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.

Reflections on the Earth Activist Training Report Back

One lunar eclipsed full moon evening we organized an event to share our learning and experiences at The Earth Activist Training. With 25 attendees we opened the space with introductions and a song. We moved on to explain permaculture design basics through stating the ethics: care of the land, care of the people, and fair share to all plus creating surplus by design. This lead into a meditation using the first of the 27 principals that one uses in designing permaculture spaces, observation. People closed their eyes and imagined they were in a spot in nature and looked for the patterns in that spot. It was about using all their senses as well as working with the phrase "I wonder" as they imagined moving through that natural environment. We then had them open their eyes and look at the shapes in front of them, see what patterns were in the room. We wrote these patterns down on a white board and talked about what patterns one might use in designing a permaculture space.

The observation time lead to a slide show exemplifying our experience and highlighting the rainwater catchment gray water hand washing station we built as well as the cob and waddle storage shed we began building. We rounded out the evening with a hands on ritual workshop in singing and making seed balls. As we rolled together the clay, compost and native wild seeds Heron described the plants many uses and the no till method of the seed balls. People put energy for the world they wanted to live in by singing over our finished product, a pile of tiny balls ready to repair degraded land and beautify a piece of earth with their medicinal and flowerful qualities.


As a co-creator of this report back I felt quiet happy with the results. I felt that all our hard work and advertising payed off. It was fun to see a large group of people including people we did not know gaining new insights and asking so many questions. It was hard to choose what to focus on; this training covered so many topics so to choose how best to present it was challenging. In the end I am glad we stuck to teaching only three key things and just sharing our experience for the rest of the time. We had report back forms and it was good to get a lot of appreciation and some constructive criticism. I feel that in time my teaching skills will get even better, especially in transitioning from one topic to the next. I liked helping to lead people in ritual that had never or very rarely experienced it. In the feed back form we asked people directly what they thought about the ritual and most agreed that they did not usually do this sort of thing but were happy with the relaxed atmosphere and how they could choose to participate or not.

I like learning how to be a teacher, how to make things fun and dynamic as well as packed with information. I also liked the process Heron and I had to go through to lead this together. It was hard choosing who would do what tasks. We both ended up working independently of each other a lot and there was a feeling that we could not rely on the other for help. We were able to communicate this and work it out so that we could collaborate when it came time to lead the report back. I feel like this is one of the many lessons I am learning in working collectively. These are great steps towards being able to live in an intentional community.

Week 6 winter quarter

I spent week 6 focused on the report back next week and on gathering more inspiration for my art installation. I rented a PBS series called "Art 21," interviews with artist in the 21st century. These DVDs were incredibly helpful in gaining perspective and guidance surrounding the work I am creating. I was especially enchanted with Ann Hamilton's work. Her use of natural materials and multimedia presentations exploring the idea of spirituality excited me. I was also enthralled by the works of Kiki Smith, her sculpture, especially about the witch trials was a fascinating way to make history relevant and in your face. I liked the reminder of how political art is a way of creating beauty and healing in a tense and destructive environment. As a multi-media artist I also appreciated how the interviews were shot, few face on shots and mostly showing the artist as they created their work. You really got a sense of the process and energy put into each piece.

Heron and I crafted a slideshow and presentation for the report back as well as took a look over our timeline and decided what were the most important things to cover. We have been publicizing the event widely and will be doing a short interview on the radio about permaculture and the report back. I think it will go smoothly and be very dynamic, a true expression of our experience at EAT.

I have been keeping up with my Body and Earth nature awareness exercises and notice new things each time I go out. I find myself craving to go to my secret spot in the mornings. I feel as though I am fully honoring the spring this year by watching it slowly unfold in my neighborhood. This week we were focused on the brain and visceral experience in the body. I did yoga on Saturday and had an even more illuminated experience when noticing my visceral body and brain during the practice.

Week 5 Winter Quarter

This week began with a fit of inspiration. I spent Monday morning delving into heavy art books in the library containing images to awaken my creativity and spring forth-new ideas for my art installation. Through reading Janine Antoni's Slip of the Tongue I was able to think up new ways of visualizing my body as a part of the installation. Her use of her mouth, hair and even eyelashes as tools to manipulate her work gave me a new foundation for how to make my piece even more interactive. This study went along well with my readings in Body and Earth. I am learning about evolution by being present with its existence in my body, I am noticing how I came to be an up right creature. By doing movement exercises in the book I stay connected to this somatic experience. I am really enjoying doing this course of study and like how it influences my art installation.

I have decided the basic structure of my installation. I plan to present it week 10 as an art event in my neighborhood with my installation outside and local small films being shown inside.
I will construct an art installation in my backyard. Building a cocoon like structure that visitors will be invited to enter with the beat of a drum outside. As they come into the space they will be greeted by a small stone labyrinth and dry tea bags (harvested form the many cups of tea drank at EAT) hanging from strings that they will have to duck from hitting as they walk the spiral of the labyrinth. Attached to the tea bags will be words from a poem by Rosario Murillo that starts with the line "I am going to plant a heart in the earth." As the visitor walks the labyrinth they will read lines from the poem and end in the middle. I imagine this as a way for the visitor to connect with there body in the space. There will be a worm bin in the middle of the spiral with a heart made of sprouted turf on top of it.

This installation will be a way for me to share some of the knowledge I experienced at the EAT and also a way to symbolize the ritual I do as a part of my earth based spirituality practice. All things I use for this installation will be crafted from natural and found materials except the worm bin which I will be constructing and using for my house and garden. I plan to use my body as a tool in crafting some of the structural elements of the installation. I am still thinking of different ways I want to conceive of this somatic practice in the making and experiencing of the installation.

Heron and I had another good seminar discussing our readings from the book Creating A Life Together as well as discussing the curriculum for the EAT report back. We came up with a general outline of what we wanted to focus on then went through each thing and discussed who would lead it and what information was the most important to share. This will be a well-planned report back exemplifying the holistic approach to learning we gathered at the EAT.

Notes on "The Earth Path" by Starhawk

One of the key concepts I got out of reading Starhawk’s book The Earth Path relates to the mechanistic approach verses the animate approach to how life is viewed in western contemporary culture. “The mechanistic model assumes that the world is knowable and controllable. Unintended consequences of an action are seen as anomalies, not “real” consequences, and therefore often go unseen, unacknowledged, and unaccounted for.”(16) This model of thinking shows up most readily in agriculture and the way western contemporary society relates to nature. Starhawk exemplifies this by showing how a corporation can clear-cut a field, spray pesticide to kill off weeds and say the salmon that die from the herbicide run off are “externalities” unintended consequences. After reading this it made me clearly see how one action is connected to a web of relations. “West Africans believed in an animated universe, in the process I call ‘continuous creation.’ Continuous creation means that the generation and recycling of energy is always in effect.”(21) “While indigenous cultures are all different, one thing they share in common is a perception of the world as alive and themselves as embedded in a matrix of complex relationships.”(22)

This book has greatly affected the way I look at the history of my culture in North America and re-examine the way I choose to be in the world. I started this book before attending the earth activist training. Using these tools and way of thinking on a daily basis during the training really enriched the text and made me more ready to dive into Starhawk’s approach to observing the natural world. The Earth Path is full of examples and exercises of ways to connect with the earth and see all beings as sacred. I want to use this book and its exercises as a physical tool in connecting to my home and the land I live on. I have chosen to keep it as a resource throughout this quarter, to take some of her observation with me when I go to my secret spot, when I have social interactions in groups and when I am moving around in my day to day life grounded and aware.
“To be a witch is to be someone who has concisely accepted the challenge of serving the powers of life and balance.” (134)

Week 4 winter quarter

I began this week happy to be back in the swing of academic life. I successfully found my (secret spot), a spot in a wooded area near my home to quietly observe nature and wild life. I began the exercise in Body and Earth that include doing this nature observation and movement exercises to lessen the distinction between my natural environment and me. I have also been putting to practice the things I learned at the E.A.T. around observing the place where I live and listening to bird language.

While I was in the bay area I took advantage of going to an installation art exhibit at the SF Moma. This provided the perfect space to sketch out some of my ideas for my final art installation. The work of Olafur Eliasson was inspiring as a way of creating interactive and engaging space. He liked to separate naturally occurring phenomenon and put it up in a gallery. For instance he used one room to create an installation of water vapor. He put a light on the vapor as if a piece of sunlight was pouring through the trees onto a waterfalls mist, which created a rainbow of mystery. It was very beautiful land yet very artificial. I prefer to observe the beauty and then create my own interpretation in outside space.

I appreciated his time-lapse photos the most. They documented a spot in Iceland where a valley met with a dark hill. He shot the same photo every hour from before sunrise to the black of evening. It was lovely to watch the subtle variations in light play and experience a day in the life of this valley. I also thought of the environmental implications of documenting a place like Iceland, which will be dramatically effected by climate change.
I plan to use some of this inspiration and metaphor in my work. I also did research on several natural materials art installationists and will be reading their books and watching their movies over the next few weeks. Including the works of Alma Ruiz, Wolfgang Lieb, Andy Goldsworthy and Janine Antoni.

On Wednesday I volunteered for Climate Change day and sat in on multiple workshops relating to making Evergreen carbon neutral and a panel discussion on next steps in making an active climate change movement. While I liked seeing the steps Evergreen is making to reduce carbon I felt like the workshop lacked in looking at the abundant resources for alternative energy the school already has. It made me want to look into doing more green design on campus. The workshop also lacked a strong facilitator so not all voices were heard and a few loud characters dominated the conversation. The panel discussion was inspiring in all the creative ways this diverse group of folks have figured out to reduce there carbon intake and build cleaner energy systems. I was especially inspired by one of the speakers talking about her small business "Terra Gardens" which makes food forests on people's lawns and her environmental despair workshops that got people feeling there feelings of hopelessness about the environment so they could ultimately heal and do better work.

Heron and I had a very successful seminar where we began by doing grounding exercises then did one of the examples in The Earth Path where we discussed our sacred intention. A question came to mind during the seminar, how am I living now to create the change I want to see in the future? This is something I want to continue asking myself as I do my work this quarter.

Syllabus for Building Sustainable Communities

Weeks 1, 2, and 3 Jan.7th-25th

• Jan 5th-19th: 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 catchments/conservation and grey water 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.
• Jan 23rd: Visit Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in Occidental, CA, to research intentional living situations and volunteer in their organic garden.
• Write complete syllabus
• Read The Earth Path by Starhawk aloud with learning partner
• Begin academic blog with entries from readings and reports on training.
• Complete sketches and initial brainstorm for Art installation

Week 4 Jan. 20th Feb. 1st

• Do exercises in Body and Earth chapters 1-3 and The Earth Path
• Keep field journal of nature awareness exercise
• Write on Blog about EAT and The Earth Path
• Publicity for EAT report back
• Sketch and write notes for art installation, watch Rivers and Tides by Andy Goldsworthy for inspiration
• Volunteer for Climate Change day
• Seminar on The Earth Path
• Reading: EAT reader and begin Reading: Creating a Life Together
  

Week 5 Feb. 4th-8th

• Do exercises in Body and Earth chapters 4-6 and The Earth Path
• Keep field journal of nature awareness exercise
• Write on Blog about EAT reader
• Publicity for EAT report back
• EAT report back curriculum planning
• Continue research on natural materials art installations and finalize sketches for installation
• Seminar on Creating a life together and EAT reader
• Reading: EAT reader and Creating a Life Together
  

Week 6 Feb. 11th-15th

• Do exercises in Body and Earth chapters 7-9 and The Earth Path
• Keep field journal of nature awareness exercise
• Write on Blog about Creating a Life Together
• Publicity for EAT report back
• EAT report back curriculum planning
• Begin construction of art installation!
• Seminar on Creating a Life together
• Reading: finish Creating a Life Together begin reading excerpts of The Intentional Communities Directory
  

Week 7 Feb. 18th-22nd

• Do exercises in Body and Earth chapters 10-12 and The Earth Path
• Keep field journal of nature awareness exercise
• Write on Blog about The Intentional Communities Directory
• Present evening report back on EAT for general community at the Free School
• Continue construction of art installation and gaining inspiration
• Seminar on The Intentional Communities Directory
• Reading: The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teachings For Sustainable Living

Week 8 Feb. 25th-29th

• Do exercises in Body and Earth chapters 13-15 and The Earth Path
• Keep field journal of nature awareness exercise
• Write on Blog about report back
• Continue construction of art installation and gaining inspiration
• Seminar on Widening the Circle: Inspiration and Guidance for Community
• Reading: Continue The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teachings For Sustainable Living

Week 9 March 3rd-7th

• Do exercises in Body and Earth chapters 16-18 and The Earth Path
• Keep field journal of nature awareness exercise
• Write on Blog about Widening the Circle: Inspiration and Guidance for Community
• Continue construction of art installation and gaining inspiration
• Seminar: community creation map plan
• Reading: finish The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teachings For Sustainable Living
• Start work on self evaluation
  

Week 10 March 10th-14th

• Do exercises in Body and Earth chapters 19-21 and The Earth Path
• Keep field journal of nature awareness exercise
• Write on Blog about community creation map plan
• Present Art Installation and photographically document experience
• Continue writing self evaluation
  

Week 11 March 17th-21st

• Self evaluation and faculty evaluation

Booklist:
Nature Awareness and Permaculture

• Body and Earth: An Experiential Guide by Andrea Olsen 2002. Middlebury College Press Lebanon, New Hampshire.
• 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 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.
• The Earth's Blanket: Traditional Teachings For Sustainable Living

Lessons from the Earth Activist Training Jan.5-19th

The Earth Activist Training is a learning space that was set up to engage Heron and I in the arts of radical sustainability and regenerative activism through learning the basics of permaculture design and other tools like alternative energy and consensus process. In coming to this training I did not truly expect them to cover all the topics listed in their online syllabus. I was happily surprised that they did and more. This was an intensive that left me with ideas to immediately start creating the environment I want to live in at home. I have the building blocks to learn more intensively the things that most inspired me which included a range of topics like installing simple gray water and rainwater catchments in my home, insulating my windows, making an accessible clothes line, learning bird language and basic tracking, leading full moon rituals, using urban permaculture to help re-mediate toxic lots, start doing stream restoration and creating wild habitat for animals and sanctuary for song birds.

For my final E.A.T. project with a small team I helped create a permaculture design project on Starhawk's, one of the teachers, land. I was able to get a sense of what it would really be like to help people design their land to work with the earth instead of on top of it. I also got a chance to interview the people living on the land and create a design that would cater to their needs. We not only designed better building structures and terraced gardens but also used our skills of social permaculture to create a more solid sharing and community feel for the caretakers and interns living on the land.

Below is a break down of the things we covered in the day to day of the training. They were long days 9am-10:30pm most often with few breaks in between. We had one day off which we chose to use by exploring the redwoods close by and spending some time connecting with the ocean.

Schedule during EAT

(Sun.) Day1. Principals and Patterns in Design. We learned about all the different patterns you can use for design, such as honeycomb, spiral, etc. We also looked at pictures and brainstormed what these designs might be best used for like a spiral in an herb garden.

(Mon.) Day2. AIR: Concepts Design and Process. We did sight sector analyses and learned about using the different zones of any piece of land sourcing the principals of integrate, reflect, absorb. We learned the basics of using a general core pattern, working from pattern to detail and then mind mapping our observations.

(Tues.) Day3. WATER: and Networking. We learned the basics of swale building, rainwater catchment, source, sink, catchment, key line, ponds, grey water and black water. In the afternoon we networked and shared resources that was called social permaculture. In the evening I helped co-create a new moon ritual where we made bio-brew, a nourishing drink for plants similar to compost tea, and worked with the magic of the land and the energy of the darkened moon.

(Wed.) Day4. SOIL: and Affinity Groups. We focused on all aspects of topsoil building and the importance of using the skin of the land. We also studied mushrooms and micro-remediation. Using compost and worm bins, sheet mulching, cover crops, erosion, bacteria for our starting point we made a worm bin and also made some mycelium bags to help integrate mushrooms into un-healthy soil and leach toxins. In the evening we had a political affinity group training where we pretended to get into a political debate. After this we did a human scale showing how many people wanted to work within the system or not.

(Thurs.) Day5. Plant Guilds, Food Forests and Grey Water! Grafting and pleaching, were some of the techniques covered in how to work with trees. we also learned how plants work together to create topsoil, a healthy soil would have a nitrogen fixer, insectory, and dynamic accumulator. We created a gray water and rain catchment system, making a hand washing station, plumbing and laying it out so the grey water goes into a swale in the garden. In the evening we did an anti-oppression training working in small groups on different oppressions and sharing our experiences with the larger group.

(Fri.) Day6. Field Day. Willow planting to control river erosion and swale building to catch rain water in a field. Design projects met that night I decided to be a part of designing Starhawk's land.

(Sun.) Day8. Animals and Climate Change. Animal husbandry and animal guilds, microclimates! And briefly we touched on tropical permaculture. Evening lecture on systems theory, climate change, solutions for sustainability!

(Mon.) Day9. Natural Building. We started the work of building a cob and waddle tool shed by making cob and waddle from mud, sand and straw. There was an inspiring lecture on the living building, passive solar design and a slide show of what others have created.
Evening lecture on urban permaculture! How to get involved example (city repair in Portland) and our teacher Eric’s inspiring story of food not lawns, how he inspired whole neighborhoods in Sebastopol to work together and create gardens on their front lawns.

(Tues.) Day10. FIRE: Energy and Bird Language Morning! Conservation, alternative electricity, solar thermal, wind, methane, micro hydro are some of the ways we studied to make alternative energy. Afternoon tracking and naturalism, awareness and bird language in depth! Holistic land management strategies, Allen Savory’s book, cattle grazing for disturbance and regeneration of native plants, preventing erosion. Evening lecture on consensus and starting a campaign, making press release, etc.

(Wed.) Day11. Invisible Structures. Consensus continued, power is earned over time with commitment to the whole. Learning strategies of group development, getting feed back and giving it. Global economics, local economy, land trusts! local currency, alternative financing!
Afternoon and evening work was done on design project, Star’s land, interview members, take pictures, design, water catchments, community structure, bunkhouse, zone 1 garden and planting plan. Healing from trauma ritual that ended in a laughing circle.

(Thurs.) Day12. Design Projects Continued!

(Fri,) Day 13. Design Presentations. We created an innovative and fun presentation using photo slide show, theater and information Sharing as well as drawings!
Good-bye ritual, making seed balls and singing for one of the teachers who is about to have a baby.