. You can’t even catch your breath. Soon you won’t be able to take a clean breath at all. And that’s the point.

Visioning a Better Future: A Call to Action

And as we are coming to the end of 2025, I’d like to put out a call for action and a set of magical acts that we can do–collectively–in the next year: crafting, sharing, and radiating out an alternative vision for the future. We can work to craft right stories for our communities, our lives, our world. A vision where humans learn to live within their limits and return to nature, end extractive activities, and rebuild their local communities. This is the work that matters, especially in the face of so many things we cannot control. I propose we use the new moons to do this work, as the power of the new moon is the power of possibility: it is a time when we dream in the dark, when we set intentions, work towards the manifestation of a new reality, and have new beginnings. And that’s exactly what we need now. (I will also note that this should not substitute work in the world- continue to fight in whatever physical ways you have been called to do–but we can also turn to the magical tools we have for this visioning work).

Why? Because magic works. It might be the most important thing we do right now. As above, so below. As within, so without. Holding this vision is critically important now because we are at a turning point. Even though COP30 ended in mostly failure, for the first time, over 80 countries called for the end of fossil fuel extraction. That has never happened before. It was even unheard of 5 years ago–but now it is being said. The tides are turning, but we are in a war for the future. And I believe we can still make a massive difference.

When I was spending time visioning and working magic with the women I wrote about in the opening to my post, I learned that through their collective action and magic, they stopped an incinerator that was to be built in the middle of their local town. And now, they were coming back together to continue to work on behalf of the earth to stop the new fracking demand in ecologically sensitive areas in Pennsylvania. Hearing their stories and their many years of work was so inspirational. The work we did that day will resonate deeply moving forward–and I believe this is one of the things that can help all of us with whatever local battles or personal challenges about the ways the world is changing–we can vision. Will you join me?

**How do I engage in visioning work? **There are lots of ways to do this work, and I’ll outline some here. If you have other ways or ideas, please share them in the comments!

*Visioning meditation. * Go out under the sky when the moon is full or new and close your eyes. Envision the world you want to see, a right story for your community and ecosystem. Draw upon the potent energy of the moon and radiate that vision.

Storytelling on the land. Go out to your sacred mountains, rivers, stones, trees and tell the land a future story–the story of a year from now, five years from now, etc. Tell the story about humans getting it right rather than humans getting it wrong again and again. You can speak this story aloud, write it down and share it, or even share it with your favorite trees.

Co-creative visioning. Stories are best when they are shared and created together. There are two options here:

• *With the land: *Go out onto the land where you live and speak to the spirits of the land. Commune with them and ask them about the world they want to see. Take that collective vision you have created and envision that strongly upon the land. Share it in some ways with others.
• *With other committed humans. *You can do the same kind of co-creative visioning that I shared at the start of my post. Open up a sacred space. Invite everyone to spend some time in quiet, and then have everyone share the vision and radiate it out. This is particularly strong and effective in groups!.

*Bardic visioning: * Put your creative skills to work for the good of all. Bardic visioning is when we put our creative skills to use to craft a better vision of the future. This can be in whatever bardic creative practice you do–painting, writing, singing, weaving, carving, etc. Put your intention into the piece you are creating, and when you are done with it, share it with others. Share it online, share it face-to-face with friends, share it with your land, burn it as an offering to the land.

*Other ideas? *Nate Summers and I also have a whole chapter on visioning in our new book,Eco-Spirituality in the 21st Century, which you can check out for more ideas.

The moon in winter–good time for visioning

**New Moon dates. **You can do this work anytime–do it every day if you can. However, I am choosing to focus my 2026 visioning efforts on the new moon and inviting you to join me. The new moon dates are as follows. Note that this list is adapted from this moon phase calendar.

• January 18: 2:52 PM – Capricorn
• February 17: 7:01 AM- Aquarius – This will also be the time of a total solar eclipse viewable in the southern hemisphere over South America.
• March 18: 9:24 PM – Pisces
• April 17: 7:52 AM – Aries
• May 16: 4:01 PM – Taurus – Supermoon – the moon is closer to Earth, so she appears larger in the sky.
• June 14: 10:54 PM – Gemini – Supermoon – Large moon in the sky!
• July 14: 5:44 AM – Cancer – Supermoon – Large moon in the sky!
• August 12: 1:37 PM – Leo – Total Solar Eclipse viewable over Iceland, Greenland, and parts of Western Europe
• September 10: 11:27 PM – Virgo
• October 10: 11:50 AM – Libra
• November 9: 2:02 AM – Scorpio-
• December 8: 7:52 PM (Sagittarius) – Micromoon – this is when the moon is further away from the Earth. so she appears smaller in the sky.

What should I vision? Visioning can be challenging work. Think about your local community–what would make it substantially better? Think about your local ecosystem–how can the ecosystem heal? Think about the world you want to live in rather than the world that exists. You can craft a vision that is very local and specific or very broad. What I have learned from doing other group visioning ceremonies is that different people often think on different levels or in diverse directions based on their experiences, and together we will cover what matters. Here’s some of my own vision I shared a few years ago about the world I would love to see: the web of relationships.

Feel free to share your visions in this post. I will also make posts in the Druid’s Garden Facebook and Land Healer’s Facebook groups three days before the new moons so that we can do this co-creative visioning together. I hope you’ll join me.

Annoucements

I wanted to share a few things about 2026 and all that it brings!

**Druid on Retreat in late Dec and early January. ** I will be engaging in my regular January retreat, and this will be my last post until late January. I hope that all of you take some time to engage in a retreat during the dark, quiet, and cold months of the year (if you are in the northern hemisphere, of course!) See you when I return!

Appearances for 2026: I have a number of appearances in 2026!

**Plant Cunning Conference: **I will be one of the keynotes at the Plant Cunning Conference (which has not been announced yet to the public) which will take place in New York at the end of July. I’ll be offering a workshop on animism and herbalism and a land healing ceremony. I’ll share more details as soon as the announcement goes public.

**MAGUS Druid Gathering: ** I will be attending MAGUS 2026 May 14-17th, offering AODA initiations, and collaborating with others on a ritual team for one of our main rituals. Registration usually closes in about 5 minutes for this, so if you are interested, check when the event opens up and register literally the first minute it opens in early January. Hope to see some of you there!

**Aromatic herbalism weekend – August 28- 30th at Rhoneymeade in Centre Hall, PA (near State College, PA): **The Pennsylvania School of Herbalism is planning an aromatic herbalism weekend that will include me teaching a Friday evening of plant spirit communication/plant spirit initiation, a full Saturday of learning how to craft various locally-based and sustainable hydrosols, essential oils, herbal smoking blends, and incense with all local and sustainably harvested herbs. We will also offer a cacao ceremony, earth oven baking, herb-based yoga, and some other great things. You can camp at Rhoneymeade for $25/night, and we will have food available for purchase and/or potluck options. Rhoneymeade is a wonderful location for learning herbs, tucked into the rural Central PA mountains with many sacred spaces, a botanical garden, and much more. You can join the waitlist for this event, and we will announce a full schedule in early 2026. Hope to see you there!

**Mushroom medicine (virtual Course): ** I will once again be offering my medicinal mushroom course for a sliding scale (on Zoom or Zoom-based recordings) in January and February of this year. Learn more about it at the link!

Blessings to all, and see you in late January!