Tea Ceremony Poem honoring Melanie Goodchild at r3.O Conference by Bridgid Normand
Bridgid Normand is a poet, land artist, and educator, recently returned to her native Scotland after decades of cross-cultural work in teaching, curriculum design and climate activism mainly in Cascadia, Turtle Islands. Her poems—born of land, loss, and deep listening—invite presence, reflection, and co-created action in times of planetary unraveling. Through ephemeral art, ritual, and poetry shaped by walking in the landscape, non-dual awareness practice and a healing journey from illness, she invites what she calls “the sacred dance of sorrow and joy.” She is currently part of a global community of practice with the Design School for Regenerating Earth and with the Rivers of the North Hub and Confluence.
After listening to Melanie Goodchild and the Tea Wagon that she evoked in Day 2 at r3.O Conference this week, Bridgid dreamed this poem and offered it to us in the morning. We are now offering it to you and all the indigenous elders and allies around our beautiful world. Melanie, an Anishinaabe scholar and educator focuses her research on Indigenous Knowledge protocols and regenerative exchanges across biocultural systems, while maintaining the integrity of distinct identities. Bridgid has built a beautiful relational kinship with water in her new bioregion, with the Elsick Burn that goes in the North Sea.
Tea Ceremony by Bridgid Norman, Aberdeen, North Sea, Scotland
She unhitches the wagon from her bike. She pulls it across the tight-mown grass, past the reed-fringed ponds,
through the wildflower meadow,
and into the leaf-green space
beneath the spreading branches
of the massive tree–
softly greeting the ancient one before she enters.
She lays out two large blankets,
arranges the water bottle, the red kettle, the glass teapot, the handmade pottery cups, the two collecting baskets,
and clears a patch of earth
for her small wood-burning stove.
Then she lifts her flute to her lips
and plays a song of welcome,
a song of gratitude to the mother tree and to the flowers.
The notes float out across the grass
to where children are playing,
to where people are strolling
or chatting on benches.
Some pause and turn their heads,
and smiling to each other
set off to follow the song.
When they arrive, she invites them to tea!
They walk with her slowly through the meadow and around the wetland.
They forage yarrow, red clover,
pineapple weed, and water mint.
They gather dry sticks and twigs.
Later,
with time,
the kettle boils.
The flowers share their sweetness.
Words dip and float.
Spirits lift and mingle.
The afternoon sun dapples through the leaves.
Bridgid Normand © 2026
With thanks to Becky Chambers and her book “A Psalm for the Wild-built” and to Dr. Melanie Goodchild and her vision for a Tea Wagon. And to the women of the We Are Nature collective who have sat in circle with me under the mother tree.
We met Bridgid in the Design School in 2024, she had just recently moved to a little village near Aberdeen, North East Scotland by the North Sea, her homeland.
She imagined designing her solo land immersion as she was new to the land and only starting to meet its peoples. She presented her Burn of Elsick in the Rivers of the North Hub and we are happy to share it here:
