As the program facilitators, Charlie and I had been excited about Jill from the time we first read her application to the Apprenticeship. She seemed highly motivated and passionate about pursuing her dreams, just the kind of person whom we wanted to attract to the program. When she jumped out of the cab of that huge shiny white semi, I wasn't quite sure this was the same person I had envisioned. She was heavy set, hair bleached blond, with sad eyes and her mouth set in a tight line. I was surprised and wondered if she had come to the right place. I thought, "This will be an interesting three months."
Charlie and I had designed that year's Apprenticeship to offer our ideal of the skills people need in order to truly live sustainably. For us this included personal growth skills in communication and counseling as well as the practical skills of gardening, permaculture, medicinal herbs and other skills that assist in developing a relationship with nature. Our intention was to integrate the emotional/spiritual/physical/intellectual aspect of our humanness with the land-based activities to create a holistic approach to sustainable living, giving the apprentices tools and experience in relationship and creating close connections with others.
The first three days of the Apprenticeship we spent together in one tight room--all twelve apprentices, Charlie, and myself. We wanted everyone to get to know each other and experience a community bond before we began to focus on the garden and landscape. The process we used was based on M. Scott Peck's community building work in The Different Drum. As facilitators, our primary role was to maintain emotional safety and all we told the group is that we were together to create the experience of community.
The feeling in the room the first day was tense and uncomfortable. I felt awkward about the number of men in the group, seven men and five women, a very different energy from the past three Apprenticeships I'd facilitated in which there were mostly women and a few men. And yet, as I looked around the room at these young people, mostly college students, the person who looked the most out of place was Jill. She was the oldest at 27, and, although she had more life experience than the rest, she had the least experience in gardening and sustainable living skills. Understandably, she was very shut down and wanting to protect herself, and I was concerned that she would not be able to open up to us. I did not know if we could create enough safety, especially with all the men present and considering the resistance several of the apprentices were expressing toward the process. I'll never forget the look on her face, so strained and heavy with anger and grief.
(Over the summer, this look was to transform, Jill's face soften and clear, her body relax, and her laughter become a prominent part of every day. At summer's end, I would experience her as a completely beautiful and powerful woman.)
On the morning of the second day three of the men and one of the women began to complain more vigorously about the process we were engaged in--they had anticipated that we would immediately be starting in the garden. They wanted to "do something" and felt as though we were wasting time and they really did not care much about this emotional growth stuff anyway. The air began to get thick with emotions. Other apprentices retorted that they wanted to continue with the process and very much desired to create community since we would be living together all summer.
Charlie and I sat back and watched as the quarreling escalated. We only intervened by making general statements about what was happening in the group; it was the group's job to figure out how to create community together. Some apprentices tried to lighten the atmosphere by playing games. It was clear that there was a polarization happening. Jill had hardly said a word up until now. There were big feelings of anger flaring and huge discrepancies in ideas and opinions on what to do next. It was hot in that room!
Finally there was a lull in the heated verbal exchange, we all looked at each other and Jill started to cry. We put our attention on her. She talked about the reasons she had been attracted to the program and how she wanted the skills of relationship and community building. Then she described where she had come from as we sat mesmerized:
Her parents where alcoholics, divorced when she was 6 years old, her mom constantly hospitalized from abusing alcohol. Her dad was a workaholic salesman who subjected her and her sisters to many different women, and she was surrounded by alcohol, drugs and promiscuity when they lived with him after the divorce. Her father obtained custody after the divorce because her mom was in the hospital. Her mom fought for custody of the kids for eleven years and eventually all the girls went to live with her again.
Jill left home at 17 years of age and joined the army where she spent almost five years as a law enforcement officer. She started her college education in the military and then went through several community colleges before deciding to finish her degree in Environmental Management and Geography with a minor in Urban Studies at Elmhurst college in Illinois, spending a total of ten years to get her degree.
She had to pay her own way through college so she worked full time at a day care center for disabled people while going to school. She was now an assistant manager of two apartment buildings with 21 women, supervising staff and paperwork. She told us how she disagreed with the philosophy of the center and their attitude towards disabled people. It was a very mainstream approach and she was seeking alternatives.
Her dream was to create a community which cares for disabled people with an emphasis on gardening. She also had been in several dysfunctional relationships with men and wanted to learn skills that would help in creating healthy relationships. She wept again as she told us of her desire to get married and have children. I was stunned by her courage and her insight.
The environment in the room had changed when Jill was finished sharing her story. She initiated the sharing of deep feelings, relating her hurts and struggles and so began our movement as a group toward true community where we began to accept each other without judgment and we were all simply human with our hearts open to the flow of love and compassion as each person in turn shared their story. At the end of the three days, we had definitely experienced a sense of community, and we knew each other more deeply, finding a sense of safety and connection with one another in having shared ourselves and where we were broken. It was amazing to get a feeling for people's patterns, strengths, and challenges in just three days, and to feel comforted knowing that we were somehow all the same in our struggles. Charlie and I were pleased with the outcome of the community building exercise, as were the apprentices, and at the same time we were made thoroughly aware of the challenges we faced with this group. It was going to be an intense summer!
Charlie and I had structured the Apprenticeship according to our ideas about what the apprentices would be interested in learning. We made a very full schedule with garden work and demonstrations each morning from 7 to noon, followed by classes from 3-6 PM after lunch and a break. Weekends and one afternoon a week were free time other than rotated watering duties. The afternoon classes focused on the topics of Medicinal Herbs, Permaculture, peer counseling, and personal development.
Jill was a hard worker from the outset of the program. She often made breakfast for all the apprentices, getting up early to do the work and then cleaning the dishes afterward. After a time, she expressed anger and resentment that none of the other apprentices were working as hard as she. Through the peer counseling work she discovered that this was a prevalent pattern in her life, that she had often taken the role of caretaker and martyr. This pattern developed in her home environment as a child since her alcoholic parents had needed her to care for them. We encouraged her to tell others what to do, and to ask directly for what she needed, to contradict this pattern. It was really fun to watch Jill squirm as she tried not to get involved as the other apprentices either left a mess or did the job differently than she would have. Over time she became more assertive and powerful in her contributions to others. Her face and posture changed and her beauty became more visible.
Jill's desire for self improvement manifested in the interest and energy she put into acquiring the counseling skills we were teaching (which are based on Re-evaluation Co-counseling). She became a trusted counselor for many of the apprentices. Her experience in her family environment was useful to her in being able to connect to the experience of others, and her ability to create a lifestyle in contrast to what her parents had taught her was inspirational. She had come a long way along the path that most of us were traveling, creating a new experience when the old one was painful or no longer fulfilling.
I was thrilled with Jill's interest in garden management. She adopted her own beds in the gardens and worked with us in garden planning. She was very serious about getting the information she needed to pursue her dreams. We often had to encourage her to slow down and play because the drive to improve herself was so great she would otherwise work constantly.
Charlie and I grew so fond of Jill, and felt so proud of her for her courage that we told her we wanted to adopt her as a member of our family. In her counseling sessions she would grieve about not having people in her life who really knew how to be there for her, and it was quite a contrast for her to have us. We kept reminding her that it was really true that we would not abandon her, that she would always be our daughter.
Towards the end of the summer, the apprentices undertook a Vision Quest in the desert. For three days and nights they fasted alone in nature, seeking clarity on issues they had identified as important for them. Jill was frightened by the prospect of being alone. Camping was still new to her and nature was a foreign place. She had never gone a day without food, either. Jill shared her fears with us and then decided she was ready to undertake the quest when we assured her that she could return to basecamp at any time. We felt sure she would not stay out the entire time, but she surprised us by returning the morning of the fourth day with clear eyes and a radiant confidence.
In the ceremony celebrating and confirming her journey at the conclusion of the Apprenticeship, we gave Jill the name Beautiful Wise Woman Healer in honor of how she is blossoming into her true self. She spoke eloquently and assuredly of her dreams and the challenges facing her. Her face was open and confident and I felt an intimate connection with her as my daughter. I have no doubt of her ability to manifest her dreams and I shall always see her as a powerful woman.
Charlie and I invited Jill to return to Lost Valley as an assistant for the 1998 Apprenticeship program. She has accepted the invitation and is moving to Eugene. She has seen that she is no longer responsible for taking care of her mother, who was recently given her second DUI and is still in and out of the hospital. She received her college degree, the first in her family to do so, and is stepping out into the world to make it a place where life is more supportive and sustainable.
It is astounding to me that while I think the students have so much to learn from me, it seems that I learn more from them. I learned as much from Jill's presence in the Apprenticeship as she did from me as a teacher. Jill will forever remain an inspiration.
Julianne Tilt--a mother, herbalist, peer counselor, and educator--has co-facilitated Lost Valley Educational Center's gardens and Agroecology Apprenticeship for the past four years.
©1998 Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 1998
Volume 8, Number 1
Education for an Ecological Society
I met Arne Naess in 1978 when we were both tutors for the New Natural Philosophy program. At that time I began working out an experiential education approach based on deep ecology. In the years since then I have done workshops in various parts of the United States, published a yearly newsletter on the subject, and lectured at various colleges--both in the U.S. and in Canada, culminating in the publication of my book Sacred Land, Sacred Sex in 1988.
Uprooting
In Part 1 of Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, titled "Uprooting," I explain how we in the West became uprooted from nature by contrasting our approach with that of the Chinese. To quote the leading Chinese scholar at Oxford, E.R. Hughes, "The main distinction between a western and a Chinese tradition is the western has tended to see reality as substance, the Chinese to see it as relationship." The ultimate development of this "substance" mentality came with the onslaught of the Industrial Revolution. Using the Norwegian, Sigmund Kvaloy's term, Industrial Growth Society (IGS), we can say that the IGS has defined human good as the production and buying of more "things" and this has been going on for at least the last four hundred years. It is time to turn that right around and look at human good in the context of the entire time humans have been on this earth. Human good was the finding and celebrating of ever deeper ties to the surrounding land including the animals, the sky, and the plants. This grew out of 150,000 years of hunting-gathering and continues on into the present time in the remnants of indigenous cultures.
Instead of accumulating more "things," which necessarily results in destroying the environment, we need to accumulate more understanding. From a deep ecology perspective, insecure, acquisitive individualism is the most destructive attribute of the narrowly human viewpoint. Prior to the IGS and for most of human history, education consisted of recognizing more and more diverse patterns within the daily life of the child. This was accomplished by paying attention to how things were done both in living nature and within the tribe--no linear explanations can ever take the place of this primary way of learning. The fundamental pattern which the child was helped to see was the yearly pattern of the sun's rising and setting in that place. There are detailed accounts of how different tribes accomplished this. The Hopi, for instance, showed the child that the sun was in the summer house when it was setting behind a certain mesa. And then showed the child how the sun moved toward his winter house up a particular valley. In this way the child was initiated into the seasonal progression of drought, rain, snow--all part of the knowledge needed to live there and grow corn.
Tribal people, in general, as well as the Greeks before Socrates, and the early Chinese, all made use of patterns as their basic thinking. As far as tribal people are concerned, we tend to call them illiterate but that is because we do not realize that their patterns, songs and dances are valid literature and accurate recording systems. Bill Mollison explains:
"Having evolved number and alphabetical symbols, we have abandoned pattern learning and recording in our education. I believe this to be a gross error, because simple patterns link so many phenomena that the learning of even one significant pattern is very like learning an underlying principle, which is always applicable to specific data and situations."
Mollison writes that the Polynesians used pattern maps. They "lacked scale, cartographic details, and trigonometric measures, but nevertheless sufficed to find hundreds of island specks in the vastness of the Pacific! Such maps are linked to star sets and ocean currents and indicate wave interference patterns."
Pattern recognition gives us more information than can be secured through limited rational thinking. Pattern registers on us through sound, touch, movement as well as sight--more pathways to learning. Our older brains and our body sense register these "subliminal" patterns and digest them for future use.
Continual emotions of care, love, and elation develop and fuel this type of learning. Before explaining this natural, basic way humans have learned for centuries, let's take a look at the present, aberrant education we now have.
The Ongoing Role of Sexual Energy in Education based on the Anthropocentric Approach
The current approach began with the ancient Greeks. The elite young men were taught by the older intellectuals in a relationship based on homosexual energy. Most of the older leading thinkers at one time were in love with the beautiful young man, Alcibiades. This elite was supported by slaves who did the daily work, which of course, meant less and less contact with basic reality for the students. The entire system was based on Protagoras's statement: "Man is the measure of all things." When Rome took over the rule of the world, they imitated the Greek system as best they could. When the Roman empire was taken over by Christianity, education continued in the same mode.
Young men were taught by older men but the normal attraction was subverted by the imposed chastity of the Christian church thus sublimating normal sexual energy into an effort to achieve salvation from sin. This, of course, led to more intense absorption in the so-called sacred studies of the Bible. Meanwhile the real work was being done by the peasants.
This linking of learning with the church continued down through the ages in Europe. The modern compulsory education system began in Germany, which was a late-comer in the effort to become a nation state. In an effort to "catch up" with the already developed nations, an education system was enforced which required rigorous control over the students. When other nations grasped the quick results of the German system, it was copied elsewhere. England did not have compulsory education until late in the nineteenth century. D.H. Lawrence wrote that his father was of the last generation of English "not ruined by public schooling."
North Americans inherited this system. The system is fueled by the intensity of underlying sexual attraction: which, of course, is supposed to never, ever be consummated. The Canadian This Magazine is About Schools is the only journal with the courage to touch this explosive situation. In the late sixties they printed "The Teacher as Lover."
John Taylor Gatto stated in January 1990, upon accepting an award naming him "New York City Teacher of the Year," that: "Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the State of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted--sometimes with guns--by an estimated 80% of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable, on Cape Cod, not surrendering its children until the 1880s when the area was seized by militia and the children were marched to school under guard."
Does this sound familiar? Certainly--that's how the Western European imperial powers treated all children of indigenous peoples--from the Franciscan priests in California to the U.S. government rounding up Indian children and imprisoning them in government schools.
Gatto considers this treatment as a "tearing away from family." But for most indigenous people, family included the animals, plants and the land itself. This is the real family, and children were torn out of it by modern compulsory education. And for what? To make them homogenized easily manipulated workers for the continued growth of our Industrial Growth Society.
Education Based on Love of the Land
What is necessary, now, is to replace the perilous, merely human sexual energy fueling education with the natural love of a people for the land on which they live. Indian speeches throughout Western history are replete with references to this love, but we ignore it. Modern day Israelis rediscovered it when they began the kibbutz experiment. Bruno Bettelheim in his study on the Kibbutz in the sixties, wrote that "the romantic attachment of their parents to Israel-as-idea has been translated by their children into a fierce love for a particular landscape." One example he gave was of a man who was a good father and husband (by his wife's account) but would not leave the kibbutz because he "could not bear to leave behind him the small lake where he spent nearly all his time as a fisherman--not for the fishing, but because of the beauty of the lake."
Edith Cobb's book The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood documents the importance of such a deep love of place. Near the end of her book she summarizes the insights gained from her lifetime research: "In the creative perceptions of poet and child we are close to the biology of thought itself--close, in fact to the ecology of imagination, in which the energies of the body and mind as a unit, an ecosystem, and the energies of nature combine in a mutual endeavor to adapt to nature, to culture, and to the societies devised by man to embody culture."
The poet Greg Culp, writing of the importance of her work, says: "Concepts and verbally recognizable experiences, perceptions which can be structurally understood in terms of cultural framework, is that which is imprinted in adult life. Whereas in childhood we perceive, absorb, flow into and become, the experience of environment, in acceptable adulthood we're encouraged to hack out piecemeal those portions of our experience deemed acceptable by some perverse consensus, which in turn takes its form not just from what is mutually beneficial but incorporates the cultural anxiety, fear and neurosis."
Since the early 1980s Rick Medrick and I have been working out a way of education, which is based on the intense love for the land, developing out of particular experiences on our program called "Breaking Through." Essentially, we approach the outdoor experience of white water rafting and rock climbing from a totally different perspective. For example, after preliminary Tai Chi-type rock climbing instruction on boulders, we eventually take our people up the most difficult 14,000-ft. peak in the state--unroped. All along we have been developing the concept that it's not the human who does it. At first, it's the boulder which "affords" the foot a hold on it. Later on the mountain, when the going gets scary, we don't say "you can do it." Instead we help people to see that the mountain "affords" their passage. And when they have done a particularly difficult move we say the mountain lets them do it. Such experiences develop a very intense love for the mountain and often changes their lives.
Our normal culture, based on individualism, teaches people that they must strive and try and do, creating continual low-grade stress. It's them against their entire environment including the natural one. A Canadian and member of the Odawa tribe, Wilfred Pelletier, put it very well in his book No Foreign Land. He wrote, "And that's because in white society just being born is a put-down." He explained that one must spend the rest of one's life proving you're worth something. In indigenous tribes, the general approach was that the land gives them life and supports them in all they do. Instead of feeling like an individual substance, a free-floating, rootless atom, one becomes aware of being imbedded in nature, part of an on-going web of life. Quoting Pelletier again: "The land is sacred. You don't live off it, like a parasite. You live in it, and it in you, or you don't survive...You belong to the land. And that's who you are."
Back in camp, after dinner and around the fire we do American Indian chanting with a drum for some time before even considering the day's events. It's now been proved that in human evolution, talking came out of chanting. And we've found that what the chanting does for us is that the people see ever deeper meanings in the words as they are chanted over and over and relate them to the day's events. So that when we pass the "talking staff" around the circle to relate the day's events, it's already mythological. Already in their hearts it's become part of the ongoing chant. When I introduce the "talking staff" I call on the mountains surrounding us in the four directions to speak through us as we talk. This enables the people to get out of the narrowly human dimension into the sense of the place as a whole.
Often the evening culminates with spontaneous bardic poetry. The rhythms have been growing, the words have been deepening through the evening and eventually someone will give us such a poem. It may be a person who never produced a poem before. The following day that poem remains in our minds as we climb another mountain, or pack out of the valley, and the feeling of the poem goes deeper within, resonating between us and the land. Out of this process comes an ever deepening understanding of the patterns of the place which produce life there, an ever deepening gratitude to the mountains, trees, rivers and thus a deeper love. A gradual awareness of the affordances of a place allows people to remember who they are in the true sense.
Affordances
The particular concept of affordances is what allows people to begin living in deep ecology instead of just thinking about it. James Gibson of Cornell University coined the word in his book The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. He explains that he had been "puzzling over vision's perplexities for 50 years." The standard account of perception describes it as an internal process whereby an initially meaningless mass of sensory data is built up into an internal representation of the external world. This, of course, is the usual dichotomy assuming a human perceiver and the purely passive environment. Instead, Gibson shows us that perception is a relationship between the organism and its environment taken together. He first shows how vision was developed through evolutionary time in response to the changing sun's light during the day and throughout the year. See his book for the full account of his discoveries. But essentially, what he tells us is that one sees the environment not with the substance labeled "eyes" but with the "eyes-in-the-head-on-the-body-resting-on the turning world, going around the sun." It's a perceptual system or relationship.
Affordances come out of the above understanding. The varying surfaces of the environment afford us perception as we move through them and they move by us. He further describes what the environment affords animals (such as humans): terrain, shelter, water, fire, tools, etc. The senses are not passive mechanisms receiving data. They are active, exploratory systems attuned to dynamic meanings already present in the environment. "Thus to a human, a maple tree may afford 'looking at' or 'sitting under,' while to a sparrow it affords 'perching,' and to a squirrel it affords 'climbing'... The psyche as studied by these direct perceptionist psychologists is a property of the ecosystem as a whole."
On our Breaking Through courses, the clients are helped to discover that the way the rock breaks affords the footholds. This leads to curiosity as to why it breaks in just that way. That happens on good climbing rock. On bad rock, it's just as interesting but at times such a mountain may not afford climbing at all. During the few days we are climbing in this valley, long-gone Pleistocene glaciers become an intimate part of one's life as the body registers how the ice cut the rock.
On Breaking Through we also learn the affordances provided by positive and negative ions. When a storm front is trying to come in and the positive ion loaded wind is blowing, everyone feels down and uneasy and loathe to move. When the storm finally gets there and the lightning crashes up high, everyone is invigorated and feeling great! Positive ions in general cause depression, lethargy, sometimes suicide. In Switzerland when the foehn wind blows, people are allowed to take off from work and sometimes schools are closed. Positive ions are prevalent not only in "bad" winds but in polluted city air. Negative or "good" ions are preponderant in forests, by waterfalls or on ocean beaches. If variations in the ratio of positive to negative ions can cause anything from suicide to exhilaration, we can see that human consciousness is not confined within the individual human head (anthropocentrism) but instead is part of the affordances of the place and the atmosphere. This is Deep Ecology!
I have given some particular ways to begin moving toward experiencing deep ecological principles in education. As a further guide for the direction in which education needs to go, I want to quote from Paul Shepard who teaches Human Ecology:
"Beneath the veneer of civilization, to paraphrase the trite phrase of humanism, lies not the barbarian and animal, but the human in us...There is a secret person undamaged in every individual, aware [of the real needs]. All of them are assimilated in perverted forms in modern society; our profound love of animals twisted into pets, zoos, decorations, and entertainment; our search for poetic wholeness subverted by the model of the machine instead of the body; the moment of pubertal idealism shunted into nationalism or ethereal otherworldly religion instead of an ecosophical cosmology."
References
Abram, David (1985). The perceptual implications of Gaia, The Ecologist, 15(3), 96-103. Bettelheim, Bruno (1969). The Children of the Dream. Toronto: Collier-Macmillan Canada. Ltd. Cobb, Edith (1977). The Ecology of Imagination in Childhood. New York: Columbia University Press.
Culp, Greg (1985). Personal letter.
Gibson, J.J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Hughes, E.R. (1943). The Great Learning and Mean-in-action. New York: E.P. Dutton.
LaChapelle, Dolores (1978). Earth Wisdom. Silverton, CO: Finn Hill Arts.
LaChapelle, Dolores (1988). Sacred Land, Sacred Sex--Rapture of the Deep: concerning deep ecology--and celebrating life. Silverton, CO: Finn Hill Arts.
Mollison, Bill (1988). Permaculture. The Permaculture Institiute.
Naess, Arne (1973). The shallow and the deep, long-range ecology movements, Inquiry. 16, 95-100.
Naess, Arne (1989). Interview: Ecosophy: Beyond east and west, Kyoto Journal, Summer, 40-44.
Pelletier, Willfred, & Poole, Ted (1973). No Foreign Land. Toronto: Random House.
Plant, Judith (Ed.). (1991). Teacher of the year calls for "ferocious debate on education aims and methods." News from New Society Publishers. Winter, a-c.
Schultz, Robert, & Hugnes, J.H. (Eds.), (1981). Ecological Consciousness: Essays from the Earthday X Colloquium. Washington D.C.: University Press of America.
Shepard, Paul (1982). Nature and Madness. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
Dolores LaChapelle is author of Sacred Land, Sacred Sex--Rapture of the Deep: Concerning Deep Ecology--and Celebrating Life, and Deep Powder Snow: 40 Years of Ecstatic Skiing, Avalanches, and Earth Wisdom, both available from Kivaki Press, toll-free 1-800-578-5904. Poet Gary Snyder writes of Sacred Land, Sacred Sex: "What a rich book! It's like a wild ecosystem in itself, full of surprises and challenges." Contact Dolores at Way of the Mountain Learning Center, P.O. Box 542, Silverton, CO 81433. This article first appeared in The Journal of Experiential Education, Vol. 14, No. 3, November 1991.
©1998 Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 1998
Volume 8, Number 1
Education for an Ecological Society
During my first spring at Lost Valley, I was working out in the garden with two interns when my inquisitive three year-old daughter came along. Having just finished prepping a bed, we began to sow while engaged in discussion about something lofty and ponderous. I acknowledged Ariel's presence by stroking her head full of curls.
She stood at my side for a few minutes looking pensive before she inquired, "Hey Mama, why you are planting seeds?"
In a teaching/work mode, I blurted in reply, "Ariel, we're planting seeds because it's time to sow our spring crops. We've just finished sheet mulching this bed and we're planting seeds into the sifted compost layer on top."
"But why, Mama?" asked Ariel.
"Well, because we want to grow our own food. We want to be more self-reliant..."
Ariel interrupted, now rather frustrated, "But why you are planting seeds, Mama?"
"Ariel, we're planting mountain spinach, calendula, borage, and..."
"But why?" Ariel pleaded.
"But why what, Ariel?" I retorted.
Ariel persisted, "Why you are planting seeds?!?"
This exchange continued a few more times, with me searching seriously for a suitable answer, while trying to maintain my composure. Finally, throwing my arms into the air, I said, "Ariel, we're planting seeds because we like to plant seeds!"
"Oh!" exclaimed Ariel with great relief, and she ran off...
One morning the next spring, I was transplanting brassicas. My plan was to finish out four flats before moving on to the rest of the ten things I had on my list and intended to finish that day. Along came Ariel, "Can I help?" she asked.
"Sure," I responded, trying to hide my slight reluctance, knowing that help from a four year-old isn't always as conducive to productivity as I would desire. Nonetheless, Ariel gleefully picked up a trowel and plunged it wholeheartedly into the soil. I showed her how to place a kale plant firmly into the ground, so that it stood up straight, and then water it in. She proceeded to attempt transplanting as I tried to keep my gasps and instructions to a minimum.
After a few minutes, she sat contentedly singing to and petting the "babies" she'd planted. Then, looking up at me, she noted my pace and reprimanded me for my haste. "Mom, be gentle with the babies, you have to sing to each one and touch them like this," she demonstrated. I felt my resistance and agitation rise. Sighing, I envisioned things on my list being transferred to the next day--surrender is sweet, but painful.
"You're right, Ariel," and I joined her impromptu creation of a song, letting her lead. "And the su-un brings you-u light, a-a-and ke-eps you warm, fairies dancing all a-a-round...," we sang off key in operatic style. Pretty soon we were alternating making up each line; and then it became a rhyming game and the verses got more and more absurd until we were both making up nonsense and laughing hysterically.
All of a sudden, Ariel stood up, ran over and jumped on my back, knocking me over from a squatting position, and we both tumbled into the path, laughing. Ariel flung her arms around me, kissed my cheek and proclaimed, "I love you, Mommy!" and promptly got up and ran off to find her buddy, Matthew.
I went back to planting, singing to each "baby" kale, collard, and broccoli as I worked. The words of Wendell Berry came to mind, "we're not growing food, we're growing people!"
Julianne Tilt is a mother, gardener, herbalist, Lost Valley community member, and co-facilitator of our Apprenticeship programs.
©1998 Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 1998
Volume 8, Number 1
Education for an Ecological Society
If you have time to chatterAs I kept returning to the computer in the last couple weeks to put this all together (in lieu, sometimes, of walking, singing songs, dancing, or sitting quietly), I would modify the poem. In place of "Read books," I would substitute "Read or edit Talking Leaves," remembering that as soon as this was off to the printer I'd be doing something completely different, and it would be time for others to absorb what's in this magazine. Occasionally, too, I would add two additional couplets:
Read books
If you have time to read
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean
If you have time to walk
Sing songs and dance
If you have time to dance
Sit quietly, you Happy Lucky Idiot
If you have time to learn from someone else's experienceand (to temper Sakaki's somewhat solitary perspective)
Have your own
If you have time to be aloneThis issue of Talking Leaves is something of a University Without Walls. To best benefit from its "curriculum," you'll need to spend a lot of time doing things other than reading, writing, or experiencing the world through words. You'll need to do what our authors have done: put down your books, put down even this magazine, and experience the world directly. The common theme running through all our articles is that "Education for an Ecological Society" is an engaged education, a cultivation of our relationships with the natural world, with one another, and with ourselves. It involves the hands, the heart, and all of our senses, as well as the mind. It is practical, aesthetic, sensory, emotional, and often spiritual--not just intellectual. It is not abstract, compartmentalized, dry, irrelevant, or boring. (If your "education" has ever seemed that way, that's a good sign that it was not a particularly powerful force for the creation of a holistic society.)
Join a circle
The teachers in this "University" are the two-dozen-or-so contributors who share personal experiences of education, ideas about what "education for an ecological society" looks like, and stories of projects which promote ecological awareness and model ecological living. But in tallying those involved we must also consider the teachers of those teachers (who were and are also students), and their teachers as well...and all the non-human teachers too...so the actual number of faculty in this University Without Walls is quite large and theoretically almost infinite. We hope the courses live up to their potential.
We at Lost Valley were very gratified by the response to our solicitation of articles for this issue. The magazine nearly compiled itself, thanks to the contributors' enthusiasm for the subject. OK, we did need to do a little work to put this issue together. Several community members were seen writing and copy-editing feverishly in the wee hours of the morning, and one of the editors submitted to a lengthy interview in which he became surprisingly eloquent or long-winded (choose one). But for the most part this was a very easy, natural, unforced project for us to complete, because it reflects our own passions.
It's difficult to single out any of the articles in this issue without implicitly slighting the others. But I can't help but be thrilled that the likes of Dolores LaChapelle, Ocean Robbins, Joseph Cornell, Michael Ableman, Satish Kumar, and other lesser-known but equally compelling educators (and students) were willing to so freely share their insights and experiences in the pages of Talking Leaves. I've always thought that paraphrasing others, summing up what they are about to say--whether in speech-introductions at conferences or in tie-all-the-pieces-together editorials--can lessen the impact of hearing or reading them firsthand, and can even be presumptuous and insulting. So I hope to whet your appetite simply by saying that each of the pieces in this issue represents a world waiting to be discovered, and I'm not going to spoil it for you by giving you preconceptions about what you'll find there. No matter who you are, at least several articles here should excite you. If not, you're reading the wrong magazine.
We want to thank Carolyn Moran, for creating Talking Leaves nine years ago, shepherding its growth from a regional tabloid into a nationally- and internationally-distributed magazine, propelling it to the point where even after several publishing hiatuses it still elicits strong enthusiasm from a devoted, ever-expanding readership, and, finally, so graciously handing it over to us now that her alternative-fiber paper business is demanding most of her time and energy. Though all of the current editors have volunteered with Talking Leaves for several years, we are appreciating anew all the hard work that goes into producing a magazine like this one.
Thanks again for joining us in the rebirth of Talking Leaves!
©1998 Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 1998
Volume 8, Number 1
Education for an Ecological Society
The understanding that we are a part of something larger than ourselves, is, I feel, Nature's greatest gift. With it, one's sense of identity expands and, by extension, so does his or her concern for the well being of all. True caring for the environment comes, as Lao Tsu said, "when you love the world as your own self." Whenever we, as nature leaders, point out a bird or flower, aren't we ultimately hoping to encourage this type of loving respect?
In Western culture, especially, people often confuse knowledge with wisdom, and think that if we learn enough, then we'll care enough. But knowing what we ought to do, and doing it are two different things. Tanaka Shozo, the pioneering Japanese conservationist, said, "The care of rivers is not a question of rivers, but of the human heart." For love is the greatest stimulant to the will.
Of course a balance of reason and feeling is needed for understanding nature. The forte of science is explaining how nature works so we can, for example, restore damaged ecosystems and understand the consequences of certain types of behavior. Science is very practical and helps us work creatively with nature.
While science explains nature to us, it is only our intuition, or calm feeling, that can perceive it. When Albert Einstein discovered the law of relativity, it was in a flash of intuitive insight. Only many years later was he able to reason it out scientifically. Einstein said also that every scientist, to be great, must have a mystical awe of the universe. In other words, be someone of deep feeling and reverence. Science, if it is to be more than mundane, needs to be accompanied by and inspired by deep intuitive feeling. Intuition has been described as the knowledge of the soul because through it, we experience our unity and harmony with the totality of life.
Practically speaking, to achieve this lofty goal, I've developed and use a simple, yet subtle and powerful system of teaching based on universal principles of awareness and how people learn. The system is called Flow Learning(TM). Its goal is to give students intuitive as well as an intellectual understanding. Flow learning also is very adaptable and can be used to teach any subject matter. It has four stages: Awaken Enthusiasm, Focus Attention, Direct Experience, and Share Inspiration:
1. Awaken Enthusiasm--Children learn if the subject matter is meaningful, useful, fun, or in some way engages their emotions. Time spent in creating an atmosphere of curiosity, amusement, or personal interest is invaluable because once students' enthusiasm is engaged, their energy can be focused on the upcoming lesson or experience.
2. Focus Attention--Some students' minds can be compared to a team of wild horses running out of control. Without concentration no true learning can take place. The activities in this stage challenge the players in fun and creative ways. To successfully meet these "challenges" the players have to concentrate on one of their physical senses. In doing so, they become more calm, focused and observant of their surroundings.
3. Direct Experience--Once students' interest and energy is awakened and focused, the stage is set for deeply experiencing nature. These absorbing, experiential activities have a dramatic impact that involves people directly with nature. These games help us discover a deep, inner sense of belonging and understanding. If people are to develop a love and concern for the earth, they need these direct experiences; otherwise, their knowing remains remote and theoretical and never touches them deeply.
4. Share Inspiration--This stage provides an interesting way for students to reflect together on what they have learned. In our fast-paced world, students and teachers alike often rush from one activity to another. Yet taking the time to reflect upon an experience can strengthen and deepen that experience. It need not take long. It can be as simple as responding to a few questions, writing a journal entry, or drawing a picture. Goethe said, "A joy shared is a joy doubled." Giving students the opportunity to share their experience increases the learning for the entire class. Sharing also brings everyone together and creates an uplifting atmosphere, making it much easier for the teacher to share inspirational stories and ideas.
Flow Learning makes inspirational teaching very realistic, because it works with people where they are, and step by step, gently brings them to a deeper, more profound experience of nature. For example, the first stage of Flow Learning--Awaken Enthusiasm--uses playful games to get the children excited and motivated to learn. A stationary car is hard to steer, but once it's moving, it's quite easy to guide the car where you want it to go. It is the same for children or adults: once you get them enthusiastic, it's easier to guide them. The Flow Learning progression leads naturally to its later stages and the intuitive realization of our connection to everything around us.
Man is not himself only...Joseph Cornell is the author of Sharing Nature with Children, Sharing the Joy of Nature, Listening to Nature, and Journey to the Heart of Nature, and founder of Sharing Nature Foundation.
He is all that he sees;
all that flows to him from a
thousand sources...
He is the land, the life of its
mountain lines, the
reach of its valleys.-Mary Austin
©1998 Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 1998
Volume 8, Number 1
Education for an Ecological Society
In three months interns only taste a piece of Lost Valley, a glimpse of farming, a peak into their process. This short season we share is about a lot more than lectures, seminars, or field trips. It's much more than growing our own food.
I realize every season that passes as I leaf through the canceled files, that gardening for me is not about leaning how to produce food, gardening is about our relationship to food. And this internship program is more and more about relationship. Growing in relationship to each other, to ourselves, and to plants. Gardens are a medium in which we begin to express these relationships.
Every season my approach to gardening changes, as I gain a deeper and deeper trust in life. As I learn to let go, and let things happen, I release more and more control and allow observation and perception to guide me. I realize that although apprentices learn how to propagate and how to identify common weeds, the greater lessons are in their personal process.
For most interns, it all begins at 6:30 am when we circle and begin the day. People who have never been up before 9 begin to feel the earth's pulse in the early moments before sunrise. They begin to create a rhythm of sunrise and sunset in their body that mimics the earth. They begin to feel the opening and closing as a plant in relationship to the sun. Plants become our teachers, our tools of understanding.
One of the first places the students learn this lesson is in the greenhouse. It's here where I begin to see in their eyes the first signs of wonder.
I remember one student this last season, continually uncertain of what he was going to learn in this non-university setting. He consistently asked for more and more his first week. No time off, more readings, more handouts, more scheduled events--something he could compare with his college experience.
I remember working with him and being pretty low-key about initiating any perception exercises in the garden. Then, one day we were in the greenhouse. He was watering while I was taking inventory. When I got over to the seed trays, I noticed he had stopped watering, and was brushing his hands over the flats as I often did when greeting the little seedlings. When I asked him if anything was wrong, he proceeded to lift up a flat he had seeded weeks before, and pointed to a flat I had seeded last week.
"Amani, these seedlings are pale and weak."
He pointed to the flat in his hand.
"I was so frustrated and angry the day I seeded them, they were clearly affected by my negativity."
Years ago, I would have comforted him by explaining all the variables at work on those seed trays. But at that moment, I knew there was no need for consolation. He had already received the lesson, the important piece was already said. His eyes were wider, his heart was opened, and I knew without any further questioning that the plants had done their work.
I'm continually amazed at the transition people make during a season. Many students come to Lost Valley frustrated and burned out from our school system. They're cautious, and reluctant--uncertain of any seemingly-structured program. So many of the younger apprentices come to the program with a lot of issues around teachers and school, and it takes them awhile to know what it is they really want to get out of this program. It takes them time to know what they're willing to put in.
I remember one student getting angry when I answered her question with a question. "Do you want me to pull this dandelion out of my bed?" she asked.
I responded with "Do you want to pull that dandelion out?"
She was so upset by our interaction that she yanked it out. I said nothing.
I remember weeks later her plants were struggling along, for lots of reasons. She called me over, I was assuming, to discuss the health of her plants.
"I shouldn't have pulled that dandelion," was all she said.
She wanted to know what to do to "make up for it." I could only respond with a hug. The words had already been said.
Soon after that incident I felt her shift. No longer was she a hard, tough, stand-offish woman. The plants had softened her. They reached in and knocked through the walls that she had been hiding behind for years. She became our prized scarlet runner bean, soaking up the love and support of the group, swelling up with confidence. She became grounded in who she is. Soon, her artistic, creative side burst forth, and she blossomed in our presence.
This is what the garden is all about, the forces of life. It's not about weed control or pest control. When we become aware of life forces, and the interrelatedness of these forces, we begin to experience gardening far beyond the mechanics.
Teaching people how to garden is not sharing a collection of recipes or tricks. It is about observing the balance between plants, soil, people, and nature. It is about processes of growth and decay, the plants as well as ourselves. Gardens are a meditation and we are the product of its forces, strong, grounded, enlightened spirits.
These gardens we create are a safety zone in a sometimes-crazy world; a place to slow down and begin to feel how we are influenced by life, and how we influence life. This winter as I walk through the blackened muddy garden, I hear all the voices of the summer. I see all the faces of those who have worked the soil over the seasons. Every plant skeleton I see reminds me of a face, a memory, a spirit. I hear the questions that were asked, the songs that were sung.
I walk aisle by aisle, remembering the joy, the sorrow, the pain, the laughter, and I imagine the plants as they die back into the ground, remembering each of us and our stories.
Amani Carroccio co-facilitated Lost Valley's Agroecology Apprenticeship Program for three seasons between 1993 and 1996. Before leaving to pursue her massage practice in Eugene, OR and now in Taos, NM (where she also co-manages The Abominable Snowmansion Youth Hostel), she contributed this article to The Lost Valley Book of Ecological Cooking and Living. Her legacy lives on here in the Lost Valley gardens and in the many lives she's touched.
©1998 Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 1998
Volume 8, Number 1
Education for an Ecological Society