The Sky Meadow Mystery School: Harvest 2024

Aug 21, 2024, 2:00 PM – Aug 28, 2024, 2:00 PM

The Sky Meadow Mystery School is a free, week-long residential immersion into wholesome work and Deep Play in Vermont’s beautiful Northeast Kingdom. 

Our theme at the 2024 Harvest Mystery School is memento mori ergo carpe diem; “remember death and therefore seize the day.” For millennia there has existed an underground, countercultural perspective on mortality; life as the Art of Being Well-Remembered. The Mystery School embodies this philosophy through a balanced program of practical homesteading skills and creative, mythopoetic exploration.

Between 10am–12pm and 2–4pm each day, you will learn (or hone) harvest skills such as crop gathering, apple picking, wood stacking, and produce canning: all vital, down-to-Earth tasks as the full-time residents of the Sky Meadow Retreat Center prepare for the winter months. No prior homesteading experience is necessary, but Scholars should be comfortable doing active outdoors work and come ready to get their hands dirty.

Each early afternoon and evening at the Mystery School is an immersion into mythopoetic Life-and-Death mystery through the Deep Play of communal storytelling, craft, symbolic ritual, music and poetry, led by Tony Wolf, Kathrynne Wolf and/or Brendan Graham Dempsey. Here you will learn ways to sustain and be sustained by the memento mori ergo carpe diem perspective, finding (or creating) and deepening your own meaning as a mortal human being in communion with others of like mind. 

As a Scholar, you will experience a quasi-monastic, semi-communal lifestyle for the week, with your choice of free accommodation in one of the dorm-style rooms in the Barn (the hub of Sky Meadow) or quaint cabins. While you provide your own food and transportation, communal dining and resource-sharing enrich the experience. The nearby mountain town of Hardwick offers plenty of grocery and restaurant options. 

There are ponds to swim in and forests to explore. A herd of sheep, a brood of chickens and one magical cat. The sauna beckons after a fulfilling day’s work. Soulful conversations with kindred spirits abound. Sky Meadow is also just 20 minutes from the famous Bread and Puppet Theater, whose al fresco political circus/giant puppet shows have been a mainstay of the East Coast counterculture since 1974, and whose 2024 performance season nicely coincides with the Mystery School (just saying). 

At the end of the School, a delicious feast of local (some very local) produce awaits you! 

Here’s a discussion about the event:

If you wish to be one of the twelve to join us at Sky Meadow this Harvest season, please get in touch to reserve your place.