Wild Developments
Wild Developments
Restoring Soils & Souls
Robin Motzer's Wildlands blends art, poetry, and environmental activism to inspire personal and ecological healing. Through her Substack platform and habitat restoration projects, she encourages individuals to reconnect with nature and engage in conservation efforts. Discover how Robin’s journey from artist to environmental advocate can guide you toward a more mindful and restorative relationship with the earth.
Wildlands, https://robinmotzer.substack.com
Habitat Restoration, www.sustainabletucson.org
Wild Wisdom Highlights:
- Art as Activism: Robin Motzer demonstrates how art can be a powerful tool for environmental advocacy, using creative expression to raise awareness and inspire action for habitat restoration.
- Reconnection with Nature: The podcast emphasizes the importance of reconnecting with the natural world as a means of personal healing and ecological stewardship, encouraging listeners to explore their surroundings and engage in conservation.
- Community and Collaboration: Robin highlights the value of building community through collaborative projects and initiatives, showing how collective efforts can lead to significant environmental impact and foster a sense of shared responsibility.
Let’s hear your story! Click here to submit your tale.
New England Fall Foliage Trip: October 13-19, 2024
selfdrivenewengland.com
Connect with me on social media!
Instagram
Facebook
YouTube
LinkedIn
TikTok
X
Pinterest
For more inspiration, check out www.WildDevelopmentsStudio.com.
Wild Developments is part of the iRoar Network
Intro & Outro: Bernie Baggs
Have everything we need within us we just need to get back to us and once we really know that wisdom and live from that simple true wisdom everything gets restored welcome to wild development studio join us as we venture into the breathtaking realm of wildlife arts and untamed adventures with captivating stories from the field and ideas to dive into to the visual arts will ignite your passion for conservation.
Get ready to develop something wild.
Robin means new beginnings and Robin Motzer is on a mission to explore peace,
love, restoration, conservation, protecting nature, and ourselves.
Robin is an artist from pencil to oil to acrylic and writer, essays and poetry.
She does design, teaching, healing, and transcending trauma with restoring soils and souls.
She believes healing the earth heals people.
Robin, thank you so much for being here today.
Thank you, Lauren.
Glad to be here.
Tell me about Wildlands.
Wildlands is a culmination of decades of work I've done in the health and wellness and environment.
I've worked a lot in advocacy so i've just uh created wildlands which is on substack and it's a share poetry essays and art along with action steps to help yourself and nature and more than humans with a mission to reduce harm increase self -love and love of nature in all relations that sounds exactly like not exactly like but it sounds a lot like my mission here at wild developments so if somebody subscribes to wild lands what can they expect well uh everything thing is a choice if you want to subscribe for free or if you want to nation of your choice or there's a subscriber fee it's five dollars a month and so there's different options on levels of support it goes towards helping projects i have a group called sustainable tucson habitat habitat restoration.
We do habitat restoration for native wildlife, and we also do community gardens.
And it's also to inspire people to do their own restoration and conservation work,
and they can do that at home or anywhere.
And I actually travel the country.
I work not only in Arizona but I also work in Oklahoma and in Ohio so my work is growing and it's really exciting and I love it so much I'm willing to work for free because I just so I have so much information to share and I really the feedback I get is phenomenal I think use from around the world people telling me me that my knowledge is helping them heal trauma.
And it's helping them live a healthier, happier life.
And it's also helping them connect with nature and all of the divine beings within it.
So there's a lot of great work happening.
I'm really excited to share this work with thanks again, Lauren, for having me as a guest.
I'm so glad that you're here.
And I want to hear more about 2022sustainable tucson habitat restoration and how gardening helps traumatize children absolutely so as we we probably all know that there's a lot of benefits to gardening there's a lot of research that's been done on this and it helps improve health once we when.
When we get our hands in the soils, the soils are full of nutrients,
and it's just a great way to remember who we are.
We came from the soils, and we'll return to the soils, and it's a way to grow life and be a part of something greater than ourselves.
Because nature is miraculous, are all miracles, and the children are able to connect with not only growing something,
it gives them a partnership, it gives them purpose, it gives them so much information that is not taught in schools or society.
Society it gives them quiet with nature so that they can go within and it's really a great way to clear any trauma and confusion and loneliness i think that since the last time we talked i started taking a community gardening class and the woman that is in charge she used to do gardening with prisoners and she said that the change in their attitude and their mood just getting their hands in the soil and watching something grow from a seed to something that they can then turn into salsa or you know a food that they can share as a community she said that that transformation was just absolutely amazing like you could see her sparkle and radiate as she's telling people about out the changes she was seeing in these prisoners.
It was a really cool experience.
And so speaking of soil, you started restoring soil and souls.
What was your inspiration behind this and the backstory?
I've always been a nature lover my whole life.
I just believe that I was part of nature.
I could communicate with nature and nature could communicate with me.
My earliest archetype was Mowgli of Jungle Book and I really just felt like that's the way you know we should all be living is uh connected with nature and we're separated from it on so many levels it's causing a lot of health problems and mental health problems and uh you know really being uh someone who's very much aware of health and wellness and the connection with nature.
The importance of all that.
I have been plant -based for 35years and it has healed me from childhood allergies,
asthma, bronchitis.
I don't get any of those issues anymore.
And I live a very, very simple life based on what's true.
I've done decades of research.
I am very, very active in several communities.
And I've actually been asked to run for office even a few times,
which I gratefully declined.
I feel like my work is actually very, it is very political.
And it does uh incorporate no knowledge of and wisdom of laws and politics grandfather was a farmer and friends with the u .s president and my great aunt actually helped to raise and babysit uh the first daughter of the president of a president and another ancestor fought in the american revolution so food farming and freedom are infused in my life and restoration conservation is part of my partner is a physicist and a citizen of the.
Cherokee Nation and he and I now own farmland that has been in his family since 1902and we have paperwork that's signed by a U .S.
President around that time that said this Cherokee land, which we all know the trauma that the extirpation of the indigenous and all the wildlife,
the buffalo is horrific.
It's something that we all need to make amends with.
And that's exactly what my partner and I are doing.
And the happy part of this is that my partner is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
So it the land is back in Cherokee hands and we are restoring the land and a home and we are planted hundreds and hundreds of trees for the wildlife and for food and we're doing gardens regeneratively.
It's going to be one of the most beautiful beautiful sanctuaries for wildlife and for people and nature and we hope one day that it will be a park for perpetuity because sean and i don't have children our our children are all the beings that we are teaching and guiding and we really want to have our legacy be this park and it'll be.
The historical park for indigenous, the Cherokee, but also the history of farming and farmers really built this country.
And we need to get back to healthy ways of farming and gardening because the soils have so much nutrients and they have to be nurtured in a regenerative way because that's been done for millennia.
And the modern ways of poisoning the soil is really about consumerism and,
you know, it gets people sick and into the pharmaceuticals and all of the industries that sell these oils.
Is we really need to go back to what we know about what's true and that's really you know a simple regenerative lifestyle.
I find that so fascinating and it seems so overwhelming like I want to start a garden in my own yard and I have to look up local regulations with the township and the neighborhood and it's just it feels so ridiculous we should be able to grow our own food on our own land how do we go back to reclaiming a land that you know everybody should have access to I agree so much with your statement Lauren that's that's my work restoring soils and souls is all about that it's all about taking our power back our authority we're in charge we don't need people to tell us how to tend to our land our soil our health our bodies our minds it's just gotten way out of control so i'm bringing that all back to the people people and reminding them that you are in charge so take charge do what you know is right Lauren and do it without poisoning and without doing and everybody benefits and think about the food chain I mean just quite simply you know if we're poisoning the land that poisons all the beneficial beneficial insects all the beneficial birds that eat those insects and it just goes on up the food change that's insane and it poisons our water which then just enters everything back into the whole cycle i mean we really we need to get back in touch with nature and living naturally so what.
What do you have a simple step that somebody can start today in restoring their soil?
Absolutely.
Step one, don't use any chemicals.
And ensure soil regenerate naturally by planting native plants, herbs, any flowers, you know,
that are native.
All of that works symbiotically to restore the soils and when you have healthy soils moisture is retained naturally so one of the things I tell people is when you poison the soil you're drying it out and it creates a way a need for more water and this message is so.
So important all over, especially in the deserts, because what's happening is, you know,
a billion pounds of pesticides and herbicides and pesticides are used annually.
And this is documented.
And I wrote about it in one of my essays.
I provided the link to show.
Show it's actually i think through the ohio department of resources that uh i that link was shared i think through their work of documenting the amount of chemicals that are used and so you know drying out the soil is death to the soil and then it creates you know erosion it blows away and we need to water more it's just it's just not the way to go and and we have proof that it doesn't work i mean look at the dust bowl that's because nature was being destroyed farms were being destroyed and and then the soil just blew away it was lifeless so we cannot repeat that i mean we're we're so needed each one of us and i write about this each one of us is a a piece of the piece and it's our responsibility to know right action and when we love ourselves we do not want to do harm because that goes against our nature so what we're taught is to buy this product take this pill this person this organization this politician will help you and that's just really you we have everything we need within us we just need to get back to us and once we really know that wisdom and live from that simple true wisdom everything gets restored and I'm I'm living proof I have overcome a lot of trauma and I walk my talk and I really I'm not kidding.
I love what I do.
So if anyone wants guidance, just reach out to me.
I am happy to help.
Yeah. It sounds like, I mean, you can tell just listening to you,
how passionate you are about it.
And you know, we all want to be cured from physical impairments and we want to be healthy.
We want to live more connected lives.
Why do you think that higher powers that be are poisoning our land and essentially poisoning us what i we see the end of the road it's not going to be pretty why are we still on this like basically a bullet train towards destruction why do you think that is uh i know why that is again i've done a lot of advocacy i was asked to run for office i i what happens lauren is that politicians corporations military big pharma they all work together to create regulatory agencies that regulate and allow harm so what you know that's why we have to take our power back we have to be our own authority and we can't just uh keep standing up to all these um you know errors and judgment that are made by these people who just want to control and make money power over everybody so that they can continue control power and money for themselves and it's just a beast that wants to grow and grow grow and grow until we say no.
Yeah.
That's just it.
We're just going to have to take our power back.
And that's my work.
That is all about my work, man.
Read wild lions, robinmonster .substack .com.
I go into all of this.
I've been writing about it for a year.
Um, and again, it's based on decades of my work so you already said what your legacy is you want to leave your park behind what can you tell us some more about the park like how big it is and what are some if somebody goes to visit the park what are some things that they can expect to do there well it's not a park yet we're still still restoring the land and the home I designed the remodel it was designed by designed by me and I have also a background into the design build I'm also I'm very much in into natural building materials and organic design so that really is all about connecting the building with the land so it's like an indoor outdoor lifestyle and using natural building material possible and one day it'll be a park so what we hope to have are will be organic regenerative gardens and places to reflect and you know walk and we'd like to have a pond for the wildlife wildlife and uh free food free organic food and herbs and um and one day hopefully a sanctuary for the wild that can't be released um i used to work for a wildlife center we did rescues and we did restoration rehab and then we would return them back to the wild if they could could be returned back to the wild but sadly a lot of them can't um you know well -meaning people might um take a baby chick out of the wild and think that they need you know help or something and then they've lost all of their natural way of being they lost their their mothers and father teach them how to be wild so anyway there's a lot of education that goes into all of it and uh so that's what we hope to have in our park one day that sounds beautiful and i can't wait to see where you guys go with that are you keeping updates are you doing are you doing fundraisers how like what's your what are your plans to get there well um that's a development because i i really don't want to go the non -profit route uh i've worked with a lot of non -profits and.
And I really, right now, the work is starting with wildlands on Substack,
robinmotzer .substack .com, because it's a way to get the word out, and then people can support that work on Substack.
And then as things progress, you know, we'll have fundraisers, and we'll figure out ways that people can help.
Help. Another way people can support the work is through Sustainable Tucson Habitat Restoration dot org and you know a lot of projects that we're doing so around the country so there's ways that people can get involved either financially or if they want to volunteer for a project and they just need to really reach out and let me know what they'd like to do to help.
So, and you have work in Ohio too, right?
Yeah, I was born and raised in Southern Ohio in the Great Miami Valley area,
so of Hamilton, Ohio, and I'm very proud of all of the restoration and of the historic buildings and the waters.
They're helping clean up, you know, different areas and and create more parks,
and it's all really exciting what's happening there, so I look forward to doing a lot more there,
and I'll be there at the end of April.
Okay, great, so because I'm located in Ohio, and I think a lot of my listeners currently are in Ohio,
so would they be able to reach out to you and help out and volunteer?
Absolutely. My email is rmotzerdesigns at comcast .net.
Perfect. And I'll put a link to your sub stack and your email so people can hop on and get ahold of you and start making some changes to restore soil and souls.
And you're also an artist too right that's right and i'm uh working on the road now right now so there's no artwork behind me of mine but i love your art it's absolutely beautiful and all those blue ribbons really are uh spectacular oh thank you so what is your favorite um subject to draw or paint?
I like to draw and paint animals and forests.
So I was recently in an art show called.
Pieces of Me through the Women's Art Club of Hamilton.
And it was a dual gallery show.
It was a great success.
And it was at the Strauss Gallery and at the Fitton Center.
And I'm all I have poems at the Oxford Community Center right now through April 4th that's fantastic oh congratulations thank you um where can people view your artwork is that on.
Substack too yeah right now everything's on Substack it just is easy because I work on the and uh it lets me showcase everything right there on one platform how do you go about traveling and doing your artwork because i'm currently trying to put in for a couple art artists in residencies and i'm like how am i going to pack all my stuff and keep it safe so what do you have any tips or tricks for that well uh it's pretty much just a trial and error for me but what i guess works is that you know well so that's why i i went back to drawing with a pencil so you know my my show the pieces of me artwork are actually my pencil drawings of animals and you know pencil and paper are the purest form of art so why not do that on the road and then uh i do acrylics and oils too have kind of a small like little toolbox that i I haul everything around in and then just grab canvases around wherever I am.
Cool. Do you find that people gravitate towards one particular painting of yours or a theme?
Yeah, you know, yes, I think animals obviously are something that people really connect with and love so i've got a lot of portraits of animals and the singular comment i get the most is that they can see the the souls in their eyes and because i i seem to capture that in my drawings and that is important to me because souls you know the eyes are the windows to the soul i yeah you got your restoring soul soils and soul so that totally makes sense that the eye is absolutely my favorite part to paint on anything and i don't think people realize all the intricate details with the reflections and then also adding in the shadow and everything that really helps to to bring it to light absolutely so do you have a favorite experience in nature well i have several fans decades i just across the board my favorite thing is connecting with the wild i mean they wildlife i can tell wildlife love humans they're very curious about us they just want us to behave a little kind you know more kindly and with more respect to them uh I've witnessed gosh I some of my favorite beings are insects because they work so hard and work as a team and they're just they I I was this is kind of a funny story in a way but um and I was playing pickleball the other day I just picked that up and as a way to be outside side and you know it's a great exercise uh way to exercise and socialize so uh unfortunately you know there's there are like ants like to come on the courts and so I try to watch my step I don't want to hurt any beings and I noticed that an ant had been stepped on and I saw another ant aunt come to that aunt who clearly was deceased and they circled that aunt and they circled a couple times and they would go and and and they were clearly acknowledging the aunt and that you know the aunt needed their help they picked up this aunt picked up the aunt the other the the deceased aunt and was carrying them off the court.
And I thought, you know, people need to stop and watch the serve because you can learn so much from nature.
And, you know, these beings are sentient.
They have intelligence.
They, they have families, they have jobs and purposes to do all these things I cover in wild lands on Substack.
And, you know, it's, it's really these fine details that we really need and respect and say,
hey, that's a lesson, you know, don't poison them, don't step on them,
don't, they need us, they need us to protect them and conserve them and restore them just as much as we need them.
If not more.
Yeah. And I think if we all get off of these cell phones,
I think that, and we're more present and taking that time, like you said,
to observe such a small being that we will learn so much.
And when we take the time out to observe and learn, we're going to fall in love with them and we're going to want to protect them.
That's the whole reason for my work lauren and i don't even own a smartphone i don't like what they do to people i don't like what it's doing to our freedom i don't like what it's doing to our minds our spirits i don't like it so i don't have one and that's the way we change the world we don't comply we don't support these things and we don't purchase them i don't on i don't like no no so I support local small businesses and I support those who do no harm very good and let me see do you have a favorite animal well I'd say I love them all I seem to be drawn to cats all kinds of cats so wild cats bobcats mountain lions.
Jaguars, house cats, cats.
I love asking that question because I feel like you can learn a lot about a person by their favorite animal and what they like in that animal.
What is it about cats that you find fascinating?
They're independent. They're smart. They're.
They're, they know how to take care of themselves in any situation.
I just think they're all loving, sensitive, empathic, beautiful beings.
I just love everything about them.
Perfect.
Well, you've told us where people can find you.
And um so i will make sure that we put that in the show notes so people can find you and before we go what is one tip that you have for someone who would like to connect with nature take a walk in nature and connect with something out there like a rock or water or a tree or a forest or an animal and tell them that you're letting go of your inner conflicts and your fears fears and leave it behind in nature and restore that peace and being and independence within yourself perfect thank you so much for sharing all of your information um and keep up your important work i can't wait to hear how far you go so thank you for sharing that thanks lauren and people can read uh some of my other connection with wildlife i've written about out my connections with fish.
Dolphins, hawks, birds, bear, a bear, intuitive and psychic.
I do healing work for animals as well as people.
And I do a lot of sharing on my publication.
Great. Thank you so much.
And until next time, get outside and see what develops.
Thanks for joining Wild Development Studio.
We hope this exploration into the world of wildlife arts and adventure has sparked a desire to get outside and connect with something wild.
If you have an adventure that's awe -inspiring, don't hesitate to share.
Click the link in the description to submit your story to have it featured on our show or be a guest.
Until next time, keep connecting to the wild and see what develops.
The views, opinions, and statements expressed by individuals during Wild Development Studio productions do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Wild Development Studio or its affiliates.
Participation in any activities, expeditions, or adventures discussed or promoted during our content may involve inherent risks.
It is strongly advised that individuals conduct thorough research, seek professional guidance, and take all necessary precautions before engaging in any such activities.
Wild Development Studio, its representatives, or employees shall not be held responsible for any injury,
loss, damage, accident, or unforeseen incident that may occur as a result of participating in activities inspired by or discussed in our content.
By choosing to engage with our content or act upon any information provided,
individuals do so at their own risk and discretion.
You.
