Dear Friends,
We’d like to give a huge thank you to Andy Vantrease! Andy, in addition to being a wonderful friend and support, has stepped up in meaningful ways these past years to collaborate with Feathered Pipe Foundation and help us grow and transform.
Some of the ways she’s contributed —taking our Instagram to the next level with thought-provoking posts, writing articles and helping us tell our story (several that have been published in magazines and newspapers), interviewing valued voices from the Feathered Pipe community and turning those into podcasts for our Dandelion Effect Podcast and blogs, and offering storymapping sessions for guests of the Ranch. The creation and work we did on the podcast, both preserved our history/archives and gave us hope and inspiration throughout the pandemic and into the future.
We cherish our time working together and know it is not the end, but an opening to what is next.
We wish Andy joy and happiness as she pursues her next endeavors. Andy shares her reflections of her journey with us. We hope you enjoy reading her story—really a Dandelion Effect story—that is a testimony to how “REAL goodness” can shift the world one seed at a time.
With love and gratitude,
Crystal, Eric, and the Feathered Pipe Team
Andy’s Reflections
Nine years ago, I sat down at my parents’ house in Delaware and hand wrote a letter to India Supera. I was 27 years old, had just returned home from the Philippines to tend to debilitating Lyme Disease, and I was completely culture-shocked and disillusioned. In Asia, I had found work and a way of life that felt passionate and purposeful, and at the time, I feared that I’d never feel that again.
You see, I heard out about the Ranch at a critical time, through a series of serendipitous events (like many of us do). A friend had given me a hat from her trip to Montana, and while wearing it one day, a woman approached me and told me if I ever make it out west, I HAVE to visit the Feathered Pipe Ranch. “It’s the most magical place in the world,” she said convincingly. The next moment, she was gone—and to this day, I still don’t know who she was. I was jobless, still quite sick, and everything I thought I knew about the world had been upended in the months prior. So, I Googled the Ranch, read India’s story and my heart leapt out of my chest.
I had to go.
Fast forward to several weeks after I mailed the letter, I received a phone call from India. “Come out this summer,” she said. “Clearly you are a writer. We could use your help.” One week in 2016 turned into the whole season in 2017… turned into many years of working with the Feathered Pipe Ranch and Foundation. I attended retreats and wrote articles for wellness magazines, interviewed the founding crew for a historical archive project, helped manage social media, produced the Dandelion Effect Podcast, created and offered therapeutic Storymapping services for retreat guests, coached teachers on how to articulate and share their unique talents with the world. I even spontaneously served breakfast on the only morning in 35 years that Mike Wells slept in and missed his shift! (We love you, Mike.)
We’ve accomplished a lot together—175 interviews over the years! But more than any goal reached or project completed, the lasting fulfillment for me has been belonging to a community dedicated to goodness. Half a century’s worth of REAL goodness. Creating spaces for people to remember their inherent divinity; sharing ideas that uplift and inspire; embodying a healthy relationship with our minds, bodies and spirits; integrating the arts as a necessary ingredient for living (and healing). The Ranch gave me an education that I didn’t receive in school, one that prioritized service, love and nature as the foundational medicines of our times.
Over time, I’ve learned to listen to the stirrings of my soul, and I regard the soft voice of intuition and steady tap of desire to be worthy data points for navigating life. I’ve also learned that there is a rhythm to the creative process—a time to build, a time to bloom, a time to compost, a time to start something new. We started and completed many creative cycles in my time at the Ranch, and this year, I decided that my work here, in this particular shape, has reached the end of a larger cycle for now. That it’s time to take the fruit and pollinate new gardens.
I’ve landed on the coast of Maine and have fallen utterly in love with the water, just as I remember falling for the mountains of Montana nearly a decade ago. I walk to the tidal river most nights and say hello to curious seals who poke their heads up and look around. I watch bald eagles and osprey dive for fish. I hear owls and foxes and coyotes at dawn.
Just last night, I was strolling the trail near my house, feeling the familiar swirl of emotions I’ve encountered so many times when on the precipice of a big transition. From up in the tree canopy came a ruckus so loud, it startled me out of my wandering thoughts: A flock of wild turkeys!
I listened to their calls and the flap of their clumsy, large wings as they traversed the dense brush. Some were flying from the ground into the trees. Others were jumping from limb to limb. All were chanting and chatting and gossiping about me.
I stood and watched for a while, stepping quietly on the Earth underneath them. And when I turned to go, I saw something drop from above, slowly cascading onto the trail in front of me.
A feather.
A beautiful turkey wing feather.
An omen. A gift.
And maybe, just maybe, a wink from India.
I smiled thinking about her, and the magic of it all. “My life has been one giant love fest,” she had said to me in one of our last conversations before she passed. “Sheer gratitude to everyone who I know and who knows me. There’s nothing but love.”
I couldn’t agree more.
To the leadership at the Foundation who believed in my ideas and abilities, to the friends and family who took me into their homes, to the guests who trusted me with their deepest truths and stories: THANK YOU.
This time, and these relationships, have forever imprinted on my heart and helped solidify the self-worth and confidence needed to journey on and follow my path. That is a gift I will never take for granted.
Your friend,
Andy