Trebbe Johnson DailyGood Interview
Interview with Richard Whittaker
July 22, 2013
Originally published in Parabola, reprinted in Daily Good
On a recent visit to the Bay Area, I had the pleasure of meeting Trebbe Johnson and found her a charming and intensely passionate advocate for the healing we need both individually and in a global sense. In 1997 she founded Vision Arrow, a program that combines wilderness exploration and the search for meaning. A few years later, she founded a second program, Radical Joy for Hard Times, which evolved naturally from the first. The two programs complement each other. In her notes for Vision Quest she writes, “I don’t know anyone whose life hasn’t been an incredible journey of ups and downs, sorrow in the midst of great joy and, even more amazing, joy in the midst of the deepest chasms of sorrow.” How to make sense of it all? At some point, it’s necessary to realize that one’s own health is intricately connected to the health of the world we live in—thus her second program. And since our feelings of grief and despair about damaged nature may be mirrored by our own wounds, it’s not such a leap to see how personal healing and attending to damaged nature—to grieving what is lost and discovering nature’s hidden resilience—could resonate in profound ways.