Alive
I’ve spoken a lot about feeling fully alive in this program, and I’d like to expand on that a bit. A recent discussion with our founder, Jon Young, helped me understand why so much of this program evokes this feeling in us. According to one theory, new brain patterns are formed through four main inputs. These include sensory inputs, curiosity (related to creativity and inspiration), adrenaline (excitement, fear, or “edge”), and mind focus (using mind’s eye and meditative mind states). Therefore, those who are fully aware, awake, and alive are those who have honed all four of these areas. A good tracker or naturalist would fall into this category, and everything about our residential training program reflects this. To be fully alive is to be expanding our minds, forming new brain patterns, making connections. This is true education.
With that rather wordy introduction, I will attempt to share some of our experience over the past couple weeks on our extended trip to California. I won’t attempt to summarize and won’t be able to give you a full picture of our journey, but only snapshots of an epic adventure that was chock full of aliveness.
In Sunol Regional Wilderness, east of the bay area, we found green rolling hills, fragrant Bay Laurels, Giant Coast Live Oaks, a Prickly Pear forest, singing frogs, mating newts, a hunting bobcat, whistling screech owls, and laughing Acorn Woodpeckers. We faced driving rain and cold as well as clear blue skies and warm sun. We shared our research of other California species, and spent a good deal of time exploring, taking it all in.
At Quail Springs permaculture farm in Cuyama, east of Santa Barbara, we discovered a community making magic in the desert. In the arid high desert sagebrush hills these inspirational people are creating gardens, building natural materials dwellings, and caretaking the land to not only live sustainably but to restore and improve biodiversity in their home. We were honored to be able to learn from them and help them a bit- through gardening, plastering straw bale walls, and making cob building materials. We also got to do our own exploring through small mammals tracking, birding, stalking/scouting adventures, and general wandering. Some powerful memories include desert wind and rainstorms, rainbows, chattering California Quail, grandmother pines and junipers, Dusky-footed Woodrat nests, yucca wounds, singing with new friends, and a night sky full of stars.
At the Regenerative Design Institute at Commonweal Gardens in Bolinas we were back to green rolling hills, this time with the persistent sound of crashing ocean waves. Eucalyptus trees, ancient cypress trees, coyote brush, and purple irises dotted the landscape. Another inspirational community greeted us there in an elaborate welcoming ceremony consisting of powerful songs traded across the gate. This was our sister school and these were students in a program similar to ours; we finally got to meet in person. During our visit we explored the landscape with the resident community, spent valuable time learning from Jon Young, and learned more about permaculture from other inspirational teachers. We were immersed in the sounds of spring, fresh smells of garden plants, and a good dose of the California sunshine which had evaded us.
Although it was difficult for some of us to leave these new lands and all our new friends, it was time to return to the northwest. For all of us now comes the time of reflection as we integrate our experiences into our lives. Twelve days of new sensory input, fresh curiosity, excitement, and mind focus has left us all charged and fully alive.