In The Earth Path, Starhawk presents strategies, ideas, and inspiration to develop a new way to live holistically with nature. It is a manual of understanding how to decolonize your mind from westernized mechanistic thinking, to literally observe and reflect the patterns of nature in your life. Many humans have realized the need for overarching change in the current world. Rampant injustice, suffering, and abuse take place to fellow humans and the earth. In order to change the situation, we must first be able to articulate what world we wish to create. This is the magic and power of intention: the act of defining and stating the future you wish to see.
The book is also like a manuscript of much of what we learned at the Earth Activist Training. It feels almost like a textbook to remind and reinspire me when I will inevitable forget the energy and information from the training. Starhawk covers evolution and the roles of bacteria in the genius of photosynthesis, as well as the attributes of the four elements earth, air, fire, and water and thier core teachings. Patterns in nature and observation are covered in depth.
The main technique for grounding your spirit in nature is to find a special spot in nature and go there as often as possible and just observe. This is the foundation of the Kamana Program which I am doing concurrently in this term. The more I hear this idea expressed, through many teachers, writers and thinkers, the easier it is to actually put this practice into being. I find I am extremely resistant, not to the idea, but to actually carrying it out. What happens is an extreme level of self-criticism comes up when I go into nature just to observe. It is so uncomfortable to experience this harshness that I avoid the act that brings it up. In reality, the more I do it the easier it becomes and the little voices are getting quieter.
There are many experiential exercises in the book. I am touched by the exercise "A Sacred Intention," which guides us through identifying our core values, the things that we truly cherish dear to our hearts. What would it be like if the institutions of government, education, etc., all supported and worked toward the thing/s that you cherish? How would the current system change if it implemented your core value/s as a central guiding point? If we would like to live in a world where our core values are cherished, we say "It is my sacred intention to create a world that cherishes _____."
Later, sacred intentions are suggested as a way to help guide decision-making processes. I find this exptremely relieving. How many times have I stuggled to make a clear decision? Well, she suggests simply asking "does ____ serve my goal toward my sacred intention?" The simplicity of this excercise guarantees it's effectiveness for me. I have tried it several times since then, and the effect is that it feels as though I have installed a tuning fork into my decision making process, and I get to check how closely the resonance of any given decision matches the tune of my sacred intention.
Throughout the book I found myself crying, touched by the truth and heartfelt inspiration in her words. The book begins with the story of Starhawk and her fellow community members doing a ritual to honor the fire ecology of the Cazadero Hills of Sonoma County, California, where they live. The hills there have evolved for thousands of years with human burning, which kept brush down and food plants plentiful; the frequent burning ensured a lower burn temperature because there was less fuel to heat the flames, and life would return quickly after these much-needed and healing disturbances. The ritual was to ask the fire to stay at bay, since the land is choked and surpressed from a century or so of western settlement and an end to indiginous burnings. If a fire came through the country now it would be devastating. The ritual was also to express an intention that the land my once again return to a comfortable cycle where humans may live in balance again.
A foundation of healing the human relationship with nature is recentering our values to be earth-based in essence. Starhawk presents a way of seeing the world where all entities of the universe become sacred at all times.
I am inspired to create the life that I want to live right now. This is the ancient magical technique of creating your own reality. It means visualizing the way I want it and actively making it happen. This could even come out in small forms, such as improving the living systems at my house to make it livable and easy to do household chores. It means designing systems around me that flow, that work with my rhythms and the rhythms of nature to create a working easy flow. An example that would support my value of conservation and living simply could be changing the placement and improving the technology of our clothsline to improve the likelihood of using it. There is no excuse to not make life easier and flowing better right now. That is permaculture, and that is working with nature by creating sustainable systems.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Garden Volunteer Day at OAEC
Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, Occidental, Sonoma County, CA
Wednesday January 24th, 2008
Margaritte and I have had our eye on this place for at least a year because of its unique organizational structure and its apparent functionality as a combo education center business and residential intentional community. After finishing our two-week permaculture training, we take advantage of our close proximity to the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC) to show up for garden volunteer day to pull weeds and pick the brains of any community member who will talk to us.
We arrive in the morning from the wild concrete mess of San Francisco, where I drove back and forth across the tangled, crowded city streets early that morning in search of lost items, and the night before, a quiet place to sleep. Tanoaks and madrone, not yet affected by Sudden Oak Death**, line the short driveway and hand-painted colorful signs bid us to slow down and warn unwanted visitors to not drop by unexpected. The rich green gardens cascade in terraces down the hill, vegetables interspersed with fruit trees, winding trails and quaint natural wood buildings. It is obvious upon looking around that this land has been lived on with love and attention for a long time. It shows up in the care of design and detailed art weaved into things functional: a dragon shaped cob bench, a shed with a metal sculpture of a face with lightning bolts on it's side, a wooden stage set into the backdrop of the creekside forest, carved intentionally for flow and beauty. I think of how my dad would love the buildings here, how his eyes would light up with fire and dreamy ambition to create spaces such as these for the development and nurturing of community spirit.
In the garden our first task is weeding and mulching the garlic. Doug and Michelle are the two main gardeners whose full time job is managing this lush system of food- and beauty-producing gardens that provide year round for community and guests to the center. The kitchen feeds community members, which number around twenty, and whoever else is present for workshops or events, such as our workparty crew. We squat in the rich built-up beds with a small crowd of other volunteers, delightedly chatting and pulling the tiny weeds away from the maturing garlic leaves. I am struck by the feeling of peace and communal ease on the this land, and I mention this to Michelle, a short middle aged woman with long curly brown hair and a round amiable face. She reveals that, in all the time the land has functioned in its current legal entity (since the early nineties), no one has left the community permanently. No one has left!!! Turn over = zero. This is incredible! Longevity is the main problem I see in the intentional communities I have been a part of and it is the key issue I have set out to understand on my personal journey of creating a land based intentional community. To me, this land looks like a model utopia. I am aware of my naivety, and ask her to define what she thinks creates longevity in community. How do you create this sense of family? What makes people want to stay? Is is possible to define? Much to my delight, she busts out with a simple three point program. It's as if she has been asked this question countless times by young idealistic community-seekers, thus developing the perfect answer to feed their hopeful idealism; her answer is exactly in line with my own thinking, and I feel a surge of creative energy within me as my wildest hopes are confirmed with her clear, experience-informed wisdom.
Michelle's Magical 3-Point Program for Community Longevity (unauthorized).
1) Begin with prior relationships with the people you wish to live with. At the very least, have an extended trial period before accepting new people into the community.
2) Have an established structure for emotional process that the community has agreed upon and is employed regularly. This foundation is invaluable for avoiding emotional build-ups of resentment and miscommunication. Michelle prefers Naka Ima as a model.
3) Create a land-based culture that is a built-in bonding system for people to feel connected to the place where they live and the natural rhythms of the ecosystem. Many community-seekers were raised in the city, or in the mindset of the city, and living with natural rhythms is not ingrained; it must be harbored and developed through regular activities that connect our life cycles with the land, i.e. growing food and eating it. We must re-create the need for local knowledge by linking our needs to those of the land.
At OAEC people also get to do their own thing; the structure is set up to allow people to follow their own inspired life's work, not restrict it. "Why would they leave?" Michelle says matter-of-factly. She herself has come back and forth several times, and no longer lives on the land but is employed by the center as the gardener and is very connected to the place.
After weeding we move on preparing a bed to plant some late-season garlic. We spread compost and manure on the dark earth; then Michelle teaches us the wonders of Tai Chi Gardening. It seems that every system in this place is designed to prevent burn-out, including the use of your body as a valued, irreplaceable, lovable tool. She instructs: your strong hand goes in the middle of the fork handle, your non-dominant hand on end (just for support-don't use the muscle on that hand). Take a wide, low stance; knees bent, one foot in front of the other with your pelvis tucked in to protect your lower back. As you turn the top layer of soil backwards you rock your body by shifting the weight from front leg to back leg; don't use your back to pull and don't exert your arm muscles. The movement is all in your legs, not your upper body or back at all.
As I practiced this extremely awkward new way of moving I noticed my chronic feelings of disregard for my body, how I use it like a cheap tool able withstand a lot of abuse for the sake of production. (For a self identified anti-capitalist, how capitalist is my own mind-frame about my own body?!) Michelle is adamant about garden workers respecting their health and bodies and not burning out in farming as we age. New radical concept! Farming (or, working in general) as a practice in body mindfulness meditation!
I left the day at OAEC with an increased sense of possibility about my own dreams, and an ambition to pursue a possible internship there. Something about the way the structure functions by keeping the legal entities of community (a Limited Liability Company) and business (a non-profit) separate from each other yet linked through the people and the land seems to create a flexible and clear situation that leaves room for community bonding and functional business like I have never seen. Could the community I want to create function like that, I wonder?
**Sudden Oak Death. Once a staple food for the indigenous peoples of this land, and still a foundational species to the wildlife of the area, the tanoaks of northern California are dying at an extreme rate due to sudden oak death. Michelle tells us that it is caused by an algae that spreads through mud and waterways. It constricts the vascular system of the trees, stressing them to the point where they are vulnerable to beetle invasion, which moves in to finish them off. Humans haven't found a way to stop it. The forests in this area are visibly affected: crispy brown tanoak leaves, which normally remain on the tree year-round, are littered thick on the forest floor. Looking across a valley, large brown patches in the hillside vegetation point to the extremity of the loss.
Once, salmon returning to spawn in the clear waters left their dead bodies as offerings of nutrients to this ecosystem. Now they are mostly gone, and their missing presence is one possible link to the cause of sudden oak death. According to a Native friend of Starhawk's, the tanoaks need the humans to tend the land just as the humans need the tanoaks for food. The loss of the human interaction with this species through food foraging and fire management could be creating its mass extinction.
Wednesday January 24th, 2008
Margaritte and I have had our eye on this place for at least a year because of its unique organizational structure and its apparent functionality as a combo education center business and residential intentional community. After finishing our two-week permaculture training, we take advantage of our close proximity to the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC) to show up for garden volunteer day to pull weeds and pick the brains of any community member who will talk to us.
We arrive in the morning from the wild concrete mess of San Francisco, where I drove back and forth across the tangled, crowded city streets early that morning in search of lost items, and the night before, a quiet place to sleep. Tanoaks and madrone, not yet affected by Sudden Oak Death**, line the short driveway and hand-painted colorful signs bid us to slow down and warn unwanted visitors to not drop by unexpected. The rich green gardens cascade in terraces down the hill, vegetables interspersed with fruit trees, winding trails and quaint natural wood buildings. It is obvious upon looking around that this land has been lived on with love and attention for a long time. It shows up in the care of design and detailed art weaved into things functional: a dragon shaped cob bench, a shed with a metal sculpture of a face with lightning bolts on it's side, a wooden stage set into the backdrop of the creekside forest, carved intentionally for flow and beauty. I think of how my dad would love the buildings here, how his eyes would light up with fire and dreamy ambition to create spaces such as these for the development and nurturing of community spirit.
In the garden our first task is weeding and mulching the garlic. Doug and Michelle are the two main gardeners whose full time job is managing this lush system of food- and beauty-producing gardens that provide year round for community and guests to the center. The kitchen feeds community members, which number around twenty, and whoever else is present for workshops or events, such as our workparty crew. We squat in the rich built-up beds with a small crowd of other volunteers, delightedly chatting and pulling the tiny weeds away from the maturing garlic leaves. I am struck by the feeling of peace and communal ease on the this land, and I mention this to Michelle, a short middle aged woman with long curly brown hair and a round amiable face. She reveals that, in all the time the land has functioned in its current legal entity (since the early nineties), no one has left the community permanently. No one has left!!! Turn over = zero. This is incredible! Longevity is the main problem I see in the intentional communities I have been a part of and it is the key issue I have set out to understand on my personal journey of creating a land based intentional community. To me, this land looks like a model utopia. I am aware of my naivety, and ask her to define what she thinks creates longevity in community. How do you create this sense of family? What makes people want to stay? Is is possible to define? Much to my delight, she busts out with a simple three point program. It's as if she has been asked this question countless times by young idealistic community-seekers, thus developing the perfect answer to feed their hopeful idealism; her answer is exactly in line with my own thinking, and I feel a surge of creative energy within me as my wildest hopes are confirmed with her clear, experience-informed wisdom.
Michelle's Magical 3-Point Program for Community Longevity (unauthorized).
1) Begin with prior relationships with the people you wish to live with. At the very least, have an extended trial period before accepting new people into the community.
2) Have an established structure for emotional process that the community has agreed upon and is employed regularly. This foundation is invaluable for avoiding emotional build-ups of resentment and miscommunication. Michelle prefers Naka Ima as a model.
3) Create a land-based culture that is a built-in bonding system for people to feel connected to the place where they live and the natural rhythms of the ecosystem. Many community-seekers were raised in the city, or in the mindset of the city, and living with natural rhythms is not ingrained; it must be harbored and developed through regular activities that connect our life cycles with the land, i.e. growing food and eating it. We must re-create the need for local knowledge by linking our needs to those of the land.
At OAEC people also get to do their own thing; the structure is set up to allow people to follow their own inspired life's work, not restrict it. "Why would they leave?" Michelle says matter-of-factly. She herself has come back and forth several times, and no longer lives on the land but is employed by the center as the gardener and is very connected to the place.
After weeding we move on preparing a bed to plant some late-season garlic. We spread compost and manure on the dark earth; then Michelle teaches us the wonders of Tai Chi Gardening. It seems that every system in this place is designed to prevent burn-out, including the use of your body as a valued, irreplaceable, lovable tool. She instructs: your strong hand goes in the middle of the fork handle, your non-dominant hand on end (just for support-don't use the muscle on that hand). Take a wide, low stance; knees bent, one foot in front of the other with your pelvis tucked in to protect your lower back. As you turn the top layer of soil backwards you rock your body by shifting the weight from front leg to back leg; don't use your back to pull and don't exert your arm muscles. The movement is all in your legs, not your upper body or back at all.
As I practiced this extremely awkward new way of moving I noticed my chronic feelings of disregard for my body, how I use it like a cheap tool able withstand a lot of abuse for the sake of production. (For a self identified anti-capitalist, how capitalist is my own mind-frame about my own body?!) Michelle is adamant about garden workers respecting their health and bodies and not burning out in farming as we age. New radical concept! Farming (or, working in general) as a practice in body mindfulness meditation!
I left the day at OAEC with an increased sense of possibility about my own dreams, and an ambition to pursue a possible internship there. Something about the way the structure functions by keeping the legal entities of community (a Limited Liability Company) and business (a non-profit) separate from each other yet linked through the people and the land seems to create a flexible and clear situation that leaves room for community bonding and functional business like I have never seen. Could the community I want to create function like that, I wonder?
**Sudden Oak Death. Once a staple food for the indigenous peoples of this land, and still a foundational species to the wildlife of the area, the tanoaks of northern California are dying at an extreme rate due to sudden oak death. Michelle tells us that it is caused by an algae that spreads through mud and waterways. It constricts the vascular system of the trees, stressing them to the point where they are vulnerable to beetle invasion, which moves in to finish them off. Humans haven't found a way to stop it. The forests in this area are visibly affected: crispy brown tanoak leaves, which normally remain on the tree year-round, are littered thick on the forest floor. Looking across a valley, large brown patches in the hillside vegetation point to the extremity of the loss.
Once, salmon returning to spawn in the clear waters left their dead bodies as offerings of nutrients to this ecosystem. Now they are mostly gone, and their missing presence is one possible link to the cause of sudden oak death. According to a Native friend of Starhawk's, the tanoaks need the humans to tend the land just as the humans need the tanoaks for food. The loss of the human interaction with this species through food foraging and fire management could be creating its mass extinction.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Winter '08 Syllabus
“Building Intentional Sustainable Communities” ILC
Sponsor: Karen Gaul
Heron Heartsun
Winter 2008
Weeks 1 and 2 Jan.7th-19th
∑ Jan 5-19thrd: Attend the Earth Activist Training in Cazadero, CA. Basic permaculture design, agroforestry, vermiculture, earth based ritual, natural building, sustainable energy, political activism, community dynamics and power structures, water catchment/conservation and greywater systems, bioremediation, animal husbandry, and more.
∑ Completion of group permaculture design project and presentation. Earn permaculture certification.
∑ Document experience at training through photography, journaling and audio recordings.
Week 3 Jan 21-27
∑ Jan 22: Begin academic blog on EAT
∑ Jan 23rd: Visit Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in Occidental, CA
∑ Write complete syllabus
∑ Jan 24th: Seminar
∑ Jan 27th: Blog on readings and OAEC
∑ Reading: The Earth Path by Starhawk aloud
∑ Reading: Creating a Life Together chapters 1, 2, and 3
Week 4 Jan. 20th Feb. 1st
∑ Tues/Wed/Thurs/Fri, one hour sitting at Kamana secret spot
∑ 4 kamana journals
∑ Kamana field inventory
∑ Publicity for EAT report back
∑ Seminar
∑ Blog
∑ Reading: Creating a Life Together chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
∑ Reading: EAT reader
Week 5 Feb. 4th-8th
∑ Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri, one hour sitting at Kamana secret spot
∑ 4 kamana journals
∑ Kamana field inventory
∑ Publicity for EAT report back
∑ EAT report back curriculum planing
∑ Seminar
∑ Blog
∑ Reading: Creating a life together chapters 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16
∑ Reading: EAT reader
Week 6 Feb. 11th-15th
∑ Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri, one hour sitting at Kamana secret spot
∑ 4 Kamana journals
∑ Kamana field inventory
∑ Publicity for EAT report back
∑ EAT report back curriculum planing
∑ Seminar
∑ Blog
∑ Reading: Creating a life together chapters 17, 18, appendix’s
∑ Reading: The Tracker
Week 7 Feb. 18th-22nd
∑ Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri, one hour sitting at Kamana secret spot
∑ 4 Kamana journals
∑ Kamana field inventory
∑ Seminar
∑ Blog
∑ Present evening report back on EAT for general community
∑ Reading: The Earth's Blanket chapters 1, 2, 3, 4
∑ Reading: Communities Directory
Week 8 Feb. 25th-29th
∑ Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri, one hour sitting at Kamana secret spot
∑ 4 Kamana journals
∑ Kamana field inventory
∑ Seminar
∑ Blog
∑ Workshop publicity
∑ Reading: The Earth's Blanket chapters 5, 6, 7, 8
Week 9 March 3rd-7th
∑ Mar 2nd: Visit Emma Goldman Finishing School
∑ Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri, one hour sitting at Kamana secret spot
∑ 4 Kamana journals
∑ Kamana field inventory
∑ Kamana final reflection
∑ Workshop Curriculum planning
∑ Workshop publicity
∑ Seminar: Community Creation map/plan
∑ Blog
Week 10 March 10th-14th
∑ Teach workshop on sensory awareness and relationship with place
∑ Seminar: Community Creation map/plan
∑ Blog
∑ Final reflective essay due
∑ Kamana portfolio due
∑ Community Creation map due
Week 11 March 17th-21st
∑ Evaluations
Booklist:
Nature Awareness and Permaculture
∑ The Tracker, by Tom Brown. 1978. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
∑ The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature by Starhawk. 2005. HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, CA.
∑ EAT reader, selected articles
Community Vision
∑ The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teachings For Sustainable Living (Culture, Place, and Nature: Studies in Anthropology and Environment) by Nancy J. Turner. 2005. University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA.
∑ The Intentional Communities Directory: A Guide to Intentional Communities and Cooperative Living, 2000 edition (selected essays). Fellowship for Intentional Community, Rutledge, MO
∑ Creating a Life Together by Diana Leafe Christian. 2003. New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC.
Sponsor: Karen Gaul
Heron Heartsun
Winter 2008
Weeks 1 and 2 Jan.7th-19th
∑ Jan 5-19thrd: Attend the Earth Activist Training in Cazadero, CA. Basic permaculture design, agroforestry, vermiculture, earth based ritual, natural building, sustainable energy, political activism, community dynamics and power structures, water catchment/conservation and greywater systems, bioremediation, animal husbandry, and more.
∑ Completion of group permaculture design project and presentation. Earn permaculture certification.
∑ Document experience at training through photography, journaling and audio recordings.
Week 3 Jan 21-27
∑ Jan 22: Begin academic blog on EAT
∑ Jan 23rd: Visit Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in Occidental, CA
∑ Write complete syllabus
∑ Jan 24th: Seminar
∑ Jan 27th: Blog on readings and OAEC
∑ Reading: The Earth Path by Starhawk aloud
∑ Reading: Creating a Life Together chapters 1, 2, and 3
Week 4 Jan. 20th Feb. 1st
∑ Tues/Wed/Thurs/Fri, one hour sitting at Kamana secret spot
∑ 4 kamana journals
∑ Kamana field inventory
∑ Publicity for EAT report back
∑ Seminar
∑ Blog
∑ Reading: Creating a Life Together chapters 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
∑ Reading: EAT reader
Week 5 Feb. 4th-8th
∑ Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri, one hour sitting at Kamana secret spot
∑ 4 kamana journals
∑ Kamana field inventory
∑ Publicity for EAT report back
∑ EAT report back curriculum planing
∑ Seminar
∑ Blog
∑ Reading: Creating a life together chapters 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16
∑ Reading: EAT reader
Week 6 Feb. 11th-15th
∑ Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri, one hour sitting at Kamana secret spot
∑ 4 Kamana journals
∑ Kamana field inventory
∑ Publicity for EAT report back
∑ EAT report back curriculum planing
∑ Seminar
∑ Blog
∑ Reading: Creating a life together chapters 17, 18, appendix’s
∑ Reading: The Tracker
Week 7 Feb. 18th-22nd
∑ Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri, one hour sitting at Kamana secret spot
∑ 4 Kamana journals
∑ Kamana field inventory
∑ Seminar
∑ Blog
∑ Present evening report back on EAT for general community
∑ Reading: The Earth's Blanket chapters 1, 2, 3, 4
∑ Reading: Communities Directory
Week 8 Feb. 25th-29th
∑ Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri, one hour sitting at Kamana secret spot
∑ 4 Kamana journals
∑ Kamana field inventory
∑ Seminar
∑ Blog
∑ Workshop publicity
∑ Reading: The Earth's Blanket chapters 5, 6, 7, 8
Week 9 March 3rd-7th
∑ Mar 2nd: Visit Emma Goldman Finishing School
∑ Mon/Tues/Thurs/Fri, one hour sitting at Kamana secret spot
∑ 4 Kamana journals
∑ Kamana field inventory
∑ Kamana final reflection
∑ Workshop Curriculum planning
∑ Workshop publicity
∑ Seminar: Community Creation map/plan
∑ Blog
Week 10 March 10th-14th
∑ Teach workshop on sensory awareness and relationship with place
∑ Seminar: Community Creation map/plan
∑ Blog
∑ Final reflective essay due
∑ Kamana portfolio due
∑ Community Creation map due
Week 11 March 17th-21st
∑ Evaluations
Booklist:
Nature Awareness and Permaculture
∑ The Tracker, by Tom Brown. 1978. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
∑ The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature by Starhawk. 2005. HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco, CA.
∑ EAT reader, selected articles
Community Vision
∑ The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teachings For Sustainable Living (Culture, Place, and Nature: Studies in Anthropology and Environment) by Nancy J. Turner. 2005. University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA.
∑ The Intentional Communities Directory: A Guide to Intentional Communities and Cooperative Living, 2000 edition (selected essays). Fellowship for Intentional Community, Rutledge, MO
∑ Creating a Life Together by Diana Leafe Christian. 2003. New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
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.
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.
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.
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