Súl Ra Stewart

The Way of the Wild Crone

Some journeys are planned on maps; others are charted by the soul. For Súl Ra Stewart, the road began in the ashes of a life she thought would last forever. After the dissolution of her marriage, she set herself moving—first through the forests and mountains of Western Canada, then across the world to Aotearoa/New Zealand—following a tug older than logic and softer than grief. What she found there wasn’t escape, but initiation.

Author Súl Ra Stewart in New Zealand.

In The Way of the Wild Crone, Súl Ra travels with no itinerary and an open heart: hostel bunkrooms and long buses, ferry crossings and cliff paths, rain-soaked days and hot pools at night. Auckland’s dormant volcanoes mirror her own inner fire gone quiet; sheep-dotted headlands in the Bay of Islands slow her stride after a knee twist; Tauranga and Mount Maunganui remind her that nothing—romance, weather, plans—is promised. In Taupō, gazing over a lake like a mirror to the sky, an old question rises: Am I worthy? The answer doesn’t arrive as a slogan but as practice—rest, gentleness, and a recommitment to her body as teacher.

The pilgrimage deepens on the South Island. A three-and-a-half-hour ferry crossing opens into a night of prayerful inquiry: Who would I be without fear, without my old survival stories? Soon after, an unexpected invitation carries her to D’Urville Island—off-grid, elemental, and held by edible forests and cold mountain creeks. There, with new friends who feel like kin, she bathes, breathes, and remembers how to live in communion with land, people, and the whisper of her own intuition. It’s not escape; it’s return.

Kaikōura becomes her still point. Funds thin, knees ache, and movement yields to sacred rest. She barters for a bunk, walks to the sea each day, and lets the waves preach. When strength returns, she hikes the 25 km peninsula track—wind, cliff, ocean, proof. Then the way opens again: a food-truck job in Wānaka, star-heavy nights at Rhythm & Alps, Roy’s Peak under her boots, bare feet in hot sand at Cathedral Cove, prayers among the limestone of Castle Hill, the thunder of Punakaiki’s Pancake Rocks. The land keeps handing her sacraments: say yes, go slow, be brave, be tender.

“Every journey is an initiation. The road does not just take you somewhere new… it returns you to the woman you’ve always been becoming.” — Súl Ra Stewart

By the time she flies home, Súl Ra knows what the pilgrimage was preparing her for. In November 2024, her husband dies suddenly. The strength, softness, and self-trust forged on the trail become the bridge she walks across her deepest grief. This is the wild crone’s way: to meet life as it is—fierce, luminous, unpromised—and still choose reverence.

Today, Súl Ra is a Canadian writer, storyteller, and modern-day crone whose work dances at the intersections of grief, awakening, and feminine remembering. Former publisher of Barnacle Babes Magazine, she now tends The Krone’s Kitchen, a multimedia offering of ancestral nourishment and women’s wisdom. When she isn’t writing, you’ll find her barefoot by the sea, whispering prayers to the wind—or stirring bone broth with devotion. Follow her on Instagram at @theKronesKitchen.

🌿 Read Súl Ra’s full chapter in Wanderlust Chronicles: Transformative Travel Tales—a celebration of journeys that change not just our view, but our becoming.