In early January we took advantage of available time in the midst of the north country’s frozen, quiet rest and I packed my mud boots and rain coat and water sample from Sweetwater Spring and flew to northern California for a 15 day intensive co-led by Starhawk and a gathered support staff who lead what they call an Earth Activist Training.
EAT, for short, is a dynamic two week blend of information/education, hands-on outdoor land projects, ritual and sacred intonations, and political action trainings all spiraling around and through the steadily evolving world known as Permaculture. There were about 40 participants and we began each day with breakfast at 8 and finished each night between 9 and 11pm., with one free day. It was intense and I’m glad, at this age, that I secured an individual room and let the ‘youngins’ share the dorms.
Our intention is to employ relevant methods and orientations, learned during the California course, here at Sweetwater Sanctuary. With patience, practice and further study we desire to improve upon the way we live here in dedication to that which serves the health, help, and happiness of all of our relations
Tasmanian born Bill Mollison formed the Permaculture Institute in 1978. Today there are many thousands of sites, trainings and projects world wide. Quoting from his Introduction to Permaculture, “the definition comes from the Latin word Permanens – to endure and persist through time and cultura- cultures; meaning permanent cultures. It is an interdisciplinary design science, focused on sustainable system design. Mollison states “Sustainable is defined as a system, which over it’s lifetime produces energy equivalent to or in excess of what it consumes”.
A system of eco-design that meets the needs of people and all life around us has basic ethics such as, care for the earth, care for people, and care for the future. Its core philosophy is that everything is related. This way of understanding I feel, forever, indebted to my Midwest-based Native American friends for embodying and teaching me years ago. The popular notion that “We are all One” can make our hearts feel love for one another, but in nature and, in reality, this entire more-than-human world is an infinitely related field of vast and diverse life forms, each acting according to their own individual and strangely marvelous natures.
We will write more about our tangible implementations of these concepts in future postings. Those who wish to contribute your ideas or ways of using Permaculture methods, please do so by visiting our Plant Spirit Healing Forum to share your experiences. For now, as an example, we intend to use the Ausie “chop and drop” practice more frequently around the gardens and margins here. We realize our rampantly expanding comfrey patch can actually be advantageously harvested by cutting her back and using the leaves and stems as nitrogen fixing mulch in various gardens. My instructors could not emphasize enough the importance of using lots of good compost and heavy mulch in garden practice, and perhaps we’ll grow our garden methods more away from traditional row planting and more toward cover cropping, stacking methodology, forest canopy principles, and various ways that eventually lead to that basic goal of all permaculturalists – more time afforded for laying in the hammock or smelling the flowers.
You can learn more about the Earth Activist Training at www.earthactivisttraining.org