(no subject)
The summer keeps marching on. The Ecovillage and Permaculture program has completed six weeks-two more left. I’m continuing to have fun with it and learn all the time. I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone, and how soon it will be over.
A few things from the course have stuck out at me since I last wrote. One was a field trip to Cougar Mountain, a property that is several hundred acres of pretty young forest (purchased in the ‘70s only a few decades after major logging) with a little bit of space where a family lives, experiments with permaculture, and holds an annual weekend-long reggae festival. They power their stage/cidery with photovoltaic panels and huge batteries, and I think they use solar power elsewhere and possibly micro-hydroelectric power. They have several constructed ponds for water storage, and they’ve created an elaborate water storage/infiltration system of swales and terraced gardens. They have around a thousand fruit trees, mostly cherries and hundreds of varieties of apples, which they grow on the terraced hillsides along with an unfathomable amount of berries-mostly tayberries, a delicious (as we discovered last week, over and over!) Scottish raspberry-blackberry hybrid. They mulch the area, and they let other plants grow there too. The site is far too much for the family that lives there and is cultivating it to manage right now (their ambition has left them in the dust), so at this point they have a lot of fruit that they’re not harvesting. I left with my tummy full of tasty berries and cherries!
Mark Lakeman, one of the founders of a group called CityRepair, spoke at Lost Valley lost week. CityRepair started in Portland, though it’s spreading. They started as a group of friends who noticed that their city neighborhood had no gathering space. So they created one-a beautiful tea-house (“T-Hows”), made entirely from reclaimed materials. Within a few weeks, many people from the neighborhood were gathering there, and all of a sudden they were creating a sense of place and building community where it hadn’t really existed before-which the T-Hows sparked but which has continued long after it was taken down. CityRepair particularly recognizes street intersections as forgotten spaces for people to gather, and much of what they do now is help the people in different neighborhoods to turn their intersections into beautiful spaces where cars slow down and where people want to gather. Most of the projects that they’ve helped to make happen-or that have happened because they brought the possibility to people’s consciousness, and they got it made legal in Portland-are incredibly beautiful, from painted or community-gardened intersections to street-corner community pizza ovens to more elaborate structures like the T-Hows. It all inspires me about the possibilities for nurturing communities within cities, and doing permaculture as city communities.
This week, a past longtime Lost Valley resident, Tammy Davis, came back to teach a couple of topics. I sat in on the beekeeping session. I was blown away by what I learned about bees. My impression is that a hive, rather than a single honeybee, functions as an organism; the hive has an intelligence that goes beyond any single bee or group of bees within it. Keeping bees for honey is quite a bit of work, but I’m attracted to the idea of offering spaces for bees to build hives (and even bringing bees to the hive) and then leaving them alone to do their work; as a species, honeybees aren’t doing well, but are crucial for the pollination of many plants we like to use for food-and, I assume, for the health of many ecosystems. We’ve domesticated some of their strengths out of many of the varieties we keep for honey. It seems worthwhile to nurture the naturally-selected, wilder varieties. And although it obviously takes maintenance, keeping bees for honey is feasible too. Mainstream beekeepers, at least in the United States, generally take too much honey from the hive, and then feed the bees sugar-water-which, given how much honey bees make, is ridiculous, not to mention unjust. A hive needs about a hundred twenty-five pounds of honey for the winter, but produces multiple times that-so humans can take gallons of honey from a single hive each year and leave the bees what they need, which is only fair-and makes sense. It’s far better for the health of the hive.
Wednesday afternoon and evening, Tree Bressen gave us a consensus and facilitation workshop. If anyone ever has the chance to do a workshop with her, I’d recommend it. She’s articulate and skilled. We focused mostly on facilitation. I don’t know that I’m naturally gifted at it, but I’m interested in developing the skills-I want to be able to create space for ideas to flow freely, and for sparks of inspiration to be born and channeled into action! I think that successful facilitation is largely about hearing both what people say and what they mean, and being aware of how they feel. In order to do that well, I think you have to be in touch with your own thoughts and feelings even while things are moving fast. I aspire to that, and admire people who do it well, like Tree.
I learned an interesting tidbit about consensus. A lot of groups that set out to use consensus to make decisions end up using a modified version of it-for instance, if they’re unable to reach true consensus, they might fall back on some kind of vote. In fact, Tree says, banks won’t lend to groups whose bylaws dictate that the group use full consensus-banks want groups to allow for a vote. On the other hand, many groups that say they use a voting system-for example, many boards of directors (including of those very same banks)-really use consensus: they do vote, but they actually work things out beforehand and aim to have everyone agree, and even if they don’t all agree, then they’ve generally at least heard each other out.
In some ways, I feel less connected with Lost Valley as a community than I’ve felt in the past. My life mostly revolves around the summer course, and I haven’t been as involved recently in general community life. In fact, that’s less because of choices I’ve made (though I have made choices consistent with that) and more because, during the summer, the life of the course seems to take over the community a bit, or at least blend in, and the community doesn’t maintain a strong boundary. This isn’t necessarily bad. But soon the course will end, and all of a sudden twenty people who have been living here will be gone, along with all their connections with us and with each other. I imagine that some of us who remain will find our connections with each other changed.
The day the summer course ends, I leave for a week in Maine, followed by Megan’s wedding in Washington, and then possibly a few more days in the northern Pacific northwest. In my absence, all the students will leave, my friend Aimee will leave for good, and a new, three-week course (Eco-Homes: An Introduction to Ecological Building and Appropriate Technology) will begin. Shortly afterward, at least three more Lost Valley residents or interns will leave. I have a feeling that when I come back, everything will feel different. I have no idea what things will be like.
There have been many other highlights recently, and here are a few. Last Wednesday we had an open mic night. I sang four songs with Chris R and Stephanie Z; you can listen to two here. (Thanks to Chris for recording. I was sitting closest to the microphone, I think . . . Depending what browser you're using, you may have to download them before you can listen.) And last weekend I visited Portland. I had a fabulous time staying with Robin and also seeing Anne and Joanna. Anne, Robin, and I spent much of one evening sharing delicious food, wine, and ideas under a just-past-full moon; given the fullness of our hearts that evening (at least mine) and the fact that Robin is about to leave the west coast, it struck me as poetry. Today I got to talk very briefly with my dear African-traveling friend Jenny. I love the beautiful people in my life at Lost Valley. And I’m so, so grateful for all of my wonderful older friends too.
I’ve been starting to think seriously about the future after the scheduled end of my internship in late October. I have many different ideas and feelings. One factor is that Marc, the director of the educational programs at Lost Valley, is leaving in November. He doesn’t know yet who will replace him. By then, I will have been here for seven months. I’m not interested in nor qualified for his position, but I see myself as a potential resource for whoever takes Marc’s place; I could stay at Lost Valley for another year or part of a year and help to facilitate that transition. In some big ways, that possibility appeals to me. I also feel pulled in other directions. I’m ready-hungry-to be gaining practical permaculture-related skills that I just haven’t been able to do in the work I’ve been doing here. I want to work with other people on projects that build community where it doesn’t exist strongly yet, and that transform cities into beautiful, lush, green places. I’ve been realizing that most of the permaculturists I know and admire got to where they are largely by creating and tending their own gardens and just trying things out. So I’m wondering how I could do that-and start to actually make a living. I really like Oregon, and it happens to be the best place I know of in this country to learn about permaculture-I think that more people are doing it here than in any other part of the country. So it could continue to be a great classroom for me, and a good place to live for awhile longer. I also feel pulled to travel literally all over the world. Some of the places I regularly feel attracted to are parts of Latin America, Africa, the Mediterranean, parts of the western U.S. that I haven’t been to like Montana, parts of New England/southeastern Canada, Minnesota . . . (It’s funny to me that Minnesota is on that list now, because a year ago I couldn’t imagine having moved on from my Carleton depression enough to ever want to be in the same state again!) It’s possible that I could combine traveling with learning about the stuff I want to learn about-and I may seek to do that. It’s also possible that part of my desire to travel comes from uncertainty about my future. I simultaneously feel the desire to go all over the place and see and experience a wide variety of things, and feel the desire to put down roots for awhile in the area where I am right now. We’ll see . . .
One last thought for now. I’m curious about and try to notice the ways in which I do and don’t connect with the earth and her range of life. This time of year, I notice some passion in myself around wild berries! The variety and abundance of wild berries here is fabulous. There are many kinds I know are out there but I haven’t encountered-mostly different Rubus species (raspberry/blackberry-types) I haven’t met before. But there are plenty of kinds of berries in plain view everywhere. The strawberries have passed (and they were soooooo sweet); right now, some thimbleberries are ripe, and tarter but more flavorful than raspberries (the compromising-or at least precarious-positions I’ve found myself in indulging my thimbleberry-lust have made me laugh); visibly approaching are blackberries (I see three species or varieties, plus one other close relative) and salal. Both of the last two grow in such quantity that, when they’re ripe, I can see that you could easily pick gallons every day and completely gorge yourself, and you wouldn’t have made a visible dent. I’m excited about that abundance of fruit . . . you can’t live on blackberries, but in a few weeks I might try!
A few things from the course have stuck out at me since I last wrote. One was a field trip to Cougar Mountain, a property that is several hundred acres of pretty young forest (purchased in the ‘70s only a few decades after major logging) with a little bit of space where a family lives, experiments with permaculture, and holds an annual weekend-long reggae festival. They power their stage/cidery with photovoltaic panels and huge batteries, and I think they use solar power elsewhere and possibly micro-hydroelectric power. They have several constructed ponds for water storage, and they’ve created an elaborate water storage/infiltration system of swales and terraced gardens. They have around a thousand fruit trees, mostly cherries and hundreds of varieties of apples, which they grow on the terraced hillsides along with an unfathomable amount of berries-mostly tayberries, a delicious (as we discovered last week, over and over!) Scottish raspberry-blackberry hybrid. They mulch the area, and they let other plants grow there too. The site is far too much for the family that lives there and is cultivating it to manage right now (their ambition has left them in the dust), so at this point they have a lot of fruit that they’re not harvesting. I left with my tummy full of tasty berries and cherries!
Mark Lakeman, one of the founders of a group called CityRepair, spoke at Lost Valley lost week. CityRepair started in Portland, though it’s spreading. They started as a group of friends who noticed that their city neighborhood had no gathering space. So they created one-a beautiful tea-house (“T-Hows”), made entirely from reclaimed materials. Within a few weeks, many people from the neighborhood were gathering there, and all of a sudden they were creating a sense of place and building community where it hadn’t really existed before-which the T-Hows sparked but which has continued long after it was taken down. CityRepair particularly recognizes street intersections as forgotten spaces for people to gather, and much of what they do now is help the people in different neighborhoods to turn their intersections into beautiful spaces where cars slow down and where people want to gather. Most of the projects that they’ve helped to make happen-or that have happened because they brought the possibility to people’s consciousness, and they got it made legal in Portland-are incredibly beautiful, from painted or community-gardened intersections to street-corner community pizza ovens to more elaborate structures like the T-Hows. It all inspires me about the possibilities for nurturing communities within cities, and doing permaculture as city communities.
This week, a past longtime Lost Valley resident, Tammy Davis, came back to teach a couple of topics. I sat in on the beekeeping session. I was blown away by what I learned about bees. My impression is that a hive, rather than a single honeybee, functions as an organism; the hive has an intelligence that goes beyond any single bee or group of bees within it. Keeping bees for honey is quite a bit of work, but I’m attracted to the idea of offering spaces for bees to build hives (and even bringing bees to the hive) and then leaving them alone to do their work; as a species, honeybees aren’t doing well, but are crucial for the pollination of many plants we like to use for food-and, I assume, for the health of many ecosystems. We’ve domesticated some of their strengths out of many of the varieties we keep for honey. It seems worthwhile to nurture the naturally-selected, wilder varieties. And although it obviously takes maintenance, keeping bees for honey is feasible too. Mainstream beekeepers, at least in the United States, generally take too much honey from the hive, and then feed the bees sugar-water-which, given how much honey bees make, is ridiculous, not to mention unjust. A hive needs about a hundred twenty-five pounds of honey for the winter, but produces multiple times that-so humans can take gallons of honey from a single hive each year and leave the bees what they need, which is only fair-and makes sense. It’s far better for the health of the hive.
Wednesday afternoon and evening, Tree Bressen gave us a consensus and facilitation workshop. If anyone ever has the chance to do a workshop with her, I’d recommend it. She’s articulate and skilled. We focused mostly on facilitation. I don’t know that I’m naturally gifted at it, but I’m interested in developing the skills-I want to be able to create space for ideas to flow freely, and for sparks of inspiration to be born and channeled into action! I think that successful facilitation is largely about hearing both what people say and what they mean, and being aware of how they feel. In order to do that well, I think you have to be in touch with your own thoughts and feelings even while things are moving fast. I aspire to that, and admire people who do it well, like Tree.
I learned an interesting tidbit about consensus. A lot of groups that set out to use consensus to make decisions end up using a modified version of it-for instance, if they’re unable to reach true consensus, they might fall back on some kind of vote. In fact, Tree says, banks won’t lend to groups whose bylaws dictate that the group use full consensus-banks want groups to allow for a vote. On the other hand, many groups that say they use a voting system-for example, many boards of directors (including of those very same banks)-really use consensus: they do vote, but they actually work things out beforehand and aim to have everyone agree, and even if they don’t all agree, then they’ve generally at least heard each other out.
In some ways, I feel less connected with Lost Valley as a community than I’ve felt in the past. My life mostly revolves around the summer course, and I haven’t been as involved recently in general community life. In fact, that’s less because of choices I’ve made (though I have made choices consistent with that) and more because, during the summer, the life of the course seems to take over the community a bit, or at least blend in, and the community doesn’t maintain a strong boundary. This isn’t necessarily bad. But soon the course will end, and all of a sudden twenty people who have been living here will be gone, along with all their connections with us and with each other. I imagine that some of us who remain will find our connections with each other changed.
The day the summer course ends, I leave for a week in Maine, followed by Megan’s wedding in Washington, and then possibly a few more days in the northern Pacific northwest. In my absence, all the students will leave, my friend Aimee will leave for good, and a new, three-week course (Eco-Homes: An Introduction to Ecological Building and Appropriate Technology) will begin. Shortly afterward, at least three more Lost Valley residents or interns will leave. I have a feeling that when I come back, everything will feel different. I have no idea what things will be like.
There have been many other highlights recently, and here are a few. Last Wednesday we had an open mic night. I sang four songs with Chris R and Stephanie Z; you can listen to two here. (Thanks to Chris for recording. I was sitting closest to the microphone, I think . . . Depending what browser you're using, you may have to download them before you can listen.) And last weekend I visited Portland. I had a fabulous time staying with Robin and also seeing Anne and Joanna. Anne, Robin, and I spent much of one evening sharing delicious food, wine, and ideas under a just-past-full moon; given the fullness of our hearts that evening (at least mine) and the fact that Robin is about to leave the west coast, it struck me as poetry. Today I got to talk very briefly with my dear African-traveling friend Jenny. I love the beautiful people in my life at Lost Valley. And I’m so, so grateful for all of my wonderful older friends too.
I’ve been starting to think seriously about the future after the scheduled end of my internship in late October. I have many different ideas and feelings. One factor is that Marc, the director of the educational programs at Lost Valley, is leaving in November. He doesn’t know yet who will replace him. By then, I will have been here for seven months. I’m not interested in nor qualified for his position, but I see myself as a potential resource for whoever takes Marc’s place; I could stay at Lost Valley for another year or part of a year and help to facilitate that transition. In some big ways, that possibility appeals to me. I also feel pulled in other directions. I’m ready-hungry-to be gaining practical permaculture-related skills that I just haven’t been able to do in the work I’ve been doing here. I want to work with other people on projects that build community where it doesn’t exist strongly yet, and that transform cities into beautiful, lush, green places. I’ve been realizing that most of the permaculturists I know and admire got to where they are largely by creating and tending their own gardens and just trying things out. So I’m wondering how I could do that-and start to actually make a living. I really like Oregon, and it happens to be the best place I know of in this country to learn about permaculture-I think that more people are doing it here than in any other part of the country. So it could continue to be a great classroom for me, and a good place to live for awhile longer. I also feel pulled to travel literally all over the world. Some of the places I regularly feel attracted to are parts of Latin America, Africa, the Mediterranean, parts of the western U.S. that I haven’t been to like Montana, parts of New England/southeastern Canada, Minnesota . . . (It’s funny to me that Minnesota is on that list now, because a year ago I couldn’t imagine having moved on from my Carleton depression enough to ever want to be in the same state again!) It’s possible that I could combine traveling with learning about the stuff I want to learn about-and I may seek to do that. It’s also possible that part of my desire to travel comes from uncertainty about my future. I simultaneously feel the desire to go all over the place and see and experience a wide variety of things, and feel the desire to put down roots for awhile in the area where I am right now. We’ll see . . .
One last thought for now. I’m curious about and try to notice the ways in which I do and don’t connect with the earth and her range of life. This time of year, I notice some passion in myself around wild berries! The variety and abundance of wild berries here is fabulous. There are many kinds I know are out there but I haven’t encountered-mostly different Rubus species (raspberry/blackberry-types) I haven’t met before. But there are plenty of kinds of berries in plain view everywhere. The strawberries have passed (and they were soooooo sweet); right now, some thimbleberries are ripe, and tarter but more flavorful than raspberries (the compromising-or at least precarious-positions I’ve found myself in indulging my thimbleberry-lust have made me laugh); visibly approaching are blackberries (I see three species or varieties, plus one other close relative) and salal. Both of the last two grow in such quantity that, when they’re ripe, I can see that you could easily pick gallons every day and completely gorge yourself, and you wouldn’t have made a visible dent. I’m excited about that abundance of fruit . . . you can’t live on blackberries, but in a few weeks I might try!