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.

An Eco-village in the Midst of the City

An Eco-village in the Midst of the City  August 3, 2013

I found an amazing eco-village evolving within an old urban neighborhood of Cincinnati this week.  Its name is Enright Ridge Eco-village.  It's only a few miles from the city's center, and I was just astounded at the network of green-space and wholesome ecosystem nurtured along 2 residential streets of this old working-class neighborhood where most buildings date back 100 or 120 years.

There are warm, vital connections within the human community, along with farmers and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in a network of backyards.  Many of the lots are only 50 feet wide, but go back 600 feet or so behind the homes, with extensive backyards that link into wildlife corridors pieced carefully together over the years.  

This has been the patient work of my hosts Jim and Eileen Schenk, with many others.

Rather than building new homes, using additional resources, and settling previously undeveloped land, this eco-village is these older solid homes and the surrounding land brought to new life.  

Owners have made simple but valuable investments in native plants, compost, and rain gardens, with fruit trees and vegetable plots that provide food and habitat for humans and a rich diversity of wild creatures.  

All of this is nourishing stable and interconnected families who have multiple reasons to walk down the street and support each other.  A few chickens here, a couple of Angora goats there, and beehives in yet another yard fit within the city's designation for pets, and variously help to eat the extra foliage of various garden plants AND of invasive plants the residents are working to control, and/or provide eggs, organic fertilizer, fiber, milk, pollination and honey.  

The barn for the Angoras is part of an old garage, given a new purpose!

A cistern pond collects roof water, irrigates gardens below and offers aquaculture potential for edible water plants and fish.

What they are accomplishing is an inspiration to me and my homesteading/community heart, and can certainly inspire such community in other towns and cities.  Jim offers that they are available by phone or Skype, willing to have people visit, or willing to come to your neighborhood to talk about setting up an urban eco-village. 

Watch their website at enrightecovillage.org also for a resource manual on Urban CSA's and for a mid-West conference they are planning for next summer.

Upcoming Journey

All my life, I have had an abiding connection to the land, and I have made a commitment in many arenas of my life to discovering and demonstrating more cooperative, sustainable and small-footprint ways of living.  Now I am leaving my paid work as an engineer in sustainable building and energy work to broaden how I am contributing my time and heart to the world.  

I have been voicing the commitment I am now making as leveraging all my skills and my heart as a gift towards co-creating a sweeter future for all the children within a multi-generational and multi-cultural framework.  And to teaching and listening-- supporting a shift in the balance of human impact on climate change to protect and safeguard the amazingly beautiful array of life on our planet home.
 

Towards the end of June, I will begin a 4+ month "sojourn" across the country, starting from this part of central North Carolina that has been wonderful roots to me these last 11 years.  I will return to part-time home here in early November.

I expect much of my time will be out West, where my heart also has strong connections, including the Pacific Northwest and California.  Conversation and community that support the future I yearn to be part of bequeathing -- these are integral to this cross-country journey of mine. 



Conversation-- sharing, inspiring and co-creating stories and ideas that stretch beyond the beginning point



Community-- in the sense of being heart-connected and caring about each other's well-being
 

I will be looking for part-time home in the West, too, and work tied to community building, to cross-generational connections, to raising food & living simply and compactly with small energy & resource use, to nature-based rites of passage.... to interweaving all this training & experience of mine.
 

My current highest priorities are completing shop-time on my tiny house timber frame, so that it is ready to store as a ready-to-assemble kit, and down-sizing everything else so that I can move into a 10' x 10' storage unit in early to mid-June.  

This is the 6th timber frame I've designed and cut, and the tiniest.  It will be an 8' x 12' tiny home.  More on this in future blogs!  Here are a few recent pictures of test-fitting and tuning the joints.

 

My precise departure date will be when I complete all my other preparations, including roughing out my immediate travel method and initial itinerary.  After that, I will be writing more!  Including what "ripe communities" mean to me.