Dare to Trust

January 4, 2015

Sometimes it’s hard.

Life intervenes.  Doubt 

blossoms.  Imagination is hollow.

Persist.  

Believe.  Dare to trust that this tremulous 

something is nonetheless incredibly potent and wanting to 

come through you into the world.  

The rest of life eagerly awaits it.  Take one brave step.  

Listen for those who are kindred.  

They are there.

Ripe Communities: Vulnerability and Patience, July 2014

Ripe Communities:  Vulnerability and Patience   July 6, 2014

Perspective & Hope.

How can I be nearly a year down the road of this particular journey?

It is easy to be impatient, to fear that I am too immersed in the details of arriving, of daily living.  Am I truly moving ahead in my life and my intentions of building rich human community, of devoting my experience, skills & voice— as wilderness guide, engineer, artist, parent, teacher, elder— towards a sweeter future?

There’s something about backpacking together with Shane that feeds my perspective and hope.  We are growing into this new life-place:  one of adult comrades with a variety of kindred interests and a deep history of knowing each other.

Shane’s current inquiry into the botany & ecology of wild places inspires conversations between us about the future of these mountain forests & humans within them.  I leap ahead— linking islands of native habitat & Shane’s idea about bringing permaculture & indigenous plants into local communities & yards— and connect all of that to my imagining of a land-based cross-generational teaching community.

Such a contrast between the more limited & “tame” forests of central North Carolina where Shane spent his elementary through early high school years, and this immense much-more-trackless land of north Idaho of his late teens and early adulthood.  

Musing about his love now of pathfinding across wild topography and his skill in using tiny twig-fires to heat food, we saw the gift of his younger years in North Carolina as a just-right and safe enough container.  That period and place— roaming those less-wild woodlands and learning basic fire skills— provided amazing freedom and stepping stones towards the future he now inhabits.

Something in all of this reminds me that it takes time for big dreams and futures to take visible shape.  Fostering underground roots that are mostly unseen and yet potent is the foundation.  Patience, persistence, holding intention:  they are roots.

(Do you see the mourning dove on her nest?)

Vulnerability seems a gift in this, too.  Often I feel my hesitation to risk; to articulate and share my deepest-held hopes and dreams.  “Someone” might laugh, or roll their eyes!  I might lose some conventional approval.

But I am NOT conventional.  And I do hold these big dreams.

Continuing to introduce myself genuinely as I am has brought in new and inspiring friends with kindred hopes, and I bet that in some years down the road, I will be able to have the perspective looking back of how these beginnings have grown into some chunk of the future I hope for. 

So I cheer myself on— and you, my friends— in holding to dreams.  May shy and wild snowshoe hares emerge to greet us as we stand, unsuspecting that some aspect of us and the way we are present has made a safe place.

Rekindling Friendships, written March 2014

Sights, Inspirations and Rekindling Friendships  March 18, 2014

It’s three weeks since I’ve written.  At the moment I’m on a bus in Oregon along the Columbia River that Amtrak has hired to shuttle us— our train lost time in the Cascades behind a limping freight, and now they are aiming to make up time and catch the eastbound Empire Builder that left Portland ahead of us.  

One way or the other, I should end up in Sandpoint, Idaho in the wee hours of the morning.  I have a place to stay for the next 2 nights, and various leads to follow towards finding a small place or room to rent for the next months.  I expect these next few days to also rendezvous with Shane and my little car, battery reconnected after its long winter of hibernation.  For sure, I am unlikely to be sitting around much in the next while, so this bus ride seems the perfect opportunity to write you all.  I plan to stop by the Sandpoint Library tomorrow, connect to the Internet, and send this off!

These weeks have been rich in incredible countryside, and even richer in people, stories and  conversation.  In the midst of much unknown, I am also hopeful and inspired.  

Powerful winter storms and uncertain timing of ice in Chicago encouraged my friend Elizabeth and me to err in the direction of caution and cancel our long-planned trip to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in nearby Missouri.  We turned the disappointment into quiet time together and a project with Elizabeth’s vintage Singer sewing machine and a lovely Goodwill Store silk scarf to create a lavender-filled eye pillow as a gift in appreciation for our hostess at Dancing Rabbit whose significant coordination efforts were for naught.  And we feasted on the incredible variety of an orchid show at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Traveling by public ground transportation has gone well.  It was just delightful to benefit from my strategy last summer of accumulating Amtrak points and to have earned a tiny sleeper space on the California Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco.   The space design is superb and I took notes and pictures:  living and sleeping space for 2 along with a compact closet in less than 32 square feet!  I loved it!  During the day there were 2 comfortable facing chairs that at night flattened into a lower berth with another bunk above:

Arriving in the soft spring of California began with another wonderful Servas host family in Palo Alto and a gentle transition to Petra, Joseph and the Wilderness Guides Council’s annual Gathering in an absolutely sweet place along the Pacific near Bodega Bay.  At night, I could hear the ocean surf, and this is the time of year that the grey whales are migrating back north from Baja along this shore with their newborn calves.

The entire Gathering was incredible for me:  I particularly loved all the new members we had, many of them in their twenties and thirties.  And hard work that I and others had invested beforehand concluded in a broad and amazing consensus process to move ahead with the intention of becoming a public benefit nonprofit that I will continue to be significantly involved in, towards long-held dreams by many of us to one day make earth-based rites of passage work accessible to every family and community.

I’ve spent the week since the Gathering with 4 different sets of friends in northern California, sharing news and hopes for the future.  Over the weekend, I was with Dominique, David and Torin, hiking along Sly Park Lake and catching up- we originally met when Shane and Torin were in a Montessori pre-school together.

And yesterday I was with my two best friends from California teacher training for the first time in 13 years or so.  Deb and I joined Arlene in her 5th grade classroom, and then had some great visiting time together before I caught the train last night out of Sacramento.

I feel quite blessed in all these circles of amazing friendship and possibility in my life.  Connecting, and staying connected across wide gaps of years and geography--- it's a discipline that seems vital to community and creating the potential for it in a broad variety of ways.

P.S. Wednesday, March 19  Arrived safely in Sandpoint in wee hours last night and found a friendly fellow-traveling family to give me a ride to the home of the young friends where I am staying through tonight, so I didn’t have to wake any one up!  Currently at the library with internet access and have started following leads for congenial places to live.  

Community Winter and Idaho-Bound, written February 2014

Community Winter and Idaho-Bound  February 26, 2014

I realized that this winter was a time to put some good foundations in place and tie up loose ends   I sold my car and my old laptop, finally got a will and a Health Care Power of Attorney written, moved everything into a different storage unit for a lower monthly rent, wrapped up final energy models with my engineering work, navigated the Affordable Health Care Act, and the like.  

I spent a good deal of time with my sister Susan, Mom and as many friends as I could manage to connect with, and with the land of North Carolina.  
 

And I had the good fortune to share the home of my good friends Becky and Lee, surrounded by their larger co-housing community of Arcadia.  

Our neighbors were welcoming and generous to me, sharing beeswax for a candle-dipping project, a bike with great side baskets that supported some helpful bus-bike travel on various errands, an interesting book on off-the-grid power, and some hiking boots to keep my feet dry climbing various springtime mountains with Shane!

33 homes clustered this way chew up much less land in roadways, and neighbors walk past rather than driving, so connections happen easily.  The storm water pond attracts birds, and there are shared garden, play field, and community dining/cooking space for meals and celebrations together.  Every morning I could run through the small woodlot next to the pond, greeting my favorite white oak tree and whoever else was out at the same time.  (You can tell we had an unusual heavy snow a couple of weeks ago!)

Of course it’s crucial to be kindred, AND I am more and more inspired by the huge benefits of house-sharing with others— now more than ever, with natural resources precious and dwindling, finances tricky, and demographics leaning towards many single people.

The most lovely part for me is how easy it is to counter the isolating impact of busy schedules this way, with impromptu and rich conversations, laughter over side-by-side meal preparations, games.  I reveled in it!  Turns out Becky had as much fun dipping beeswax birthday candles as I did, and we are a dynamite jigsaw puzzle duo!

Instead of working inside all day after our big storm, I yielded to temptation and played with my buddies in the snow!

Becky dreamed up a shared trip as I was leaving North Carolina that was an incredibly sweet transition:  first to the mountains near Asheville to visit land that is about to leave her family, while camping with my dear friend Justine.  We had a sweet morning snuggled in our sleeping bags near the pond full of springtime frogs, and talking about life. 

Then Becky and I headed to Charlottesville, Virginia and we each visited good friends before her return to North Carolina and my boarding the train for Chicago.  I had a joyous evening with my high school friend Jane and her good husband Mark.

And I’m getting to spend time with two lovely women I got to know last year— Kristina in Charlottesville 

and Elizabeth in Chicago.  

Before I head on to the San Francisco Bay area, Elizabeth and I are quite anticipating a weekend trip together to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, a very interesting intentional community in northeastern Missouri that is hosting us to learn more about what they have figured out.

Most of the tiny house frame, various tools, my bike, and boxes of books, cookware and some clothes are tucked into my 10 x 10 storage unit as I head towards Sandpoint, ID and the mysterious yet-to-emerge patchwork of community and livelihood that await me there, along with great time with Shane.  I expect I’ll head back to North Carolina in September or so, and maybe this next winter will see the tiny house taking form.

New Orleans and Old Stories, written late October 2013

New Orleans and Old Stories  October 30, 2013

I love that there are some operating streetcars in New Orleans' transit system, and I rode one at the end of the day after a walking tour of the Garden District:  a section of huge old homes built to impress "the neighbors" in the mid-1840's after a Frenchwoman sold her plantation.  The streetcars were fun to ride.

Odd to walk the city thinking what it must have been like just after Katrina, and also noting all the stark contrast of privilege and oppression.  But I found it a friendly city with a sense of humanity (unlike Houston, which felt creepy to me…. urban sprawl, corporate greed, asphalt and mining the earth without thought of the impact and the future). 

Before walking the Garden District, I took the bus (I loved the city's great public transportation!) to Audubon Park near Tulane and Loyola campuses, intentionally to see what they call "The Tree of Life".  It is a live oak called the De Bore oak that they estimate was planted in Audubon Park in 1740.  Here it is.  I sat up against it for a while and imagined the stories it has witnessed.

My hosts Grace and Harvey are an English-as-a-2nd-language teacher and a city permit/planner with the New Orleans Water Board, respectively, with a love of old trees.  Harvey is an amateur dendrochronologist who has been working energetically since 2003 (that was 200 years since the Louisiana Purchase) to register old bald cypresses in the state that pre-date the Purchase.  His efforts help educate owners to the wonder of preserving such long-lived and slow-growing trees.  One of them is almost 19 feet in circumference and dates to be at least 800 years old.  

Harvey and Grace's house is just south of the Garden District and near the Mississippi River, and was built before 1850 in this old working class neighborhood.  Again, I wondered about the stories going back into past centuries.

Two coincidences of interest:  Grace and Harvey had stayed with the same Servas couple in Sandpoint that I stayed with who are sailors and very involved with smart growth and the Idaho Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance, and liked them as well as I did.  And Harvey did his graduate work in Cincinnati in the late 70's, when I first lived there, and was quite interested in the Urban Ecovillage work there of my friends the Schenks that I stayed with this summer.

Stories and Cross-Pollination  August and September, 2013

I've been thinking a lot about stories and cross-pollination with this journey.  Traveling has immersed me in multiple points of view, and brought an incredible array of new information and thinking.  

There was quite a bonsai collection at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and the eldest was hundreds of years old.  Wouldn't it be something to know the stories of all the people who have tended it?  Everywhere I've stopped, the stories of the people I've met have touched me, and in some way helped to sculpt MY form and heart as I look towards the future. 

My friend Kristina in Charlottesville spoke of her homeland of Armenia and the depth of community that was there, generations old for her.  Living here now, I see her dedicated to creating that level of connection amongst the people she knows.  

 Elizabeth in Chicago, who grew up in Colombia, has also brought to this country her heart for people, her bone-deep value of living collaboratively and kindly.  

I've already written of the urban-based Eco-village and backyard Community Supported Agriculture I found as the outgrowth of 30+ years of Jim and Eileen Schenks' engagement with their old working-class neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Chicago has a lively urban agriculture program going, too:

The Schweigerts in St. Paul shared a documentary their daughter both lived and produced- a small troupe of inspired young thespians built a raft, floated down the Mississippi on it, and tell of the life and the sickness of the river, the native peoples who continue to hold it sacred, the narratives of small town residents and fishermen along the shores, the power of the current.  At a St. Paul food co-op, I found and loved this discount for shoppers who come by bike:

In the small town of Eureka, Montana, I heard the story of a non-profit that 4 people began and guided by asking what the community needed and how they could fund it.  Today Sunburst Community Service Foundation is responsible for a free Shakespeare in the Park offering and other arts events throughout the year; a network of clinics, mental health and social services for families in Eureka and other small towns in the same county; a greenway and trail that lies along an old railroad bed; and the latest possibility:  a proposal to develop a cohousing complex of 25 apartments serving older people and people who use mental health services.  

Glacier National Park was a study in contrasts:  wild mountain goats, intense tourist pressure, NO recycling program for their water bottles, paper and food containers, a lovely small hostel:

In northern Idaho and eastern Washington, where I've spent my last 5 weeks or so, families and communities are wrestling with livelihood and land-use issues as Canadian coal trains steadily come through en route to export.  It's a hard thing.  Families need better choices!  

There's an organization in Spokane and Sandpoint called Power Past Coal, and the latest estimate is that proposed plans will ADD 16 trains per day hauling through this area… WOW.  All at the same time that we have already surpassed what all international leaders can agree on as a safe CO2 level in the atmosphere, and need to be burning many LESS fossil fuels, not more.   I am going to be informing myself more and taking a professional technical stand this fall on this issue, on fracking, and on tar sands as a Professional Engineer standing for the long haul for all the children, for drinking water safety, for the First World taking responsibility for the environmental havoc we are currently wreaking.

Illustrating local pieces of the environmental puzzle of livelihood and resource management, and all the questions we as a people face now of balance and wholeness and charting a good path towards a sweet future:  here's a native cedar forest I camped in, and the cedar sawmill where Shane is currently working, and whose beautiful western red cedar products I have used and appreciated in years past….  

Residents here are working, too, with the Idaho Transportation Department to increase pedestrian and bicycling options in small towns, implementing ideas of smart growth, and engaging young people, adults, and elders with each other and with their future.

I love that I have found so much alive in each of these communities along the way.  I feel sure that I could be at home and contributing in each one of them.  On every hand I've been inspired and nourished by what Paul Hawken has documented in Blessed Unrest as the largest social change movement ever in the history of civilization:

"What I see are ordinary and some not-so-ordinary individuals willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in an attempt to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world… coherent, organic, self-organized congregations involving tens of millions of people dedicated to change.  When asked…if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same:  If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren't pessimistic, you don't have the correct data.  If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren't' optimistic, you haven't got a heart."

I am incredibly grateful that so many people are asking what it is that they can do to make a difference  in service to the larger good.