The Wild Mountains and Beyond

Its been a wild ride.  Today I find myself at what may likely be my final destination, the Crystal Waters Permaculture eco-village about 150k north of Brisbane.  My host, Peter, has a beautiful garden, plays in a community marimba band, and has lived here for 25 years.  

It is quite a large community, with 85 house lots, 250 people, and 600 acres, most of it bushland/rainforest.  They have a community center, saturday markets, monthly gatherings, and a the whole slew of political and interpersonal issues that come up when people from different backgrounds try to come live together.   I'll be woofing, helping garden, gather wood, and bake sourdough.

Aside from one night and a mate's birthday party in Brisbane, I have been staying at the Wild Mountains nature reserve for the last few weeks.  This is a hundred acre sub-tropical rainforest area built with the specific goal of earth education.  Earth education consists of a "head heart and hands" approach to developing a connection with nature.  I got to see this first hand with a group of 25 fifth graders this week.  The running tagline:  spending time with nature feels good. 

Yup.  And they weave a really magical opportunity for the young people to become keepers of the keys, and help begin a notion of how soil and air cycles are essential to our existence here on earth. 

Richard and Susan Zoomers helped start the place 30 years ago, living in tents as they hand built all the present 2 homes 5 a-frame cabins and the magnificent new main hall.  They are a working model of sustainable systems with solar power, solar hot water, wood stoves, rainwater catchments, and many efforts to restore rainforest species to certain of the more logged and flogged areas of the property (once used for farming).

I spent a day slashing through these head-high bushes of Lantana, a really invasive weed, as well as paving an area for new solar battery arrays and planting trees.  It was a really lovely time and a good opportunity to connect with the effort of cultivating wonder in times of ecological stress, and I now have a much better idea how to get the message across in a safe and meaningful way.

I'm off to a home-brewed beer party tomorrow, and then I'll be cruising around this community, interviewing friends and trying to piece together what it means to grow your own lifestyle.

Cheers,

Michael

Some Pictures from the Journey

Inland

Just as I'm about to pick up this book and remark about how things are really about to take a jump, Joey walks up, barefoot, coveralls, smile n his face--he's seeing what I'm seeing.

What follows after that is a cascade of a events, a slingshot so radical that time is lost, celebrated in the bristling afternoon light, the approach of a world of trees and tree people, and the stories of such and endavor, soil, humus, and the roots that grow there.

We get into his truck, smells like dirt with no power steering, and before we get much chance to talk and get to know one another he's pulled up to an old hitchhiker in a dress, this guy's named brick and he bring plants to court, he's got a lazy eye and starts telling us all about the politics of control and the duty of all to attain freedom--one must get one's laws of one's body, you see.

Before we know it we are winding into the wollumbin hills, volcanic peaks and lush valleys before us, hearing of garden tips to add nutrienct to soil and reclaim CO2, plants that grow on other plants and the Nimbun oneness festival that gave birth to it all.

We drop off Brick at the town market, almost the only official building in the place, and then work our way up into the hills on dirt roads. Joey tells me a story of growing up, his dad showig him the compost pile, asking him to stick his hand into it.

"Feel that?" he said, "that heat is from the soil; It's alive." At that point joey recalls a flood of connections, life and decay, the round and ciclic meandering of energy in this world, the truth of his own death and decomposition, how it would become the roots and trees and rivers, and all that being only six years old at the time.

We arrive at the Mothership: beautiful blue home on the side of a lush sub-tropical hill, a clear view of the afternoon mossy silhouetter of Mount Warning in the background, and the trinkets of a real life scattered about--tea and honey, wicker chairs on the deck, my little pony and guitars and posters on the walls.

Joey starts telling me about bird watching, hos its so much more about the feeling of it, using senses other than the watching that our descriptive language binds us to. His dad would quiet them in the woods and the heard the bird calls, identifying every one, the king parrot we heard, among others. Or how when you'll be walking in the woods you'll suddenly feel like your being watched, and sure enough a three foot tall owl would be in the trees, staring a hole in your body.

We stretch and calm ourselves, let the gold set in the space between our inhales and exhales. I have a fair bit of exhaustion built up from surfing on the coast earlier in the day, and it feels good to open it up and breathe.

Just as we are wrapping up, a van rolls up the hill, and out pour more elves, and their children, arriving home from the seven-year-old's birthday party in the park, excited and full of cake. I get introduced to Josie, mother of one of the young ones with Joey. More tea is had, and the afternoon stretches into evening as we sit on that porch, sharing stories of festivals up north in Cannes and outcroppings and ranbomd beach walks that turn into day long adventures.

Soon Uncle Sam pulls up, he is a long haird grandfather type whose got earrings and runst the institue for inner peace down the road. He's a great sotry teller, they just sort of erupt out of him and jokes as well: "Whats the dirrerence between and egg and a beet-root? You can beat an egg but you cant beat a root."

Josie and I get to talking about her dreams of opening up a teashop next to the natural market they are starting in town. She wants to have a space for healing there, and I ask here if she has the disposition for it. We hold hands for a little while, conducting a little experiment, and with bliss and relaxation we both acknowledge what touch can do--transportive, amazing, and we hardly have time to acknowledge the truth of our experiment before one of the girls is cryng inside because Taz puller her hair, and Joeis, mother-hero, arrives and begins describing to Taz the need for open communication nd being kingd to your playmates.

At the dinner table I learn about local jungle macadamias and how all the water for the house comes from the rain, clean and guaranteed year-round. We are in the sub-tropical rainforest, after all, the loins-town, the den, and these are beautiful people with beautiful dreams, and like the legends they are those who care for the trees, colors buring bright though they may be.

Sydney and Embarkation Park

Its been nearly 36 hours since this all began, and despite a slight headache I'm better for the wear. There is mounting excitement for this place and what is surely to come...already I feel at home in the in-between places, searching for some alley that will guide me from the tourist world of appearances to the locals life of relationships and places.

A few people I've met: Dana, massage therapist on the train back to SF airport on his way to Amsterdam. He and I immediately hit off talking after I we had been listening to this other fellow's self produced hip hop album in the subway station.

The next person would be Walter. I ran into him in the crowded subway train at central station in sydney. I was carrying all my baggage then, just arrived from the airport quite a wide load. I happened upon the city's morning rush hour, lots of coats brushing by me as the unloaded at the city center. I asked him where I might be able to find the youth.

Later today, after having found a place to stash my luggage, I ran into him in the city center, selling magazines. We spent the next three hours discussing economics and the current world order--he is quite a historian, tying up for me in a most intelligent way the goigs on of todays neoliberal-driven crisis with the role of China. Turns out privitization is an oppurtunity for greed, and we joked about how when the US made its move into australia, privitizing health care and the commonwealth, all that amounted was the selling of government land to the banks and increased competition in the job market for street sweepers...this is quite a laughable world we live in today.

Just now I ran into Aragorn, a dutch traveler staying in my room. He has been at it for 12 months, earning his way as he goes...handyman at a hotel, working the harvest in the outback, the fishmarket. He admires how connected one can get to a local community throug work, and how it is both the fastest way to develop real relationships and to see the parts of the community that are real and true.

His latest gig was two weeks working on a fishing boat up north. The work consisted of waking up at two in the morning to drag in nets, hundred-fifty kilo cages really, to break them down, clean them, and throw them back out. He said one morning the pulled in 45 sharks, big nurse sharks, and had to wrestle them off the deck back into the water by jumping on their backs and grabbing their gills. You have to be careful because if they hit you with their tail they are strong enough to break your legs, and of course a bite can be mighty bad. He said that the water is so warm up there that it is home to tons of bacteria, so if you get wounded you have to disinfect four times a day or it will eat away at your flesh. It was hell, he says, smiling, two thousand dollars richer, feeling like superman.

Tomorrows my last day in the city. One taste of downtown, stilettos and show girls is enough. Hopefully I'll get to stay at Walter's place tomorrow night, and then off to the coast, to the forest, and the homes of people I have met only in the well-traveled tributaries of the travelers mind, we'll all make it there sometime.