Snatched awake at the Northwest Permaculture Convergence

As we walked into the mess hall of this year’s Northwest Permaculture Convergence, I looked at my children and said, “Look around kids. These are the people that will save the world.” By the end of the convergence, that statement had taken on a whole new meaning.

While I was prepared for growth, unexpectedly the event changed my life. It snatched me awake on a whole new level. I left asking myself a very serious question.

What would I do with my remaining time on this planet if I knew I had nothing left to lose?

Many of us are feeling activated by the tension building on the planet. Especially with Standing Rock unfolding publically for the last few months. I suspect many of us are feeling this need to rise up and stand together in formation. To take your place, uniting for the cause that’s most dear to us. Which at its core is to reclaim, recover, and protect clean water.

The Water!

Humble Observations

The event was held in Nordland, Washington at Fort Flagner State Park, an old military base on the Puget Sound. The encampment was oddly fitting for the 600 plus soldiers who showed up for such an event. We’re talking boots-on-the-ground kind of folks, not scared to get dirty, out doing the work healing the damage colonization has done to the planet

These are people who dedicate themselves to acquiring the knowledge necessary to take back the stripped mountains and man-made deserts, bringing abundance back to the planet and her people. Events like the Permaculture Convergence are where we exchange that knowledge with one another, adding fuel to our collective fire.

I was urged by a friend, whom I’d met at the infamous Montana PDC, to go to the Convergence. I found a nice niche in which to serve at the Convergence bookstore. The bookstore seemed like the perfect fit for me, I could hide in my introvert corner and let the action come to me; my usual M.O. And the action came.

By the end of the convergence, I’d heard several references to an extinction event of the human species.

And in a surprising late night conversation with an astrophysicist, I found myself spinning into a straight up spiritual awakening that I’m still navigating weeks later.

The Numbers Change Everything

Biochar conversation was buzzing in the air throughout the event. Folks came into the bookstore all weekend looking for Dr. Paul Taylor’s book, The Biochar Revolution, having heard Taylor speak on the subject. The moment I ran out of the books, a biochar comrade overheard; divine timing. Next thing I knew, Taylor was bringing more stock, and in seconds, the whole bookstore was a buzz with biochar conversation.

The conversation took an interesting turn when I popped off at the mouth about how we, as permaculturists, have our work cut out for us to heal this planet. That’s when Paul Taylor PhD turned spiritual guru. This is the gist of what he said:

In order to heal the Earth, heal being the operative word, each person on the planet would have to sink one ton of carbon per year for the next 70 years. But Americans would have to sink three tons of carbon every year for 70 years, obviously because of our vast collective consumption. Basically, we need to undo the damage we’ve done since the industrial revolution. There’s not much else we can do at this point besides wake-up. As in, awaken not only to what we’ve done, but awaken spiritually. Because that’s about all we have left.

Whoa!

I mean, like you, I know we have a serious problem on our hands, but I’ve always been hopeful we could turn this ship around. My ever-optimistic view of the world was confronted by simple numbers that changed my perception. I left the event in a deep mourning for my mother, our Mother Planet.

Ok, the information did knock me off my feet. But I waited to collapse into actual mourning till I was on the road after we’d packed down the event

To think that we’d failed on our mission to fix this mess we’d made was more than I could bear. How did we miss this?

It took me several days to recover and get my hope back. I think this may be one of my superhero powers. I see multiple paths and solutions to get to our collective goals.

We have a lot of carbon to sink, folks. We’re going to need some large scale operations to pull this off.

Based on the knowledge and drive the permaculture movement has collectively, I know if we organize, we can pull off amazing feats. If anyone can do this, it’s the bad-asses in our permaculture community. But organizing is the only way to effectively tackle a problem this giant and create a permaculture revolution.

Organizing Forces

Michael “Skeeter” Pilarski, the event’s coordinator, is a force to be reckoned with. Pilarski’s ability to organize events, bringing together communities of people ready and willing to do the work that can save our planet, is grassroots at its finest.

Skeeter has organized over 90 events. He jump starts each into reality, runs the event for a few years, then finds a team to take over so he can go on to the next inspiration. Pilarski has spearheaded many gatherings all over the greater Northwest, each creating networks of community. I’m sure there’s one being planned right now.

Through his Friends of Trees Society organization and personal farming practices, he’s left food forests and abundant, working permaculture farms throughout the Northwest in his nomadic wake.

The greatest lesson I take from my beloved mentor Skeeter is about humility in service. If one man can make such a difference with his constant and humble service to the planet, never stopping for credit or recognition, imagine what we can do as an organized collective.

He’s an instigator, bringing together communities. An organizer. And organizing forces are crucial for the mess we have ourselves in. It’s the only way we’ll pull this off. You with me so far?

I mean the man actually runs, literally, clipboard in hand, as if our lives depend on it, constantly finding ways to serve the planet, with all humility.

Skeeter writes a much more well-rounded account of the 2016 Convergence here.

Saving The Bees and Ourselves

Paul Stamets, renowned mycologist of Fungi Perfecti fame, holds critical information for the survival of the human species. Stamet’s scientific studies and observations in nature give me great hope for the planet and humanity. Stamet’s journey takes mystical turns, as gifts and answers from the natural world appear before him, on “a spiritual journey of science and self-discovery.”

“If you walk with respect for First Peoples, you walk loving nature, you walk with faith and the excitement of discovery, and respect for the ancestors, I think these (mystical answers and gifts) are given to you.”

While I’ll study permaculture and it’s practices for the rest of my life, I’ll make no attempt to come off as an expert on anything, only to share my observations. So please listen to Stamets speak and absorb this knowledge first hand, permaculturists. It’s really important for the work that’s coming to save humanity.

[su_youtube url=”https://youtu.be/ET4dxrsl2Ps” width=”1600″ height=”700″] This is footage from Friday evening’s keynote speech. I’m So thankful this footage exists; I was hoping to be able to hear it again. Forgive the technical difficulties. Paul begins speaking after the introductions at 16:44.

With the bees facing a massive extinction event the very near future, our current food system (already teetering on the brink of disaster) is also in line for a total collapse, which as Stamets explains, is a direct threat to our bio-security and a much more immediate threat than global warming due to the speed in which the collapse is happening.

Stamets describes how in bed one evening, head swirling with the perils of the world — specifically the bees in collapse, he has an epiphany in a sort of waking dream, and he may be on to a cure for colony collapse.

But it get’s better. He and his team have gone on to prove we can greatly reduce the viruses and parasites plaguing the industrialized honey production in colony collapse with one of nature’s many first medicines. And he’s devised a mycelium cocktail, or nutraceutical, currently in patent proceedings, which he intends to gift to the world as an open source technology to immediately put to use.

That means us, people! As in, If you’re reading this, I highly recommend you sign up to follow Stamet’s work in any way you can, and be among the first to help distribute and dispense the prescription to the bees by one of the world’s top scientists in the field of Mycology.

Because we all know Mushrooms save the world. I mean, don’t we?

Cancer fighting, immune boosting, virus killing, carbon sequestering, bee saving, soil building, life bringing, God organism. Wait, I forgot oil spill and radiation remediation. Big!

Vision of a Sweeping Movement

The Permaculturists of the world are gathering information and knowledge for an organized movement of monumental proportion. Don Tipping, of Seven Seeds Farm, refers to this as the Permaculture Armada, where we show up in droves to the frontlines to design and implement our way back to abundance.

I have a similar vision of organized, sweeping permaculture actions, in which we take back our world from the destruction. You with me?

VerdEnergia Pacifica was formed in Costa Rican jungle decimated by foreign interests who cut, slashed, and burned the land in order to make pasture in the 1950s. Since established in 2006, Verde has become a smooth running permaculture farm and the jungle is reestablishing under the canopy of the planted food forest.

As neighboring family farms up the watershed from Verde have come up on the chopping block to be purchased by palm oil prospectors, a handful of VerdEnergia shareholders responded by creating Blacksheep, a regenerative resource management company with a bottom-up, grassroots approach.

Blacksheep organizes large-scale actions in which they collectively take back destroyed cattle land and prospective palm oil plantations. They turn out lucrative crops for market, like turmeric, cacao, and ecologically harvested lumber while the jungle reestablishes itself in the undergrowth nursery of pioneer species planted to repair the spent soil. They create profitable, regenerative agroforestry investment opportunities, and they do so while keeping the local families on their land.

Blacksheep has created an agroforestry-based, collective model that can easily be replicated anywhere in the world. They offer consulting services to do just that. It’s a model that tackles several problems in true permaculture form.

• Taking back the mountains and reestablishing jungle/forest habitat on degraded land
• Protecting clean water
• Generating food stability
• Sinking carbon
• Creating and empowering communities
• Creating resource-based economies
• Creating retirement packages for long-term income potential
• Empowering locals and families on their land
• Creating and protecting broad and collective ownership of land

Blacksheep organizers want to stress collective and local ownership of Blacksheep projects. They realize that the top-down approaches of the big NGOs do nothing to empower the local people who live closest to the land, often doing the opposite. Their goal is to educate people that economics, environment, and social revolution are all different facets of the same struggle.

Inspirational work, to say the least.

The Call

So, if I were to do anything with my time left on the planet, and I have so many things to do, this would be act one:

I’d organize around taking back the mountains.

• I’d instigate a conversation around large movements of carbon sequestration, while building resource based economies, in abundant compounds and communities.
• I’d focus on organizing the permaculture troops to stand ready.
• I’d pray for indigenous collaboration, knowing we can do much more united. And I know we’d all love to see the Nation’s First People leading the world in sovereign food systems on so-called American soil.

If you had nothing left to lose, would you go all in?

I’m initiating a conversation, engaging many voices and visions to take part in grand scale collaborations. Gather with me here at Greenbelt Productions; let’s see what kind of trouble we can stir up.

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• Do you have visions of big change and plans to share about how to get us there? Are you a permaculture visionary?
• Would you deploy to locations to take action designing and setting up systems where we’re most needed?
• Who are the community organizers of our permaculture community? Event coordinators?
• Any developer/coder types in our community? We need systems in place for gathering people up. And I need collaborators.

All Hands on Deck

If you don’t already have a Permaculture Design Certificate, get one. Find a PDC experience that most calls to your soul. Because, and you can ask anyone, it’s transformational. Especially a good intensive PDC that lasts two to three weeks, where you can really dig in and make community.

My friends at VerdEnergia Pacifica offer this Permaculture Design Course in Costa Rica in late January of 2017. This year you can also opt to stay for the transformational leadership immersion, NuSeed Gathering. The collaborators of VerdEnergia and NuMundo have teamed up to create a great package for the two workshops.

No matter your skill level and experience, it’s time to gather. We have our work cut out for us. I know we’re all working locally, that’s what we do. But it’s time to organize the troops.

We’ll take our collective knowledge and resources and apply them to the places that will make the most impact. We’ll learn, teach and collaborate in the field. We were born for this.

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If I have nothing left to lose, I for one, will die trying to make this right. It’s what I’m here to do. Instigate.

In deep gratitude for you, the education you’ve given yourself, and the action you’ll take serving our planet and humanity.

And always… For the Water!

Heather of Greenbelt

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