At a September potluck welcoming many of us to the Residential Program, we were told the following: “You are now meeting people who in nine months you will not be able to imagine life without.” ( Or perhaps some more grammatically correct version of that.) We all looked around at each other, a very motley bunch from age 18 to somewhere up in the 60s. I honestly wondered how we could possibly come together into any sort of cohesive community in anything like nine months. I’ve lived and worked in several different communities and always have valued the rich experiences that come from this. I knew we could learn a lot from each other at any rate. But this is certainly one of the more diverse communities, in terms of backgrounds and life experiences, of which I’ve been a member. Think of the movie The Breakfast Club. For those having never seen it, it’s a simplistic teen angst movie where a handful of high school students with labels like “jock”, “nerd”, “princess”, etc. magically bond over the course of a Saturday detention and leave as friends. If it sounds unlikely, well, of course it is because it’s a movie, and it’s high school. Imagine a similar scenario, people brought together from different backgrounds, without even ages in common and increase the number to 30 with almost that many labels we might give ourselves. Yet amazingly, after just our first week together, I could honestly say (and believe others would agree) that we all bonded, are friends, and can hardly imagine life without each other.
Granted, it was an intensive week. We showed up Monday morning and set up a tent city at Linne Doran, the school’s land, where we stayed, learning and sharing from dawn (pre-dawn even) to dark, until Friday afternoon. During this first week we were introduced to the basic aspects of our curriculum, including core skills that will help expand our awareness and make way for new ways of seeing and being in the world. We learned to gather our minds together each day by giving thanks for all manifestations of life and the earth. We learned to sharpen our senses by getting into the minds of animals with owl eyes and fox walking. We were tested on our notice of details, on local plants, on bird language, and we found out how much we have to learn. We want to learn! We were given ways to relate to each other in smaller groups through assignment into clan groups and societies. We played, we sang, we spent a whole day exploring and came back to tell stories, eyes wide open like children. We are remembering the true role of elders. We are remembering how to be dirty, wet, and cold, and not care, the feel of bare feet in a muddy meadow. We’ve seen fire kindled from wood in seconds. We were given a small taste of all that is to come and we are hungry for more!

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