Walk with Heath Armstrong: Finding Our Way Back to Nature—and Ourselves
Episode Summary: For Heath Armstrong, reconnecting with nature has been part of a much larger journey back to himself.
In this open-ended conversation, we explore recovery, creativity, adventure, fatherhood, intuition, community, and the role the natural world has played as Heath moved from addiction and disconnection toward a very different way of living.
Episode Description
What happens when finding our way back to nature also becomes a way of finding our way back to ourselves?
In this conversation, I sit down with Heath Armstrong—artist, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Rage Create—to explore the role nature has played in a life shaped by recovery, creativity, adventure, family, and a willingness to follow some unexpected paths.
Heath's relationship with nature has been a through-line in his journey from addiction and disconnection to traveling and living in a van, climbing mountains, building creative businesses, becoming a father, and eventually putting down roots with his family on a homestead in the mountains of North Carolina.
Together, we explore what happens when we loosen our grip on control, the stories and conditioning we accumulate, and what nature can teach us about ourselves. Heath shares a powerful experience on Mount Rainier that changed him, as well as the ways intuition, synchronicity, and creativity have shaped his understanding of his relationship with the natural world.
We also talk about connection—not only with nature, but with one another—and what Heath discovered about the importance of community after years spent moving through wild places.
Throughout the conversation, one idea continues to surface: perhaps reconnecting with nature isn't about finding something outside ourselves, but remembering that we were never separate from it in the first place.
If you've ever wondered what might change when we begin to see ourselves as part of nature rather than apart from it, this conversation offers an expansive and sometimes unexpected place to explore that question.
Key Themes
Finding our way back — Heath reflects on the movement from addiction, avoidance, and disconnection toward a life that feels more aligned with who he wants to be.
We are nature — The conversation challenges the idea that nature is something separate from human life and explores what changes when we begin with belonging rather than separation.
Control, surrender, and change — From mountaineering to parenting, Heath returns to the limits of control and what he has learned from responding to life rather than trying to force it.
Nature and human connection — Time in wild places mattered deeply to Heath, but so did discovering the importance of community, gathering, and being physically present with other people.
Making room for mystery — Intuition, synchronicity, creativity, and experiences Heath doesn't fully explain are part of the conversation, inviting curiosity without requiring certainty.
Key Takeaways
Nature can be more than a setting for wellbeing; it can become a relationship through which we understand ourselves differently.
Reconnecting with ourselves may involve examining the stories, habits, and conditioning we've accumulated rather than continually trying to become someone new.
Immersion in nature and human belonging aren't substitutes for one another. Both can be important parts of a connected life.
Some experiences resist easy explanation. We can remain curious about what they mean without needing to prove or dismiss them.
Putting down roots can be both literal and metaphorical: a process of tending relationships, creativity, community, and what matters to us.
“Humans, we're not separate from nature. We are nature.”
— Heath Armstrong
Connect with Heath Armstrong
Website: heatharmstrong.com
Rage Create: ragecreate.com
Resources Mentioned
Rage Create — Heath's creative company and home of his affirmation decks and other projects.
Dr. Zach Bush — Mentioned by Heath during the conversation in connection with ideas about nature, health, and remembering our relationship with the living world.
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz — Referenced during the conversation through the idea of being impeccable with your word.
Reflection Prompt
Where in your life might “finding your way back” be less about becoming someone different and more about reconnecting with something that is already there?
Prefer to read? The full transcript is below.
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Walk with Heath Armstrong: Finding Our Way Back to Nature—and Ourselves
This transcript has been edited lightly for length and clarity. Repetition, false starts, and occasional tangents have been removed while preserving the substance and flow of the conversation.
Nature, Wealth and Wellbeing
Susan: Hey, Heath. Thank you for joining me today.
This is a little bit of a fan moment for me because I’ve been a fan of your work for a while. I had the opportunity to hear you on a podcast recently, and some of the things I heard led me to believe we could have a fun conversation on ROOTED.
When I messaged you and shared that this podcast is about the connection between nature and wellbeing, your reply included a line I loved: “Our connection to nature is our connection to wealth and wellbeing.”
Can we start there?
Heath: That’s a good one. I said that, huh? That comes from my heart.
I’m always practicing allowing what is from the heart to come out and not trying to shape it or force it into something because whoever I’m talking with wants it to turn out or sound a certain way.
That’s a very big principle in my life. The rediscovery of that took me from being a raging alcoholic for many years, a drug addict, and cowering into my wounds and not facing them. That reconnection with nature and the inner child helped me completely change and develop an entirely new existence.
Nature has always been at the core of my health and wealth.
Susan: It is magical and essential—those are two ways I would describe it.
Before we started recording, you shared that it was raining there in the North Carolina mountains and that you live in a rainforest. I don’t know that I’d ever thought about that area as being so tropical and humid.
Heath: It pretty much is.
This cabin I’m in, I built last year. It’s the “wealth shed.” We’ve got a sauna, artwork, all our books. It’s a place for intellect, connection, and authentic relating.
But the most powerful thing about it is that you can open the door and step outside.
I feel like that’s the case for most structures. No matter what experience you’re having inside, it never really trumps that feeling when you open the door and step back outside.
It’s funny because on our computers we have nature scenes, and we have pictures of nature in our houses. We see nature all the time on social media. But how often are we really visiting it and not just looking through the window box?
Susan: We know that seeing nature—whether through a window or imagery—can have a positive impact on our mental health and physiology. But seeing and experiencing are different.
I sat outside for half an hour this morning. I did my morning sit and then yoga outdoors. During my sit, I intentionally noticed what the air felt like, what I could smell, what birds I could hear, what the sky looked like. I was using all of my senses.
Looking at nature and being in it are very different things.
Heath: Totally. There’s a benefit to seeing it, too. Not everyone has access all the time. I now have four acres in this rainforest, which is incredible, but it wasn’t always that way for me.
There were many years where I visualized and kept taking action until I got to this space I could actually cultivate. The effect it’s had on my nervous system has been drastic.
What a blessing to spend time in nature in any capacity.
Growing a Dream
Susan: Part of the reason I was already a fan is that I have a set of your cards. One that sits on my desk says, “I grow farmlands of authentic dreams and water them with self-confidence streams.”
Then I heard you talking about your home, and I wondered if there was a connection.
Did you grow this dream?
Heath: I’ve been growing this dream for a while.
There’s a lot to unpack in my journey. At one point I woke up face down, pants down, on a garage floor with blood everywhere, an empty bottle of whiskey near me, and my car running in the front yard. I had no recollection of the previous 48 or 72 hours.
That was one of the biggest moments of realizing that if something didn’t change, I wasn’t going to be here to experience the great wealth of this world and nature.
I’d always had dreams of being outside and traveling, but I was working in a concrete construction factory making concrete receptacles for $13 an hour.
There’s nothing wrong with that job. It taught me a lot and drove me in the direction I needed to go. Nothing anyone does is better than anything else.
But a seed had been planted a long time ago of having land and cultivating with the beloved. There were a lot of hero journeys I had to go on before that could become my life—a lot of painful moments, trusting, and leaning into intuition.
That was ultimately always guided by nature. Sitting in silence under trees. Fasting and being outside. Swimming in glacier lakes. Campfires.
There’s nothing much more powerful than sitting around a fire with people you love, looking each other in the eyes and saying, “Hey, I love you. This is going to be okay. Look at how beautiful this all is.”
I started to populate that dream of having land. I had no idea how it would come about.
There were businesses that succeeded and failed, affirmation decks, living in a van, traveling around the world—all these things that didn’t seem possible to the child who was hurt and wounded and scared and drinking a fifth of whiskey a day.
Simply showing up to nature and being quiet guided me to the next step again and again.
This homestead I have now—I don’t know how many times I drew it on paper or sat under a tree and visualized what it would look like.
So yes, it’s a dream to be here.
Giving Things Away and Taking to the Road
Susan: You spent time traveling and living much closer to nature in a van. I’m curious about the jump from where you had been to realizing you wanted to hit the road.
Heath: I realized I wanted to live in a van around 2017, shortly after I quit my job, sold my house in Kentucky, and went through this process of giving almost everything I owned away.
I logged what I gave away and journaled the good things coming into my life during that process. Day one, I gave one thing away. Day two, two things. Day three, three things. It compounded until eventually it was almost everything I owned.
You start to see how much stuff you have—things you think you need or have an attachment to, when maybe there’s a better place in the world for them.
What I noticed was that the more I gave and tried to be of service, the more prosperity and abundance came in—not just monetarily, but through connection, people, community, experience, and synchronicity.
I moved across the country in my car with my dogs, camping in national parks and working nomadically from my laptop. I was building an e-commerce business and starting to make affirmation decks after the idea came to me in meditation.
I spent a lot of time in Oregon climbing the Cascade mountains, on glaciers and ice, seeing the sun come up from the tops of mountains. Traveling, sitting with families around the world, working with a school in Africa—every experience was chiseling me into who I actually was and removing layers of what I thought I was supposed to be.
Eventually I started visualizing having a van.
Then COVID hit and disrupted my business and supply chain. I ended up with something like $150,000 in credit-card debt. It was intense, but because I was spending so much time in nature, I felt held. I had this internal sense that everything was going to work out.
The van kept coming up.
I found one for $22,222. Twenty-two is my number, so I took that as a sign.
I brought it to my dad’s property near Nashville and spent a winter building it out in the cold. Right when I finished, I met my wife. She moved into the van with me, and we spent the next several years submerged in nature together.
Nature was the greatest initiation for our relationship.
Susan: Stories are really important, and there were so many layers in that one.
I want to go back to the ice climbing. For people listening who have never experienced anything like it, you’re leaving around 11 p.m., climbing all night in the dark with a headlamp, and then seeing the sunrise.
You’re working in partnership with nature—with extreme trust.
When Nature Is Bigger Than You
Heath: It’s important to remember that nature isn’t inherently good or bad. It’s all-encompassing.
You learn quickly that you’re not controlling nature. You are part of it.
You have to pay attention. As soon as you get in your monkey mind and stop paying attention, things can get really dangerous.
There’s something about mountains with ice for me. The higher I go and the harder I climb, the more intensely connected I feel to myself.
It’s so silent. You have the moon and stars for the first four or five hours. You can’t see much around you, so you’re fully trusting that you’re on the path.
I had one really intense near-death experience that changed me.
I was climbing Mount Rainier. There are crevasses you have to cross using metal ladders. We were roped together in a group, and one of the climbers fell off the ladder into a crevasse.
I had already crossed. I looked back and realized he wasn’t there.
I dropped to the ground, anchored myself into the ice with my axe and crampons, and then felt the rope pull.
I was probably ten feet from the crevasse. I spent what was probably 45 minutes to an hour lying face down with the ice against my face, holding that weight while the others worked to build a pulley system.
I was crying, panicking, calm, laughing—all of the emotions at the same time. Your life flashes because you know there are decisions you may have to make that you never thought you would have to make.
Eventually another climber came down to help, and they were able to pull him out.
During that time, I felt the earth’s heartbeat. I felt completely insignificant and, at the same time, like a fragment of God.
It felt like a rebirth.
It was almost like nature saying, “Don’t disrespect me. Don’t underestimate me.”
It sent me on a different path—one that was more caring and loving. I had been running from something, leaning away from things.
That experience transitioned me into leaning into things.
Susan: That idea of leaning in is interesting when I think about wellbeing and nature.
Part of what we’ve danced around through this conversation is a habit many of us have of avoiding some of the stories we’ve built and some of the truths of our lives.
It sounds as though, over time, you found yourself in situations that led you to stop avoiding, and that shifted things for you.
Heath: Totally.
A Two-Year-Old, a Garden, and Remembering Who We Are
Susan: Now that you’re living in this very different way, are you still learning from nature?
Heath: Always. She’ll always be the greatest teacher.
And I have a two-year-old daughter. She’s just nature.
Humans aren’t separate from nature. We are nature. There’s this weird thing we do as humans where we think it’s everything else and then us. That’s absolutely not the case.
Nothing I’ve ever experienced quite compares to the connection back to nature—or the God center—that you experience when you have a baby.
Looking into a baby’s eyes, holding a newborn, there’s something incredibly powerful and natural about it. It makes you wonder, what have I been doing this whole time that was missing the point?
Everything I’ve experienced takes me back to: I’m perfect exactly as I am, right here. I don’t need anything else external.
Experiencing nature with my daughter is the greatest thing ever. We grow gardens. We’ve got chickens.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
What we’re planting is providing. The more we tend and care for the beloved, the more we are tended and cared for.
Maybe we’re just here to plant a garden. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
Susan: I love that—it doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
A two-year-old is, for lack of a better description, not programmed yet. They’re just being their natural creative selves. Society hasn’t gotten to them in quite the same way.
What an interesting place for you to be: observing this young natural creature while also having the perspective of where you’ve been.
Heath: Nothing about having a child makes sense, and at the same time it makes everything make sense.
If you’re willing to show up, be vulnerable, and not try to control, it teaches you constantly.
Everything I’ve learned from nature about letting go, surrendering, and quitting forcing action gets reflected back to me through her.
She wakes up and wants to go outside. Sometimes we can’t take her out right that moment, but she just wants to go.
And when I think I need to accomplish something, here’s this little person who isn’t conditioned and might scream in the middle of something that’s supposed to be silent.
I’m learning to love all of that.
It brings things up in me. Why am I upset? What’s the wound there? Let me feel it, process it, write about it, give it to the fire, and make space for something more aligned with the father, husband, and creative I want to be.
We Can't Control Nature
Susan: I appreciate the truth you keep coming back to: we can’t control nature.
Nature evolves, and so we evolve and grow, releasing what no longer serves.
We’re recording this in August in the Northern Hemisphere, about a month from the equinox. I’m already beginning to mourn the end of warm days because I love warm days. But I’m also really clear that I can’t control that.
When we pay attention to nature, it can be really powerful if we can stop long enough to also be with ourselves.
I think that’s the hard part sometimes. We’re looking for a distraction.
Heath: Distractions are shiny. They give you a dopamine hit, and in that little hit we feel content for a moment.
For me, it’s important to keep showing up and creating. There’s something about sharing what nature has to say through whatever our craft is.
Everything is art in some capacity—visual art, writing, software, building something. It’s all being channeled through nature in some way.
My past self could be incredibly judgmental toward people. Now I can see myself in everybody and everybody in myself, and I have more compassion for the world.
I’m optimistic about humanity. Even though it might not look that way through the small percentage of things we see through social media, there’s a lot of good happening. People are coming together. Creative renaissances are happening.
Susan: I had an experience like that last night.
I went to an old church in Detroit that’s been converted into a restaurant and coffee shop, and they’ve been doing house music a couple evenings a month.
I hadn’t done something like that on a weeknight in a while. On the way home, I was full of joy.
There was such a diversity of people—ages, nationalities. I thought, we’re going to be okay.
If we keep coming together like this, we’re going to be okay.
Nature and the Need for Each Other
Heath: That’s what I’m saying. Sitting around the fire, going to the old church, bowling—whatever it is. You’re having an experience and connecting with other humans.
Even if you’re indoors, that means you’re connecting with nature because connecting with each other is natural.
Social media can make us feel like we’re hanging out with people when we’re actually not. You see your friend, double-tap something, and it feels like you have a connection.
But it isn’t the same as meeting someone in person, touching them, hugging them, spending time with them.
The little town where I live now is Old Fort, North Carolina. We can go five minutes down the road to the yoga studio where my wife teaches. There are women’s circles. There’s this community building around us.
That wasn’t something I could get living in a van and moving around.
We were in nature constantly, and it was incredible. But there was also isolation and longing.
Combining nature with people feels like the original way to live—the primal way.
It doesn’t have to be perfect. Hike. Spend time at a lake. Hang out at a brewery outside. Enjoy life, feel good, have fun.
When you’re relaxed, connected, and creative, you can bring your gifts into the world.
Susan: I’m thinking about your car and van time almost like a seed blowing around—connecting and touching different places—and then eventually you found a place to plant and grow in community.
Some people don’t get a chance to fly around and check things out. They might plant right where they were born.
There are lots of different seeds and lots of ways to find community.
Heath: Exactly. Wherever you are, there’s always something you can be planting and cultivating.
That doesn’t necessarily mean a physical garden. It could be your self-talk, what you think about yourself, what you think about the world, or making the decision to stop reacting and start responding in a way that aligns with what brings you peace.
One practice that helped me was looking at my resistance, hesitation, and fear as a gremlin. There’s a hidden gremlin on every one of my cards for a reason.
When I could see fear as a gremlin, I could name it. It wasn’t this elusive thing anymore.
Then I could move through it and love that part of myself.
Some things take five or ten years to move through. Others move instantly.
The wild thing is that sometimes the moving happens when you sit still.
You sit and be with yourself, and that’s what moves the energy to create new worlds and new experiences.
It’s a beautiful practice. It’s a hard practice. It’s an ever-evolving practice.
But it’s a natural practice.
Movement, Emotion, and Creativity
Susan: The double meaning of movement is interesting to me because we do a lot of sitting and not moving here in the States.
I was under the stars dancing in that old churchyard last night. Part of why I felt so good afterward was that I moved my body in community.
Walking, running, biking, swimming, dancing—physical movement can also help us connect with ourselves and process what comes up.
Heath: There’s a reason motion is in the word emotion. It’s right there, hidden in plain sight.
Even when I was drinking and doing drugs, I noticed that if I was outside, I would wake up feeling so much better than if I was inside. I felt like the earth or a tree was sucking that negative energy out of me and transforming it.
There are all these reciprocal, symbiotic relationships.
I don’t know many people who spend time in nature and then say they don’t like nature. I know people who don’t like going into nature, but I don’t think they’ve really given it a shot.
For me, comfort could be a way of hiding. I could stay inside, watch television, blame everything else, and be okay momentarily. But long-term, that wasn’t the life I wanted.
Words, Creativity, and Sharing What Is True
Susan: That reminds me of another card I have somewhere that says, “Words are spells.”
Words are powerful, and we take them for granted a lot of the time.
Heath: Your word is your wand, as Florence Scovel Shinn would say. Don Miguel Ruiz says, “Be impeccable with your word.”
There’s so much in ancient texts about the power of the word—the way we think, speak, and see ourselves.
For me, resistance is the death of creativity. When we create, we move through resistance and allow something to flow through us into the world.
We activate each other. You can meet one person who changes your entire life.
I was sleepwalking for many years. That doesn’t mean the intelligence, love, spirit, nature, and creativity weren’t already in me. I just hadn’t connected to them yet.
Conversation with particular people helped activate that for me, and spending time in nature carried me through it.
If you have gifts, if you love something, share it.
That’s where you find community. You find people interested in the same things. Together, you create things.
As I’ve gotten older, I care less about what other people think, which means I’m more likely to be authentic about what I share.
We’ve been conditioned to create superficial versions of ourselves—to shape ourselves in conversation rather than vulnerably say, “Maybe everything isn’t okay inside me.”
Vulnerability and authenticity are everything.
Susan: I’m glad you brought up sharing.
Connection has been a theme that’s growing on this podcast—connection to nature, but also connection to each other.
Sharing hopes, dreams, fears—all of it—is so powerful.
What Heath Is Creating Now
Susan: Before we wrap, is there anything you’re excited about or anything else you think is important to this conversation?
Heath: I’m working on a kids’ affirmation deck that I think is really important.
There are 44 pieces of art, and there’s a lot of nature in it. There are principles I’m learning as I experience being a father.
Traditionally, there was so much I was taught as a child that led me toward being disconnected from myself and nature. I’m creating this deck to open up that pipeline of intuition and nature for children and to experience that with them.
That will be coming out through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. RageCreate.com is my hub if people want updates.
That’s really where my heart is at the moment.
Susan: I’m excited about the kids’ deck. I’m already thinking about who I can gift it to.
All right, let’s play a little Natural Favorites.
Natural Favorites
Susan: Favorite sound in nature?
Heath: Silence.
Silence on the mountain. There’s a little crunch if you take a step on the ice, but there’s this silence at three or four in the morning when the sun starts to come up that is my favorite sound ever.
It’s like the sound of a billion choruses of heavens from all different ancient religions coming together and singing.
It’s all-encompassing but somehow silent.
Susan: Wow. That sounds amazing.
Favorite smell?
Heath: Roses.
There’s something about that smell for me that just transforms lifetimes.
Susan: Besides your homestead, a place in nature you return to again and again?
Heath: There’s a really special, hidden hot spring in Oregon where I’ve had some remarkable experiences.
One time I was walking there with my wife—before we were married—and I had this thought about old obsidian blades. I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we found an old obsidian blade out here?”
As soon as I said it, she looked down and picked one up.
We both had this moment of, “Whoa. What just happened?”
Later, after soaking in the hot spring and hiking back to the fire, I had this very strong voice in my head telling me to go back to where we found it.
It was getting dark, there was still snow, and it was a couple miles back. Normally you’d think, that’s a crazy thought. There are mountain lions out here. I’m by myself.
But it was so strong that I went.
I walked back in the dark with my headlamp. Then the voice said, “Turn the headlamp off.”
So I turned it off. My eyes adjusted, and I realized you can actually see pretty well at night once you let them adjust.
I got back to the spot, and the voice was like, “Okay, stop here. It’s here.”
I bent down, started feeling around on the ground, and found two more obsidian blades.
Experiences like that are why I keep following the intuition. I don’t always understand it, but I pay attention when it shows up.
Susan: That’s quite a way to end Natural Favorites.
Heath, thank you for spending this time with me and for being willing to go wherever the conversation went.
Heath: Thank you. This was beautiful.
