February 10, 2016

Reflections After the 2016 January Earth Activist Training

It’s been two weeks since I returned home from the 2016 Earth Activist Training (E.A.T.) in Black Mountain Preserve in Cazadero, CA, but some part of me still lingers there… It feels like a “hangover” from taking in too much the goodness from an overwhelmingly enriched collective experience and I found it hard to put down in words. What really happened there? Where should I start if I am to recount that experience? How can I piece together such a rich experience that’s impacted me on so many levels, known and unknown? Then everything began to boil down to one word--connection. 

Connection to Self
“Xiaojuan, the only thing you need to worry about is studying. I would do anything to support you going to school, even if I had to climb the mountain that’s sharp as a knife or jump into the sea that’s full of fire. So when you grow up, you will not be like me, a peasant.” Mother’s words accompanied my growing up in China. In the '80s and '90s, peasants in China were not only excluded from enjoying the social benefits that the city or town residents enjoyed, but also had to pay heavy agricultural taxes. Being a peasant’s daughter was my biggest shame in my early years. 

My parents valued education and sent me to the best school in town to study. From the 1st to the 9th grade, I was the only country bumpkin in my class. I never invited any friends home or let Mother visit my school. Getting away from the dirty soil was the only way to leave shame behind. 

During the Earth Activist Training course, getting my hands dirty in soil and compost was homecoming to me. What an honor to be the daughter of a peasant Mother who knows how to grow food out of the soil! Though she didn’t want me to be a peasant, she has never stopped planting seeds, growing vegetables and flowers in her life. During the course, I finally knew the name of the small orange flowery plant that she used to grow all around my childhood home. It was Calendula! 

One rainy afternoon, we layered a composting pile by alternating between one layer of wood chips and one layer of food scraps and yard waste. Then we began sheet mulching over the soil near the entrance of the retreat center. We laid down the cardboard and then covered them with wood chips and bio-brew. While wheelbarrowing the wood chips to the sheet mulching spot, I could barely open my eyes as rain water splashed off my face. But working in a collectively high spirit in the rain injected so much buoyancy in my gaits, despite that my feet were soaked in my shoes. The day before, when we were making bio-brew during our morning circle outdoor, the rain started pouring, but we continued to sing and dance... 

I am a little proud to list here what I took part in during the E.A.T. course: composting and sheet-mulching, building graywater system, making A-frames and digging swales, seeding and propagating, pruning and grafting, making biochar and biobrew, inoculating mushrooms, making cob and refurbishing a cob oven, making hydrosol, and more. The nature view from the outdoor toilet at Golden Rabbit Ranch was breathtaking. Plus, the human manure would be put into good use. What could be more empowering than living off the land using wisely the harvested "free" energy sources? 

The most common interaction between the students and the teachers sounded like this:
"Is it the best way to..."
"It depends."

Making cob (Golden Rabbit Ranch). Photo Credit: Brooke Porter


Returning to the land is reclaiming my roots, returning “home,” my eternal sanctuary, where there is no shame, only dignity and freedom. 

Connection to Others
We were a diverse group, consisting of different ethnicities, ages, genders, orientations, backgrounds, hearing and non-hearing, and beyond. As in plant guilds, diversity creates resilience, which was proven true as we powered through difficult discussions in our circle. At the end of the training, we felt so close to one another and knew that we would forever remember those 14 days of learning and unlearning, staying open and growing close in 50 circles of sharing, and culminating with team project presentations and our very own talent show.

Before every meal, we joined hands and gave blessings to the food and thanks to those who contributed their labor of love. Every morning, we held an opening circle; every night, we held a closing circle. We circled to welcome the four elements from four directions, the air, the fire, the water, and the earth, and the spirit from the center, and we sang and danced. We spiraled in and out, looking into each other's eyes while passing... 

I learned a few signs from our interpreters who signed for the deaf students. I was amazed by the way the words being translated into such animated signs. How could I ever forget what the deaf students shared with us the noble deaf culture and their bumpy yet rich journeys of arriving where they were in life at that moment. “If there were a hearing pill available to me, I would not take it,” they said. It has remained as one of the top highlights of the E.A.T. course for me, and it continues to inspire me to claim my own noble nature. 

Pomo and Miwok friends, whose ancestors settled on this land way before anyone else, shared their profound inner world and outer conditions, from the past to today, from traditions to current food sources, from dance to music… and how they transformed anger into love and generosity. As I breathed in the wisdom words, my heart opened more.

As we journeyed further, besides discussing organisms, we included other “isms,” such as audism (discrimination based on one's ability to hear) and racism. We spoke our truth in big and small circles, together and separately. We rode on the roller coaster of our raw and true emotions, up and down, holding tightly as an elastic circle. Our circle did not break; instead, it was strengthened and cleansed by our tears and laughter. Our facilitators Starhawk, Pandora, and Charles held that sacred space and time for us to dive into the discomfort zone of anger and hurt, and then return with an expanded heart and mind that would carry us on in our shared meaningful future. 

Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem Please Call Me by My True Names offers a great reminder for us to see our human potential in forgiving and loving, and recognizing the basic goodness in all. 

Time warped during our E.A.T. course because our experiences were so intense that our awareness amplified more memories than usual into a short time interval. My brain was tricked into thinking more time had passed, especially during the first half of the training, three days felt like three years and we had known each other for a long time in an intimate community.

Together we planted on the hugel kultur bed we made (Golden Rabbit Ranch). Photo Credit: Brooke Porter Photography 

"Merry meet, merry part, merry meet again."

Connection to Nature
As a Chinese proverb goes, “Fallen leaves always return to the roots.” When one gets old, he goes back to where he was born. Now this ancient proverb is ever more visceral to me, as described in the book, The Earth Pathby Starhawk. 

“Imagine that you are a leaf, hanging tight to a twig on a high branch, waving in the wind… feeling what it’s like to feed from light, effortlessly… And now time passes. Imagine the first cold winds of winter beginning to blow... a freeze comes into your veins… And you take a deep breath... you let go and fall, letting the wind take you, and you swirl and dance and spiral... falling down and down and down… Until at last you come to rest on the earth… but the earth…is porous… alive with a billion hungry beings. And you take a deep breath and give yourself back to the earth, and she reaches up to embrace you, and a billion hungry months open wide to take you in… You descend, through great caverns and chasms… [passing through aunts, beetles, worms, soil bacteria, fungi…] long arms of the mycorrhizal fungi that stretch between the root hairs of the great trees… pass you from one tree to another… [Take] a deep breath, feel yourself sucked into the root hair, and up into the root, rising and rising on a current of sweet sap… higher and higher… you become part of a green bud that opens with the warmth of the spring sun…”  

Walking on a tree-shaded trail covered with soft brown leaves, I imagine being a walking tree, lifting my feet but staying connected to the ground. Through the tree branches, the gentle breeze brushes my moving body, lifting me upward until I feel like flying away, through light and shadow, like a bird. Above, a flock of small black birds are holding a community meeting on the fly, this way, then that way. When one topic is raised, the group echoes in chorus, “Agreed!” “Not agreed!” Or maybe they are just laughing at us, ignorant four-limbed erect creatures. 

Standing on a wooden bridge over a creek, I watch the water moving towards me from one side, then under me, then away from me. It is constantly flowing… 

When I see a garden, I am in awe, feeling the life force calling to me from way below the dark soil. I walk closer to a fruit tree, a flower, or a vegetable, I touch them gently to feel their vibration that resonates with mine. One day when my time comes, I desire to journey down and be part of that magical life cycle.

Every morning when I open my eyes, the birds fly by my window, calling me, “Outside! Outside! Outside!” 

Going Forward
I stayed at the Golden Rabbit Ranch for 3 more nights after the course. On the last day, as we raked, wheelbarrowed, dug and picked to flatten the parcel where Starhawk visioned to hold circles next to where a Chinese medicinal garden would be, I asked if she knew anyone who does related work in China. “John Liu, a filmmaker, documented land restoration projects around the world,” she said.

I looked him up upon my return. In his film Hope in a Changing Climate, John D. Liu captured the transformation of the severely degraded land in Northern China after the Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Project.

Loess Plateau (黃土高原) covers a vast area in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River. In ancient times, it was fertile and easy to farm, which contributed to the development of early Chinese civilization around the region. But Centuries of deforestation and over-grazing, exacerbated by China's ever-growing population, have resulted in degenerated ecosystems. Its silty soil, the “most erodible soil on the earth,” is deposited into the Yellow River by wind and water, which causes frequent floods along the Yellow River, also known as “China’s Sorrow.” The success of the restoration project proved that the ecological balance can be restored. 

Loess Plateau, early September 1995. Photo Credit: Kosima Weber liu, EEMP

Loess Plateau, early September 2009. Photo Credit: Kosima Weber Liu, EEMP      
                                          
As John D. Liu said, “The entire planet is functional. If we understand how the natural evolutionary process worked... we emulate those and don’t disturb... we can live in the garden of eden.” He has come to see Ecological Restoration as the “GREAT WORK” of our time. 

As Masanobu Fukuoka wrote in The One-Straw Revolution, "The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings."

As Lao Tzu, the Taoist sage, says, "There was something formless and perfect, before the universe was born... It flows through all things, inside and outside, and returns to the origin of all things... Man follows the earth. Earth follows the universe. The universe follows the Dao." (Dao De Jing, chapter 25)

As I continue to ponder the balance in the universe that's yet to be restored, I think about joining my mother to plant together next time when I visit China. Maybe I'll plant that scarlet runner bean that was shared in our circle at E.A.T. 

To connect is the first step to heal. We are part of the earth; healing ourselves and our communities is part of healing the earth too. Knowing that the relationship between nature and humankind is a delicate and eternal dance, I'll learn to continue to spiral, "with no beginning, and never ending."


The garden my mother grows (Jiangsu, China)



2016 January E.A.T. Class. Photo Credit: Brooke Porter Photography


Thanks to:
Our amazing facilitators: Starhawk and Charles Williams  with Pandora Thomas 
The Earth Path by Starhawk
Starhawk’s blog about the 2016 Earth Activist Training
Permaculture Skills Center
Black Mountain Retreat Center
E.A.T. course photo credits: Brooke Porter Photography
Mother(s)

All Participants of the 2016 E.A.T. 
YOU ROCK!