Perspective Guides, a New Collaboration with Hope Springs

We’re Perspective Guides, a worker-owned cooperative with a vision for social impact work that’s sustainable for the long haul. We bring facilitation, coaching, and operations support to workplaces in times of change.

I’m Lindsay (she/her), a transplant to Southwest Ohio from the big woods and big water of Michigan. I was raised by a school teacher and geologist, so naturally ask a lot of questions. I’m a writer before all else, always telling stories and making meaning this way. I grew up boating, water skiing, snowmobiling, and foraging for whatever the woods offered us seasonally.

You can find me backpacking in the back country or planting more perennials and veggies than I can reasonably tend. If you see me onsite at HSI this summer, there’s a good chance my toddler will be strapped to me or running out in front greeting anyone she sees. 

My name is Rosie (they/she). I'm a Cincinnati native. I grew up in an immigrant household. Child of teachers, preachers, and therapists. I experienced a Hope Spring Retreat for the first time in 2023. I met some of my very best friends and fell in love with the land, or rather, "came home" to the land, which is familiar, like the wildest version of flora and fauna kin of my childhood and ancestral memories. 

I'm currently participating in a ceremonial immersion with the School of Lost Borders to initiate into wilderness guiding, where I'll sharpen my ability to facilitate land-based rites of passage, vision quests, and story council.  

I'm also a poet, enjoy traveling, and spending time with my wife, dog, and cat. 

About our first weeks at Hope Springs and the moment we’re in:

Our first night on the land together, we settled into the director’s house, learning the quirks of the appliances, and stocking our provisions for the next few weeks. After enjoying a meal on the porch, we took our first walk together on the land to watch the sun sink through the trees, visit the grief pond, and say goodnight to the deer, frogs, and rabbits. We closed our evening with an oracle reading to ground us in this work with you and with this place. We wondered: what does it mean to be persistent and resilient in the liminal – personally and organizationally? What brings us here in this moment?

The notion of resilience is hefty. "Bounce back?" To what end? The status quo has not been favorable to those surviving harm. We live in a dominant culture that reinforces at every turn that we exist and are valued not based on our inherent dignity, but based instead on what we can produce and survive. These stories are tricksters. We all have an inherent right to exist in an abundant world in right relationship with planet, people, and all living beings.

We are here thanks to lineages of resilient people who had a singular goal in mind: surival. In a way, it worked: we’re all here thanks to our ancestors’ persistence. But it came at great cost too. We find ourselves cut off from our relationship to each other, place, and multi-species community. For those who are in love with the world, we're tired. We're wary of years of perseverance, continuing to find creative strategies to protect our care. But we're not alone. We have each other, and the land has us.

Our greatest strength is our persistence towards love and connection. The depth of our sorrows is also evidence of our depth of joy.

We all possess the inherent awareness of cycles -- seasons, the moon, tidal patterns, migration, and more. Yet, we sometimes tend to see ourselves, relationships, and organizations outside of those cycles. I do the work of organizational transformation because I respect thresholds. Liminal space offers the promise of something new. Death and transformation of structures and forms are an inherent part of this process, and it brings deeply unsettling emotions to those involved. I'm also in love with council (or circle, as some might call it). The sacred act of gathering with intention, hosting each other well so that we might be in right relationship with ourselves and our shared purpose.