The Green Mirror: A Conversation with Micah Mortali on Rewilding, Resilience, and Coming Home
“Rewilding is very close to remembering — remembering this moment, remembering ourselves, remembering our connection to the earth.”
— Micah Mortali
Something came up in this conversation that I keep returning to.
Micah was talking about fire — about how a tree spends its whole life digesting light, storing the sun in its wood. And when we burn it, that stored light is released. So when we sit by a fire, we're not just warming ourselves. We're looking at a little sun. One soft enough to gaze into.
The first and last thing our ancestors did every day of their lives was look into fire. Now the first and last thing most of us do is look at our phones.
That is the conversation we got to have.
I am so grateful to my friend Micah Mortali — founder of the Kripalu School of Mindful Outdoor Leadership and author of Rewilding: Meditations, Practices, and Skills for Awakening in Nature — for joining me for this IG Live. Micah contributed to The Power of the Pause, and every time I'm on the Kripalu campus, I see the aliveness of the people moving through his programs. There is just so much vitality. It made sense to bring him here, especially now, when so many of us are looking for ways to stay grounded in a world that feels increasingly unmooring.
We explored:
What "rewilding" actually means — and why it's closer to remembering than anything extreme or effortful
The Sankofa — an Akan symbol of a bird reaching back for what's been forgotten, to carry it forward
The sit spot practice: 15 minutes a day, outside, without your phone, just observing
Why bird song is a nervous system signal — our bodies recognize safety in it
The difference between the green mirror and the black mirror, and what each one feeds us
One foot in the stone age, one foot in the digital age — and how that balance might be the most radical act of self-care right now
One of the things Micah said that landed so deeply: when we say we've lost our connection to nature, what we're really saying is we've lost our connection to ourselves.
That felt true in my body the moment I heard it.
Near the end of our conversation, Micah offered a beautiful anchor for this particular moment in time. With so much coming at us through screens — so much that is partial, algorithm-shaped, and fear-amplifying — he described the green mirror as a pure input. Something humans didn't create and can't manipulate. When we sit with the natural world, we're engaging with the mystery. We're remembering we are part of something larger. Not just in it. Part of it.
I got the sit spot practice from Micah, and it has become one of the steadiest threads in my daily life. If you don't have one yet, I hope this conversation is the invitation.
You can explore more of Micah's work at micahmortali.com and find him on Instagram for daily doses of the green mirror.
