The Manos Chronicles, Odd Fellows, and Old Ways Retreats—Willow Polson’s Journey
What happens when television, folk traditions, and community collide in the mountains of Yosemite? In this inspiring conversation, Willow Polson—artist, writer, director, and showrunner of The Manos Chronicles—shares how storytelling, creativity, and connection fuel everything she does.
We dive into:
Why community is the key to making a real difference in today’s world
The unexpected way the TV show Heroes changed Willow’s life and led to The Manos Chronicles (now on Amazon Prime)
The revival of folk schools, old skills, and hands-on creativity—and why they’re so needed now
How Yosemite Old Ways Retreats help people reconnect with nature, creativity, and each other
From making soap and bread to preserving history and launching retreats, Willow shows us that the “old ways” may hold the keys to living fully in the modern world.
👉 Learn more about retreats: https://www.oldwaysretreats.com/
👉 Watch The Manos Chronicles on Amazon Prime
Want premium clients from your content?
Grab a free Client Acquisition Audit and I’ll show you exactly where your message, offer, and CTA are leaking conversions—and the 3 fixes to turn your podcast/Substack into a client pipeline.
👉 Book here: https://coachsalchemist.com
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Transcript
WEBVTT
1
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: What happens when a TV show, a historic folk tradition, and the power of community collide in the mountains of Yosemite? In this conversation, you'll hear how one creator is weaving art, storytelling, and the old ways of living into retreats that spark transformation, creativity, and connection.
2
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Hi, and welcome to the UWorld Order Showcase Podcast, where we feature life, health, transformational coaches, and spiritual entrepreneurs stepping up to be the change they seek in the world. I'm your host, Jill Hart, the Coaches Alchemist, on a mission
3
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: to help… Coaches and entrepreneurs amplify their voice, monetize their mission, and get visible, leveraging podcasts and Substack.
4
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Today, we are chatting with Willow Paulson. Willow is an artist, writer, and director, best known as the showrunner of TV… of the TV series Manos Chronicles. She is also an Odd Fellow, founder of the Yosemite Motherlode Folk School, and visionary behind Yosemite Old Ways Retreats. Her retreats blend nourishing food, hands-on creative experiences, and a time in
5
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And…
6
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and time in the serene mountain setting surrounding Yosemite National Park. With a passion for community, tradition, and storytelling, Willow helps people reconnect with themselves and each other through art, nature, and the wisdom of the old ways. Welcome to the show, Willow. It's great to have you here.
7
::Willow: Hello, thanks for having me.
8
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Alright, let's ask you the big question, and we'll get rolling here.
9
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm ready. What's the most significant thing, in your opinion, as individuals, we can do to make an impact on how the world is going?
10
::Willow: Well, as you said earlier, community, right? Don't just sit in your house, in your pillow fort, you know, you have to actually, like, talk to people, and you can do that online, but in-person community is super important for that, and as you mentioned, I'm an odd fellow, that's part of why, because it's doing good, community service, so…
11
::Willow: Take care of yourself. Self-care is super important, so don't forget that you're part of what needs to happen to make the world a better place, including yourself.
12
::Willow: But also, reach out into the community and, you know, participate in a seed bank, you know, go to, you know, these different things that are happening out there. I promise you they are, if you leave your house and go see what they are.
13
::Willow: They're happening, and you can participate, and they're fun! You know, it's fun to help your neighbors.
14
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's fun to help your neighbors. Just getting out and walking sometimes. You… you get to know people that are in your community, or go to the park.
15
::Willow: Yeah, absolutely.
16
::Willow: And I'm in a…
17
::Willow: very isolated rural area, so when I walk out my front door, it's trees and birds and kind of not much else. And my nearest neighbor is, like, a mile from me, so, that's… but when I lived in the city, yeah, you walk around and you say, hey, those are lovely roses, you start a conversation, the next thing you know, you're, you know, trading cool things and playing cards together, so…
18
::Willow: But up here, that's part of why, again, I joined the Oddfellows, is to get me out of the house and go down and help out the community of Coulterville.
19
::Willow: which is a little, tiny, isolated foothills community. Even before that, I joined up the board of the, the local history center, because I saw a need. You know, I'm one of these people, I stick my hand up, I want to help.
20
::Willow: And, you know, my love of history and wanting to make sure that that's preserved for the future was my, you know, the fire under me to get me… to get me going there. And the Oddfellows Lodge is a historic lodge, so we need to work to keep it, you know, going for another 160 years, right? So…
21
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love that. I love history. I love Live history, where we can…
22
::Willow: Yes.
23
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Live it, and feel it, and… and…
24
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Bring it into the present, and help younger generations understand
25
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: how to incorporate things into their lives. We were talking a little bit before the show about my homesteading adventures, which started when I was in my 40s.
26
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I just… I, all my life, had always wanted to live on a farm and have chickens, but I never did. My parents didn't even have gardens when I was growing up. I had no idea how to plant anything. My parents didn't even have plants in our house. We were always moving, we were part of the… my dad was in the military, and so it was just like…
27
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I had no clue, and it was way before the internet, you know, if you even knew that those sorts of things existed.
28
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you, you had to go to the library to research.
29
::Willow: Yeah, yeah, back in my day.
30
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And my mom, she… she was horribly afraid of birds, so chickens were absolutely out of the question, and… because she… I think she watched that birds movie. Oh, no.
31
::Willow: Oh, no.
32
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But nope, no birds in our house, and her mother, who she had a really bad relationship with, was a gypsy, and I wish I'd known back
33
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: back then, when she was still alive, but she did make her own soap, or, you know, grandma's life soap. My mom was always like, don't touch that stuff, you'll burn yourself.
34
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you know, I didn't understand the process for making soap, but I'm sure.
35
::Willow: Oh, okay.
36
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: burn yourself.
37
::Willow: She probably heard lie, and was like, oh no, it's caustic, and it's.
38
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I…
39
::Willow: But that's one of the many ingredients, and, you know, yeah, don't, like, rub it in your eyes or something, but it's, you know, it's…
40
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Vinegar's the antidote.
41
::Willow: Oh, there you go, see? Yeah, simple.
42
::Willow: So, but you mentioned, Carla Emery book before, we started talking, and yeah, that, that's… so, okay, back, back, deedly, deedly, back in my day, the, the 70s was a huge, resurgence of the Back to the Land movement, and the whole hippie thing, where people were living in, you know, the country, and communes, and all of that. And even in the city, people were interested, how do you make soap, you know, how do you make,
43
::Willow: sourdough bread. How do you do these things?
44
::Willow: And there was almost a loss in the 80s of some of this. Some of us carried through in the 70s, but then, you know, the 80s, fast times, we're modern now, we don't want to do granny stuff.
45
::Willow: And that's actually how I started, learning how to make traditional baskets from a native lady, because there kind of wasn't anybody else learning it from her. And the same thing with regalia, too, dance regalia. It was almost lost, because
46
::Willow: unless one person stood up and was like, this is… I need to, you know, help carry this forward.
47
::Willow: you know, there's a lot of unwritten things. There's things in books, but there's a lot of things that are not in books, they're oral traditions, and that brokenness is happily being rediscovered as we are like, hold on.
48
::Willow: the old people… the old people, well, the elders, you know, are passing on, and their knowledge is going with them. And that's part of, again, with the museum, we take oral history recordings and, you know, reserve that stuff, and fortunately, some
49
::Willow: was preserved, and now we have our digital recording, now we can carry that forward, and now we can listen to the voice of the last stagecoach driver in Yosemite, and what he did, and where he went. Because one person decided it was important.
50
::Willow: to capture that. Going back to your first question, that's the kind of thing one person can do to make a huge difference in the world. And you may not realize at the moment, it isn't that important.
51
::Willow: But 20 years from now, someone may go, I'm so glad you did that. You saved that information for being lost.
52
::Willow: That's… that's our heritage, that's our history. Without our history, you know, kind of, who are we, you know?
53
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, and how do we… keep ourselves going. I mean, we…
54
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Quickly moving into a situation where people don't know how to feed themselves, or make structures, or, you know, if you were dropped in the middle of the woods.
55
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Could you survive? Most people couldn't.
56
::Willow: Yeah, no, I mean, I… that helps me feel comfortable and confident
57
::Willow: Because I can do that. Like, I can, as I mentioned, you know, nothing but birds and trees, I can walk out into the woods and
58
::Willow: you know, get safe drinking water, find food, make myself a shelter, start a fire if I have to, and these things, they're valuable knowledge. Now, most people aren't going to get dropped in the middle of the woods and have to survive like that, however…
59
::Willow: With food scarcity, remember COVID? We had no toilet paper, you know, for weeks and weeks. Those kinds of things, they happen. They can happen. The price of things is going up. Do you know how to grow your own food?
60
::Willow: Maybe you don't have a place to grow your own food, but you can at least grow maybe some windowsill herbs? Trade with somebody who can grow food. There's your community again, right? If as long as you have other people…
61
::Willow: What's that?
62
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: microgreens. Microgreens, right. You don't have to go really, really big. There's… there's… you can…
63
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you have to know how to do it, again, but there's tons of nutrition, and they don't take up a lot of space. Right. But it's those kinds of things people don't…
64
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Don't have any clue about.
65
::Willow: Yeah, yeah, and I think that, well, there's a resurgence right now of handicrafts, especially because of COVID.
66
::Willow: So everybody now, well, especially younger people, are doing crochet and embroidery and knitting and those kinds of things, and it's starting to expand out into the cottagecore, the hobbit core, you know, that's like, well, if I can do this, I can also do this. Well, what if I start doing these interesting collages out of, you know, animal bones? And what if I start, you know, learning how to, like, make my own tea.
67
::Willow: and then grow my own tea, and then trade my own tea with other people for things that I think are important.
68
::Willow: You know, that's what a community is. That's what we used to do that's gotten so broken in the 20th century and moving into the 21st century.
69
::Willow: That… that… that's why I do what I do, in part, is
70
::Willow: to try and excite people into, you know, this isn't old-timey granny stuff. Knowing how to make something matters. You know, can you keep yourself warm?
71
::Willow: You know, do you know how to light a fire if you have to? You know, those sorts of things. Even in the city, foraging is huge. I mean, do you know how to safely find food in the middle of the city? Well, I can. You know, how many other people can? Maybe not. Maybe they'll fall, this is fine.
72
::Willow: But it's right next to a freeway. You don't want to eat that, because it's been poisoned by all the exhaust, but if you go over here, you might find some safe variations on the same thing, but you know what to look for.
73
::Willow: Anyway, I'm going on and on.
74
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You know…
75
::Willow: skills, you know?
76
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They are important skills, and it's really important if you're going to be a forager to know exactly what you're looking for, because oftentimes, there are two things, and they look very similar, and one will kill you.
77
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: One will nourish you. And it's like, you can't… there was a whole movie made about a kid who went up to Alaska, and…
78
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Foraging killed him.
79
::Willow: Hmm, yeah.
80
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: He thought he, he, he had a book.
81
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And he thought that was enough, but it's not enough.
82
::Willow: We need to…
83
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Talk to people who have…
84
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: real knowledge and can say, you know, this is good, this is not so good. There are a lot of flowers you can eat, and most people don't realize that. We joke about our dog, we walk him along…
85
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: along the same route every year, and there's this one rosebush that… there's rose hips all winter. He loves to snack on the rose hips. His dog.
86
::Willow: Yeah, no, wild coyotes here will eat the manzanita berries because they're very high in vitamin C, and they're nutritious in that way, and the animals are smart, they know these things, you know, they know what to eat and what not to eat.
87
::Willow: But now we've got AI versions of, like, mushroom identification guides. This is perfectly safe, and they're super not, so maybe, like, don't use AI to identify deadly plants.
88
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, don't… don't depend on AI to tell you what's safe to eat or not.
89
::Willow: No, yeah, don't do that.
90
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Don't please.
91
::Willow: Which is why we need hands-on, in-person, ideally, classes that, you know… because you can watch all the videos you want about, like, how to spin wool into yarn, and then make that into a warm garment, but until you physically handle the wool on a spinning wheel, you're not going to understand the process.
92
::Willow: Fully, right? You just can't. It's a tactile thing.
93
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That works for you.
94
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And everybody is different. Yeah. We were talking about making bread before we got started here, and Literally.
95
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: 10 years minimum.
96
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I've been watching videos, doing research, trying, trying, trying to make friends.
97
::Willow: Trying is the term.
98
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And I have a specific kind of bread that I like to eat. It has a kind of texture for the crust, and the inside, which is called the crumb, looks a specific way. And it took me years to figure it out, and I did figure it out, and it's super simple.
99
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It doesn't take me any time I make bread every week.
100
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Probably a couple times a week, it's, like…
101
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: probably not something I should be so good at, because it's not great for my waistline, but…
102
::Willow: Hey.
103
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It makes me feel good, and I have a great sense of satisfaction that I've discovered a way that's repeatable, and I can share with my daughters-in-law. I'll make bread now. I've given them the sourdough, so it's like…
104
::Willow: Yeah, there you go up.
105
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Some of our… our family heritage, and…
106
::Willow: Right, there you go, yeah.
107
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's like… It's fun. Yeah.
108
::Willow: Yeah, it's the hands-on…
109
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: down.
110
::Willow: the hands-on knowledge, right? Yeah, and passing along… you can't pass sourdough through… through Zoom, right? I mean, you have to… you have to be there, right? You have to be in the room. You must be present to win.
111
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, and, you know, different starters, they can… it can be runny, it can be a little thicker, it's just like, you just gotta… you just gotta feel it. It's all about how it feels and how it looks, and it doesn't translate
112
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: through video. It, it…
113
::Willow: Right.
114
::Willow: Right.
115
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: you have to just do it. There are a lot of things in life you just have to do.
116
::Willow: Yeah, yeah, they turned out differently. I was just watching a video this morning about how to make plant dye out of nutsedge, which is an invasive weed, kind of, that's native to America. And so I went out and cut off all the little flower heads, and I had them cooking in a pot.
117
::Willow: And it looks like that dye's gonna turn out. It's sitting out on my porch in the sun, just, like, kind of right now, and so now I have to…
118
::Willow: spin some yarn so that I can dip-dye it in the nutsedge and add more… you know, so I'm still learning. I'm still… it's just… it's so fun to go, how do I do that? How do I do that? And it's a huge… the world's a rabbit hole, right? It's full of rabbit holes.
119
::Willow: It's so fun! Yeah, it really is, you know, and people are intimidated by this stuff. It's like, well, start small, you know, you don't have to know all the things. I mean, just try one thing. And if you like it, keep going, you know?
120
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I started making soap that way. It was like, melt and pour. I saved all my scraps, and I would melt them all down, and I would make them into something, some different shape. I was really excited, because I'd made soap.
121
::Willow: Yeah, no, it's very empowering. It's very… it feels really good to make something say, I made this out of nothing, you know? Especially if you go all the way back to the process, and you've got raw fleece, and you gotta wash it, and then you gotta cart it, and you gotta, you know, spin it, and then you gotta knit it.
122
::Willow: And then you've got a garment, you know? And then understanding that process, having done that process, then you realize all the work that went into that back, you know, 100, 200, 5,000 years ago.
123
::Willow: you know, how do people do things? How was that done? And you have a new respect for the handwork, and it's not just like, oh, it's just some stuff, whatever, you know? It's like, no, no, someone spent
124
::Willow: Days and days and days making this one thing.
125
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It goes even further to the animal that the fleece came off of.
126
::Willow: Yeah, I used to have sheep. I don't now.
127
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I…
128
::Willow: I have a friend that has sheep.
129
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But somebody is caring for those animals.
130
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And helping them to reproduce, and have food, and protection, and shears them, and then you get the fleece, and I mean, it's… it's a whole long process to get to… to a finished product. We don't respect clothing anymore.
131
::Willow: Right?
132
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's like…
133
::Willow: Right.
134
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: not a big deal. Even linen. Linen is a… Is a plant-based…
135
::Willow: Yeah.
136
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: fabric, and people don't even know that. Silk. Silk is an animal-based product, but it's, based off of a worm.
137
::Willow: Yeah.
138
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I've been to silk factories, and they smell horrible.
139
::Willow: Tuesday.
140
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's worse than a paper factory. It's just really bad. But that's how silk is made. It's… the cocoon is…
141
::Willow: Hmm?
142
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: unspun, and then it's spun into thread, and then that's wild. …how silk is… comes to be. Most people don't understand how fabric becomes fabric.
143
::Willow: Right. They get the fast fashion from, you know, Walmart or something, and it costs them, you know, $9, and it's like, it's a throwaway thing.
144
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Plastic!
145
::Willow: Well, in a lot of cases.
146
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: places.
147
::Willow: It… it is, yeah. In most cases, it is some synthetic material, and it's not… it doesn't breathe, right? So it's not good in any season, kind of. It's that whole disposable, you know, fast fashion and fast everything society, right? That… that it's…
148
::Willow: See, people will buy new shoes every year because they fall apart, as opposed to getting one really good, well-made pair of shoes that'll last you for 10 years. You know, it's that whole…
149
::Willow: I don't know how to get people out of that mentality. I mean, maybe me as one person can't, but hey, here's a podcast. You're watching this right now, person out there, hello. Maybe you can, you know, rethink, you know, how you're doing that.
150
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: One thing you can… you can decide is going to be… Valuable in your life.
151
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: For me, I chose overalls. All winter long, I wear overalls. I have 6 or 7 pairs of them, and that's all I wear.
152
::Willow: Nice.
153
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I don't have to worry about, you know, other kinds of pants, and overalls are not cheap.
154
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They're, like, $60, $70 a pair.
155
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But they last for years and years and years and years and years. They're cotton, they're denim, they're… they're heavy duty.
156
::Willow: Yeah, they pay for themselves.
157
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Well, yeah.
158
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And…
159
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And they just build character. The older they get. It's just like, I do all kinds of stuff in them. I paint, and build, and I garden, and whatever, and they… they…
160
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: They have a memory!
161
::Willow: Right. Well, then when they wear out…
162
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: come…
163
::Willow: You can… you can upcycle them into a quilt, or a bag, or something, you know? Just keep it going.
164
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I just gave all my husband's blue jeans to my neighbor.
165
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I didn't realize they were his good blue jeans that he hardly ever wore. I was like, he never wears these here, sure. She was building, she was making… she was quilting for the church or something, had something going on, and they needed blue jeans so that they could make these quilts.
166
::Willow: Oh, no.
167
::Willow: He's like, honey, where's my pants?
168
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: What do you mean?
169
::Willow: The ones that… my good ones? Where? They were worn them, I thought they didn't fit.
170
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Sorry.
171
::Willow: We have gone so far off of what I thought.
172
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We're gonna be talking. I have. But this all relates to your retreats that you're doing, so maybe we should back up and talk about Manos Chronicles a little bit, because I think that was, like, the basis for how you got into wanting to do these retreats and… and all of these old-timey things that…
173
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: are just so exciting that I have to talk about them.
174
::Willow: Kind of. I mean, it's sort of… it's like a parallel thing. Many years ago, I was… well, I've been up here a long time, but,
175
::Willow: I just… that's an aside. Anyway, sorry, focus. Yes, I can do this. Hashtag ADHD. I just fell in love with the show, Heroes. Well, I mean, here's some props from the show right here.
176
::Willow: And, it just… it… I became friends with the… with that showrunner through weird circumstances, and, he had me on the set one time, and we were sitting together.
177
::Willow: And I was like, this… this is it. The bug bit me. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And he's like, what, sit on a set? I'm like, no, I want to… I want to make a show. I want to make a show, and I want it to be inspirational, because that's what the message was behind Heroes, is anybody can be a hero, anybody can save the world, right?
178
::Willow: So, I took that, and my husband and I were trying to think of, well, what kind of story can we tell? And I happened to know the actress from the original
179
::Willow: Manos, the Hands of Fate, one of the worst movies ever made. If you've ever watched Mystery Science Theater 3000, that's one of their most popular episodes, because that movie's just so bad. So, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's for free up on the YouTube
180
::Willow: Manos, The Hands of Fate, Mystery Science Theater 3000, go watch it. It's hilarious, because it's, like, terrible. But I knew the actress that was the little girl in that movie from 1966, and I'm thinking, well, what if…
181
::Willow: We did something kind of in the vein of Heroes, which is that
182
::Willow: anybody can be a hero. They have to make good choices, you know? They can't just hide away from the world. Spoilers. They have to, you know, try and be a force for good.
183
::Willow: In this world, and that's basically why you're having me on the show here now, is, you know, how can one person make a difference? How can we all be heroes for ourselves and for each other?
184
::Willow: And that's kind of where the genesis of that show of the Manos Chronicles came from, is what happened to that little girl. You know, all these years later, she's been in hiding. I mean, this is, like, the first minutes of the first episode, and she's found out. So, how does she navigate that?
185
::Willow: What help does she get to navigate that and keep herself safe?
186
::Willow: She has a choice. Does she run away again, or does she turn and face the threat and decide
187
::Willow: This has to end, and I'm gonna end it.
188
::Willow: So that's… that's the… the main gist of that story. So, and carrying that into,
189
::Willow: You know, how we make a difference, and… and…
190
::Willow: I'm trying to think of… of… I mean, it ties in, but it kind of doesn't tie in, but yet…
191
::Willow: It's… it's that hands-on simplicity of… of…
192
::Willow: Just getting in there, getting in the trenches, you know, making the bread, and doing the thing, and making that choice for making a better world.
193
::Willow: You know, I mean, does that… I'm not sure if I'm connecting the dots here, but you tell me, how am I doing?
194
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Totally connecting the dots. I can… it's… it's… you're tracking just fine.
195
::Willow: as far as I know.
196
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm concerned. It's… We all… we all can make a difference.
197
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And even the little things, it's the little decisions we make that accumulate over time. I'll give you a different example. One… I was talking to somebody else about,
198
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: The need that we have to have 12 of everything.
199
::Willow: And…
200
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You know, like screwdrivers.
201
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We only really…
202
::Willow: well.
203
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: One, and… and most people could get by if there was a lending library.
204
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You know, there's… there's things that we have that we don't use very often. Maybe not screwdrivers, because I use screwdrivers all the time, but, you know, for…
205
::Willow: I have about 5 of them, because I don't know where 4 of them are, so there's that.
206
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: There's that, and it's partly because we have so much crap.
207
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That we only use every so often, that if there was someplace where we could go, and we could, you know, just check it out when we needed it.
208
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
209
::Willow: Hell yeah!
210
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Four library.
211
::Willow: Yeah, yeah.
212
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, car… car tools are, like.
213
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: for that. And O'Reilly's really did come up with a great solution, because you can rent tools from O'Reilly's.
214
::Willow: Can you? I had no idea. Wow.
215
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: actually just borrow them. You buy them.
216
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Bring them back within a certain amount of time, and they'll… you've gotten to use it for free, essentially. It's amazing. I love O'Reilly's.
217
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I… they're not even paying me to say that. And I… cars are, like, the bane of my existence.
218
::Willow: Oh, yeah.
219
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's just like, we have them, I… I don't want to have to deal with them. Yeah.
220
::Willow: Yep.
221
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But it's just, like, if we didn't have to have so much of everything.
222
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I'm really moving more into a minimalism world, where, you know, better quality
223
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: fewer of them. You don't need 9,000 shirts. If you have 5 shirts that are really well made, and you know how to take care of them and clean them, and it just spreads into everything. Shoes, clothing, cooking utensils.
224
::Willow: Yeah.
225
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You know, there was a time in the 80s where everybody had to have a food processor… processor, and, you know.
226
::Willow: All the gads.
227
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: The crock pot, and all the gadgets, it's like, really, you just need, like, a couple pots and you're good.
228
::Willow: Yeah, yeah, we're in such a consumerist society, it's just…
229
::Willow: It's just mushroomed, right? Because, again, they make money off of us. We are the product, right?
230
::Willow: So, they're constantly saying, you need all of this stuff, isn't this great stuff?
231
::Willow: And it's all… oh, oh, your stuff broke? Oh, you gotta get new stuff, you know? And my main sewing machine sitting right over there is from 1893. It's a Singer treadle sewing machine. I've never had it serviced, it has always worked like a champ.
232
::Willow: And I'm… again, 18… 1893, this… this… and the reason that… that so few of these survive in this condition is because Singer did a trade-in program where they destroyed the old machines because they were too good, and tried to sell you, well, this machine's better, look at all these updates.
233
::Willow: But it didn't last as long, and oh, well, that's a shame that that broke. You know, you should get a new soil. And it's the same kind of thing, so that's been going on for 100 years, but it…
234
::Willow: Yeah.
235
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Organs are the same way. Organs used to be… push pedal.
236
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, right.
237
::Willow: Yep.
238
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, my aunt had one.
239
::Willow: Yeah, we've got one at the museum down there.
240
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
241
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: This is from Nebraska. They save stuff. Right. Yeah, and the treadle sewing machine, I've seen those too, but there's… there's…
242
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: There's a technique to it, and you have to do it, because you have to, like, be able to, like, keep it going, because it's not the same as having an electric one.
243
::Willow: And the whole electric…
244
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: the electrification of our country and the world has really changed the world. It keeps us from going out and experiencing the night sky.
245
::Willow: Mmm.
246
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It also… It… it… it makes it…
247
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It disrupts our sleep cycles, because now.
248
::Willow: We can…
249
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: work all night and have to sleep all day. Right. And it just, like…
250
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: You lose… you lose so much of…
251
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Of the experience and the richness of being a human.
252
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: When you're inside all the time, and you aren't experiencing the world.
253
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: As it was intended for you to experience.
254
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Including growing your own food, or finding your food, or just making friends with trees.
255
::Willow: Making friends with trees. Right, yes, well, and plants, and being… as we were talking about foraging, being able to identify those plants.
256
::Willow: You know, it's super important. I mean, how empowering is it to be able to know you can walk out your door and make yourself lunch just by walking around, you know, because you know what you're looking at. I mean, it saves you money, and it feels cool, because how many other people can do it? It's like you're in a little secret club or something. It's like, I know how to do this.
257
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: When I lived on my homestead, I…
258
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I… it… there's just, like, a feeling that you get when everything on your plate is something you've made.
259
::Willow: Oh yeah, oh, that's an Instagram picture right there. It's like, look at everything I did. This soup contains, you know, everything from the garden. So, yeah, yeah.
260
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: The eggs, and the bread, and the cheese, and…
261
::Willow: Yeah!
262
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: vegetable salad, and it was just, like, it… It felt so good.
263
::Willow: I fully realize this is slightly a place of privilege, because someone who has time to be able to, like, make your own cheese and do all these things are… that person's not working 3 or 4 different jobs outside the home and… or otherwise
264
::Willow: You know, maybe they're disabled and they can't physically go out and grow a bunch of stuff. You know, my 92-year-old mother-in-law certainly
265
::Willow: can't, you know, cook all that stuff herself. I do some of her cooking for her, because, I mean, she just… she just can't anymore.
266
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, so that's to be… But that's where community comes back in again, too.
267
::Willow: Right, you anticipated my point. Well done.
268
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Sorry.
269
::Willow: No, no, that's it. That's… we're having a conversation. That's, that's, that's, that's absolutely it.
270
::Willow: And, yeah, I just… I can't stress enough. In fact, there's a great documentary called Join or Die. I don't know if you've heard of it.
271
::Willow: But it's… it's basically… well, it starts off with the Oddfellows, yay! And talks about what community used to be a thing, because it used to really matter, to be able to get together and talk to each other and come to understandings and help each other in a community way.
272
::Willow: And it talks about… it stems from a book that was popular called Bowling Alone, and it's, like, what happened on the bowling leagues? What happened to the PTA? What happened to all of these
273
::Willow: ways that we used to get together as people, as a society, and without that, it's horribly broken. I mean, we don't talk to each other. We're doing this all the time, instead of trying to come to understandings and working together to make a better world, right?
274
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Serious!
275
::Willow: Being curious, and this actually ties into the whole retreat idea, which is, whether it's 6 people or 60 people, bringing people together in a purposeful way with goals of
276
::Willow: you know, I need to heal myself, I want to be in a safe place, I want to help heal other people. The big retreat that I have planned for next summer
277
::Willow: is for 30 people, and it's basically kind of… kind of sort of a LARP. It's kind of… it's like, you know, come be a hobbit for 4 days, right? It's themed, right? To be, like, a little tiny Ren Faire that's private.
278
::Willow: And I am asking everybody to please donate an hour of your time during this weekend, and run a discussion group, or help out in the kitchen, or, you know, do… sweep something, or whatever.
279
::Willow: To try and foster this community, because I've been at retreats like that in the past, and they've been so amazing, and so just… I mean, I still remember 35 years later, the ones that I used to do way up in Mendocino, I don't go anymore, because it's just, you know, reasons.
280
::Willow: But I wanted to kind of catch that lightning in a bottle again, and for other people, and help them feel supported, and like, oh wow, there's other people like me.
281
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And…
282
::Willow: This is a great place. Wait, sorry, I was… Oh.
283
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: My… my dogs decided… my husband came home, and my dogs decided to get excited.
284
::Willow: I got it, got it, right.
285
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's real life.
286
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Y'all can come along. I live in a house with 3 dogs right now. I'm babysitting.
287
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Grand Dog.
288
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: My grand dog, and I already have two other dogs.
289
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I… when you… when I first went and visited your site, the thing that struck me about what you're doing and creating there was when I used to go to Girl Scout camp as a little girl.
290
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: And it was so fun, but everybody had jobs, you know? You learned a lot of stuff.
291
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But you also had jobs, you know, you worked in the kitchen, you were either helping with cooking or cleaning, and the wood fairies, you know, if you put your elbows on the table, you had to brush the dead wood fairies off and blow them off and wish them well.
292
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: The silly things you remember from those kinds of events.
293
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Are you interested?
294
::Willow: You remember them I do remember them! And there was a magic tree that we could slide down.
295
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It is in California somewhere, I don't know where it was exactly.
296
::Willow: Must have been north of San Diego.
297
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It probably wasn't that far, I was, like, 6 or 7.
298
::Willow: Right, right. Within an hour's bus trip or something, maybe.
299
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah, and I've… I lived in San Diego as an adult, and I still… I don't have any idea where that was.
300
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: But the point is that you have fun, you build relationships with people, and memories. It's just, like, the only thing we're gonna take with us after this life is our experiences.
301
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: None of the crap that we accumulate.
302
::Willow: Well, and what we do for others is going to be remembered by those people, and there's a saying, what is remembered lives.
303
::Willow: And whether that's a person or a deed, you know, it's less about stuff than it is about, and I say this as a past president of a museum, which, where stuff is important, but it's… it's how… it's the stories of the people that came before.
304
::Willow: you know, and that's part of why I'm doing the old-timey stuff, what I call it old ways retreats, because it's not just show up and do yoga, which, I mean, that's fine. There's, like, 90% of retreats out there are about yoga. I'm about the hands-on experience. You want to learn how to
305
::Willow: turn something, you know, green, let's learn how to do that with plants. You know, you want to…
306
::Willow: you know, do a thing at a talent show, you know, for everybody else. Maybe it's your first time, maybe you're really nervous. You're in a super supportive atmosphere, and maybe that moment for you is gonna be so transformative that you're not going to have stage fright.
307
::Willow: as much, and you can go next time, and you know what, I'm gonna try busking, and I'm gonna try
308
::Willow: doing this magic trick that I saw, and learned it… it's those moments that can change a person's life, and you don't know what it's going to be, and the person doesn't know what it's going to be. But… but I want these retreats to foster that, so that… that… that's what can come of them. And hopefully people will come back
309
::Willow: And bring their past experience to the next group.
310
::Willow: You know, and the cycle continues in a beautiful way. It's my hope.
311
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love it, I love it. And… I don't know. Just… I'll tell you later.
312
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I have thoughts. So many thoughts. I'm really excited for you, and I love what you're doing. And people can learn about the Old Ways Retreats on your website called…
313
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: OldwaysRetreats.com.
314
::Willow: How original, yes.
315
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It makes it easy?
316
::Willow: The URL is OldWaysRetreats.com. The business name is technically Yosemite Old Ways Retreats, to kind of denote that I am gonna do them all the way around Yosemite, in the Yosemite region, because, I mean, one of the most beautiful places on Earth, how can I not, right? You know, so…
317
::Willow: And the area surrounding is gorgeous, too. I mean, the foothills are beautiful, there's a lot of unique
318
::Willow: biomes, we can do nature walks, there's ranches out here with horses, and then I've got a gal on an old historic ranch who wants to do retreats. She's got a crystal labyrinth, and she's going to do horse therapy. It's just like…
319
::Willow: I can't wait to really dive more into this. I mean, I'm just getting started. I mean, I'm just getting started, as they say.
320
::Willow: So, yeah, yeah.
321
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I love it, I love it. And people can watch…
322
::Willow: Right?
323
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yes! It really is. It's the beginning of the whole new cycle.
324
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: the 9s.
325
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, you're also doing the Manos Chronicles, and there are episodes up on Amazon Prime, so if…
326
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I… I'm definitely gonna go check this out. Isn't that cool?
327
::Willow: It's meant to be a dramedy, it's meant to be kind of fun and weird and a little bit silly, but also, I mean, there's, you know, important messages in there, too.
328
::Willow: I… I dragged in a character from one of my book series, and he's become super popular, so that's… that's… that's been great. The first three episodes are up on Amazon Prime. Episode 4 is, almost done with editing. I think we might have Picture Lock in the next couple of days.
329
::Willow: And meaning all the visuals, we just have to go over the credits again, make sure nobody got left out. And then, my husband does all the score… well, my husband and my son do the scoring, my husband does all the sound design, and… and the post stuff, which is kind of the time bottleneck on that, but so 4 should be out very soon.
330
::Willow: 5, 6, and 7, we're gonna film in November, and then, that concludes Season 1. We're hoping there will be a Season 2, you never know with these things. Got an angel investor that's, that's bankrolling, actually, the episodes 5, 6, and 7.
331
::Willow: And I have the series, in a development track, potentially.
332
::Willow: So I'm waiting to see how that's gonna happen. I've signed with a company that's marketing it to various production companies that are bigger than mine, that actually have a bank account. Well, I have a bank account, but you know what I mean. They have bigger pockets, you know, so, that's my hope, is it'll continue.
333
::Willow: You know, in a bigger way. I'd love it to be, you know, the big thing, so show up on Netflix, who knows? I don't know.
334
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Amazon Prime's pretty cool!
335
::Willow: Yeah, yeah.
336
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Gotta say!
337
::Willow: Amazon's… it's not an Amazon original series, they're not paying for it, but it is available on that service, so… but you never know, maybe they'll decide that.
338
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
339
::Willow: We'll run it for one season and then cancel it. Hey, maybe… as they do with everything.
340
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: That's how things get… can get momentum. Yeah.
341
::Willow: Yeah, no, that's true. I mean, they, they brought back, they, well, like, the show Lucifer, which is actually pretty good, it was on, something… oh, where was it? It was on…
342
::Willow: And then Netflix had it, and then they canceled it, and then it went to a partnership with Warner Brothers. That was a whole convoluted thing. I know way too much about television, and that is not this podcast.
343
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So… I like television.
344
::Willow: Yeah, most people do, yeah, yeah, yeah.
345
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I like it.
346
::Willow: Has anybody ever…
347
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Steph.
348
::Willow: wants to message me about what happened with Heroes, that's a whole hour, right there. I mean, I'll keep going.
349
::Willow: Anyway.
350
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: So, anybody out there who has a podcast about television.
351
::Willow: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to talk to Willow. Right? Right, I've got all the dirt on, on what happened to heroes. Well, which…
352
::Willow: a lot of, I shouldn't say, so…
353
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Well, she'll come on your show, and she'll talk about the things that she can talk about, and she'll leave your audience wondering.
354
::Willow: Right, I'll… I'll leave you in suspense. That's the best part, see? I can tell. Magician never reveals all their secrets.
355
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Right. Is it want to come back wanting more?
356
::Willow: Speaking of podcasts, I have a podcast, and it talks about old-timey things. It's Willows Vintage Homestead.
357
::Willow: And and I… my third episode was my friend Robert Bax talking about vaudeville and magician things, and that's a… speaking of magician things, so yeah, yeah.
358
::Willow: Very cool. Thought I'd throw that in there.
359
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Well, I'm glad you did, because I didn't know.
360
::Willow: Oh, well, hey! We've all learned things.
361
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: We have, indeed. Thank you so much for joining me.
362
::Willow: be.
363
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Yeah.
364
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: Got that.
365
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: I agree.
366
::Willow: At the breakfast.
367
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: What's your phone, everybody joining.
368
::Willow: All right, well, thanks for having me on. I know that we went super long, so…
369
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: It's all good.
370
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: To learn more about Willow and her retreats and the Manos Chronicles, visit OldWaysRetreats.com, and you can catch Manos Chronicles on Amazon Prime, and we'll be sure to put those links in the show notes below. If you have a podcast or you're interested in starting one to get your message in front of our huge, inactive audience, be sure to reach out to us at support at heartlifecoach.com. We love to help spiritual entrepreneurs and coaches amplify their voice and monetize their mission.
371
::Jill Hart-The Coach's Alchemist: and offer a variety of ways to do this on Substack. Join us for our next episode as we share what others are doing to raise the global frequency. And remember, change begins with you. You have all the world… all the power to change the world. Start today and get visible.
