It usually takes a few days for everything from class to sink in and see it begin to integrate into my life.  Today (three days after our class) was one of those days where I was given the chance to experience and explain a little bit about the course to a friend and some family.

My day started with some typical house chores and fed into a little “road trip” across the Golden Gate Bridge and into the Marin Headlands.  Spinach, lentils, and the scent of garam masala accompanied a beautiful view of Angel Island and a misty cityscape.  Silence broke only  between bites of food to discuss life plans and other happenings.  As with most conversations as of late, we ended up discussing permaculture and what I’ve been doing in class.

I started off her off with some generalizations of permaculture while watching the fog burn off over the bay, giving greater visibility to the ocean and the natural contours of the land.  Once we could better see the city, my friend and I noted and discussed the difference in the amount of structural development on either side of the Golden Gate Bridge. It made me happy to be where I was at that moment, surrounded by rolling hills, peppered with dilapidated and graffitied batteries.

From lunch we wandered through one of the battery tunnels to Hawk Lookout.  The dark concrete tunnel was like a transporter taking us from a view of one of the world’s most famous cityscapes to green grasses and tall sequoias full of birdsong.  Beyond the trees was a promise of a grayish open ocean and an empty horizon barely visible through the haze.

Once at Hawk Lookout, we found a sit spot situated within the sequoias. After taking a moment to settle, we dove into a quiet conversation accompanied by the chatter of songbirds.  From there I remembered our discussion about bird language and nature awareness and brought it up to my friend.  We wondered what type of disturbance we had caused by climbing the slight hill to the lookout and share the beautiful view with the rest of the forest.  Hopefully we hadn’t startled anything too much.  I have a feeling we didn’t because eventually we were accompanied by three ravens gliding into view just above our heads and a hawk soaring lower down in the valley.  Birdsong had returned and been noted until a mountain biker happened by and made some noise walking his bike through some wood chips.

We returned to the city with smiles on our faces and full from good conversation and beautiful scenery.  Although only a quick trip, its impact was strong.  I feel my mind reawakening from the dull sleep of city gossip.  The profound thoughts I once had are slowly reemerging and filling a void in my life.

This little adventure showed me how much I have absorbed from the course these past three weeks and further piqued my curiosity for what’s to come.  I look forward to getting my hands dirty and a further expanding of my mind through more observation.

Learning Affirmation:  I reclaim myself through observation and interaction with my community.

Our third PDC class began with the Elm Dance, a moment of silence to honor people’s historian Howard Zinn, expressions of gratitude to the 5 elements (air, fire, water, earth & spirit), song and re-introductions.

We learned David Holmgren’s 12 permaculture principles, a synthesis of Mollison’s 28, by matching them to their definitions.  For the remainder of the day, we put into practice Observe and Interact (beauty is in the eye of the beholder) and Design from Patterns to Details (can’t see the wood for the trees).

Jay said that permaculture is applied nature awareness, which we should cultivate like indigenous or native people who have a deep-rooted knowledge of place through observation. Unfortunately, I might have nature deficit disorder common to urbanites like Woody Allen, who said he was at two with nature.  To help us become one with nature like naturalists, Jay encouraged us to allow space and time for core routines like sit-spot, journaling, storytelling, wandering without an agenda, childlike curiosity, etc.  Nature is sensitive so we need to be more self-aware, especially our impact on the natural environment, and walk softly on the earth.

Because animals have more direct contact with our natural world, they seem to sense danger like impending natural disasters or predators better than humans and can respond in fight-or-flight mode.  We Americans are so sheltered (wearing clothes and shoes, altering climate with heaters/air-conditioning) that we’re less attuned to our senses and we don’t encounter life-threatening dangers daily so we just don’t pay much attention to nature but seem to rely on language and technology.

During the 15-minute excursion to go outdoors to observe nature’s patterns, I also used the time to think about J.D. Salinger, who passed away on the same day as Zinn.  Like the hypersensitive Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye, I spent my adolescence observing “phony” behavior and feeling alienated.  Now that we were encouraged to practice our “innate” childlike sense of wonder, I kept visualizing Holden as a “catcher in the rye” saving innocent children from falling off a crazy cliff and being exposed to phony adulthood.  Like Holden, I’d pretend to be a deaf-mute so I wouldn’t have to have useless conversations with anybody and then I’d build a cabin near the woods but not in the woods because I’d want it to be sunny all the time.  I digress a bit, but I wanted to honor J.D. Salinger, whose writings influenced me to look at things honestly.

We returned indoors to review patterns found in nature and our own bodies, their function and where they’re found in design:  branching, radial, wave, branching tree, decentralized branching dendrites, packing/cracking, spiral, lobe and scatter/random.

During lunch break, we took a 20-minute stroll over to 100-year-old Brigid House, a 7-bedroom intentional community, for our site analysis.  We wandered the grounds noting landscape features based on David Jacke’s Scale of Permanence:  climate, landform, water, legal issues, access & circulation, vegetation & wildlife, microclimate, buildings & infrastructure, zones of use, soil, aesthetics.  Sage and Jay discussed sectors (map based on larger influences like elements of sun, fire, water, wind) & zones (map based on human energy on land to maximize efficiency), design process (inputs, outputs), and evaluation based on SWOC (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Challenge).

Jay discussed bird language (song, companion call, fledgling, male-to-male and alarm), reminding us that the Apache knew when a white man was approaching within two miles by observing birds.

After dinner, few of us shared learning affirmations, which were re-assigned to us as a “curious exploration” (euphemism for homework) so more of us would be prepared to share next week.  Finally, guest trainer Liz Turkel facilitated storytelling exercises (biographical, traditional, spontaneous) to demonstrate how talkers and listeners are co-creators in storytelling.

My left brain created my own curious exploration about the 5 elements: fire, earth and water elements are commonly recognized by Pagans and Chinese, but why do Pagans observe air and spirit (invisible) while Chinese observe wood and metal (visible)?

A lot of information today.  First, Holmgren’s Principles.  Ok, it’s been a while since I was in school, but I think I need flash cards to randomly look at during my days.  I think that I may try and pick the definitions I can assimilate best from each of the different principles lists.  Mollison’s vs. Holmgren’s.  I also need to get my printer up and running so I can print out the info that we are getting from the class.  I am already feeling a little bit overwhelmed.  I need to keep looking at this info and find some ways to assimilate it.  It’s  time to start looking at the back yard garden.

We were introduced to Jon Young’s core routines for nature awareness.  I think I am split down the middle as to some of them I actively do and understand firsthand; sit spot, journaling, wandering, curiosity for example.  The other ones I believe I at least understand intellectually.  Once again, how to bring these routines into practice….?

We spent a good amount of  time on nature’s patterns.  It felt like I  didn’t know how to connect this information somehow.  I haven’t gotten too deep into Gaia’s Garden so maybe time to delve a bit deeper, maybe find some of the connections to this informatioin that is coming at me.

Thanks for the great day to walk to the community house that we went to. Great people.  Super gracious.  The scale of permaculture site analysis kind of brought a lot of what we have been talking about home.  I am going to get started on my  own backyard.  I do want to plant stuff this year but I am also going to try and watch the property overthe course of the year to gather what information that I can.  Hopefully, by the time Ive gathered up this info I will know what to do with it.  I am very interested in mapping site analysis on a social permaculture model as well.  Now I have to figure out where.  A great day…again.

David Holmgren, a student of Bill Mollison’s, and still-active permaculture designer, has also tried his hand at defining the essential principles of permaculture. Holmgren’s principles are much more abstract and philosophical. Where Mollison’s are specific and tailored to the garden or design; Holmgren values diversity, integration, interaction and feedback. In his book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability, Holmgren draws schematic diagrams and cycles to illustrate his view. The take-home message is, of course, that all the principles advocate an awareness of our interconnectedness.

We were given the opportunity to practice this interconnectedness (and also realize our natural affinity to forget or not pay attention to it) while conducting some unplanned meandering. We ventured out into the rapidly-warming day to test our sense of self-reliance, and also our ability to notice naturally-occurring patterns. Armed with our skills of observation, we were able to practice first-hand our abilities to “observe and interact,” one of Holmgren’s permaculture principles.

Upon retruning to class, we were asked to identify the pattern types that we observed, and realized that as varied as they were, they all fit within 8 different pattern types: radial, wave, branching, decentralized branching, packing, spiral, lobed and scattered/random. This one was my favorite: A honeycomb-like packing or crating pattern, that is used in building or planting to reinforce and create strength or protection amongst things that, to me, seem unlikely to cooperate. Plus, it reminds me of flowers.

Speaking of flowers, we had the chance to visit an intentional community in southwest Berkeley that had been a cooperative living situation for the past 25 years. While hearing the story and history of the house, we had the opportunity to wander around in their permaculture garden, performing a site analysis – but really just marveling at the variety of flowers and trees and shrubs and food plants. All had been done with care and attention to the needs of the community (human and otherwise) as a whole. There was an herb spiral, raised beds of greens and radishes, pathways buttressed by rainwater-collecting barrels, and miniature forests created to attract and entice pollinators.

Learning and being able to experience urban permaculture in all its beauty was marvelous. Watching members of the community working on the garden and using group decision-making tools to modify or re-plant different areas of the yard was also sobering, and made me realize that achieving true stasis with nature doesn’t happen just because you think it will.

This week’s course focused on Learning Affirmations, Community Agreements, Permaculture History, and the Ethics of Permaculture.

We began the day with the Elm Dance, a way of bringing us all together after a week of living our lives separately from one another. The dance represents a release from experiences of the previous week and a way of reconnecting on an energetic level with everyone else in the course. Asleep at first, eventually our minds gently awaken for the day ahead. Ready to dust off thoughts not visited for a while, portions of our brain that many people don’t address in everyday conversation.

Learning Affirmations

This exercise provided me with the ability to vocalize something I always knew inside, but never expressed outwardly in a profound manner. Milling about, sharing answers to questions on our best methods of learning, some of us noticed a similar learning pattern among the group. It seems that many of us expressed that we best learn by doing. Some learn best where the teacher and student share a path of reciprocated learning. Others learn well in a somatic way. We are human beings made to move freely and with emotion that needs to be expressed. Our current public education system needs help in creating space for these outlets.

Community Agreements

The community agreements are interesting and I’d like to learn more about them. I think they would be helpful within other contexts outside of permaculture. Some non-profits or businesses could greatly improve their working atmospheres by practicing a few of the agreements.

Permaculture History

I liked the way that Sage and Jay step back and allow the class to teach one another. I felt engaged while trying to define permaculture and creating the permaculture flower mandala. When I first signed up for the course, like some of my peers, I had a hard time explaining exactly what I had signed up for and why. It was easier to define once we were split up in groups and were able to bounce ideas off one another for a 10 second elevator speech. My group defined permaculture as something that “creates a sustainable system to address everyone and everything’s basic needs based upon natural systems and cycles.”

Ethics of Permaculture

After lunch we dove into the ethics of permaculture and how each applies to different petals of the permaculture flower. Split into groups again, each was given a petal to focus on and ask questions whether it applies each of the three ethics. Not given a specific scenario to focus on allowed us to interpret the exercise in whatever way we chose. For the Health and Spiritual Well-Being petal, my group chose to look at it as if we were creating a new global health system. Some questions we came up with included, “will profits get reinvested into the earth in measures that prevent degradation of its resources,” “will everyone have equal access to health care,” and “will the system promote self-reliance and personal accountability of one’s health?”

We further “met” Bill Mollison and learn some of his -isms after dinner. I was impressed by the video clips and motivated by the stories in India and Africa. To see the lush gardens that have come from barren land gives me hope for us and that hopefully soon we can turn our arid lands over as well. The swales found in the Sonoran Desert are impressive. It’s amazing what nature does when we leave it alone.

Affirmation for the day: I am working on formulating the life I know I am capable of leading.

The first class was devoted to social permaculture, which is the aspect of permaculture that I believed was of least interest to me but that I now realize is integral to rebuilding our communities.  I really didn’t know what to expect this first day, and for the most part, I was pleasantly surprised.  Before I go into the highlights of the day for me, I do want to say that I believe the exercises in the afternoon went on for too long.  We were asked to reflect and share on very similar topics repeatedly and since the class lasted until 9 p.m., I was definitely left thinking that we could have accomplished just as much by shortening the afternoon and covering the evening’s materials in the late afternoon.   However, it is a true testament to the instructor’s skill and knowledge that the afternoon was educational and enjoyable, and that despite its length, it actually flew by.  I would also have assigned some exercises to do at home during the week.   I assume we are going to have “homework” throughout the course, and I definitely feel that sharing what we learned with our families and friends, and getting their feedback and response to our growing awareness of the process of social permaculture, would be helpful to the learning experience.

The absolute highlight for me on Saturday – and this was close to a life-changing experience – was one of the exercises we did during the symposium, which in itself was amazing.  We were asked to close our eyes and imagine ourselves in the future, sitting outside in nature with our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who were thanking us for what we had done all those years ago (present day) to get society back on course and save us from the brink of extinction.  We were to imagine ourselves receiving thanks and then explaining to our descendants what it had been like for us to live then, and how we had responded to the planetary crisis.  We were asked to reflect on our struggles, periods of frustration and hopelessness, as well as how we were able to cultivate hope and participate in and lead the change.  It was amazing.  I, like probably everyone in the class, am motivated to work toward sustainability not only to live a richer more joyful life today, but to do all that I can to ensure that future generations have the same opportunity.  That is, in essence, the definition of sustainability.  I have never before, in the thousands of hours I have devoted to thinking and acting on sustainability, ever felt a true emotional connection to the people who will inhabit this future, and especially, to the ones who will call me grandma.  It was absolutely overwhelming.  It was a beautiful feeling to imagine this future, and it surprises me that it all took place in my imagination.  It actually seemed real, and I still feel it now as I am writing.  I think that speaks to the power of the symposium and to the setting and facilitation provided by Common Circle.

The class overall left me feeling both hopeful and sad.   I am hopeful that it is possible for individual human beings to reconnect with themselves and with each other, and I am sad that very few of us are moving in that direction.  I am looking forward to learning more practical tools that I can use to make my own life more sustainable, and to work toward creating more sustainable communities. Overall, the course so far has helped me to focus my professional goals on change at the local level – which is a good thing, because if our only hope is action at the federal level, then it is unlikely that the beautiful conversation I had with my descendants will ever happen.

“We are nature working,” spoke Masanobu Fukuoka, a Japanese farmer. So began a discussion and exploration into the nature of permaculture – essentially a way of reestablishing and strengthening relationships between people and the world around us. Some would say it is having a sense of community ecology, or a way of applying living systems design in the least input-intensive way possible. Whatever one’s preferred definition, there is no arguing that it a lens through which to view lifestyles and choices.

Permaculture is based on three primary ethical concerns – care of the earth, care of people and care of the returns or surplus or losses of each action. Each decision should be evaluated accordingly, and each choice made with full knowledge of its effects in each of the three realms. Furthermore, permaculture incorporates eight overarching themes:

• Land and nature stewardship
• Built environments
• Tools and technology
• Culture and education
• Health and spiritual well-being
• Ethics and principles
• Finance and economics
• Land tenure and community governance

These themes help ground the lens of permaculture in a more accessible way, to really help one focus their understanding – and their dedication – to living a life that is harmonious and real.

When taking the principles of permaculture to practice, there is none more active than Bill Mollison. The founder and propagator of modern-day permaculture gardening techniques, he has been responsible for the spread of natural gardening that uses what inputs are already present to build upon and improve the natural environment in a way that is beneficial to all creatures that come in contact with this habitat. Traveling around the world and spreading the word of beneficial relationships, both large and small, Mollison has helped thousands of farmers and gardeners realize the latent potential of the land around them. Permaculture gardening is a way of utilizing symbiotic biological relationships to harness the full potential of plants. For example, rotating food crops and spacing them appropriately to take full advantage of natural cycles and to also train plants to grow with minimal inputs and human intervention.

In India, Mollison and his students set up a land tract dedicated to permaculture farming, and helped destitute farmers regain their livelihoods by teaching them how to go back to low-input, organic farming that utilizes traditional knowledge bases to support a thriving food system that valued food for its nourishing properties. While other systems place a monetary value on food, thereby making it a dehumanized and tradable commodity, permaculture refocuses attention on creating fair and just systems that allow everyone the opportunity to empower themselves and take charge of the health of their own communities as a whole. Using principles of nonviolence and basic respect for the contribution each living thing can make to society, permaculture seeks to reinforce the notion that we are all in it together.

I had a horrible cold and I wasn’t quite sure that I was going to make it to the second class of our permaculture design course.  I really am glad that that is not how my day  ended up.  Having been exposed to the first week’s transformative vibe, I think that a lot of people in this course (myself included) were really eager to see where this idea of (Social) Permaculture can take us.

We started in with the ethics of Permaculture.  I didn’t have time to take notes on them but was assured that all of this information was going to be made available to us.  My first sense of these ethics was that it is a pretty basic compassionate view of our relationship to the world.  As we discussed it I could see in my own experience how we don’t really live in that space for mainly a lot of selfish and silly reasons.  We don’t take the time to understand the impacts made by our decisions.  Our frustrations keep us from acting with compassion in all of our interactions and relationships.  The goofy thing is that all of this should be pretty easy to do and benefits both ends of the relationships.  You simply have to be present with that information/experience/belief.  Sure is a good thing that being present was one of the ‘ethics’ .  It’s something that I think our broader culture sure needs a lot of work on.  I really enjoy a lot of the ‘active listening’ exercises that we have been doing and I think it helps re-enforce the idea of coming from a place of compassion.

In trying to come up with our own principles of permaculture and then the best case scenarios of what could come of this, I kept trying to seperate the idea of ‘Social Permaculture’ from ‘Permaculture’ .   We were introduced to the Principles and we started in on some exercises and the Permaculture charades game and right before the dinner break it kind of dawned on me that one isn’t apart from the other.  Kind of like we aren’t apart from nature, or that community, over there….There is no apart!  Thanks!!

We began our second PDC class with the Elm Dance, expressions of gratitude, re-introductions and then exercises focused on our learning intentions and setting forth community agreements in response to “How do we as a group begin to behave as a learning community to support our best possible outcomes?”

Our homework was to create a learning affirmation so here’s mine:  I effortlessly grow organic produce to feed myself and community!

My experience with organic gardening has been based on the biointensive method, a 4,000-year-old Chinese tradition practiced by my grandfather and which involves lots of muscle power to dig 2 feet deep into the ground.  In deeply prepared garden beds, water enters soil more easily and plant roots can penetrate further down into compost-enriched soil (instead of needing to spread out in search of water and nutrients) so plants can be spaced more closely.  According to John Jeavons, we can produce up to 4 times more food by using this method than an equivalent shallow bed planted in rows.

Growing up Chinese meant that I followed my grandfather’s tradition of gardening in our backyard in Hawaii, where we raised most of the food that we ate.  In Chinese culture, food is so important that we greet one another by asking, “Have you eaten yet?”  In fact, my happiest childhood memories are coming home from school to snack on plants picked from our garden—sugar cane, bananas, mangoes, papayas, tangerines, etc.  Growing up Chinese also meant that we ate lots of fresh vegetables and nothing was wasted so food scraps went to the compost pile.

Because eating fresh produce has been so nourishing to my well-being, I wanted to get involved in food security issues.  One way was to go to developing countries to promote small-scale, biointensive gardening.  In Tanzania, we worked primarily with women who lost their husbands from AIDS/HIV, malaria or other infectious diseases; it was a real challenge for the women to do digging work because this reminded them of burying their deceased loved ones or sometimes illness would compromise their strength to do so.  While biointensive gardening has a proven track record, I wanted to explore alternatives so I searched “no dig gardening” on the internet.

I was fascinated to learn about Sydney gardener Esther Dean’s No-Dig Garden, which eliminates the need for backbreaking work by building a garden above ground with layers of organic matter.  This led me to the permaculture work of her fellow Australian Bill Mollison.  I want to learn all I can to apply permaculture design principles to let nature do its work J!

While Sage and Jay asked us to tap into our “inner wisdom” during discussions about what is permaculture (designing systems to mimic relationships found in natural ecologies) and its ecological ethics (Care for Earth, Care for People, Return of Fair Share), I often felt like tabula rasa (blank slate) as I have spent much of my working adult life in an unnatural environment that I need to re-learn our natural environment.  For 15 years, I have worked with U.S.-based employers to establish and maintain employee benefit plans based on governing labor and tax laws, collectively known as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).  As these man-made laws reflect compromises made by politicians, they are subject to many exceptions (or “loopholes”) and frequent revisions.  Even practitioners can get frustrated with the intricacies of ERISA, which is also known as Every Ridiculous Idea Since Adam.

I was relieved when Sage and Jay handed out the list of 28 permaculture design principles as I would not have guessed them all.  But as usual, they weren’t going to make it so easy as they asked us to partner with a classmate to act out the principles in charade!

We viewed Global Gardener, a film showing Permaculture founder Bill Mollison creating gardens in the tropics, dry lands and urban areas.  It was inspiring to see how permaculture principles are applied in places as diverse as Australia, India, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Germany and U.S.A. (including Village Homes in Davis, CA)—to great success when we follow the universal laws of nature.

- Charles D.