Re:Source

(2022. I wrote this after reuniting with my bus in my favorite place I lived in 2021. It is an offering to this land and the people who love it.)

There is a place in the desert that is green and growing. It may be the most special place I’ve ever called home.

It has gone by many names. Re:Source. Wildheart Ranch. Saguaro Sanctuary. Javalina. The property, the ranch, the land. Personally, I call it Re:Source, because that was what I first knew it as, and returning to source is meaningful to me. Ultimately what matters is not what you call it, but rather the relationship you form with it.

This place is special for many reasons; that begins with the land itself. The large plot of land is hidden in the mountains of Southern Arizona. It is saguaro country. Nobody understands the majesty of the saguaros until they spend time in their presence; I know I didn’t. Saguaros are some of the most ancient and noble living things I have ever met, and they are everywhere on this massive land. This private property is as chock-full of massive saguaros as Saguaro National Park, except it’s always empty, natural, and tourist-free. There are hundreds of saguaros on the land; I wouldn’t be surprised if the number was over a thousand. The median age is well over 100 years old, and many of them are 200, 300 years old; the massive grandfather saguaro down in the wash could easily be over 400 years old. There is almost no private property available on this continent where you can still find so many ‘old growth trees,’ because they’ve all been logged— but not the saguaros. They remain; they stand tall; they are sagacious. They are the keystone of this entire ecosystem, which is so much richer than I could have imagined. To walk around this property is to walk through the kind of untouched natural landscape that is so difficult to find nowadays, and so necessary for the human soul. These ancient saguaros are a treasure, and spending time among them changes you in ways difficult to describe. They speak a language older than words. They are also, you will find, rather silly characters; they all have unique shapes and unique personalities; quite often you will find one going ‘woohoo!’ with its arms, or enthusiastically waving hello to you as you pass. It is appropriate to wave back; mirroring saguaro arms is great fun. You will come to appreciate the different cactus characters: the old, the young, the spears, the many-armed, the shapely, the crooked, the nub-studded, the siblings, the grandparents, the ones with holes in their heads, the ones that look like they’re on a brochure.

No matter how many people are currently on the property, it is very easy to go off on a hike alone and lose yourself in the incredible silence. The property is huge enough that it takes many different hikes to explore the whole thing. You can go north from the house up a ridge towards a certain saguaro whose arms twist curiously downwards to human level; this is unique, because almost all saguaro arms point upwards, as if they intend to offer their blossoms to the sky; when this strange saguaro’s flowers blossomed last year, it was as if he was handing us the blossom as a blessing. You can also go west down into a wash and then up towards the highest ridge on the property, from which you can see spectacular views of the whole surrounding area. This includes the unmistakable Gila River at the south end of the property, and the riparian desert oasis that surrounds it; this also includes various mountain ranges in every direction you turn; you can even see the peculiarly beautiful copper mine in the distance to the northwest, which is the reason that the tiny towns nearby exist. Or, if you head east from the house, you can follow a narrow slot canyon into a wash, or go along the eastern ridge to a motherload of massive saguaros with all sorts of different personalities. There are a pair of cacti up here that I call the aunt and uncle, and I am particularly fond of them; you will know which is which. Eventually both the east and west ridges, with spectacular views all along, feed down towards the wash, the copper mine train tracks, and finally the Gila River, which has flowed all the way here from New Mexico. The Gila is its own environment, very different from the rest of the desert, and holy in its own way; it is a slice of bright wet greens in a landscape of tans and softer greens. A very wise shaman occasionally floats down to Re:Source from his home near the source of the river. If you cross the Gila, you can make your way up the wild Tortilla Mountains on the far side. This is only a taste of the adventures that await the eager explorer of Re:Source; I don’t want to spoil everything by sharing all I’ve found.

You will come to appreciate the many-colored rocks that form the ground here, and you may take some specially-colored ones home with you. You will also come to appreciate how full of life this desert is; not only are there saguaros, but there are many cacti of all kinds, including prickly pears, little round dudes with big hooks, and the dreaded jumping cholla. There are hummingbirds and owls, bats and doves, crows, and the amazing gilded flitter who lives in holes near the top of saguaros. There are ants and little hopping cricket-type dudes, there are crafty desert rats and exciteable coyotes, there are snakes and spiders and scorpions and more. There is even the occasional cow mooing in the distance. It will shock you how full of life the desert is, and yet still, when any noise breaks the silence, or distracts you from the sound of your shoes on gravel, you will stop, awestruck, and listen. The sparseness of the desert has a way of highlighting the living; the silence accentuates the sounds of life. There are also bushes, trees, palo verde; you will be surprised that, when viewed from any ridge, the property is more green than tan. 

It is not just the land that makes Re:Source special. This place has a way of drawing people together, and the people you will meet here are here for a reason. The people who come here are on journeys, journeys that take them off the beaten path. Here, you will find dreamers; you will find spiritual seekers; you will find teachers and students; you will find artists, poets, thinkers; you will find creators and entrepeneurs; you will find world-shakers, paradigm-shifters; you will find people who believe in themselves, and you will find people who believe in you. At just one month-long intentional community Re:Source event, I grew to know and love many different kinds of people: there was a Nike designer, a Columbian world-traveler, a young crypto whiz-kid, a yoga teacher, an OnlyFans top creator, a DJ, a guy named Infinity, and the coolest math teacher you’ve ever met, to just name a few. And that was only one event; there always seems to be spiritually attuned people coming and going from the ranch, making offerings to the land, building things. The network of interesting people attached to this land continues to spiral outwards, and the potential this community has is limitless.

The force behind this incredible place is Kjerstin Erickson. Kjerstin, or KJ, is one of the most impressive, well-rounded, and compassionate human beings I have ever met. I am going to try to help you imagine KJ. Imagine the most well-developed millenial possible; imagine she worked hard her whole life and got herself into Stanford; imagine she’s highly intelligent and highly motivated; imagine a slew of successful startups and nonprofits under her belt; imagine someone who did YCombinator before it was cool; imagine she’s spent a ton of time helping places in need around the world, working intimately with communities in Africa to spearhead unique aid efforts designed to help those communities empower themselves long-term; imagine that she’s achieved great success in her career, and has relationships with all sorts of interesting people from all walks of life. Got that? Okay, now imagine that she’s drop-dead gorgeous; imagine that she’s fit, healthy, blonde, everything American magazine covers want, and that she takes pride in how beautiful she is; imagine that she radiates divine feminine power like almost nobody else you’ve met. Still with me? Now get this: imagine that this high-powered person I have described is also deeply compassionate, deeply human, deeply sensitive, deeply spiritual. Imagine that this person gives time and energy and care to so many different people, that she overflows with abundance, that she has made the world better in thousands of tiny ways, hundreds of big ways, dozens of huge ways. Imagine that this person is a seeker of truth and beauty, that she loves poetry and art and reading and exploring. Imagine that she is on a spiritual journey just like you and I, that she has struggles and successes, that she cries and that she dreams. Imagine that her journey brought her to a plot of land hidden in the Arizona desert, and that her well-tuned sense of the sacred alerted her that something very special could happen here. Imagine that she moved mountains to be able to purchase the land, and began to unleash her creative vision into the rich desert. Imagine she began to bring people together on this sacred land to change their lives, and to change the world. That’s just the tip of the iceberg in imagining Kjerstin. She is too good to be true, and yet she is truer than I can convey.

With Kjerstin as the force behind Re:Source, the place has developed tremendously in just the first year. She has so many people coming to the property at different times to make different offerings, and the land is being cultivated like a communal garden. All of the improvements fit in with the land as an extension of the human home here. The house itself is lovely, and has everything a human being could need; those camping around the property can use the house’s amenities as long as they are respectful. Just because we are in the desert does not mean we have to rough it, if we so choose. There is also a yoga studio just up the hill, which is sometimes used for ceremony. Down the hill there is a massive workshop, which has the potential to be a great creative space; it has also been used as a dance floor for the occasional daybreak rave. These came with the property, but I have seen many improvements since then. There is a hot tub in the back under the shadow of a saguaro. There is a sauna in the front with a window showing a vast vista of cacti. There is a swingset. There is a path to a desert oasis featuring a fire area for group gatherings, with chairs and shade structures around. There are random little stone markings and patterns left by those who wanted to make a meaningful mark on the desert. Just today, two devoted friends of the land finished making a sweat lodge out of willow, while another friend of the land raked a zen garden in the gravel around. All around the property there are little places where a tent, pod, van, rv, or bus could reside, and the amount of openings is growing as new living structures are built. There are two new platforms for permanent tents or pods being built not 20 yards from where I am sitting. These improvements are all done in harmony with the land; we work around the cacti. Over time, this is becoming the kind of place that can host just about anything you can envision.

The possibilities for Re:Source open endlessly. That’s what happens when you combine a unique land, a brilliant founder, an evergrowing group of truth-seekers, and a powerful vision for a place that can put people in touch with nature, each other, themselves, and their highest callings. For me, Re:Source has been a place to recognize the power I’ve always held, to learn that life is ceremony, to embrace parts of myself I had been missing, to make amazing lifelong friends, to find courage and compassion, and to create amazing poetry. For others, Re:Source will be many different things, although I imagine there will be many shared experiences as well. When I left last April, after a month of calling this place home, the saguaros were bursting with spring desert rain, and bearing pink fruit; they were finally blossoming, and so was I. This place will help many people blossom, and I have been blessed to bear witness.