Earth Lodge Core Values

Past and current lodgers got together to try to elucidate what makes the Earth Lodge so special. The following is a set of core values that lodgers identified.

Diversity of thought
• we celebrate free thinking and creativity
• we are accepting of all points of view and strive to understand other peoples’ perspectives

Learning about self and others by exploring the natural world
• We cultivate respect and appreciation for nature though outdoor activities
• We develop self-knowledge through both adventure and reflection
• we explore the connections between ourselves and the natural world by learning basic wilderness and naturalist skills

Imaginative edupunk
• “edupunk: a style of hands-on self-education that benefits the student without concern for the curriculums or the interests of schools, corporations or governments. In other words, an autodidactic approach that spurns commercialism, mass-market approaches and top-down goal setting” (Jim Groom)
• we encourage an inquisitive and relaxed atmosphere of collaboration, equality and honest communication
• we believe that people learn best through experiential and multi-sensory education
• we value close teacher-student relationships

Forming a supportive and open-minded family
• we foster an environment of genuine and honest communication
• we develop relationships based on respect, love and acceptance
• we create a supportive environment for exploring questions of meaning and purpose
• we value reliability and dependability
• the teacher is part of the family

Spontaneity
• we let curiosity and passion guide us
• we love to play, relax, and of course, drink tea!
• we celebrate life and share the feeling of hope

Quotes from Lodgers:

“Earth Lodge provided me with an amazing community of friends, all from different backgrounds, majors, and interests, and with freedom of thought. The program combines an amazingly thought-provoking class with solace of nature. It is truly an experience unlike any other offered at Richmond and made me so much happier and content as a student here.”

“The close community of individuals within the Lodge, with a common respect for each other's different backgrounds and thoughts, provides an atmosphere that is fluid.”

“Lodgers are spontaneous, inquisitive, and creative. They aren't afraid to take risks academically, and are more focused on learning both in and outside of the classroom than getting perfect grades.”

“Because all of the Lodgers are open-minded and inclusive, I think that participants feel free and comfortable to share their thoughts and feelings. Thus, we were able to consider things we wouldn't by ourselves and gained unique and important perspectives about our surroundings and our coursework.”

“Earth lodge completely changed my experience at UR. It is the single greatest thing I have done in college. I became a part of an extremely strong community full of intelligence, love, new ideas, honesty, determination, and motivation. It has shaped me to become who I am, and urged me to become a better, more involved, more thoughtful person.”

Reality Check

The "pale blue dot" is our EARTH as seen from Voyager I at 3.7 billion miles away

*click image for documentary
*thanks to Laura Barry for sharing Sagan's text 

In a market-driven, media-saturated, celebrity-lusting culture where the assembly line never stops and competition for attention or title often trumps the less flashy but more crucial work of compassionate community building, it can be instructive and inspiring to put ourselves in perspective with some basic, essential and absolute facts about human life on Earth. Carl Sagan, the brilliant Cornell astronomer provides a necessary and increasingly relevant re-orientation of our perspective in his famous work Pale Blue Dot:A Vision of the Human Future in Space.

Excerpt from Carl Sagan’s  Pale Blue Dot

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

 

Desalinization Breakthrough

Our readings of texts like Stewart's Earth Abides, McCarthy's The Road or Callenbach's Ecotopia have sharpened our awareness of the necessity of water and the fragility of the infrastructure that delivers it to our faucets.
Today, much of the news is consumed with our decreasing oil supply and the potential crises resulting but the human body does not require petroleum products for survival - we survived for millennia without it. However, water is central to human survival and a mere 7-10 days without water would kill most people by dehydration.

Published in 1863,  "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge has left us with a line that many of us have heard and repeated:

"Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink." 

While they almost seem cliche, with these lines Coleridge left us with an important reminder of a significant fact about life on earth: 97.5% of the water on Earth is not drinkable without reverse osmosis desalination processing which is very expensive and maintenance intensive according to a United Nations Environment Program Report:"...significant costs associated with reverse osmosis plants, aside from the capital cost, are the costs of electricity, membrane replacement, and labor." 

 Though reverse osmosis is the predominant technique for desalinization, there are several other desalinization processes used today. One of the most recent and most promising approaches to desalinization called "forward osmosis" is being developed at Yale.

For more info, listen to Living On Earth's report "Low Salt Water with Low Energy Technology."

Walking in Circles

"walking in circles" by angrytoast

 When we went on our Corbin Cabin retreat, one of our skill sessions was about map reading and cross-country navigation. Most hikers use topographic maps to find and follow various marked trails, but sometimes the view you want to see is off the trail and you need to "bushwack" or hike cross-country off trail. If the distance is short, this is no problem, but when humans walk long distances cross-country we tend to walk in circles.

And we're not sure why.

In a recent NPR story "A Mystery: Why Can't We Walk Straight?"
Robert Krulwich interviews Jan Souman, one of the co-authors of "Walking Straight Into Circles" published in the August 2009 issue of Current Biology.  In blindfold experiments run on various topographies from the Saharah Desert to the Bienwald forest in Germany, subjects invariably ended up walking in circles.

 During our Corbin Cabin retreat we addressed one way to avoid such circling using map and compass. For example, if we wanted to bushwack from Corbin Cabin to Camp Ridge Trail, first we would lay the edge of our compass on the map so as to connect the cabin with the point we want to hit on Camp Ridge Trail. Next, we would turn compass housing or outer ring of the compass so the underlying red orienting arrow lined up with the compass needle pointing North. On some compasses this gives us the direction of travel in degrees, but even without them, the hiker can stay oriented. Holding the compass so that the orienting arrow arrow aligns with the North (red) end of the compass needle, you will be faced toward the goal. By choosing a series visible landmarks like notable trees, large rocks or other obvious features that are directly in line with the direction of travel arrow, the hiker can travel in a relatively straight line to the chosen destination and avoid ending up walking in circles. The success of this involves stopping to realign the orienting and magnetic North arrows at each landmark to re-orient to the goal before choosing the next landmark.

To accomplish this, the hiker must be a close observer of detail on his compass, his map and his terrain.  Such close reading is also important in literary studies where interpretive moves require attention to detail and occasional re-orientation. For example, our literary "bushwack" might involve using our reflective compass to trace a line connecting narrative events that are not directly connected by the writer. In Cormac McCarthy's sobering novel The Road we might wish to connect the occasional but disconnected geographic details and descriptions McCarthy gives to see if we can recognize and identify the specific route the characters take.
Wesley Morgan of the University of Tennessee does this in his hypertext "The Route and Roots of the Road" where he tracks these details, landmark by landmark, to reconstruct the route and locates it in the southeastern US.

For more detailed instructions about map and compass orientation see Kjetil Kjernsmo's illustrated guide on how to use a compass or Princeton's excerpt on map and compass work from The Backpacker's Field Manual by Rick Curtis.

Chesapeake bayside camping trip

Our most recent camping trip was in early October at First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach where the first English settlement was established in 1607, from which Captain John Smith explored the Chesapeake Bay.

An advance crew left early on Friday and got camp set up but the second wave got caught in traffic and then I missed an exit after the CBBT so our arrival was delayed a bit, but when we arrived we were welcomed enthusiastically.

 Lodge vet Parker Hawkins started the fire, and we set up the remaining tents and got the kitchen started so we could have dinner (spaghetti al Rubino) with fireside s'mores for dessert....

 











...while we circled the fire sharing jokes, stories and even a little dancing.







Our campsites were near the road but still in the dunes and under the shade of the beautiful sprawling Live Oaks native to the area.





The weekend weather was superb and after some early morning review of knife, saw and axe safety we headed for the beach.

The sand was littered with horseshoe crab shells, seaweed and mermaid's purses, and the winds kept my kite flying high.

With huge container ships anchored in the distance and the inspiration from a pod of dolphins that playfully frolicked nearby, several intrepid Lodgers spontaneously formed what looked like a group of playful pagan sea goddesses doing a ritual dance complete with horseshoe crab crown and mermaid's purse rattles. They were impressive, but I think they scared the crap out of those poor guys playing bocce on the sand.



Such spontaneous play is an important but increasingly rare activity in our often over-scheduled, "productive" lives. The good news is that it's free and we can tap into the surprising power of play any time we want to.

(I wouldn't cross 'em, would you?)

Playfully building on the collaborative skills developed during our Corbin Cabin retreat, our Chesapeake bayside weekend turned out to be a much-needed stress-buster and a delightful success.

Getting to Know Your Neighbors

"Hello black gum tree. It is nice to meet you. I hear you are one of the first trees to change color in the fall. I look forward to seeing that!" I enjoyed seeing old friends and meeting new ones today on our plant walk around Westhampton Lake. "Hello willow oak, sycamore, tulip poplar, river bird, beech, sweetgum and so many more! And you, sassafras, would you have chosen such a fun name on your own? I shall visit you soon for a tea date." Talking about the names of trees on campus today reminded me of a passage from Twelve by Twelve, where author William Powers writes, "Sociologists point out that American kids today can identify a thousand corporate logos but less than ten native plants and animals that live around their homes." He goes on to wonder, "are we, like Gold Kist [a giant poultry production company] chickens evolving in artificially manufactured, rather than natural, ways?" (44). At first glance, the idea that kids can identify so many logos and so few natural things is a bit horrifying. But the more I think about it, it makes sense. We didn't lose the ability to recognize patterns and use our powers of observation, we just use them differently than a hunter-gatherer culture. We pay attention to what is important in our lives. Instead of learning the land and knowing the plants and the animals and transmitting the tribal oral history, we know how to use computers, relate to popular culture, do well in school, keep up with the national and global news, get around the city, buy food and navigate the complexities of modern life. I do not think these are lesser achievements. In fact, an indigenous person might be in awe at the amount of stress the average person endures just to live a modern life. They might also think it is ridiculous.

I don't think being a modern, savvy person is a bad thing, but I worry that when we get so caught up in this manufactured lifestyle we overlook the fact that our human world is built entirely upon the natural world. We forget that the principles that govern the natural world also govern us and our creations and you get the big global mess we are in right now.

Maybe what we are doing in our sit spots is reacquainting ourselves with the principles of the natural world, slowly reeducating ourselves to something we once collectively knew before human hubris took over. Sitting in this one spot, we get to see the constant dance of life and death and the great interconnectedness of all things. Slowly we start to realize that we are just a part of that. As I look around, I cannot help but be filled with gratitude for being a part of this world. I am smiling at the plants around me now. Can they feel me relax and let my heart open?

-Geoff Cox

ASSIGNMENT FOR THIS WEEK: In addition to your journal, discover the name of one tree and one bird on campus that you do not already know using the resources on blackboard (Supplements>Relevant Links>Online Field Guides). Draw and label a picture of both the bird and a leaf from your tree. Use as much detail as possible and include any distinguishing marks or characteristics that aided your identification. Include everything someone else would need to know to identify the species without seeing it directly.

If you are trying to discover the identity of a bird but are not able to be sure what it is for whatever reason (e.g. seeing it briefly in bad lighting), write down everything you can think of that you observed about the mystery bird.

Sense of Place in the Western Desert by Tara Laidlaw

Hello friends! Here is an entry from my friend Tara, who you met in class and on the plant walk. Sections in quotations are from the journal she kept while in Australia with the Martu, an Aboriginal family group in the Western Desert---

Several years ago, I had the extraordinary honor of spending a week with an Australian Aboriginal family group on their land title in the Great Sandy Desert of western Australia, learning as a participant observer in one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies on the planet. This week was the culmination of a seminar about indigenous Australia taught by two Stanford professors who had been instrumental in fighting in court for the Martu – an Aboriginal cultural group – to get their land legally restored to them. The relationship between the professors and the Martu made it possible for 14 students not only to visit the land title but also to stay there for a week and learn from the Martu in traditional ways.

Picture Above: Tara (bottom, with hat) helping pluck a desert turkey

What struck me the most was the incredibly deep connection the Martu have to the land on which they live. Every aspect of life is governed by this land: food and drink; spiritual beliefs; sleeping arrangements; songs; stories; dances; play; interpersonal relationships; coming-of-age ceremonies; death rites. This vast interconnectedness within the culture and to the land gave rise to a staggering sense of time-depth as I learned more and more about these peoples’ lives.

"These people have lived on this land in this way for tens of thousands of years. Doug [one of the professors] was saying too that that vast history is reflected in Dreamtime [spiritual] stories: for example, there are stories that have been handed down through the generations about giant carnivorous kangaroos, and those kangaroos did used to live in Australia – 30,000 years ago."

This is an example of a piece of information about the landscape as it was 30,000 years ago, now reflected in a spiritual creation story – pretty amazing! Nancy, the elder who held the land on which we were staying, called this kind of information “old memory.” As the holder, her responsibility is to

Picture to Left: Lizard (parnajalpa/sand goanna) in the foreground; desert turkey (kipara) in the background (feathers all over the ground and the carcass spread over a spinifex plant just to the right of the shovel)

keep track of this sort of knowledge that catalogues the stories about the land, its features, its inhabitants, and the changes it undergoes through time. This information was presented both to the next generation of Martu children and to the Stanford students alike through Dreamtime stories, dances, and songs, just as it had been taught to the current group of elders. Even though today’s Martu children straddle their parents’ world and the encroaching white world, they still grow up with the same cultural underpinnings and the same remarkable connection to the land as their parents and grandparents have.

"The kids grow up in such a different way [than most children I know] – a month in Parnngurr [the outstation] for every week out at Kurta-Kurta [the field camp], pulling water from a soak via a windmill and sleeping under the most spectacular sky I’ve ever seen, setting fires in extremely flammable material and eating lizard and camel and kangaroo that they’d caught earlier that day."

The children also learn about the hunting and gathering traditions that play a major role in the Martu lifestyle. Children learn by observing their elders and at a young age are capable of pulling witchetty grubs from trees; tracking lizard, kangaroo, and desert turkey; and identifying and collecting roots and tubers. Even at a young age, a child is expected to bring in the majority of his or her own calories. While a small child isn’t going to be going out hunting with a gun, to successfully bring in that much food requires enormous attention to detail. This attention to detail is a learned skill: children not only follow along during hunting and gathering expeditions led by adults but also play traditional games that encourage close observation. They certainly have a leg up because this skill set is so highly prized (and necessary!) in their culture, but the skill is developed and sharpened throughout childhood and on into adulthood.

"After digging for ganjimarra [tubers] in a dry riverbed (you find the plant and then excavate the root, straight down, until the whole thing is exposed and you can pull it out without breaking it) we got distracted at a white tree that was full of lungki [witchetty grubs] – Brianna and Alicia [Martu girls aged about 10 years] were up the tree armed with axes before I knew what was going on, and after only maybe 20 minute there was a ziplock bag full of squirmy gooey grubs."

Picture to Left: Children pulling witchetty grubs (lungki) out of a hole in a tree using a twig. The kids made it look easy, but the grandmas laughed while the Stanford students tried (and failed) to hook the grubs with the end of the stick and pull them out.

Like most Aboriginal groups, the Martu relate spatially to the world in an absolute fashion rather than in a relative fashion. This means that there are literally no words in their language for right or left, or front or back, for example. Instead they use directions – north, south, east, west – acknowledging their position within the landscape as a whole and using unmoving reference points rather than relying on a single individual’s own perception of his or her place in the landscape. So when asked where someone wants to lay the fire, for example, the response isn’t “over to the left of the trucks” but rather “to the south of the trucks” – and that is equally clear to everyone, regardless of where they’re standing in relation to the trucks.

This way of relating to the world isn’t limited to the adults. From a very young age, children hone their own skills as expert navigators. While this is easier for these children because it’s an integral part of their culture, it’s not in-born. It’s a learned skill, just like tracking and collecting food. I once saw a mother ask her son to point to where his grandma lived. We were out in the middle of the desert and I couldn’t have pointed to where we’d parked our truck a few hours back, let alone where our base camp was, but the child pointed without hesitation in a particular direction. His mother then adjusted his pointing by a few degrees – that precise! – and said, “That’s where your grandma lives.”

It can be tempting to paint indigenous Australians as nature-lovers, living in perfect harmony with each other and never disrupting the world around them. This can be pretty far from the truth, especially when their culture comes into contact (and conflict) with white culture. But even when on their own land title where they’re most comfortable, the Martu certainly have a major impact on the landscape: they use extensive fire management to promote a diversity of food sources, make it easier to track game, and keep plant reproduction at a steady and predictable rate. If they were to leave the landscape alone and just take what they could find without the creating a burn mosaic, they would have a vastly harder time finding enough to eat and would have to move base camp locations much more frequently. So while the Martu do move lightly on the earth (particularly in comparison to what I’m used to as an American), they also manipulate the landscape to suit their own needs, and have been doing so for long enough that the landscape now depends upon their presence.

With that said, though, spending that week with the Martu was an remarkable lesson in living simply and turning to the land as an unendingly generous source of life, if only you know how and where to look. So while it was spectacular fun to hunt and swim and hear stories and eat weird things in the desert, the real take-home message was about deep observation, true gratitude, and the value of paying very close attention to the world around you.

-Tara Laidlaw

Also, in case anyone is interested, the two professors who led the trip have websites with information about their research:

Doug Bird: http://www.stanford.edu/~dwbird/DWBIRD/main.html

Rebecca Bliege Bird: http://www.stanford.edu/~rbird/RBIRD/main.html

Rebecca has brief and (relatively) understandable summaries of the different research projects she and Doug are working on with the Martu; both have links to their publications, many of which are about the Martu and some of which are available as pdfs. These tend to be pretty dense but if anyone is really into it they might be worth a look.

Further reading & viewing:

The Mardu Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australia’s Desert, Robert Tonkinson, 1986.

Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place, and Politics Among Western Desert Aborigines, Fred R. Myers, 1978.

Rabbit Proof Fence, 2002.

10 Canoes, 2006.