Elemental Healing Walk

A moment of fresh air, a millennium of peace

Raising the Last $20,000

Since 2019, we have invested, raised, and completed 77% of this $88,000 project. The remaining $20,000 will cover the last phases of this free public botanical pathway. We’re excited to invite community support to expedite the launch of this sacred site in the season ahead.

The vision and infrastructure of this project was built with the professional services of many. Alice Sky has lovingly tended the soil the land for almost a decade, and other significant contributions were made by Frances Rose Subbiondo, Susan Clark, Janis Walrafen, Jason Mallory, Erik Gillard, Colin Brown, Michael Clookey, and seven hardworking young women from Twinfield High School. The project was also supported with seed funding from the Todd & Libby Rieke Philanthropic Trust in 2021, as well as 40% of profits from Onion River Campground from 2020-2025. We are grateful for the hard work that has culminated in this vital moment for the Elemental Healing Walk’s public launch.

Total Project Budget

Completed: $68,000

$9,000 Orchards, grading and land preparation
$13,600 Parking area and path maintenance
$20,300 EARTH: Pollinator garden, pathway, edging, boulders and stone bench
$8,600 AIR: 4’ x 4’ pagoda with Thai Sound Bowl
$16,500 FIRE: 30-foot stone circle patio and communal fire hearth

Remaining: $20,000

$8,600 WATER: foot bridge and pondside garden
$8,400 Directional signs for EARTH, AIR, FIRE, WATER, and the entrance
$3,000 Adopting 501(c)(3) non-profit status

DONATE NOW

Join the Volunteer Corps

Join the Volunteer Corps that will sustain the walking path! Members will make a once-a-month commitment (from May through October) to walk the ¼-mile path. They will monitor the trail conditions and report to the caretaker of the land.

We’re Almost Finished!

The Elemental Healing Walk is a public, botanical pathway at a beautiful bend in Vermont’s Winooski River. We’ve laid a large, stone fire hearth and erected the pointy-roofed pagoda for the sound bowl. The blossoms of the pollinator garden have bloomed five seasons and we are bursting to open for the public!

En route to the Northeast Kingdom, New Hampshire & Maine, the Elemental Healing Walk is free to the public from May through October, sunrise to sunset. It is a relaxing oasis for elders, families, dog walkers and loafing about. Public places reverse fascism, and we hope to be right on time. It’s almost ready to open! Here’s how to help now.

DONATE NOW

Walkers are self-guided along stations honoring the four elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water.

Volunteers for the land, including residents, lenders, neighbors, fruit cultivators, soil builders and myself, are committed to organizing this courageous public project.

The land will be conveyed in time to a trust protecting the Elemental Healing Walk in perpetuity.

with gratitude, jax brown

Visitor Information

The Elemental Healing Walk is a free, public, ¼-mile botanical path. It is an accessible walk (or wheelchair roll) for just about anybody, designed to bring peace to everybody.

From the parking area, a low-impact trail takes you toward a pond, across a creek, uphill to a fire hearth, and along a gentle ridge to a pagoda with a sound bowl. Before departing, you can pause on a stone bench at the pollinator garden, brimming with colorful blooms.

Upon completion of the project, locals, travelers, families and campers will enjoy this nature oasis, May through October from sunrise until sunset.

The Four Stations

EARTH for grounding and grief: the body remembering its weight
AIR for breath and voice: releasing what has been held too tightly
FIRE for transformation: honoring what must burn to become fertile again
WATER for compassion: the flow that connects all who have been named and unnamed

Walkers are invited to pause, listen, and interact in their own way. You might leave a stone, a breath, a word, or a tear. The elements receive without judgment. The Elemental Healing Walk grows from the soil of exile - a practice of meeting discomfort with curiosity and choosing relation over erasure.

Location

61 Onion River Road
Plainfield, VT 05667 USA
802-426-3233

The Elemental Healing Walk lives on the grounds of Onion River Campground, a community space that for years has offered affordable, transitional, and seasonal homes. Its soil has already absorbed countless stories of arrival, loss, and renewal; the walk simply continues that teaching. Visitors are guests of the land and of the community that stewards it - please walk with respect for both.

The walk has been consciously designed and maintained for wheelchairs, while not ADA approved, with a low grade on the upslope and well-mowed ground.

Origins

This memorial pathway was begun in 2019 from an inspiration of Susan Clark, a resident of this land. She was horrified to learn that her ancestor had served on the jury that unlawfully condemned John Proctor to death in the Salem Witch Trials. The Elemental Healing Walk invites the grief of all the historical bullies & bullied ones alike. It is where the condemners & condemned may both lay down their suffering together.