✦ Shope Creek Wilderness
A Family Home.
A Living Appalachian Wilderness.
The Birthplace of Hollow Bone.
131 acres in Asheville, North Carolina.
✦ The Land
131 Acres of Forest, Creek and Memory
Ten miles from Asheville, Shope Creek is a living Appalachian wilderness shaped by ancient forest, open meadow, flowing water and generations of human relationship.
For 12 years, Stephen and Mary Sedmak have opened portions of their 131-acre family property to children, educators, artists, musicians, healers and friends.
This land was never designed as an institution.
It became something meaningful because people were welcomed into it.
Shope Creek has served as a home for nature education, Forest Floor gatherings, music, storytelling, family, reflection and the original pilot experiences that helped bring the Hollow Bone Initiative into view.
Shope Creek remains Stephen and Mary's home.
Its role in Hollow Bone is not ending.
Its role is becoming clear.
For 12 years, the land has held:
Nature education
Forest Floor programs
Children's camps
Rites of passage
Music and campfires
Family gatherings
Storytelling
Quiet restoration
Camp Mary
The first Hollow Bone pilot experiences
The land did not need to become a retreat center to matter.
It had already been teaching, gathering and transforming people for years.
✦ Stephen and Mary
The Keepers of Shope Creek
Shope Creek is first and foremost the home of Stephen and Mary Sedmak.
Their life together, their relationship with the land and their willingness to welcome others created the conditions from which everything else emerged.
Stephen Sedmak
Stephen is a writer, inventor, storyteller and explorer of consciousness whose work asks two central questions:
Can we move the collective beyond fear?
Can we shift the nature of exchange?
Those questions became the philosophical foundation of the Hollow Bone Initiative.
Mary Sedmak
Mary is the heart of the home and the namesake of Camp Mary.
Her life, resilience, humor and quiet presence are inseparable from the spirit of Shope Creek. The gatherings that occurred here were possible because a private home was temporarily opened as a place of welcome.
Together, Stephen and Mary have stewarded the land not as a product, but as a relationship.
✦ Forest Floor
Where the Land Was Already Working
Long before Hollow Bone had a name, Forest Floor was demonstrating what Shope Creek could make possible.
For 12 years, children and families have come to the land for nature-based education grounded in curiosity, connection and direct experience. Forest Floor has been on the land with Stephen for 12 years — thousands of children learning to track, to build, to listen.
The forest became the classroom.
The creek taught attention.
Tracking taught patience.
Fire taught responsibility.
Community taught belonging.
Forest Floor is not evidence that Shope Creek must become an institution.
It is evidence that land can change lives when the right people are trusted to meet it.
✦ The Original Pilot
Hollow Bone Began Here
Shope Creek became the original pilot site for the Hollow Bone Initiative.
Stephen entrusted Craig Rose with helping translate his philosophy into a visible, participatory experience. Camp Mary brought together artists, musicians, healers, founders, filmmakers, teachers, elders, children and a dog named Lion.
There was no finished formula.
The purpose was to gather the right people, create the conditions and observe what emerged.
The pilot revealed something larger than a retreat:
People arrived through different doors but found common ground.
Creativity became part of healing.
The land became an active participant.
Stories and wisdom moved between generations.
Exchange took forms beyond a conventional transaction.
People left seeing new possibilities for themselves and one another.
Shope Creek proved that the central questions of Hollow Bone could be explored through lived experience.
It also revealed that the full vision would require an independent organization and a permanent property designed to hold it at scale.
✦ The Evolution
The Birthplace Is Not the Institution
Shope Creek was the place where Hollow Bone became visible.
It is not intended to become Hollow Bone's permanent campus, nonprofit headquarters or full-scale retreat facility.
Shope Creek will remain Stephen and Mary's family home. Select family, educational, creative and nature-based experiences may continue by invitation, but the property is not being presented as the future institutional home of Hollow Bone.
The initiative is now moving forward independently to establish its own permanent home in the greater Asheville area.
Shope Creek was the birthplace.
Hollow Bone is the initiative.
Asheville will be its first permanent home.
✦ Camp Mary
The Gathering That Revealed the Next Chapter
Camp Mary began as an intimate gathering at Stephen and Mary's home.
Artists. Musicians. Founders. Healers. Teachers. Storytellers. Elders. Children. A dog named Lion.
People came without knowing exactly what would happen. They shared meals, music, stories, nature and time away from the familiar structures of ordinary life.
Camp Mary became the experiential pilot for Hollow Bone — and the subject of a documentary recording the initiative's birth.
Future Camp Mary gatherings may take place wherever the Hollow Bone model is invited to live.
The gathering was born here.
It was never meant to remain confined here.
✦ The Medicine Wheel
Learning. Alignment. Realization. Sharing.
The framework Stephen developed at Shope Creek remains part of the origin story.
North
Learning
We arrive without needing to know. The land, the stories and one another become teachers.
West
Alignment
We become quiet enough to recognize what is true and release what no longer belongs.
East
Realization
What was obscured becomes visible. Not a new identity — an honest recognition.
South
Sharing
What has been received returns to the world through service, creativity, participation and generosity.
You do not have to believe anything.
You are invited to allow for the possibility of everything.
✦ The Documentary
The Birth of Hollow Bone
What began as documentation of a gathering became the story of a vision discovering its true scale.
The film captures Shope Creek as it was during the founding pilots: a family home temporarily transformed by the people invited into it. It records the beauty, tension, uncertainty, creativity and realization that accompanied Hollow Bone's birth.
It also captures the central discovery:
Some visions are born in one place so they can eventually serve many places.
Documentary Coming Soon
✦ Legacy Lab
The Stories That Began at Home
Shope Creek also inspired Legacy Lab: an effort to preserve the voices and wisdom of people who have lived deeply.
It began with Stephen — three books just released at stephensedmak.com — and now we're helping other retreaters and people create their own books, music, and movements:
Stephen's three books — out now
Stephen's conversations
The history of the land
The Forest Floor years
The founding of Hollow Bone
The people who passed through Shope Creek
Books, recordings, music, film and oral history allow those experiences to travel beyond the property without requiring the property itself to become public.
✦ A Place Where Something Was Born
Shope Creek does not need to become a hotel, campus or village to fulfill its purpose.
It has already:
Connected children with nature
Held families and community
Inspired books, music and stories
Hosted the original Camp Mary gatherings
Provided the first living test of Hollow Bone
Revealed the need for something larger
Stephen and Mary will continue stewarding their home and listening to what the land asks of them.
Hollow Bone will carry what began here into its next chapter.
✦ Connect
Invited Conversations
Shope Creek is a private family home. If you'd like to start a conversation, we'd love to hear from you.