Tag Archives: water

Sol dialed: remembering mortality with grave stones and grave stories of near death

A friend shared a beautiful tombstone with a sundial and it served as a prompt to remember death. The sundial “says to those of us above ground: this is the “last hour to many – possibly to you”. What would you do if this was your last hour, day, week, month or year? Hour/day seems easier to conceive of. Nice to have a little advance notice and time to think about it eh. Just shooting the breeze a little… Maybe phone up loved ones, tell em what they need to hear good and bad, and make them brave. Whatever one is generally too chicken to do/say. Chickens are almost certainly less cowardly than most humans. Go out in the street/digital town square and loudly try and share whatever seem like the best ideas you learned in this life for this struggling humanity to find joy in one another and the earth; good luck guys. If it’s a whole year obviously stop as much as possible doing anything that isn’t EXACTLY what you want to be doing; differentiating one’s existence as a part of creation from any limited or misjudged human notions of what one should do...”

And to that I replied:

Thanks for this important message. Wise words. The idea that the goal before dying is to find the best ways to give everything away – that hits home.

A year? Probably adding to the list, write a book of aphorisms/wisdoms/educational autobiography and share it most goodly.

A day? For sure say hey to my loved ones and homies. Deuces

An hour? Oh there’d be hard feelings. Hugs and squeezes. A note of the nearly dead. Some sort of meditating to tune the star ship.

I had a few near death experiences, one intense one when on a trip with the professor I think we met via. Homeboy [WW] swam and saved my life, but for some time I didn’t think I’d be saved, as I was facing death in a slow but fast way. Slow enough to notice, fast enough not to tell a soul, as I got dragged further and further away by rip current at a remote coast on the Pacific. I tried all the things to remedy the situation. And then I tired. Wave after wave, it’s daunting, nature is so vast and exhausting, its flows so relentless and big. What would I do if I had moments left to live? I’d sorrow for the suddenness and shock with which I’d hit the hearts of those who’d miss me. I’d long to tell some folks my heart, mainly just that I love them dearly. I’d take deep comfort in knowing who already knows that love and it needs not saying. I felt no concern about stuff or unfinished projects, beyond the impact it’d have on those I loved.

It comes down to relationships. And the preciousness of breath.

Breathe easy frend

Oak seedlings growing in arboreal adaptation research by Michigan Technology University (https://www.superiorideas.org/projects/adopt-a-tree)

The Adapters Movement, in summary

Adapt in place, live in the here and now, and truly make the world a better place whether times are good or . . .

This post summarizes the defining features of ‘The Adapters Movement’. I hope this post fills a gap, offering a healthy framework to respond to the critical time we are living in. As it becomes clearer that many systems we rely on will not suffice or survive in the future, I hope this and similar movements will serve as popular and robust alternatives to inaction or to isolationist (and sometimes extremist) forms of preparedness and survivalism. Let us lessen, not worsen, inevitable harm.

This movement was first introduced to me in the form of a long, winding thread that was posted by a widely appreciated blogger Ross Raven aka Category5 on Permies.com: C5 Defines The Adapters Movement – Acceptance and Triage. Permies is the world’s largest permaculture forum (or so I’ve heard from them), and this Permies post was being discussed in an online community of the Deep Adaptation movement (which I introduce below).

I read the long thread introducing The Adapters Movement over a few days, and I found a lot of gems in it, representing the best of the ‘prepper’ and ‘survivalist’ movements, while explicitly revising many of those movements’ most off-putting and self-destructive problems. To help make the Adapters movement more accessible, I am sharing this relatively-short write-up introducing it and outlining its key themes. A heads up about what’s ahead: This post prints as four pages, which is much shorter than the many essay-length posts in the original Permies.com thread that this intends to summarize.

A little more context. This ‘Adapters Movement’ fits the wisdom of Deep Adaptation well. Here is Deep Adaptation in a nut shell: What are the chances of catastrophic natural disasters? Practically certain. What about the collapse of safety-critical systems? Very likely. Could humanity go extinct? Possible but not probable. Many systems we rely on for basic safety and well-being (e.g. food, housing, medicine, water, wood, ‘waste’, wildlife, social systems) are in the process of collapsing and some will fail. The way to adapt to these realities, according to the Deep Adaptation movement, can be summarized with the “Four R’s framework for inquiry“:

  • Relinquish what we need to stop to avoid more harm
  • Resilience is a priority for what we have that we need to preserve
  • Restore what we need from the past to live in ways that remedy and reduce harm
  • Reconcile relationships to remedy and reduce harm

With that introduction, here is a summary of key points I took from that long Adapters Movement post linked to above. I hope this helps inspire and clarify paths forward that are well adapted to grow bright, solarpunk futures out of collapse and change.

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Northeastern Indigenous Agroforestry

Thanks first peoples for simply living so that others may simply live. Thanks Jono Neiger for sharing this 1984 paper on indigenous agroforestry to the Northeast Permaculture Listserv.

Some Ecological Aspects of
Northeastern American Indian Agroforestry Practices

This paper was written in 1984 while I was a student of Professor Arthur Lieberman at Cornell University.  Professor Lieberman was then Director of the Cornell Tree Crops Research Project and taught landscape ecology in the Department of Landscape Architecture.  This version was submitted to the international journal Agroforestry Systems in 1988, but never published there due to its length.  A somewhat condensed version was later published in the 1994 Annual Report of the Northern Nut Growers Association (Volume 85). For a broader perspective on Native Americans’ land management practices, see this online article by Doug MacCleery.

http://www.daviesand.com/Papers/Tree_Crops/Indian_Agroforestry/
“Figure 2. Reconstruction of Major Dietary Constituents in the Early Seventeenth Century (Indian) Subsistence Cycle (from Thomas [83]).”

Solarpunk Snapshot: O Sunny Days, Reflections on Heat Waves

Journal entry, JD175, YR2174
Location: New Heartwood, Great Lakes water unit East 37.

Heat waves

The mainstream still grows a harder gap to cross. It meanders more turbulent and wider. Its degraded soils worsen the waters. Bridge building continues, bank stabilization continues (thank stars for the willows), and inland waters are being healed. On days like today, I can’t help but think of all the heat and friction in the mainstream. Those high temperatures can hardly hold any dissolved oxygen, and life is slowly choked out. May the ocean of histories heal and renew.

I knew today would be like this. Most are. Hot. Dry. Dry. Even the winters are feeling drier. And even the good days are reminiscent of conditions in the mainstream now that I think of it: when we get water, it is heaved violently, it thrashes and impacts, it erodes. The waters crash down and wash up, and as they pass the ground is lost to downstream. The waters are like reflections from history, and those remaining islands and land bridges around the mainstream are generational systems, built on . . .

I won’t go on. Much progress to be made here and on the shorelines of the mainstream. Ladders, lamps, lifeboats . . . It is better inland, and I hope more life will find its way out of the mainstream and onto land, onto the earth element.

Despite being of a different world than that of the mainstream, we are still in the same world. Same goes for all the different niches in the mainstream, which fight so fiercely against each other and themselves to squeeze out what life is left.

Life is better here. Where we are a regenerative part of the landscape and not degrading or even dominating it. Where as many of our knobs are turned, as are the dials of ecosystem conditions which we try to control. Where the ways and wisdoms of the local first peoples are followed, and where we all connect with our own first personhood. Where there is ecological mutualism. Where generations behind us and ahead of us grow with us, actively in mind as we steward life and vice versa, in succession.

Life is mind, and may peace be upon yours.

Field Tree Seeding (Acorns) – April 28, 2020

A nice day planting tree seeds in a field with a dear comrade. This completes my Winter 2020 seed stratification plantings. About 80 acorns went in modular air prune beds, with probably 100 more going in a section of a field that will no longer be mowed (last mowed last summer). In adjascent sections as seen in an image below, there is an area of hybrid hazelnut and shagbark hickory seed plantings (see images & video from that planting), and an area of black walnut dispersal.

As these areas stopped getting mowed they will begin succession toward forest. With some extra help from existing plant and animal communities, these planted seeds making their way up, and ecosystem management / caring disturbance from above: may this field become a bountiful food forest.

What does productive ecosystem restoration look like to you? What about mutual benefit? I consider these questions as I watch this water and seed this field.

Photos from this workday field planting trees from seed are shown below. As I work out a system for sharing photos and videos, I appreciate feedback on viewing options! Please let me know how the gallery works for you and if you have any suggestions.

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Fiddle Gnome Homes and a Trio of Turtles

Images from the forest
Natural wisdom of the forest

  • turtles sunbathing
    One turtle on a log glides into water to hide. Two remain still, soaking up Sun somewhere upstream.
  • Turtles Sunbathing
    I like turtles
  • Turtles Sunbathing in Pond
    One turtle on a log glides into water to hide. Two remain still, soaking up Sun somewhere upstream.
  • Fiddleheads
    Spring soup
  • Complex forest
    Complexity
  • Wild plant abundance
    Our ancestors knew an abundance
  • Wet woods plants
    Fiddle Gnome Home and the Wonders of Wet Woods

Pond Muck Plantings – April 19, 2020

This post begins an exciting series in the Alchemecology project. I’m starting to post media from an agroforestry project I describe on the Willows Edge Agroforest page.

I’m exploring different image gallery options and am open to input. Please let me know suggestions or feedback in the comments below!

Small 3 pool hand dug pond
Field Scuffin’, Pond Diggin’, Mound Muckin’, Tree Plantin’. And some nursery bed seeding with a significant friend.

In those post I share photos from a workday digging small pools in Willows Edge’s wet field. Each pool was dug independently, dammed from the other pools during digging. I did this to get easy access for filling up 5gal buckets of water and to get various other benefits of small ponds in agroforest systems. Some important benefits I’m working with: soil for plantings and mounds, and improved drainage and landscape complexity for the surrounding environment. Read more to see pictures and descriptions!

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