Self Evaluation for this contract

This contract was a jumping off point for my best friend and co-contractor Heron and I to make plans for the vision we share of building an intentional community. Looking back at all the hard work we have done, I can see how much closer we are to making this dream a reality.
Beginning this contract I set out for myself a list of goals. The first goal was to attend the Earth Activist Training (EAT), a two-week intensive permaculture design course that incorporated sustainability practices and activism through systems farming and design. This course not only taught us about systems farming and design but also covered such diverse topics as gray water and black water usage, micro-hydro electricity, consensus decision making, earth based ritual leading, grounding for activists, nature awareness, bird language and much more. I used this course mostly for inspiration: a way to get an introduction to many topics and select the ones I was most interested in for further study.

I found that nature awareness and bird language was one of the topics I wanted to continue learning when I got home. I used the book Body and Earth, by Andrea Olsen, to inform myself on this. I also attended a bird language workshop put on by the Wilderness Awareness School. In working with Body and Earth, I found a “secret spot” in nature and spent three mornings a week sitting and observing what I saw there, while maintaining an awareness of my body in the process.

Through observation I began knowing the place I live and the creatures that inhabit it. I was so engaged by my spot I craved going back there throughout the quarter and plan on continuing to go after the quarter is over. At the bird language workshop I was able to identify the birds I heard in my secret spot and what their different sounds meant. I listen each morning out my window to hear what the robins, song sparrows, and juncos are saying. I believe that the first step in creating community is getting to know the place you live in. By doing these exercises I have felt more connected to my neighborhood, bio-region and my vision of community. I want to create a land-based culture that has a built-in bonding system for people to feel connected to the place where they live and the natural rhythms of the ecosystem.

My second goal in this contract was to make an art installation to further my learning and challenge my skills as an artist; I researched and created an art installation using solely natural and found materials. I crafted an intimate piece about place, land, working with your environment, and living simply. The installation, a spiral labyrinth enclosed in a white parachute tent, took place on the side of my house in the front yard. I saw this installation as an opportunity to visually express my experience at the EAT, using seed balls that the viewer takes into the middle of the spiral. This installation is equally political to the work I did at the EAT but engaged on a heart felt level. I created space to contemplate these bigger issues, making art for pleasure and beauty along with engaging social justice themes.

The final project in this collective contract was creating a set of documents outlining our vision, values and goals for living in community. Heron and I used the book Creating a Life Together, by Diana Leafe Christian, as a tool and reference to start crafting these documents. We began this process by brainstorming the skills we already have for creating the community we want. I enjoyed doing these exercises as a way to connect our vision. It was fun to see what were the most important values to us and how they fit together. We did a similar exercise with our goals document. My favorite part about these exercises was getting a sense of how possible this goal is. Heron and I have talked for years about wanting community and land to work on. Starting now, with these exercises, I am seeing how we can make that vision come to life. I am learning about structure in a community, collectively working with another person and believing in our vision.

As I look back at this past quarter I can truly see how much I have grown. I am spending more time doing the things that I want to be doing, like exercises that give me energy and knowledge to continue working beyond this contract. Through engaging with nature as an observer I have learned many of her subtleties and feel more connected to the land. Through working on my installation and using my neighborhood for resources I have gotten to know the people that live here more and I have created a form of sustainable art: an art that is replenishing to the land, the people and the creatures.
After attending the Earth Activist Training I am inspired to be an even more active participant in creating a healthy planet. I feel more confident as a leader in ritual and public speaking. I feel more ready to take on my new project this summer helping to co-manage an organic farm and to incorporate permaculture design into it. I also feel more informed and ready to work with my current intentional community of friends and housemates. I plan to start a conversation café in the spring focused on intentional community in Olympia. I hope this will start a dialogue with people of different levels of experience in community to share stories and information so we can network and help each other out.

I look forward to engaging with my community more and continuing the work I accomplished this spring. It has been a wonderful opportunity to focus on the things I love and the future I want to create.

The Communities Directory

I began reading The Communities Directory aloud to Heron on our drive to Seattle one afternoon. I think this is the best way for this interactive guide to be shared. The Directory begins with a series of thirty three articles related to the intentional communities movement as well as listing seven hundred communities and what they offer. Sense we are not planning on visiting these communities for quiet some time we mainly focused on reading the articles which described many different scenarios that you come across in this movement . I was drawn to the articles on cults, being an elder looking for community, raising children in community and resistance activist community. As well as the essays on income sharing, working with consensus and setting up a structure so you get you personal needs met.

In the article "My other car isn't mine either" Bumper sticker for an income-sharing community
Valerie Renwick-Porter Outlines the basics of sharing income as a community. "One of the most attractive features of this type of living is the interdependence and the level of engagement we share with each other." I like this philosophy. I like how radically different this is from our mainstream one unit family culture. She goes on to describe having home business, sharing resources and making sure each persons need are met. I imagine this to be a challenging set up, deciding what "needs" are and what your fair share is. In my communal house we have a "Kitty" that we each put in $40 a month for collective grocery money. It took us awhile to decide what should be communal and what was your own personal wants. This food list has changed greatly from the beginning and is an ongoing dialogue in our house meetings. In this way we share money to help the collective get there basic needs met. It feels good to practicing this now to get a sense of what it might be like to do this on a larger scale.

In Life in a Resitance Community I was inspired by hearing about the radical acts people do in community. Sue Frankel-Streit points out that "Living with others who share a vision strengthens the activist resolve; when you are discouraged, you can draw strength from others. When you cannot be as active, you can support the activism of other community members." this was a good point to realize and a push for the importance of having a strong vision that you all follow. Frankel-Streit lives in a Catholic Workers community and does non-violent direct action. She is also a mother in this community and helps to raise the other children on their farm. I liked the idea that community can enhance your activism resolve and help you see your blind spots. It is always inspiring for me to see radical mothers and people who have made a commitment to social justice working with each other for the long term. I think a sense of spiritual connectedness is a part of keeping this energy going as well. The essay ends with a great quote by Dostoyevski and Sue Frankel-Streit "Love in dreams is easy, love in reality is a harsh and dreadful thing." It is only that harsh and dreadful love, in fact, that will sustain both community and activism, and it is perhaps this common root that keeps the two intertwined. When we bind together community and activism with love, the universe bends a little closer to justice."


I found the essay's in The Communities Directory to be great starting off points for thinking of the many ways people decide to share their lives. I hope to use this book in the future to set up a tour and get some hands on experience to ultimately create the kind of community Heron and I would like to share.

Week 9 winter quarter

Week nine started in Seattle at a Bird Language workshop presented by The Wilderness Awareness School. This workshop was so much fun. The presenter was full of pep and vigor as she pretended to be each bird. We learned the basics of different bird sounds and then got a chance to act them out in small groups. I had started to learn bird language at EAT, now six weeks later and after many visits to my secret spot, I had so many new questions. What I found to be the most helpful about the workshop was hearing the different sounds each bird makes. We focused on local species that are common and mostly ground feeders, Robin, Junko, Song Sparrow, and Towee. I realized that high pitch squeeze toy sound I heard at my spot was a Robin warning call, I always imagined a fluffy pink squeeze toy bird making that noise. I also learned that the little brown bird singing close to me at my spot was a song sparrow. Overall this workshop was a great start to identifying the sounds I hear each day at home, I felt excited and ready to learn more after it. I have also decided to get us a bird feeder so I can witness up close my bird neighbors.

I spent much time writing my summative essay on all the activities of this quarter. I realize how far I have come from the beginning. It has been quiet a journey into nature and into a way of learning I have wanted for a long time but am only now getting a chance to experiment with. It was a good experience seeing all that I have done, yet also daunting in presenting my writing through an essay format.

I have come to a good place in the final stages of my art installation. I have spent a lot of time worrying about this piece and have also had many different good ideas. I have stuck to the ones that make the most sense and I am happy with my work. I gathered the last stones for my labyrinth from a friends back yard. I have three possibilities for sound scapes on Sunday that would all work well. I gathered the birch bark to write the poem the piece is based on. It feels good to be here and to be ready to show my art to the public. I am happy I am creating DIY art space and adding beauty to my neighborhood. We shall see how I feel the day of the event, but for now I am content with my art.

Week 8 winter quarter

Week 8 was full of academic work prepping for my final installation and recording the experiences I have had this quarter.
I began the week writing a blog on permaculture, what I through about it and some of the highlights of what I had learned at the training. I also blogged about our successful report back.

The thing I am learning most from making this installation is giving my inner critic a rest. Through my meeting with my faculty I got this advice. " You can't control the embodied experience of your viewer, the most important thing is to enjoy the process and not stress the details." I have decided to take this advice to heart and not spend my time obsessing about how all the little parts fit together. I will trust my process and enjoy crafting each piece. It feels good to make art from all natural and found materials, low environmental impact art makes me feel more connected to my neighborhood, as I watch my neighbors walk by and look inquisitively at the spiral I am crafting. It makes me feel like an urban forager finding all the stones in the alleys and asking neighbors for extra ones from their patios. I take apple branches I find in a yard waist dumpster and weave them together into a square to create a nest of sorts. I made a flyer about the installation and started inviting people this weekend.


I spent the rest of the week crafting a values statement for my and Heron's community plan. We also made a chart of the goals we want to achieve before living on the land. These were all documents that are a part of our strategic plan for intentional community. It was fun making these statements, we got to brainstorm and use exercises from the book "Creating a life Together." We were also able to see how important it was for us to start attracting members so our vision can expand beyond our two imaginations. I had a good talk with a friend this week about her ideas of having an intentional community. Through that talk we realized how much we want in common and how fun it would be to talk with others about there strategies and dreams for community. We want to start an open conversation cafe about it starting in the spring.

Permaculture

Permaculture is a systems approach to designing land and farming. This is also a way of living, looking at your whole environment and seeing how one change affects all the life forms around it. The first thing you learn are the ethics, care of the land, care of the people, and creating a fair share for all with surplus. These ethics made me see how essential I am to creating a better world. Some environmentalists see humans as a scar on the planet, sucking away resource. They believe that humans must leave land alone in order for it to heal and become "natural" again. I disagree with this. I see people as our best biological resource because we can so greatly negatively affect our environment we can also greatly heal our environment with just a few ideology changes and management practices.

Permaculture is the art of beneficial relationships I see this as helpful in putting two plants that work well together in a garden bed as well as putting groups of humans together to care for those plants and healthy communication systems to promote a happy environment for all life forms in that area. Permaculture is a way of thinking as much as a farming technique. It encourages you to see the world as animate and working together dynamically for the greater good.

This mind set is very much in contrast to our current western mechanistic society. My friends and family were mostly raised with this mechanistic thinking, I watch them as they struggle to know where they belong, travel far and wide looking for home and moving to places just because they got a job there. This kind of displacement makes people sad and depressed, the last thing on their mind is what the native bushes are in the area they live, they are consumed with popular media and longing for a true sense of belonging. The more I use animate thinking the more happy and alive I feel, I ally myself with all living creatures and know my place in the world. I want to teach the art of animate thinking to others starting with my friends and family, re-educating them to the ways of the land that our ancestors taught us.

The first thing you learn in permaculture is the art of observation. The more you observe an environment the better you can get to know it. Before you think about implementing any new design you must sit with the land and see what it needs and what it already has. What are its surplus's? What is it lacking? How has the land been compensating for that lack? What is the best way to make a simple change for the greatest effect? By observing you learn the answers to all these questions. In social permaculture I noticed a trend, being raised female in this society I find because of sexism I have trouble stating what I think. My way of trying to remedy that situation is by charging in and saying exactly what I want to un-censored, this technique works well in making me believe in myself more and to be heard but does not always work in thinking about changing a system. I found taking an observational approach teaches me about the situation before I go into it. Then, using my thinking, I choose weather I need to charge in or give space for others to be heard too.

I have used the technique of observation in doing my weekly nature awareness exercises at my secret spot. By doing this I can see so much more of what is happening in my neighborhood, I know what bird habitat we already have as well as how the trees are handling the rapid spread of English ivy. As I watch the birds and wild things I feel more connected to place and I know better ways of working with the nature around me. We have gophers in our yard, instead of exterminating them we plant more squash and cabbage then we will need to share the abundance with the creatures that call our back yard home.


Through using my animate thinking, observation and beneficial relationships skills I am learning how to be a permaculturist. The key thing I learned at The Earth Activist Training was permaculture design. At the end of the course I got my 72-hour beginner certification, which allows me to work as an apprentice to a permaculturist and work on most permaculture farms. It also gives me the chance to create a permaculture design business in the future. I look forward to applying these techniques as I collectively run a small farm this summer.

Creating a Life Together :Practical Tools to grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities

Heron and I used Creating a Life Together as a tool and reference to start making plans for our future community. This contract began with our idea, building on a 10-year plan to establish an intentional community and education center in the Pacific Northwest. My vision for the community incorporates artistic exploration with deep connection to the natural environment. I believe that nature awareness can be greatly enhanced by artistic expression. Our community will incorporate a “freeskool” (for grassroots information and skill-share), long-term permaculture farm to produce a subsistence level of food for community members and guests, long-term internships in building a sustainable society, use of local resources (wild food and medicine, water, timber, etc.), and a documentary media collective. It will be financially sustained by our work as educators, foresters, artists, and farmers, and other diverse small industries. Through reading Diana Leafe Christian's work I started to see what the practical steps were to making a truly successful community. Christian breaks down the skills you will need to start this business and a time-line for the first steps in finding members and land. Heron and I began this process by brainstorming the skills we already have for creating the community we want. After this we brainstormed the skills we will need and the kinds of people we want to live with.

In the top 10% of successful communities Christian outlines, is the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, the community Heron and I visited in California. It was great to see that we chose the right place to investigate. I remembered talking to one of the members on the day that we visited and volunteered in their garden. Michelle's advice for creating community was 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 has 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.

This advice seemed like a good way to think about the foundation of our community. Another tool that Christian shares is creating a vision document to state clearly why we want this community and what we will achieve in creating it. This has lead to Heron and I crafting many small vision documents to align our values so we can be sharing the same ideas when courting others to join us in community. We feel that we cannot create a true vision document till we have a good strong group of people ready to commit.
Overall I found this book to be helpful in making this process much less overwhelming. I see that I have tools and mentors in the process of making a community and that we could be a success. I will be posting some of the vision documents and brain storms Heron and I come up with in the next two weeks.

Week 7 winter quarter

Week 7 was predominately focused on putting together the final pieces to the report back. Together and Heron and I gathered the materials to make seed balls, compost and clay and then had our interview on The Free school radio show. We discussed going to EAT and our new perspective in light of it. We were asked the question. "With the amount of environmental degradation and world market we have set up in our current system do you think it is possible to heal the land and have enough resource for everyone in the USA?" my answer was yes! and more. One thing I learned at EAT was how easy it could be to change the world just by changing your mentality to it. Instead of seeing chemically treated grass, yard after yard, imagine each green square as a garden providing most of the nutrition for the family that lives there. In cities imagine it being mandatory to install rain water catchments and food forests on the tops of buildings. There is no scarcity of land and human power in the USA to provide for the needs of all of its citizens and share the abundance with neighbors. As for the toxic soils from chemical and mono-crop farming, I learned how possible it is to restore damaged land naturally and create a diverse eco-system once again. Knowing these tools gives me hope that we can get out of this mechanistic thinking and start seeing the land and nature as alive and something we want to care for because we are part of it and we feel healthy when it is healthy.

I spent the rest of the week imaging more ideas for my art installation and gathering materials for building the labyrinth. My goal for next week is to create a flyer to invite people to see it and start crafting the sprouted figures for the center of the installation. After watching many art 21 video interviews I have decided to take some inspiration from Kiki Smith's work and create something in honor of the witches that burned in Europe during the witch trials. I think that this is very relevant to my work at EAT and is an honor to my elders and mentors in earth based spirituality. The piece is not quiet done in my head but I think it will be a good start to a greater idea.

I spent this weekend at the "Wilderness Re-Wilding Skill-Share" In Bellingham Washington. This was a camp out on a friends land where 50 people taught each other skills related to living simply with nature and learning different ways of connecting to the land. It was a fun weekend of doing sensory awareness exercises, playing games, learning how to identify winter twigs, I will take this knowledge back to my secret spot and I.D. the trees and shrubs there, making fermented food for preservation, tracking, making fire with a bow drill and trapping. Overall I had a sweet time being there and feeling like I have the skills to live a simpler life in connection with the land. I felt especially empowered by the bow drill workshop, this technique allows you to make fires with materials you find in the woods and not use matches. I want to practice this more when the weather warms and I can start camping again.