I love snow.
I do, I love snow.
As the winter solstice approaches, sparkling snowflakes rekindle our romance, and I am again awestruck by the impossibility that each and every tiny flake is unique. Even shoveling can be a Zen-like experience, each glistening white shovelful an om. My love affair with snow ends abruptly at the same time each year – January 2nd. By January, I am over snow. I am over that crisp feeling of moisture freezing around my nostrils. And by February 2nd, I am praying to a groundhog 500 miles away.
Continue reading 'When the Snow Flies, Sow Some Seeds'»
How you are sustainable or regenerative has a lot to do with the place you are in. Each local ecology has its own set of circumstances, variables and things that are unique to that place. As I think about my personal environmental footprint and my place, I think about it from near to far. In permaculture, they call it zones. So I define my zones in the following way:
- my family and my home (zone 1)
- my block and neighborhood (zone 2)
- my city and region (food shed and watershed) (zone 3)
- my country (zone 4)
- the planet (zone 5)
I have started focusing on zones 1 and 2 by asking myself, “How do I get it so that as much of the needs that my family and community have are sourced locally?” There are a number of benefits to becoming more local and focused on place. Continue reading 'Place'»
Composting, Conservation, Green Building, Lifestyle, Local Food, Primitive Skills, Recycling and Waste, Renewable Energy, Transportation, Urban Agriculture
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Local, Permaculture, Place
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I was teaching a tracking class in May at the North Park Village Nature Center on Pulaski with friends from the Chicagoland Primitive Skills Group. We broke the 22 students into three groups and proceeded to create a series of round-robin, 20 minute courses on spoor, sign and awareness. A spoor is a footprint, or a physical print made by a human or animal and a sign is a physical sign that something has moved through. A sign could be a spoor, scat (poop), urine, rubbings, chewings, fur, bedding, etc.
Mike and I setup a tracking box near the debris hut so he could teach release pressures and Harmony setup an awareness obstacle course involving some very small paper clips learned from Eddy at Practical Primitive.
Continue reading 'Stop Looking Down'»
What is the distance between you and what is under your feet? We have distanced ourselves from the food we eat by not knowing from where it comes. We distance ourselves from our community by building fences and enjoying central air. There is an awareness that is slipping from our collective conscience and no one seems to notice.
I started the Chicagoland Primitive Skills just shy of three years ago with a mission: To learn the skills that once were required knowledge to survive. Unfortunately there weren’t many instructors in the area.
Continue reading 'Long Journey'»
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I love snow.
Themocracy