Andrea Wilson

Andrea Wilson, Renaissance Woman - explorer/teacher/designer/listener/writer/learner.

I come by exploring honestly. My ancestors date back to Alexander Mackenzie, the great Canadian explorer who was one of the first recorded European explorers to cross Canada. Ironically, about 25 years ago, I attended a pow-wow where a Dene Elder spoke. He was telling the story of his ancestors who couldn’t figure out why the river they lived beside had been named after the man whom they had rescued after capsizing. This body of water was the Mackenzie River. I admitted he was my ancestor and we all had a good laugh.

I have been exploring by canoe for over 33 years. When I am not mapping new areas with my cartographer/writer husband, Hap, I spend 5 months of the year in Temagami, Ontario, at an off-grid, paddle-in, small-scale ecolodge that we designed and built by hand. Temagami holds some of the largest remaining old-growth red and white pine stands in the world. Hap and I act as conduits for guests who have lost touch with nature by way of guiding them into the forest by canoe or on foot, sharing with them the stories that tell the history of the land, its ancestral people and sharing the importance the land has to the health of the earth today.

Exploration in nature has taught me to to appreciate the nuances of balance and detail. I am an artist who has a deep appreciation for aesthetics. There is so much beauty in nature and I bring what I observe in the natural world into my design work for our lodge and client projects.

I am also an explorer of my own mind and nature has been my greatest teacher. My academic life has been an integration of many disciplines, from biology, because I love all living things; English, because I have a love of reading, writing and listening to stories; Gerontology, because I care about elders in our communities; and Studies in Religion and Ethics, because I appreciate deeper meaning, a sense of being connected to something greater than oneself, the importance of ritual in life and how people relate to others and the world around them.

My curiosity and explorations led me to pursue a masters degree in interdisciplinary humanities where my work focused on what was termed “wisdom environments” between a story-teller and listener as a kind of sacred space. My doctoral work built on this concept and looked at conversations as a form of sacred space, which is created when there is a deep sense of respect between those conversing.

In the act of sharing/listening, the storyteller and listener are transported from mundane (clock) time to profane (sacred) time where they experience losing a sense of space and time.

Sharing stories also gives the teller and the listener an opportunity to alter their perspectives, which can sometimes lead to healing. By truly listening to a story, be it another’s or one’s own, we are given a chance to lay witness to a story within a story, which can have a profound impact on interpretation and moving forward.

I continue to weave all that I learn into my fabric of being as I evolve and discover along the greatest exploration - this journey we call life. Mine is a story that is fluid, ever changing, like the rivers I paddle on, the winds I listen to in the pines or the stories shared around the campfire. I believe all things are interconnected and it is through a connection with nature that this is discovered.