Jonathan McRay
Jonathan McRay is a father, farmer, facilitator, and writer in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. He grows beautiful and useful trees that cross-pollinate food sovereignty and ecological restoration with Silver Run Forest Farm, a riparian nursery, woodland collective, and folk school practicing agroforestry, watershed health, and restorative justice. As a facilitator and mediator, he supports grassroots groups and community organizations through conflict transformation, popular education, and participatory decision-making. Jonathan is also learning to give up erosive perfectionism in favor of joyful growth.
The River Threshold
Journal Article
“She and I sat at a picnic table near a stream with a therapist who was also my uncle, and we said out loud in the summer June air that we couldn’t give what the other wanted. She said she couldn’t live with me anymore and be who she wanted to be. I said I couldn’t live indefinitely separate and fragmented. We said these things for the purpose of freeing each other, though freedom didn’t liberate like we thought.”