March 28th, 2008 Heather
I am sitting at my desk looking outside at a white winter wonderland, thinking back on our first week of spring quarter. Despite the cold white stuff draping everything out there including the pair of yearling deer grazing unaffectedly, Spring has definitely arrived. The robins are back, chattering away, the winter wrens are singing their little hearts out, the Indian plums are leafed out, the salmonberry are flowering and those deer out there are munching on fresh nettle and chickweed.
This week too was filled with the levity of returning home and the exciting freshness of new growth, despite our familiar cold wet surroundings. We formed new clans and made new alliances among now familiar faces. We stepped up the challenge of primitive fire- making by spending a day creating fire kits from the land with no added materials and without the use of tools. We practiced animal forms, learned new ones, and honed and tested our awareness. It is Spring, we are back together and we are awake!
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March 15th, 2008 Heather
This week was our final week of winter quarter. Is there really just one quarter to go? It was definitely strange to see “graduation” printed on our new syllabus. In just three short months we will all be moving on to new adventures. But not yet.
Our final day before spring break was both quiet and reflective and playful and exciting, both equally important aspects of our program overall. The reflective part of the day involved sharing stories and insights from the season with visiting elders around our familiar Malalo fire. Common themes discussed were challenges faced, passions discovered, and personal growth. The residential program just seems to be full of those life altering milestones, even after 6 months.
The playful part of the day was a giant game of capture the flag, which although could be simply dubbed a childish game, is actually a nice test of a variety of our skills and core routines including sensory awareness, scouting, animal forms, and owl eyes. Our version of the game started with each team making primitive fire in the soggy woods, so we were able to hone those skills as well. I remember crouching on the wet earth among some sword ferns and oregon grape, heart beating with the excitement of hiding and trying not to be seen, watching fellow classmates pop up out of shrubs and from behind trees throughout the forest, and thinking there is nowhere else I’d rather be right now. I can’t wait for spring quarter to start!
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March 9th, 2008 Heather
This week we really got down to some primitive skills, the nitty gritty of wilderness survival. Out in a riverside cedar grove we became a primitive village united by our central fire. We used coals from the fire to burn out logs to use as bowls, then used rocks heated in the fire to boil and thus purify river water for drinking. We also experimented with several primitive cooking methods including building stone and clay ovens from scratch, using a steam pit, boiling food in rock-heated water, and cooking over open flames. These days involved some good hard work as well as quality time spent as a tribe by the roaring fire. The water and food we took in may have been a little dirty, sooty, under or overcooked, but the time, effort and laughter that went into it made it all worth it.
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March 2nd, 2008 Heather
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.
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