Leading and the Report-Back from the Earth Activist Training

On Wednesday Feburary 20th a momentus thing occured: I co-lead a fantastic event detailing my experiences from the recent two week Earth Activist Training (EAT) in permaculture, activism, and magic. My goal for the evening was to bring back some of the inspiration and practical knowledge of living close to the earth to my community from my experiences. I wanted to push myself, against all feelings of insignificance, into leading what is important to me. I wanted to participate as a member of my community in the responsibility of each others earth-education. I wanted live the things we learned at EAT, to have them sink into my life.

In preparation for the event I created tantalizing flyers and distributed them at all social/educational/political gatherings I went to for two weeks prior. I emailed my entire email list, posted on myspace and Olyblog, and personally invited friends. We had a great turn-out of about 25 people.

Margaritte and I also did a radio interview before the event with the Radical Freeschool Radio Show (see link on sidebar). We talked about our vision for a world free from industrial agriculture, about how to work with nature in designing human resource support-systems, and how to build a long term connection with place as a radical act against the capitalist patriarchy. Talking on the radio really helped me think through my ideas and gain confidence in my ability to speak articulately and passionately. I went into the event on Wednesday feeling stronger because of it.

I also spent a lot of time re-reading all my notes from the training and researching seed balls, which we led as a hands-on activity at the report-back. See previous blog entry for my seed ball research.

I am including a group email which I sent out to my fellow members of the Earth Activist Training because it shows my thinking around how important the step of sharing my knowledge was for my personal growth. And I share the letter specifically, because it too was an act of personal growth in a similar way to the report back.

Hey my dear magic permaculturist friends!

I have been thinking about you all lots since our
training, and meaning to write to you!  As many of you
know, Margaritte and I are doing independent study
this term at Evergreen, and EAT was the beginning of
our term.  We have continued learning about nature,
awareness, community, and connection to place since
then.  As part of our program, last week we gave a
public two hour event to share what we learned at EAT!
We had a great turn out of at least 25 people!  I
wanted to tell you all about it because the experience
of sharing this knowledge with my community at home
was very powerful.  It really brought all the new
knowledge into the forefront of my life and gave me
something to immediately apply it to: teaching!  I
was, of course, scared out of my wits!  But, it went
well anyway!  Both Margaritte and I have received tons
of gratitude from friends and folks who attended who
say they understand permaculture better than before,
and feel more hopeful about creating change.

For me, going to EAT was a major act of stepping into
my power.  In areas I often feel powerless (like
changing the world, my relationships, and my
relationship to nature), I took charge and decided to
live in the reality of how influential I am.  Teaching
the report-back for my local community was even more
of an act of magic in living my power.  Though I
doubted my ability to be interesting, intelligent, and
clear, I did it anyway! We taught about observation,
patterns, and basic permaculture concepts, as well as
sang songs from EAT, gave a slideshow, and did a seed
ball making project!

I want to encourage any of you who may be feeling a
little listless after the training--perhaps feeling
like "what was it all for?" or just stuck in the
routine of everyday life and feeling the burden of the
oppressive society hanging over you--Share your
knowledge!  Even though we are not experts in this
area (yet), we have skills and an experience of
learning about change in a magical learning community,
and that is so valuable to other people!

In my process I am learning about my own significance,
which is part of the act of this email I am writing to
you all.  Keeping you all in my life by sharing about
my ongoing experiences and learning pushes me to be
bigger than I have previously been comfortable with.
How can you be bigger in your life than is
comfortable?

You all are a dear dear group of people; I am
immensely glad to have been through EAT with you, and
I look forward to many more experiences building a
just, vibrant world with each of you!

Loves,
Heron

I have gotten lots of feedback from participants, which has helped me reflect on what I learned from the experience. We passed out feedback forms, which got great responses such as these answers to "What did you learn from the report back?": "People want similar things," and "healing the land and ourselves is easy." These answers point to a key desire of mine to lift up my fellow people from the despair which so easily plagues us and help us feel something good about our world and our power.

One friend said to us "You are like a lightning rod for this community." Wow! Another friend specifically appreciated the way that Margaritte and I worked together in presenting information. He noticed how Margaritte had the knack for giving detailed stories and examples, and my skill at tying the details in with the bigger picture to show overall themes and concepts. I noticed that dynamic in our presenting as well, and it was nice to hear that it was a good thing. I was worried about it being a problem!

But not all feedback was sugar-coated. One friend commented that the whole thing felt like an infomercial for EAT. He said there wasn't enough specific learning, and we talked too vaguely about things that felt like an inside experience. I think he wanted more skills-building. When prompted he said that he did learn a lot from the discussion on patterns and observation, and the seedballs project. That feedback was hard to hear, mostly because I already carry so much self-criticism inside that I battle all the time. It is hard to hear things that reflect a little of that self-criticism, because it always sounds worse from that lens than the person actually intended it.

It took me several days of suffering under my own negative blabbing about how embarrassed I was and how I would never set foot out of the house again to realize that the event was actually spectacular. Sure, we could use some improvement, but so can most teachers. I am taking the stance of appreciating all the courage it took to put myself out there. Specifically, I think we did great at advance curriculum planing, and at pulling in people's inspiration and ideas during the event by getting group brainstorms and giving people a chance to share a little bit of themselves. I liked how we planed the event with the awareness of balance around hands-on, lecture, and discussion. We pulled out the juicy pieces from the training.

Things I think could be improved: I didn't think about being true to the flier in the material presented at the report back. I put on the flier "regenerative activism," but when someone asked a question about it, I realized I felt awkward addressing it and like I didn't really know what I was talking about. Also, I think we could've used some help with transitions. And often I felt like I didn't have everything planned with margaritte. Would it have worked better to be even more separate in our presentations? I sometimes felt a sense of panic at being perceived as boring, and when Margaritte was talking I didn't have the control; I was scared margaritte was going to be boring. In reality I know this isn't the case, so maybe the answer is just to feel the feeling and focus on relaxing.

Honestly, though, I think that ease and interest in teaching comes with practice and that is the key to improving on this skill. I think that the act of sharing this information in whatever way is radical and I am so glad to push myself headfirst into my own BIG LIFE!

The Earth Activist Training

The first day began as all fourteen days at The Earth Activist Training (EAT) would begin: with ritual. We are instructed to close our eyes and reflect for a moment on why we came to this intensive permaculture, activism, and community building training. At the beginning of any event, we are reminded, always make your intention clear. What do we intend to create together? Why have we come? Someone begins, stating their affirmative purpose, and joining hands with their neighbor. We continue clockwise around the circle in such a fashion, twenty eight people linking hands and speaking our truth as a magical act to bring each member into the circle and create a sacred energetic container. The circle is cast.

All ritual begins with casting a circle--symbolically establishing the energetic space to do work together as a group. Casting a circle for the entire training allowed us to all arrive in the same location, leave behind the burdens of wherever we had come from, and recognize the common work we had come here to do.

After arriving into ritual space together, we begin with observation. Observation was to become the single most overarching theme through all the work we did in the coming weeks. In this westernized culture we often over focus on our visual sense, sometimes to the detriment of our other input systems: touch, hearing, smell, extra-sensory energy. We close our eyes. We become completely immersed in awareness of our surroundings; our chattering brains quiet; we become fully present, observing the moment.

At least, this is the theory. I find this hard. Mostly, I want to criticise my way of observing, feeling that I should be more skilled at intuitive perception and quieting the constant yabber of internal dialogue. I am already familiar with this process and the inevitable criticisms that arise. Yet, I sink into it again. It is the half-dream, half-quiet realm of sensing.

Before I came to this training I had undertaken this goal: to calm the habit of thought-addiction and reconnect with nature through my awareness, as a member of it, not an outsider. I am glad that we start with observation; as a skill it ties together community building, awareness and sensitivity to nature, and designing of sustainable systems for human living. It is the foundation of my education strategy and future goal of living in land-based intentional community. Who knew that such a task would provide me with a continuing sense of failure and challenge! Every time a thought jerks my mind away from my senses I despise the task of making the thought retreat--I want to indulge it, rest in the comfort of busy-to-do-list-fantasy distraction.

Observation informs all choices related to designing permaculture systems, both in physical and social structures. Throughout the training we talk at length about how to assess a physical site for its attributes, based on what we notice and interpret about its preexisting state. For example, let's take water systems--before one would install a rainwater catchment, one needs detailed information gained through observation about the quantity and timing of the rains, how much water is needed for use versus how much is expected in precipitation. If one went and built a huge system without taking these simple facts into account, one could end up with a design inappropriate for ones needs, such as too much storage space, etc.

Permaculture is the art of systems thinking applied to design. It is the active participation with your environment to create self-sustaining relationships of abundance and regeneration. It is the act of taking information gathered from our own thoughtful, protracted observation and traditional knowledge of the land and applying it to modern westernized society. Using these skills, our relationship with nature can change from one of abuse to one of cooperation and positive participation. The word comes from "permanent culture" or "permanent agriculture," and was coined by the originator Bill Mollison in 1970. In this sense, "permanent" does not mean stagnant and rigid, but means consistency within adaptation. Three main ethics form the foundation of permaculture: 1) Care of the Earth; 2) Care of the People; and 3) Fair Share (surplus is returned to the whole system, not horded by individuals).

The final group project earned us our permaculture design certificate. We worked in small groups to design a holistic permaculture plan for one of several options presented to us by the instructors. I chose to work on a design for Starhawk's property, for its similarity to my goals of owning and designing land in the future. It is about 40 acres large, situated on sunny hillsides of the Cazadero hills in Sonoma County, CA. There were several structures in place, some marginally functional gardens with chickens and some permaculture aspects, forests, powered off the grid from a micro-hydro system, a misplaced wind turbine, and solar panels. We were to design the fantastical image of Star's Ranch with no holds barred on our imaginations or the practical constraints of reality such as funding or labor. We were to dream big and place our designers mind on full blast.

Our ultimate product was a redesign of the gardens and buildings in what is referred to in permaculture as "zone 1", the location immediately surrounding your most-used dwellings, the place where all your immediate needs are provided for. During the process of assessing the site, brainstorming, and designing gardens, fruit orchards, social community building techniques, water catchment for rainwater and greywater, I realized a key piece about myself as a designer. Before presenting the project, I was convinced I had vast shortcomings as a permaculturist. But our presentation to the group was received with so much appreciation, including from the owner of the land, that I began to wonder if these shortcomings were actually attributes of my personality I could just accept and not judge myself for, and might in fact be assets.

Of all the project groups that have created a design for Star's land every year of this course, our project was appreciated as being the most practically useful. This highlights what I was most worried about in our project and in my own style--that we focused on the reasonable, the small changes, the ways to work with forms already present on the land. I was worried there wasn't enough grand alterations; we hadn't visioned the ultimate design that would be the utopia of permaculture sites for all generations in Sonoma County. I learned that small changes are good. My tendency to assert minimal change on my situation, be it social or physical, is not necessarily a shortcoming from lack of confidence, but an asset that allows me to see a situation/place with acceptance and humility. I think change is much more effective on small scales over long term. This idea is stated in the several permaculture principals, which are 27 ways to think about designing systems. The principal "least change for the greatest effect" says that the best change is the least change. It says we should avoid drastic alterations in present systems because then you are less likely to alter it beyond repair if you make a mistake, and you are working in harmony with the energy flows which already are in place.

I am inspired to bring back the knowledge I learned at EAT in many ways. For my dumpy well-loved rental house, I imagine a new garden in front where the land is degraded and compacted from being used as a parking spot. Special plants and fungus will bioremediate the toxins add nutrients, sheet mulching will kill weeds and build the soil without tilling the ground. I imagine a worm composing bin and a rudimentary greywater system in the bathroom. Our veggie garden in back could be designed to support a diverse community of insects and wildlife as well as producing food by using functional plant guilds: groups of companion plantings that combine the attributes of micronutrient uptake from the soil, beneficial insect attraction, and nitrogen fixation.

For my community, I see myself taking the information and skills from EAT and reaffirming my commitment to leading a big life as a leader in nature awareness and sustainability. I need constant reminding of this commitment because of my tendency to sink into feeling overwhelm or powerlessness. This training was another chance to remember my true self as powerful and equal in creating the world I want, surrounded by a loving community of people and nature. I felt like I could create anything I set my mind to. I have plans to teach a class this spring in developing stronger relationships with nature using the tools of botany, wildcrafting, and nature awareness. This summer I plan to facilitate a collective in organic farming, small business management, communal living, and ecological restoration. These are not roles I take on with ease; I take them on with a sense of purpose, a choice for struggling against messages that say I cannot make the world I want. I do not choose this path to feel "good." I choose to fight for myself and the world and my community because it feels right, and it needs to be done.

The future is a world waiting to be created by our intentions.