Raven’s Retreat: Where Veganism, Mindfulness, and Nature Unite

What happens when veganism meets art, athletics, and the healing power of nature? You get Raven’s Retreat—a transformative sanctuary in Hocking Hills, Ohio, created by Raven Morgan and Dustin Weatherby.

In this inspiring episode of The Glen Merzer Show, Raven and Dustin share their journey from animal agriculture to animal advocacy, and how their retreat is redefining what wellness can look like. “We went vegan in 2013,” Raven says, after years working as a vet tech and witnessing the truth behind factory farming. That experience, combined with a passion for justice, sparked their mission: create a space where healing, creativity, and community flourish.

Raven’s Retreat offers more than lodging—it’s a nature-immersive experience designed for mental clarity, mindfulness, and connection. “We have a mindfulness trail,” Raven explains, featuring meditation zones, sensory exercises, and peaceful forest paths. From Japanese-inspired practices to outdoor art installations, every element reflects their commitment to compassion, respect for nature, and holistic health.

Dustin, a sculptor and athlete, sees the retreat as a living canvas—where fitness, art, and vegan values merge. The couple also champions local vegan businesses, building a community rooted in collaboration, not competition.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world” isn’t just their motto—it’s how they live.

🎧 Listen now to hear how Raven and Dustin are using creativity, compassion, and conscious living to inspire transformation—one retreat at a time.

📌 Watch the episode here: Raven Morgan and Dustin Weatherby Discuss Raven's Retreat!

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DISCLAIMER: Please understand that the transcript below was provided by a transcription service. It is undoubtedly full of the errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions. To understand the interview more completely and accurately, please watch it here: Raven Morgan and Dustin Weatherby Discuss Raven's Retreat!

Welcome to the Glenn Merzer show. can find us across all your favorite podcast platforms. You could find us on YouTube. Please remember to subscribe. have three guests today. Raven Morgan and Dustin Weatherby are the owner managers of Raven's Retreat in Hocking Hills, Ohio. And with them is their

Supervisor Mr. Peanut. So welcome, Dustin Raven and Mr. Peanut. Hey, thanks. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, it's pleasure to be here. So you are both vegans. You are both artists. You are both athletes and you have started this artistic retreat and perhaps it could also be called a spiritual retreat.

So let's start with the vegan side of things. When did you each go vegan and was that involved in your meeting each other? Yeah. So we went vegan in 2013. I was meat free since I should have been meat free since I was 12, but I didn't go vegan until 2013. we had just gotten married.

So, and then it wasn't involved with meeting each other. We actually met each other in 2008 in a mixed martial arts gym where we both were competitors. And we started dating in 2011, but it did have something to do with me being attracted to Dustin or DJ. And the reason why is I always say he was the nicest, kindest man in the gym by far. even though he was, he could outmaneuver and he was stronger than everybody.

He was still the nicest person in there. So I was always and I could we would have conversation He his favorite color was green and he loved animals. So I thought I see green in the background. Yeah, we're all about green. Yeah and So who decided to go vegan first and then did you and then you went together vegan? What have we we we did it together? She was vegetarian for a long time before and then and then I was training for MMA like multiple times

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during the week and then playing rugby on the weekends. And once I kind of transitioned over to plants, I realized I was starting to heal lot faster. And I was like, wow, there's something to this. And then we both cut out dairy and eggs and then it just got even better, like circulatory optimization, you know? And I never really turned back from then. So that was quite a while ago. He was a little bit feisty at first because my stimulus is I was a little bit more

pushy because I knew better working as a vet tech in the animal agriculture industry and then working in the research field as a vet tech. I knew, I always say, I know the truth behind the lies. I know the greenwashing. When they try to tell me about the procedures that take place in these factory farms, I've been part of the procedure. So it's very difficult to lie to me. And I'd been wanting to go vegan for a very long time. And I kept suggesting it to him while we were boyfriend and girlfriend and all that. And he would just decline it. And then finally, I went to a

kind of like a summer art fair pop-up. They had a lot of artists there and I stumbled upon like this open table with these two males. They were selling books and there was a book there on that table and it was The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer. And I thought, I need to read this book. I've been thinking about it for a long time, this and that. I read that book and at that point I was pretty much fired up and I knew I had no excuse. There was no excuse. I already worked in the industry. It was a matter of

This helps me realize how desensitized people can be. If I can turn my head, work in the industry and still consume dairy, no telling what people can do. So finally I got the slap in the face. I had a meltdown. said, I'm not doing this anymore. You're not bringing me in the house. You're not bringing dairy in the house. You're not bringing eggs in the house. If you want to get it while you're out and about, have fun. And he's just like, okay. And he kind of got on board. So kind of went like that. In my defense on our first date.

I made tofu and mixed vegetables. Okay. And I would eat some of that kind of stuff too. You I wasn't just eating meat, but I mean, I was raised in a farm area. I had three different types of livestock in a triangle that I was right in the middle of where I grew up. So it was kind of like, that's just what you did. You know what I mean? And you know how hard it can be to break people's traditions.

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Another I guess I guess when you're dating a martial artist and she lays down the law, you listen to her. I'm not going to play with that. I'm very transparent with my my so-called demands. I'm not I'm not very tolerant of heavy drinking drugs. And then I you know, I only yeah, I don't really tolerate nothing. That's you know, not vegan. So yeah, it's just I at this point, I don't do that. But

Yeah, he was eating meat when we would go out with our friends from the gym and he would win his fights. I would win my fights. Some of our training partners would win 70, 80 % of the fights, but he and I would always win our fights. but he was eating meat and they were like, well, she's just, you know, one of those small girls that don't eat meat. And I was like, when he was eating meat beside me, I'm like, that makes me look, you better get on board. So it was very frustrating for us to go out in groups with our friends because I'm this

person that's just a strange person that wins fights and he's this guy that's big and has muscles that eats meat. So when he got on board, I think people started to really turn their heads. Now, you said you were a vet raven in the tech in the got it. So basically like animal nurse. So we run blood work, radiographs. I worked for a short time. I worked at the Columbus Zoo. I worked at the Ohio Wildlife Center. I have a lot of experience with animals outside of

you know, domestics, dogs and cats. So did you were you working with animals that were being raised for slaughter? Yes. OK. And so what did you see there and what were the lies that they tried to tell you? There's a lot of lies like I know that there was there was a quite a bit of time where I kept going back to this. This dairy farm, which supposedly wasn't even that big, it was.

run by this guy up in Northern Ohio, Marysville-ish from the Netherlands. he, just from a human exploitation perspective, I'll say it like this, all of his workers, every time I went there, we would go there all times of the day, because there was a ton of sick cows, know, mastitis is rampant, why wouldn't it be? And all of his workers could not speak English. They always seemed kind of scared when I would try to interact with them, because I wanted to interact with them because

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I was used to interacting with everybody. I'm very outgoing. So I would just try to be nice. Hey, know, I'm to step in, see this cow, whatever. They wanted nothing to do with me. It was very clear to me that they were uncomfortable and that they were probably not getting their breaks. They looked malnourished. And then from the animal side, we were always treating for mastitis, tons and tons and tons of mastitis. So basically,

Why? Because I would suggest something very simple. They're not designed to lay in their own filth. So every time when you over milk those cows, they have a natural occurring teat plug. OK, it naturally occurs when they're baby nurses. But when you over milk them, that doesn't develop. So imagine that teat is open and they're laying in their own filth. So here comes the filth.

Yep. what the people that are being exploited in the factory farm, the Mexicans that can't speak my language, I can't speak theirs, their job is to dip each teeth with betadine, right? After each milking, because they're coming into the parlor two, three, sometimes more times a day. If they have mastitis and they're really swollen, they're trying to milk the crap out of them. And you can't, they just can't keep up. Dip in those teeths, all the betadine, and you know, then they go back and lay in their own filth. And I always tell people, cows are not aggressive creatures.

when they are juxting for position to get into the parlor because they are gorged with so much milk because people like me come in and inject them with hormones, that's problematic. So those are some of the behaviors that you'll see, kind of like humans, when you mash them up on each other, they get desperate, they don't behave correctly or normally. Aggressive. Yeah, because the cows aren't aggressive and you probably know that. So I just watching those females come into the parlor and wonder, is this right?

and it would be super muddy and filthy and they'd be slipping all over each other. And I'm thinking like, let's get them in here and get them milked out because it can't go fast enough. There's so many sick cows. So that was a big thing. And then taking their babies. That was a big thing is that I was part of that where we would take them and put them over in the hutch and I would do an exam or whatever. And those hutches are pretty close. So as you probably know, the babies are calling to mom. Mom's calling the baby. Everybody's upset. I'm trying to act normal.

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And by the way, my little brother at the age of 18 and a half put a bullet through his head. That was my best friend. Watching my mom debilitate from the day he was found dead with a bullet in his head for almost a little over 15 years crying, the sounds of a mother crying, can't, there's no other way to explain it besides it's one of the most awful things you'll ever hear. They're so desperate and it's the same cries that you hear from the mother cows.

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Dustin, did you have any rural background with farms? Did you work on farms? I was, when I was young, I used to just kind of try to try to make some money shoveling shit and stuff like that at different, different farms and stuff like that. But that was, mean, we, we lived in a farm house, but we rented out our, some of our acreage to local farmers instead of actually farming it ourselves.

But my mother worked in a grain elevator. So, I mean, she was a lot more deep into it than me, but I would hang out there a lot. But it was more on the not on the animal agriculture side for my experience.

Now, you're both vegans and people associate vegans with being very nonviolent and, you know,

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gentle people, and I'm sure you are nonviolent and gentle people, but you're athletes and you you you are a boxer. Right, Raven? And you both are involved in mixed martial arts, correct? Yeah, she's also a Jiu Jitsu whiz. OK, so, yeah. So how do you how do you?

balance the or explain the interest in veganism, which is non-violence, and yet the physical violence you engage in as your hobby and formally kind of a vocation. So what happened with me is I was actually jumped in college by a couple guys. You were jumped at college? Yeah. And I didn't lose because I was already

doing some martial arts training, but I was always kind of afraid of fighting, you know what I mean? And I wanted to conquer that fear and that's what got me into it. Plus I was wrestling my whole life. I'm 44 now and I wrestled since I was six or seven. So, you know, it's been a big part of my life to compete and like on the street, I'm just all smiles and...

Hey, how you doing? You know, if somebody even tries to start something, I'm like, hey, can we just talk this out? You know what I mean? Or something. But in a competitive situation, I think it's like, you know, it's obviously different. You don't have a guy around the corner with a knife or something like that. It's it's it's helped me get over that fear and fighting against other people. I was basically kind of utilizing them to help me get over that fear. That makes sense because

At least they were trained and could at least protect themselves and stuff while I'm learning. You know what I mean? And Raven, you were in the boxing ring with other women. Yeah. So and the goal is to knock them out. Yes. So if you want to make it to the top, people want to see knockouts. And that's a fact. So my thoughts are as this, it's not ideal. And towards the end, when I was done.

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you know, because I haven't had competition since 2016. I don't know that I would go back. He's trying to get me to stop shaking my leg here. I'm bumping this thing. I don't know that I would go back because what you're saying is consistent with my thoughts. Is it right? Now, what did I I grew up in a lot of my life, not the entire life growing up, but the majority of my life, I grew up in a like a low income area, a trailer park, and I grew up with a lot of boys. And my mom was bullied most of her life. She came from a very

low income background basically in the woods of West Virginia. And she always taught us.

If someone's getting bullied and I find out you don't take up for them, you're gonna have pretty much hell to pay when you get home. Like don't ever think about not standing up for somebody. Always do it. It's not optional, it's the minimum. So I grew up engaging in fights frequently. Like I was the go-to, they, you know, they're, like I remember the friend of mine, they were, he would get picked on because he had special needs or you name it. So anyways,

I was like the enforcer, I guess you could say. So I was not intimidated and I was motivated. And I remember there was a boy that I grew up in elementary school. name was Nathaniel and everybody would, I was always like first pick on like the football. I was very convoyish, right? So anyways, I was like first pick on all the sports teams and stuff when I was growing up. And I remember I got tired of everybody singling out Nathaniel. And I w at that time I went to a school where the, the most popular kid in the class

I always remember his name, Gabriel. He decided he was going to make fun of Nathaniel and Nathaniel was very plump. He had a type one diabetes. wasn't well managed. you know, he wasn't getting the care he needed and I was tired of him getting made fun of. So I remember like picking up a chair and beating Gabriel with it, which probably wasn't good, but he had Nathaniel and tears and everybody.

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bullied Nathaniel because everybody led after Gabe. And after that, nobody messed with Nathaniel. Nobody. I did the same thing with my friend Adam. He was a real small kid that was a premature baby and he never grew very large and they used to bully him. So I guess standing up against bullying was pretty much what I just always did. And then when it came to when my little brother died, you know, basically we found him with a bullet in his head. I'm so sorry about that. that's bad.

The reason why mentioned that is because our whole entire retreat space revolves around mental wellness. It's very important to realize that more people run well than we think, I think. But in order to cope with Raleigh dying, I basically started running like eight to 14 miles every day. You can imagine that's not healthy, but I did it. It was like, eat pills, drink alcohol, or run your anxiety out. So I ran, ran, ran until my knees went bad. I was supposed to get some knee surgeries and our

coach had approached me and said, you're really athletic. You should come and fight. And I was like, I'm not going to fight people. Like, what are you talking about? But then I went for a second doctor's visit and they said, yeah, you're getting knee surgery. I thought, what am I going to do for my anxiety? And I was like, I guess I'm going to the MMA gym to learn how to trick. And that spiraled in. So I never really like wanted to hurt people. I've always wanted to stand up for injustice, but I never really wanted to hurt people. did have a girl before I went to nationals that supposedly

couldn't talk after her match with me. And that really was a turning point with me. I, I don't know that I would want to do it again. she was a teacher. she had a match with me. I thought I was losing. So I thought, I mean, I gotta do something. I'm going I'm going to try to knock her out. Cause I can't lose this bout. Cause if I want to go with the top girl in the country, I can't have a record of losses. They won't match me up well with the best girl. So basically I went all out on the girl in Indiana where you're at. and.

I don't know how she's doing today. So I don't feel good about that. don't know that. I don't know that the mixed martial arts aligns with veganism. think it just depends on how you look at it. Yeah. Yeah, boxing was never my sport. Well, I think I would get knocked out in the first round and then I wouldn't be happy. So.

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My wife won't let me box, so OK. What do you do? Well, I go for walks. You do peaceful stuff. That's good. Sometimes I like to jog barefoot on a throw rug in the family room. It's kind of out there. Yeah. So I try to stay fit in very gentle ways. Yeah, that's good. Low impact.

Yeah. And since we've been down here in Hawking Hills, like I've transitioned my training, like I like I'm still going to go up and wrestle with the Ohio State wrestling club team next weekend. so I want to make sure being a 44 year old man, especially trying to represent the vegans that I go there and I'm able to give them lumps instead of me being the one like, you know, the guy that's like, they're like, he he can't hang or whatever.

And so it kind of is rewarding to me to help humble them too. You know what I mean? So, and then they find out that I'm a vegan and I'm feeling like I can transition some of these people potentially as well when they see that I'm outperforming them when they're in their twenties. know what I mean? So, by the way, he's not going up there and training this wrestling all the time. They are, they're training year round. He shows up for a couple of practices a year and he smokes them. And then he has a small talk with them about eating plants. And I think a couple of light bulbs are starting to go off.

Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Now, in addition to being athletes, you're you're also both artists. Yes. So Dustin, you're a sculptor, is that right? Yeah, I realized I was going to be I wanted to be a sculpt. Well, I realized I want to be an artist at a young age. And then when I went up to Eastern Michigan University, I got involved in the sculpture program up there. I went up there to wrestle. And so I wrestled up there for a couple of years and found myself.

I knew I wanted to be an artist. And then once I got to the sculpture program, I realized that everything is sculpture. So I basically was like, well, if I want to be an artist, I have to be a sculptor. so explain that everything is sculpture. Yeah. So like and this is like my whole philosophy is when you look at like, for instance, the the bookcase, it's behind your place or something behind you there.

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somebody had to design and fabricate that, you know what I mean? That is a sculpture, you know what I mean? And I always say like, Mother Nature is the best sculptor. My style is kind of like trying to utilize what she has and elaborate on

And what materials do you work with? Anything I get a hold of. I tell people I can make anything out of anything. I've done silicone masks. I worked in the special effects industry for about 15 years now. Did a couple TV shows in that career also. And like Disney's Disney Plus Foodtastic, I was actually in a food sculpting show there the last couple of years, within the last couple of years in 2021, I think.

And we also had a history channel TV show called Surviving History, the company I used to work for. And it was one of the largest animatronic manufacturers for haunted houses and theme parks, like in the world. So I worked there for eight years and then started my own thing, SculptiCorps. And now I do a lot of like live wood carving, ice carving performances for events around town and different larger cities, typically. So at your retreat,

at Hocking Hills, Ohio. Do you have sculptures like a sculpture garden or sculptures at the retreat? Yeah, it's basically like a sculpture museum that people can stay in, like a luxurious accommodation sculpture museum that you can stay in. So you're referring to the actual houses, the tiny houses that you've built that are like the cabins on the property, right?

So we have one tiny home and then we also have a 4,000 square foot lodge that we are marketing more towards like retreats, like wellness retreats and things like that. We have a vegan spin on it, but we also want to include people that are non-vegan and hopefully we can kind of help coax them the way we want them to go as far as that goes. yeah, so the lodge is like teeming with sculpture work.

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stainless steel fabrication. I built an entire kitchen out of walnut tree that came down on a tornado a few miles from here. Wow. And so everything is handmade. It's like there's a couple pieces of furniture in there that we that we purchased at secondhand stores. Other than that, everything is is made by us. OK, now people can find images of your property at RavensRetreatHawkingHills.com.

Right. And what sort of art do you do, Raven? So I'm kind of like a supportive artist to him. So my background is in portrait work. like basically people's faces and stuff like that. Like I had a scholarship to art school. never took the scholarship or, you know, I didn't use it. was afraid my mother had always advised me that.

you need to be very careful relying on other people. I figured that I was waiting tables ever since age 16. I figured if I had a higher risk of having to rely on a man, if I went into doing art full time, because I was afraid I needed something that could definitely support me. My mom didn't have a good relationship with my father and she was kind of unable to leave for a long time. So I went into the medical field, but my portrait works pretty good in that space in there. I kind of support him. He might say, hey, I need you to

He kind of passes off work. Hey, I need you to paint this or hey, I need you to sand this down into this shape. So I'm really just kind of like an assistant supportive artist to him. I, you know, I do murals and things like that. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm a pretty good assistant, but, he and I don't have really the same style. So that can be. It can cause conflict, but basically we just have to meet in the middle. so that, that's a lot of that artwork in there. I love, I was raised with like French work, my mother and father really big into like French impressionistic.

Um, styles. So I was kind of raised with that. And then I also have a lot of interest in like an Asian type of art, anything with like Asian furniture and things like that. And then he's, he's kind of more industrial. Um, so yeah, w that's okay because I can kind of, I can say, you know what? You reuse that. Um, that's nice. That's interesting. You know, that looks like a female pelvis, you know, we can put a lot of inspiration in this, but yeah, there's a 3d tour on our website that people, people, you know, I think it's neat, but

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People really seem to think it's neat and they can kind of push around and see different things like some of the art installations. So we, like you said, we try to upcycle anything we can. We try not to buy because we don't want to subscribe to consumer culture. We want to create. So you'll see a lot of things that are like, this was laying around. We've got to make something out of it. What are we doing? You know, that kind of stuff. Are you trying to encourage other artists to come to your retreat?

Yeah, absolutely. We're actually working on some packages right now for experiences when people come here for retreats, like a paint and sip, for instance. I don't know if you're familiar with those. People have a wine tasting and they'll incorporate that with maybe painting a still life or painting some scenery in the forest or something like that. We're working with artists to create those types of experiences where they will be able to benefit from it.

You know, we're going to give them everything that they're asking for, for that. We don't want a finder's fee or anything like that. We're trying to keep from oppression happening with artists. You know, like people will try to bottom dollar somebody because they're an artist and they love what they do. And often people get taken advantage of because they love doing what they're doing, that they'll be willing to take, you know, less money for that, but they're still trading their time, you know, so.

We're trying to make sure they get rewarded when they come to our place. And I've been compiling a list of as many as I can vegan businesses that we can work with. And again, I don't find a finder's fee. I get on the phone. I interview them. What can we do? Can you monetize this? Give me a pitch. I'll pitch it. And so far it's going OK. Now, most people don't know we're open. But as we hopefully slowly become more visible, I'm trying to crack into the social media world with influencers, which has been difficult because I haven't.

been booking the right influencers to bring the right audience. that's, that can be tricky, but I have a class on that next week. But the point is, is the goal is to kind of get a lot of vegan businesses and allow them to supply. And even one of them, one lady, she does stained glass work. She used to teach at CCAD, the Columbus College of Art and Design, for many years. And then she also runs a vegan bakery. So she's coming down on Friday and she might seduce, she wants to do her own retreats.

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We got another vegan restaurant up in Columbus. They specialize in we I love having a place where other vegan businesses can try to make money. And it's kind of so these vegan businesses would come to your retreat. But then how would they make money at your retreat? They would put on their own or the retreat space. They would have a workshop or something like that where paying customers would come. Yeah, we're working with chefs as well.

masseurs and masseuses and everything. Two vegan chefs. Yeah. And one of them says he probably won't be available till the end. the one guy owns a pretty, popular restaurant in central Columbus. And he originally was born about a 30 minute drive from here. So he is agreed. said, Carl, I really want to give really good plant based options. Like he's the man. He's the man. He's a he's a he's a food engineer and he makes stuff. So I'm like,

It's super creative. So Carl's basically said, Raven, I'll do this for you. said, I just whenever we give those vegan options to people and I pitch it to people, we got to knock it out of the park like no bull crap. We got to really make people want this. And then we went to restaurant yesterday. called Can't Believe It's Vegan. Guy's really good. He's agreed to cater if people want it. we're a good friend of ours from years, years ago. Yeah. From activism. that's where's his restaurant. Westerville, Ohio. OK, yeah.

His name is Clayton Freeman and he's like runs a great operation. Super friendly guy. Yeah, I can't believe it's vegan. Clayton Clayton is a really good guy. His wife is very supportive of him. Yeah, I definitely if you're in Columbus, Ohio, there's a couple if you ever come to Columbus, I don't know if you do, but I have. Yeah, there's a couple of restaurants that I would like guide you to. There's a vegan restaurant went to there that had a sister restaurant in Australia. And I don't remember the name of

No, no. So it was odd. were two of these restaurants and one was in Columbus, Ohio, and the other, as I recall, was in Australia. But I can't remember the name of it. was very good, though. When was that?

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year and a half, two years ago. OK, we should know the answer to that, but it's probably right under our nose. We just don't know the correlation. Well, we moved out of Columbus about five, six years ago. So we were living about about a mile west of downtown for over a decade. But we came out here to do this. Now, at your retreat, you have a mindfulness trail. Yes. What what what makes a trail a mindfulness trail?

So we've created meditation areas within the space. I've made like little ergonomic stools for people to elevate their hips if they want to sit and meditate on the hillside. We have several canopies by different variations and heights of canopy. So it's great for people that are like bird watching, forest bathing. We're also working with another vegan fellow that is... you say forest bathing?

Yeah, it's a system where like you basically go out with a tour and they show you, it's almost like a hypnosis in a way where they're basically like making you heighten all of your senses and take in nature. It's a Japanese practice. I can't remember what the word is for it, but this guy is one of the only two people in Ohio that is certified to teach this. And he's actually a

former wrestler, collegiate wrestler, so we hit it off great and he's a vegan. So he's going to contribute to our business as well. But it's basically like heightening your senses. It sounds weird, like tasting the air and listening to the subtleties around you. It's really neat and it actually makes you feel good for several days after you're done doing it. So that's one thing, one experience that we use our mindfulness trail for, but we have

functional fitness stations along the trail, which has like some crude logs and things that people can use for resistance. There's pull-up bars, balance beams. I've made kettlebell handles out of metal and I attached them onto logs so people could have like kettlebells made out of logs. We have some, yeah, we have some rocks to use for weight resistance and stool, height stools. And then there's also another like,

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small trail where people can grab resistance and do like broad jumps up this trail or run backwards up this trail. like, I try to diversify workouts to make my, make the fashion in my body be as strong as I can. Cause I don't want to get injured no matter what I'm doing. So, so I try to encourage people when they're doing fitness, don't just sit in the gym and do like bench presses and curls. You're, you need to incorporate different elements of

support muscles and balance and stamina, know, like depending on what you want to do, obviously. we also have two meditation areas along the trails. One is a deep, creek bed area with boulders that were pushed here by the Illinoisan glaciers. And that's another really attractive spot for people to sit and meditate. We have 220 feet of elevation gain on the property and over a mile of hiking trails.

How many acres do you have? It's 58, about 58.

How did you come across the property? My dad bought it back in 99. But we also when I say we, it's my husband and my brother. I had a friend of mine, she's a yoga instructor, and she said, you know what? I want you to build me a platform right here. And I thought, well, that's going to be expensive. Anyways, we built the platform. It can be used for micro weddings, small events. We have seating that DJ built, like basically benches for

you know, small to large body types that each bench can we have seats for 30. So we have a 24 by 24 foot elevated force platform. And that's really helpful for meditation and mindfulness, yoga, Pilates, weddings, events. Just have you had weddings at your property? Just one. So we're are they still married? Yeah. Yeah. OK, good. Yeah, that's good. That's a good sign up.

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OK, we have aspirations to get some wrestling mats for that platform as well. So we can do like don't combine it with the marriages, though. Yeah. Hey, that would be an interesting TV right there. So tell us about Hocking Hills. What what's this area like? Well, it's it's the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, so it's like it's very hilly, a lot of a lot of sandstone, black

Black Hand Sandstone and Hardwood Forests. It's like if you go to some of the parks around here, the nearby parks, it almost feels like you're in the movie Jurassic Park because there's like giant rocks, you know, that are just sitting next to it's unlike any place I've ever been to. I've worked in the Smoky Mountains and things like that, been out west. It's almost like this tropical combination of mountains.

mountainous region and and valleys. was your property inhabited by Native Americans in the past? I I like to think so. Yeah, I think it was. I think it was Shawnees around here. Yeah. Yeah. And when you were talking about mindfulness along our trail, so we we we could definitely open up some of our trails, but we kind of

We try to keep people on the main drag basically because we want wildlife to be respected. It's a nature preserve. We're a wildlife release site for basically rehabilitated and orphaned animals to make their way back. whether they're orphaned or they're injured or things like that, basically different organizations contact us and say, hey, can we release a couple of ducks or can we release a fox or you name it? And depends on the situation. Because I want to be careful because the neighboring properties

The one neighboring property with 140 acres, they have a thing where they allow hunters in three cabins come from anytime, anywhere, and decide to just do the old butchery technique. And so we put all of our no trespassing signs up several times around the border so that basically this is like the safe space. If they stay here, then they'll be okay. Obviously I can't control them going other places and, you know, hunters baiting them with apple corn, but we have.

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Great. That's another big thing is we make sure that we work with different botanist naturalists to make sure that our property has maximal like food for the wildlife to try to keep them here. And we have great water compared to most of the neighboring properties. So whether the wildlife comes here and stays here, they're always coming to get their water from our springs because we have the best springs. That's why my dad bought the property. So they're here. It's just a matter. Do they stay here? And then on our trails, we have art installed. So whether you

He's carved a turkey, and you walk and you see a turkey on our trail. You're like, wow, yes, we do have wild turkeys. And they do exist if they have the environment that's conducive to their behaviors, right? And then you walk even more, you see different birds that he's carved along the trail. So we want to make people understand that you're a visitor here, this wildlife is here, and we need to be respectful of that. And I think slowly we're reaching people. And we were very...

present when it comes to the behaviors here like light pollution and chemicals being used and the sound that we our guests make and how we manage our hot tub chemicals like all these things affect wildlife and that kind of goes back into our mindfulness. what kind of wildlife is is on the property? So we have coyotes, we have bears, we have deer, white tail deer. OK, let me stop you there. You have bears. We caused any problem? No, they they.

They stay away all the time. they're. They haven't been trying to get into the tiny house. No. They had. So we we we get very strong language in our in our listing that this is a nature preserve. I don't tell people this, but obviously humans are the worst, right? They're the most invasive species. So when people put their trash outside, it tells the wildlife, hey, come on over here. So we stress over and over and over and over.

Never, ever put your trash outside and never, ever put food in the fire pit. Don't leave it because that that's detrimental to bears. They're migrating because they're cutting down the forest in Vinton County around here. So they come, you know, they come to the property. So, you know, they're forced to move. And we have bobcats. We have foxes, red foxes. I don't think we've seen any great foxes and trillions of salamanders. Oh, yeah. We're a good indicator that you have good water on the property.

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Forest health. Yeah. If you have a concentration of salamanders, it's it's kind of like a requirement for a good forest of where we're located. So that's something that we were pretty serious about. We got to keep people on the trails, that kind of stuff. So unless it's like a botanist or someone that's very well trained, like a naturalist, people got to stay on the trails. OK, do do right? I once went for a hike on a mindfulness trail and I got lost. So

That's funny. You did mention you asked how we came about the property. Yes. There's a there's a pretty sad story behind that. Not sad, but it's it ended up being a happy ending. it's what I heard was that Raven got it from her father. So he had purchased the place in 1999 and and about 2018, late 2018, we had gotten word from the United States Postal Service that he was sending out suspicious packages and mail.

And what happened was he had been taken advantage of by a Jamaican telephone lottery scam where they convinced him to send all of his money to them. So was he losing his mind? Dead broke. Well, the thing was, he's he's 92 now and he's from an age where what you say is what you mean. You talk to somebody on the phone and it's easier for him to trust somebody from, you know, like from the from the time he

you know, was more thriving, I guess. they would call him like 50 times a day. They groomed him over the phone and convinced him to send his money to them that it was first going to benefit him. You know, just a typical scam, but they were very sophisticated. They started a business in his name, paid themselves out of his Social Security money. And then Social Security, we had talked to them and they said, you need to get that property out of his name because that's the next thing to go.

And I thought, well, how can they buy and sell a physical property in the United States? And it's just a money transfer. So this property could have been taken out from underneath of them like that. And they basically advised us to step in. And we had had our life savings ready to invest in a kind of a reverse factory farm role.

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haunted house that I was going to that I was going to reverse factory farm haunted house. Yes. Kind of like a reverse. I never heard of that before. Yeah. And that's that's the thing is like if people were to see the the scenes that we would be putting out in this haunted house, it would grab worldwide attention in a week. And I've got the I've got the know how to use of of what happened to the animals. Got it.

Yep. And it would be shocking, but I think it would kind of open people's eyes, you know what I mean? Because they can relate more to a human than they can to an animal. But anyway, we'd saved up money for that and had everything ready to go to open this haunted house just looking for a venue. And then we found out about him being scammed. So then once we bailed him out, we had to try to figure out a way to make our money back from that.

from what we had to sink into his situation. So that's why we opened this whole rental business in the first place. OK. Well, maybe it all was for the good. Yeah, I think that, you know, it's a great place to foster people's creativity and help them learn a better way for their life. Whatever that may be, we want to help them find that here. Yeah, I've like really lined up.

like vendors and artists where if all a retreat planner has to do is call me, I can literally, it's like a, and I know I'm offering a great service and I'm more than willing to do it because I'm trying to attract guests that value what we have. And if I can give a retreat planner, you know, two, three, four artists, including us that we can do, you know, we can help people paint in a group. We can help people sculpt in a group. Or I can bring in a vegan chef or.

I can bring in Mark, our force bather, or I can bring in a massage therapist or a yoga instructor. I'm basically giving them all the resources locally to plan their retreat really fast. All they have to do is assemble their people. So we're just trying to make it really easy for people to have transform like really good quality retreats. All right. I'm going to ask you now to explain something to me. Let's see if you have a theory about it. I have noticed

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I've gotten to know partly through this podcast, a number of athletes and muscle men. have a good new friend who I've met only through the podcast, never met him in person, Jeff Palmer, who is a vegan weightlifting muscle guy, a bodybuilding champion. Another fellow named Robert Cheek you may have heard of who's an author and a muscle man.

And there are more who aren't coming to mind now, but there are more. And whenever I get to know them, and now I feel that you guys fit into this category, you would think that they became vegans for the health benefits. They discovered that they had better recovery and better endurance.

because of the vegan diet. And that's true. But all of them are animal, animal lovers, animal rights people, people who are just, you know, advocates for the animals as you seem to be. You were talking about your haunted house. So what is it about being an athlete, being a martial artist, being a weightlifter?

that somehow seems to align with caring a great deal for the animals or is this all just a coincidence? Well, I think it's like you look at it as like a systemic health, like you you you are healthy if you make yourself have a healthy environment and as well as like healthy foods that you put into yourself, you know, it's systemic. In my opinion, you help other creatures become healthy.

creatures, plants, animals, anything. Help them get healthy. And that in turn makes you I think that it helps your health mentally, especially because you know you're doing something that you should be doing or that is good for another creature. He might not perceive himself like this, but my perception is that, you know, hopefully these larger, stronger, more so-called dominant males, however you want to see it.

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physically, potentially, they do have a duty. People do look up to them. They are under the microscope. are, you know, there's a certain level of care they need to uphold. And from my perspective, you know, with my husband, if someone's giving me pushback on like veganism or, you know, stuff like that, I just kind of, you know, that's cute, you know, and just kind of like honor what they're saying. And then I go ahead and introduce them to him. And I said,

Now what do you got to say? know, so to me, it's like these, if you're in the position to help others that are in a more vulnerable, vulnerable position, first off, you're lucky. Congratulations. Cause a lot of people aren't, they're not that lucky. And the second off you have a duty to do. let's get busy. So that's, that's kind of how I see it. You know, obviously I'm not a large male, but even from my perspective, like working in the gym and things like that, like trying to be a light in the dark with people.

I think it's really important that we don't treat others, the way we treat them shouldn't be contingent on my perception of who's smarter or not. I'm not the smartest person in the world. If that was the case, I'd be dead now and I should have been killed a long time ago. I think that it's important that people that have- I didn't follow that. Why would you be dead now? Well, think, so some people perceive me as educated, but there's people that are more educated than me, far more educated than me.

And a lot of people will make the point that animals are stupid or they're bred to do this or that. the fact that you're willing to bully them, that should be concerning. That's a mental health issue. I always go back to this is a mental health issue. When you're bullying others, that's always a mental health issue. And of course, most people who eat meat don't think of it as bullying animals. But somebody has to bully animals for them to eat the meat.

I just thought of another fellow I met on my podcast name is Alex Yabanks. He's in Florida and he's a bodybuilder and he has an animal sanctuary. know, it just seems to go hand in hand. And I've noticed this pattern of muscle muscle men and women, I guess, who are just the gentlest people. Yeah. They're like pit bulls.

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So, and you have Mr. Peanut with you. Do you have other animals that are part of the family? Well, we just have some wild ones that we like some deer that we feed to try to keep them away from the hunters. And we had to that pretty rough snow the last couple of weeks, so we were making sure to keep our

keep our birds happy and our deer happy outside. So we got a lot of friends there. how do you get along with the hunter neighbors? You don't really see them a lot because I think what they do is they lease their property out and so people come in to other hunters. Yeah. Yeah. To random hunters that like to come in and shoot our baby deer and they come and die on our property. It's best if we don't interact with them because that's happened. We have happened like all the time.

But that's happened to us before. And so whether they're a baby or a mother or whatever, you know, there's probably a, yeah, they're just shooting things to shoot things. I know that's a behavior some people have. And I always say this, it always goes back to mental health. Like that's a behavior that's you're you're quite unwell. There's no way to rationalize that. The guy runs the apple orchard down at the bottom of the hill here. Whenever I go in there, I've said hello to him. But

He's kind of distanced from me because basically when we took over my dad's care, I put him on a whole foods plant-based diet and he lost weight and he started behaving better and he started showering. And I was his full-time caregiver and the whole town was like, wow. And I'm like, we're doing this. they're kind of like, they're friendly towards me, but I'm kind of like that weird like woman that doesn't eat meat. they're like, so I don't really interact with this guy. A lot of the locals, they're becoming more,

interested in our lifestyle, they're asking questions like, like my husband will go out running on, on the road and you know, he's quite athletic. So people will stop and talk to him and say things that are quite inspirational. And I'm just waiting. I'm wanting to do almost like a town potluck, like a plant based potluck. I'm not there yet. I don't have the resources right now, such as time, but just introduce like the small town, like, Hey, these people run a retreat. They're artists. They've been around here.

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Some of the locals are kind of like, kind of remember me from back in the day and back in the day I didn't eat meat. So it's kind of the weird one. So I think slowly we're starting to wear on people. But the apple guy, he's kind of old and he's not having it put it that way. He doesn't want to interact with me.

Are there any other vegans in town in high heels? We found a little network a little network of vegans in Hocking Hills, you know, and what's crazy is there's a local pizza shop that we were able to kind of get friendly with them and we and we I put some sculptures on display in their pizza shop and stuff and so they supply vegan cheese for us, which is like you wouldn't imagine you would find that in this area, but

It's awesome that they do that. This guy makes great pizza too. So that's one of the things I love. But we also have a couple that lives about a mile down the road from us, a mile and a half-ish. And we just recently discovered that they were vegan. And then another fella that lives down the road from me, we're both wood carvers. What couple? The Copacs. yeah. Yeah, we got a couple people. Yeah, for sure. Yep.

Yeah, they have a nature preserve themselves. have a how many they got like 60 something makers. Yeah. Greg and Cindy Copac, they moved down here from Akron, Ohio. The guy found us on Happy Cow, which is strange because I have my my profile on Happy Cow. I can't edit it and it doesn't show up very often. So who knows how I found it. But he got a hold of me and goes, do you have a vegan restaurant? I'm your neighbor. I'm like, no, I got a retreat. He goes, holy crap, we got to meet you. So and then we one of our contractor buddies.

He's actually the grandson of Grizzly Adams. Are you familiar with who Grizzly Adams is? Yeah. Yeah. He's our buddy. He lived in a teepee for eight years out in Washington. He's like a medicine man. He's all vegan. He's right up the road. Mike Adams, comes down all the time. Grizzly Adams is right down the road. Well, the grand son version. Grandson of Grizzly Adams. Yeah. Yeah. Great grandson. He's all vegan and he's 60 something years old. He taught

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He taught like some pretty famous people how to rock climb such as Bruce Lee. You know, he's a big time rock climber. was like, what do you call it? Like a lead, a lead rock climber. He would lead tours in Mount Everest and the grand Tetons and all that stuff out there.

OK. And so you're also going to have a guy who has a restaurant in Columbus visit your property. And is the hope that with his help, you're going to start serving vegan food on your property? That's definitely one of our aspirations for the future. Once we kind of get everything to the point where we can have like an a la carte menu for people, we could bring him in.

for an evening or whatever. Yeah, we have a couple of different people in mind. Like one guy, used to run a department. He's all vegan. He's an artist. wants to do kind of like, he wants to put together retreats, but he also wants to offer experiences, bookable experiences where he would make vegan food on site and then lead people through.

you know, types of artwork they can make as groups. It's an experience, because it's it's art therapy. We want people to engage in more creative behaviors because we know creative people are more compassionate people, and we know that makes the world a better place. So if we can get people exposed to creativity, we know we can do well. So we've got a couple artists slash chefs that we are, basically we can call upon. We got a good line of contact. They're all up for it. We just need retreat planners to say, hey, Raven, I'm planning this retreat. You got chefs for me? And I'll say, I do.

Recently, I had a chiropractor call and book a retreat and I gave him my list of vendors and I met opposition when I said, I thought maybe it was the way I pitched it, but I don't think I could have pitched it better. I'm not really sure. I said, I got a guy who's a food scientist who runs a restaurant, makes great plant-based options. And the guy goes, you know,

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think I want to have some meat at my retreat. And I'm like...

And I said, well, Carl makes awesome food. He's a food scientist, da da da da. And I followed up with Carl and guy hasn't contacted Carl. So that's been a big pain point. We don't have the leverage to tell people, no, you can't come here and do a retreat and serve me. But long-term, is that what I'd like? I think, you know, and once I get the marketing, got a stronghold on the marketing, do I say you'll get 20 % off your treat if you eat plant-based or do I say while you're here, you're going to honor an H preserve and honor our planet.

in other living beings and you will eat plant based while you're here. I think that's the way to go. just I don't have the marketing hold to put that into effect right now. Right. Now, how many people can your retreat house at any given time now? So the lodge itself can sleep 16 and then the tiny home that I'm working on up by the pond will be able to harbor another two. We do have. We have 16 in the lodge. How many bathrooms there? There's three in there.

Three bathrooms. So three bathrooms, six bedroom, three bathroom space. And then there's a hot tub sauna outdoor shower. There's lots of like luxury amenities and all that. And then the pollinator tiny bungalow, that'll be a three minute walk on the same private driveway located hidden in the woods on the same. So let's say, know, 18 people for retreat. There's one thing that people are asking me. We haven't done it yet, but potentially under the right circumstances, we have two half a mile long

private driveways that go into our 58 acre nature preserve. One of them, it goes to what we define as like our real eco-friendly primitive private campsites. We allow up to 12 people in that space, maybe more under the right circumstances, but we really got to have people that are sharp and respect nature up there. But maybe under the right circumstances, retreats can book and they can also have some primitive campers that could be part of their retreat, but wouldn't stay in our

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actual hard spaces are our lodge or whatever. it's that chiropractor had asked me about that. And I told him I would discuss it with him should he want to go there. And I think he does. So that'll be a matter of like they can probably use a lot of the amenities, but I can't have them coming in and taking 14 minute showers. know, they need to take quick showers, not blow out the water, that kind of stuff. the 16 people who can stay in the lodge, how much privacy would they have? How many rooms are there? So there's six.

bedrooms in there. bedrooms. Yeah. And then there's, there's in the, the King bedrooms, each one has like a roll away in case somebody wanted to bring their child or something like that. But it's like, I say a roll away, it's like a luxurious memory foam roll away mattress. It's not like, you know, not as, not as a low quality as it sounds, but, but then we have one bedroom that has three twin beds in it. It's kind of like the

Kind of like the museum room is what I call it. then, yeah, and then we have another bedroom upstairs. It's a Murphy bed, a queen size. And then there's a twin bed next to that. And have you ever had it all booked, 16 people? Oh, yeah, all the time. Well, we've had probably about 40 reservations. I'd say at least half of them are 16. So it's been going well so far.

You know, so far, the guests give us positive feedback, but we kind of bend over backwards for our guests. So I guess they should. You know, we we try to be extremely accommodating and we always anticipate their needs and all that stuff. So hopefully we can keep that going. We're just really all five star reviews right now. So, yeah, that's great. And you know how it's hard to keep people happy. So do you do you advertise on any of those?

websites like Airbnb? Yeah, we're actually trying to move more toward toward a direct booking website. And that's because Airbnb that's your website, which is Ravens Retreat, Hocking Hills dot com. Right. Yes. Yes. Because because Airbnb, I mean, they they they own the market, you know, because there's so there's so many they have so much business as far as that goes. I mean, they're

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They're the leader when it comes to searches, but they don't vet their guests quite as well as we would like to be able to. you know, so that's kind of one of the main reasons we want to get away from them, because I think we're attracting people that we would probably rather not have in some cases at our point. We've had some really nice guests, but we've also had some guests that they're not thinking properly. They're not being respectful of the nature preserved. So, you know,

eight adults, eight children, the children go out back and splash 200 gallons of hot tub water with chlorine that kills our salamanders onto our land. you can imagine how upsetting and beyond words I become. So it's because the parents aren't present. They're looking for a vacation, which is great. We want to give it to them. But it's not a splash tub for kids. The hot tub is more like, yeah. So some of those behaviors,

Those are given on some of these platforms because it was explained to me that, hey, when I want to go to the woods and throw a little party, I'm going to Airbnb. Airbnb is kind of marketing toward the party crowd. Right. So I say to my listeners, if you're in the area somewhere in driving distance of Ohio or going through Ohio, look for Hocking Hills, go to Ravens Retreat, Hocking Hills dot com book.

book your stay through the website rather than Airbnb. You can favorite us on there and we would like that to go on Airbnb. Say that again. They could favor us. They're a favorite or wish list us on Airbnb. That would be really nice to do. OK, so you can do that as well. And if you've got a vegan business and you're looking for a place to run a workshop.

Again, check out RavensRetreatHawkingHills.com. Dustin and Raven, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Any parting words you want to say? We just I would just say our motto, it's be the change you wish to see in the world. There you go. All right. Well, thank you for joining us today. Thank you, Glenn.