Jessica Maxwell returns to the Wood River Valley to bring her positive, spiritual education to those seeking inner renewal. Maxwell's book "Roll Around Heaven" is a 16-year memoir about her education and spiritual journey. Maxwell has been a past presenter at the Sun Valley Wellness Festival.
"A new global spirituality is taking place," she said. "It will take all the traditions of the world and put them together. Where it's heading, who knows, but it's a deep understanding and devotion to spirituality."
Maxwell will hold a workshop, "RAHjunvenation," at the Light on The Mountains Spiritual Center south of Ketchum off state Highway 75, on Saturday, May 21, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The workshop is $95 and scholarships are available. Participants should bring lunch. In addition, Maxwell will speak at the Light on the Mountains on Sunday, May 22. To make a reservation, call 720-9804 or email sacredstones@live.com.
Maxwell said the workshops evolved from the readers of "Roll Around Heaven." Maxwell refers to readers as RAHs.
"To devotes of RAH, I am cheering you on your spiritual journey," she said. "Readers insisted they wanted more."
Maxwell said people are starved for authenticity and a clearing understanding for spirituality, which includes scientific research.
"I feel often that I am a bridge person between the sacred secular and all churches," she said. "Lies are falling away and the deep truth is coming to the forefront."
A graduate of the University of Oregon School of Journalism, Maxwell is the author of books on fly-fishing, adventure travel and golf. "Roll Around Heaven" is her unbidden debut into the spiritual genre.
Maxwell's work has been included in more than two dozen anthologies, including Bill Bryson's Best American Travel Writing 2000 and Tim Cahill's Best American Travel Writing 2006. She was the youngest regular contributor to Esquire's travel column from 1985 to 1997, and created and wrote Audubon's in-the-field conservation column, "True Nature," from 1992 to 1997, which is also the year she wrote a definitive cover story for Natural History magazine on the plight of Pacific Northwest salmon.
She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and is a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism winner.
Sabina Dana Plasse: splasse@mtexpress.com
“Roll Around Heaven: An All True Accidental Spiritual Adventure” by Jessica Maxwell. Atria Books/Beyond Words. $25. 288pp.
