Ten years at LeTerrain, seen with new eyes

I'm back from a three-week trip to Sicily, my first real vacation in the ten years that I've been here at LeTerrain.

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks because I wanted to truly settle back into LeTerrain. And I mean to say, I have settled in with new eyes and a whole new perspective on this miracle of custodianship that I have been granted.

It's been a long journey over these ten years, and I've tried many different ways to stay true to my original insight when I arrived: that I would like to protect this land by sharing this land.

I started with Airbnb, and although it was a very successful financial model, I didn't seem to be attracting the right people. Although I have books filled with guest testimonials detailing the magic they experienced during their stays, I knew I needed to find my tribe, people interested in developing a long-term relationship and a true feeling of custodianship with this very special wilderness.

So, in the spring of 2023, I launched the LeTerrain Wilderness Park membership model. The response was incredibly positive. I received messages and memberships from all over the world from people who connected with this idea of protecting through sharing and developing an ongoing relationship with biodiversity and this beautiful, healthy ecosystem.

After establishing Canada's newest Dark Sky Preserve, uncovering the astounding mysteries of the ancient ruins, and seeing the beginnings of an off-grid eco-village emerge around LeTerrain, I guess I kind of felt like I'd accomplished what I needed to accomplish.

I thought I could simply step back and live my quiet life in wilderness solitude.

My trip to Sicily was truly transformative.

I learned about the importance of community, culture, ritual, gathering around meals, sharing experiences, and reciprocating insights with like-minded people.

I realized that I had not been showing up for this.

I realize now that one's work is never done. This is life, and this can be a beautiful thing.

We must always show up, push harder, dive deeper into the great mysteries, into ourselves, face our fears, follow our intuition, and keep showing up for whatever it is that we are called to do.

And so, with these fresh eyes and these new insights, I pledge to myself, and to all of you who connect with me and LeTerrain, that I will try harder. That I will be there for you in community and in this great adventure of protecting the land by sharing.

One way I can create something real, scheduled, and ongoing in support of all of this will be monthly gatherings here at LeTerrain.

I invite all members to gather here for an activity followed by a potluck meal, an exchange of ideas, general discussion, and a healthy dose of levity in the beautiful Homestead barn.

If what I'm speaking about here connects with you, please consider becoming a member. If you do not live nearby but would still like to support these initiatives, a Sky Membership at $20 per month helps carry these ongoing adventures in wilderness conservation and community building.

I hope to see you here at LeTerrain very soon.

Ancient stones, dark skies, and an archaeoastronomy park

This summer marks nearly a year since LeTerrain became a Dark Sky Preserve, designated by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada on 30 July 2025 and the first in the National Capital Region. Protecting the darkness has turned out to be only half of what is here.

Not long ago we hosted a retreat for members of NEARA, the New England Antiquities Research Association, one of the leading groups studying ancient stone structures in New England. They walked several of our stone sites. Their reading was that the constructs here are consistent with the same ancient stone-building traditions found throughout New England.

For years I have been working on two things at once: protecting the sky above, and trying to understand the stones below. Those two paths are beginning to converge.

This fall we plan to open what may become Canada’s first archaeoastronomy park: one protected landscape where ancient stone sites, wilderness, dark skies, astronomy and human history sit together. It is hard to describe what it is like to stand at one of these monuments with the whole sky over it.

The tours keep astounding the people who take them. I lead every one myself, an hour and a half walking from mound to mound on the land’s own trails, telling you at each site what the measuring has actually turned up.

The land is as beautiful as it gets right now. Six peaks, the valleys between them, two rivers and their wetlands, four hundred acres of it all breathing at once. If you would rather find your own way through, the georeferenced trail map works on your phone without a signal.

Thank you for being part of this. Every visitor, member, supporter, volunteer and villager helps keep this place protected by sharing it.

The year LeTerrain became a Dark Sky Preserve

This year LeTerrain was certified a Dark Sky Preserve, the first in the National Capital Region, designated by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. The certification is the result of years of steady work to protect not only the land but the darkness over it.

Alongside it we began a partnership with Lightbahn, whose work is astronomy, astrophotography and public engagement with the night sky. Together we are building a schedule of guided stargazing evenings, celestial events and photographic workshops, from meteor showers and planetary alignments to deep-sky observing under genuinely dark skies.

The part of that collaboration I am most curious about is astrophotography at the ancient stone sites. Photographing these structures under the stars, in long exposures that hold both sky and stone in one frame, is already turning up something quietly extraordinary.

A short video connecting the stone constructs to the stars travelled a long way past our usual circle this autumn, and that felt like a turning point. The relationship between earth and sky, between the stones and what people once believed about the night, is going to be central to what we share from here.

LeTerrain is now in a rare position: the region’s first dark sky preserve, holding one of the country’s oldest and least explained archaeological landscapes. Not as spectacle, but as an invitation to slow down, look up, and reconsider what came before us.

On the ground, the community grew. We hosted our most ambitious retreat in September, eighteen people for a week of wellness-focused days, and our first winter retreat, seven people putting their screens down for a few days in the cold.

The off-grid village gained a villager, and with them the beginnings of a music studio: a place to record and write with the wilderness in the room. Sustainability, spirit, resilience, community, science, history, art and conservation, all meeting on one piece of ground.

Thank you for being part of this. Every visitor, member, supporter, volunteer and villager helps keep it protected by sharing it.