Recorded March 30, 2023, released July 24, 2023
Featuring: Doug Elliott and Lia Grippo

In this podcast, Early childhood educator Lia Grippo interviews storyteller Doug Elliott about his storytelling process. As an example, he shares the background for each of the verses from his iconic story song about the black snake eating the plastic egg.

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When we were keeping the chickens, catch the snakes, sometimes I’d keep it for a while. And then if I had a school program or something like that, I’d bring it and let the kids play with the snake. So I would say the snakes are getting jail time and community service for eating our eggs.

In today’s episode, early childhood educator Leah Grippo talks with storyteller Doug Elliott about his storytelling process.

Thank you, Doug Elliott, for joining us today. You’re welcome. I’m very grateful to sit in conversation with you. I wondered if we might just begin by you telling us, if you would, what’s the first story you ever remember being told?

My dad used to work regular hours. My mom was a full-time home person, and she would do things with me and my brother. We’d go to the beach, or we’d go walking here, or we’d go to the store, or whatever. And then my dad would come back and when he’d come home, they’d have a little talk about what they did that day. And then when it came time to settle me down, he’d go, here’s a story about the little boy who lived in Round Bay. That was the name of the community. And he would just take off on all the things that we did, run that through again. And so I guess that is probably some of the first stories, not a particular story, that I remember. But I did that with my son and that was always fun.

Your father would run through the story of your day with you.

Right. I was a little boy who lived in this community.

And I imagine, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I imagine that for him also, that was a way of connecting with the separation of the day where he’s working away from home.

I guess so.

Yeah. How lovely. Do you remember as a child, did you know that those stories were about you, or did you have the feeling of, oh, I did that too.

I think I was little enough, I don’t actually remember the stories, so I just think it just was engaging.

I noticed when I had a little boy, I noticed that a narrative could pull him out of the temper tantrums or fits and like, did you hear? And then start telling a story and he had to quiet down to hear it.

Don’t we all have to quiet down to hear it?

That’s right. Life hadn’t changed that much.

Yeah, right. And were there other people in your life, other than your father, that you recall telling you stories?

Well, I mean, basically we all tell stories. We all tell about what we did. And that’s basically that makes our whole sense of reality. So in some ways, anything anybody tells you is basically a story, if they were telling something they did.

So you feel like you were surrounded by stories all the time because you were surrounded by people?

I think we all are. Yeah.

I think that’s true, too. Yes, we tell stories all the time. Do you remember the first story that you ever told with the recognition that I’m telling a story, a tale?

More in my adult life, I guess, realizing I would tell various stories in an accent. I remember Barbara Freeman and Connie Reagan Blake. They were one of the first storytellers that became public as a stage event. And they were traveling around and they kept saying, You’re a storyteller. And I was like, Oh, I guess I am.

How many years would you say you would consider yourself having been a storyteller at this point?

I guess we’re getting on 40 years anyway.

I imagine in that time, myself telling stories now and again, imagine in that time, the stories themselves have taught you a thing or two from the telling. Do you find that when you’re telling a story over and over again, that you learn something new in the story as you tell it?

Maybe about the crafting of the story and what story is ready for what audience and what way do you tell it to make it fit for the audience.

How do you feel that? Do you know what that process is? Do you name it? Name that process?

I think just watching the audience. And sometimes I’ll get together with some other storytellers and we’ll actually work on crafting our thing. What works for you about this? Here’s what I’m thinking about. And then tell the story, did that work?

One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is how ancient this craft is of storytelling and how it’s one of our oldest technologies for passing information on from generation to generation, possibly even for a generation we may never meet. I think so much about how so often the answers are all out there and we’re looking for the questions. Right. And so often when I’m listening to you tell stories, I hear and I see in my mind’s eye someone who’s willing to let themselves step into a state of innocence in order to see the world as it is. I wonder if you see yourself that way at all in storytelling.

I think if there was a formula to what I do storytelling wise, a lot of times it’s basically an incident, an encounter, a problem, or a question. You know what I saw? This thing did this, this, this, this. Well, you know what I found out? Because they do this when this happens. And I talked to an old Native American guy, and he told me that they always believe this is blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I went and looked in the books and I found this out. And so actually my story ends up becoming basically a narrative about my investigative journey. And as far as teaching material, that’s a great way to go because you portray yourself as innocent and ignorant, and we’re all innocent and ignorant about certain things. And so it helps you bond with the audience.

I found also that in so many of the old stories that get passed down over and over again. The one who can solve the really complex problems is usually the fool, the one who gets called the simpleton, right? The one who comes with innocence. And I see that. I see that in how you position yourself in your stories. I love hearing you say that everybody can relate to that. We all can, right? Stepping into the place of the unknown or stepping into the place of the wow, I wonder. And I find so much of that in your storytelling as well. So I wonder, do you ever find yourself going out and hunting for stories? Or is it really that in your daily life’s adventures, you’re catching them?

I think it’s the second more. I’m always thinking of, oh, that could make a story. Some particular incident, encounter, a problem or a question. A lot of these stories just sit around on the back burner for decades sometimes. And all of a sudden a new piece will come along, Oh, that’s perfect. That’ll finish it up right. I always like the Joseph Campbell stuff talking about basically, I guess his philosophy is that basically there’s only one story. It’s basically the hero’s journey. It’s what we’re all on every day. We wake up in the morning, we come out of the void and we live our life. And then in our lifetime, we’re born and then we come out of the void and we go back into the void again. And whatever happens in between is the journey. And that’s what we’re all involved in. And he divides it up into lots of different parts. And one of the parts is the call to adventure, where he says that you just got to discover it and I paraphrase it a little bit, ripples on the surface of life that reveals hidden springs as deep as the soul itself.

Whoa, there we go. What does that mean, that little thing? And how can we learn from it? And what does it teach us?

Lovely. We have to be paying attention in order to have that moment of, Whoa, look at that.

Was it Mary Oliver that said, instructions for living a life: pay attention, be astounded, tell about it. There it is. That’s it. Right there.

When you’re storytelling with a group of children, how do you find that you, as a storyteller, change what you’re doing?

I just try to talk to them from their perspective, I guess. Tell stories that I think that they would relate to.

You feel like there’s anything in your telling that changes when you’re with a group of children versus a group of adults?

Oh, sure. Particularly the content.

In what ways would you say that content, is it something children might directly have experienced themselves? Is it a simpler question? Is it more of the comedic?

Well, I always try to put humor in about everything. I can’t say there’s a particular way that I change. Some of the material might actually be the same, but it may be just played a little simpler or slower just to make sure they catch up with it.

There’s a story that you told once that I happened to hear that involved a snake eating a plastic egg. Right. Which to this day, I just love, love, love, love. The part of that story where you come home and get told, No, you have to take responsibility for this. You have to go solve this problem. But also the imagery of you helping that snake push that plastic egg out to me has really, really stuck with me.

It was an extraordinary adventure. And in some ways, that’s probably my figurehead story. Probably, if I have one story that people remember, that’s one. Just because it really happened and it’s so visual. So that particular story just led on to one thing after another. And I ended up writing a little song about it. And it starts with, There’s a big black snake. He’s crawling across my yard. Big black snake. He’s crawling across my yard. He may be moving slow, but Lord, he’s working hard. He’s a slippin’ and a slidin’, slippin’ and your part, slippin’ and a slidin’. Slipping and your part. Slipping and a sliding. Slipping and a sliding. Weaving and a gliding. Weaving and a gliding. Creeping and a crawling. Creeping and a crawling. Lord it’s really hauling. Lord it’s really hauling. That big black snake, he’s crawling across my yard.

And then I realized all these little incidents happened. The first thing was this snake, of course, eating the egg. But after that plastic egg incident, we stopped using a plastic egg and we needed a nest egg. And if we need a nest egg, we leave a real egg in the nest. But the problem is if snakes in the summertime come in, you got to eat them. And then we had our chickens were being free range. One time we had this settin’ hand. And a settin’ hen  is a hen that once she decides she wants to sit on the nest and raise babies, she won’t hardly ever leave that nest. You almost can’t get her out of the nest. And one day we come out there and we look and she’s dead. What’s this? This dead head laying there. We looked and all her feathers on her head and her neck were all sticky looking, kind of ruffled. And we realized that what happened, she wouldn’t leave the nest. That snake came in, said, this smells like bird. I eat birds. Probably constricted her, probably strangled her right there. Started swallowing her head. Got to her shoulder, she realized it couldn’t work.

So then the verse comes, with that big black snake he mess with my settin’ hen. Big black snake he mess with my settin’  hen. I run him off, but Lord, he’s back again. One of my neighbors was pointing out to me he had Martin gourds, which is the gourds, they put them up on poles and then they had colonial nesters. Well, look, Martin’s didn’t come that year, but a bluebird did. And he went out there one morning and there was a black snake that had crawl up a two inch pole 30 feet up in the air and were eating those blue birds. What was he mad? This thing is that good a climber that it could climb up a smooth pole. Well, that big black snake he’s hanging there in my tree. Well, that big black snake just hanging in my tree. I’m watching him, but Lord, he’s watching me. He’s slippin’ and a slidin’. Slippin’ and a slidin’. Weavin’ and a glidein’. Weavin’ and a glidin’. Creepin’ and a crawlingin’. Creepin’ and a crawling.

Lord he’s really hauling. Lord is really hauling. That big black snake, he’s crawling across my yard. Well, we started free rangeing our hens. We realized it was easier to keep hens out of a garden than in a pen. And so we dispensed the garden, let the chickens run all around the yard. And there was a little shed out there, we have square bails of hay. I separated the square bails of hay, so there was a little space, so they had  little nesting places. But of course, being free range like that, you got to check on them regularly. And in the summertime, it’s like we go out there and there’s a snake trying to swallow it. Darn it, those eggs. You’re supposed to be out there eating voles in the garden and rats and mice. Not our eggs. Those are our eggs. Give me that egg. I’d take the snake out and we put it in the garden. And it’s amazing. You take a five foot snake and put it down and there’s one little hole in the garden and it just disappears. Realize the voles have this whole network underground there.

One day I come out there and there she is. It’s this not very large black rat snake. And she’s working on this egg. And she is working so hard. And she’s stretched out to her max, trying to get this egg down her throat. I think, Oh, all right, you can have the egg, but I’m waiting here till you’re finished and I’m taking you out to the garden. I’m waiting, and she’s struggling, trying to get this egg down her thing. I’m waiting, I’m waiting. All of a sudden, out of the back of the hay bails comes this other much bigger black rat snake. Starts following every contour of her body. Starts vibrating his belly. And next thing you know, there are two cloakas, that multi purpose opening at the base of their tail. Were locked together and time stood still as they rolled together there in the hay. Meanwhile, she’s still trying to swallow this egg. Finally, I guess he’d done what he’d come to do if you know what I mean. And he gave her a few fond flickers of his tongue and off he went. And finally, finally, she gets that egg into position and she can roll it, rolls her body and you hear the egg go crack.

And she finally finished that egg. And she looked up and it’s hard to read the expression on the snake, but you wonder what gave her more satisfaction. But then I wrote one more verse. It goes like this.

Well, that big black snake he’s really on the make. That big black snake, he’s really on the make. I saw a fresh laid egg get swallowed by a fresh laid snake. He’s a slippin’ and a slidein’. Slippin’ and a slidein’. Weavin’ and a gliden’. Weaven and a glidein’. He’s a creepin’ and a crawling. He’s creeping and a crawling. Lord, he’s really haulin’. Lord, he’s really haulin’. That big black snake, he’s crawling across my yard.

I learned an important thing about that. They always say females are better at multitasking. Now I believe it.

Thank you for that.

Well, it took years to build that up. every little thing I got to add to it.

Stories, they’re living beings. They change and they grow just like the rest of us. I guess that’s true. Do you sit and watch the rat snakes often?

Often. Yeah.

And that’s just in the course of daily living, right? Because they’re here with you, living with you.

Right. And we keep some snake boards around with boards that are lifted up off of the ground just a little bit to give the snake room places to hang out. It’s a way of monitoring if we have copperheads in the area, but also a way of giving them shelter and always handy. When we were keeping the chickens, they would catch them in there. I’d catch the snakes sometimes I’d keep it for a while. And then if I had a school program or something like that, I’d bring it and let the kids play with the snake. So I would say the snakes are getting jail time and community service for eating our eggs. In exchange for eating eggs. But apparently they have a thriving community, too.

Friendships, relationships. Well, at least temporary.

At least temporary.

That’s right. That’s the one day stand. I don’t know.

Having an adult child of your own at this point who’s living a full, rich, independent life and having lived through 40 years of catching stories and sharing stories. If you have any advice for those of us grappling with these questions of how to serve the young people so that we keep those connections alive with story telling.

I guess tell about your own mistakes, I guess.

That place where you played the innocent or the fool yourself, huh? Right.

I’d say you’re trying to be humorist, though, and talk about different kinds of humor. There’s a humor of power where you make fun of somebody else like an ethnic joke, and you show that you’re powerful. Power. And then there’s taboo things, like jokes about sexy, scatological things, because we’re all that way, so we identify. But you can’t really tell any of those in public. But the only time you can make fun of somebody is when you make fun of yourself. And a lot of times it’s a great way to really… Like I always tell the story about following this old mountain man around and trying to learn the plants. I couldn’t learn it. I had to learn which berries you could eat. I found these little brown berries on the ground. I couldn’t find what bush they came from. I said, What are those? He said, Those are smart berries. Don’t you know them? And I said, Will, they make you smarter? He said, Yeah, you ought to try a couple of them. I tasted one and said, It smells like deer. It tastes like deer poop. He said, See, you’re getting smarter already.

Just making fun of myself.

Thank you for your time. Thank you for talking to me. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for listening. For more information about Doug Elliott and his schedule, see his website at dougelliott.com. Leah Grippo is a co-founder of the Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers. You can find more about her at forestkindergartenacademy.org. Please visit our website at earthavan.org, and sign up for our newsletter so you know what’s happening at the village. This podcast is produced by the School of Integrated Living in Western North Carolina. Have a great day.

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Broadcast August 12, 2022
Featuring: Mollie Curry and Sara Carter

Mollie Curry moved to Earthaven in 1996, becoming one of the first village residents and getting involved in natural building. She’s taught natural building workshops since 1998, covering cob, plastering, straw bale, straw-clay, earthen paint, earthbag, and carpentry, as well as permaculture. Mollie has been involved in many of the natural building projects at Earthaven, as well as teaching and doing projects in other locations, which has informed her building experience. 

Mollie Curry shares what she learned in her nearly three decades of experience designing and building natural buildings at Earthaven and around the country.

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Working together, doing something physical that’s not too hard and not too dangerous, is actually a really great way to make and deepen connections. It is the heart and soul of natural building. It really is. And I just got chills, so you know.

Welcome to the Earthaven Ecovillage podcast, where we meet people and hear ideas contributing to Earthaven Ecovillage Village’s living laboratory for a sustainable human future. In this episode, our host Sara Carter talks with Mollie Curry about natural building.

Arriving at Earthaven

I think it was about 28 years ago that I first came to Earthaven. I was working with the Permaculture Activist magazine, and the guy who was doing that magazine was a founding member of Earthaven living with another member. So that’s how I found out about Earthaven. 

I thought, hey, I could go and learn to build my own house because they’re starting to build things out there. I went to some meetings and stuff. I was way into permaculture, obviously, but I never built anything.

Buildings at Earthaven when Mollie arrived

There was the open air pavilion. There was an old cabin that was here when they bought the land and the mud hut had been started.  Some of the founding members had gone to a natural building class and they started building this with different building methods: cob, straw clay, waddle and dab with an earthbag foundation. They were putting the knowledge they had just gained into action. It wasn’t anywhere near finished, but it was begun. Yeah, it had a roof.

I was really attracted to building a natural building, which I don’t even know if I’d heard that term before. I’d never even heard the term intentional community before, but I just kind of fell in love with the people and the whole culture going on here and with this project and what was happening here. It was pretty awesome and pretty primitive beginnings living in a tent. But pretty quickly we built the composting toilet. One of the other first things that got built. There was a couple that built a little house called the Zen hut. And then we were starting on the kitchen. So, the composting toilet, they were building their little house, composting toilet and the hut hamlet kitchen were getting built that first summer that I was here.

Engaging with natural building

I picked up natural building pretty quickly because I was a wilderness ranger before I came here, and I did a lot of trail work, and so I had a lot of knowledge about just how physical things work, my body with tools, that kind of thing. So even though I didn’t necessarily have the exact skills, I had kind of a precursor of that kind of skill set. 

It was a pretty male dominated thing, and there weren’t very many other women here living on the land. Patricia was probably the only other one that I can think of at the very beginning, more came. But, yeah, I was involved in conversations about design and understanding what was going to happen and doing it, but not all of it. There were some personality things that caused me to focus more on the garden at times. I was just like, I can’t handle that dude. But that worked out. 

I focused on working on the mud hut, which was being built, and it was my project to finish that. That was my assigned project, but I was helping with other stuff, but my focus was on the mud hut. And so other people would walk by. There were lots of visitors coming, even at that early time, and I would be like, hey, you want to do some cob with me? They would hang out for an hour or two, and we would make cob and pile cob on the wall, and I would teach them how to do it in a very simple manner. And that was fun. 

There were definitely times where I stood around in a group of men, wonderful men, and I remember one time in particular, I’m sure this has happened to many people, where I came up with some idea and I said it out loud. We were all standing around, and then no one said anything, and the conversation went on. And then, a minute later, some guy said the same thing, and everyone was like, oh, that’s a great idea. I was like, these are Earthaven dudes, and it’s still happening. Just because we have the really great intentions doesn’t mean we can actually put them into practice immediately. But I was just kind of slack jawed when that happened. Turns out it’s a lot of work to change culture. But that’s why to be here, we got to change ourselves to change the culture.

Why Mollie was attracted to natural building

There are different reasons I was attracted to doing natural building. One was the DIY nature, especially back then. There weren’t very many people anywhere that you could just hire to do something like that. But I thought, I’m going to build my own house and I want to know how to do it myself and that way it’ll be cheaper and all that. 

I was already an environmentalist and it made so much sense to not build a building out of toxic waste, basically like vinyl siding. I worked for the Forest Service when I was a wilderness ranger, so I saw the commercial logging in the Pacific Northwest. And what was happening here is conscious management of the forest for different things. One, we were making clearings so that we could live in it, but trying to use those trees to build out of. There is just such an ecological bent to people that are into natural building. And that is the main reason. Use renewable resources: straw bales, for instance, soil from where you are or close by. You can use things from the earth that then if you neglect the building, will go back to earth without causing a toxic waste dump in the site of the former house. That really was attractive to me.

And the creativity aspect… I really didn’t know about at first, but then I found out about cob and sculptural stuff and being able to shape mud and build just about anything you want. Even if you build a conventional house, you can do cob details on the inside, like curved corners on the inside of the walls or a sculptural kitty cat or whatever you want, like shelves up near the top of the ceiling. There’s so many things that you can do with it. I’ve definitely built functional bas relief. And I’ve built sculptural bas relief. Bas relief. It’s just sculpture that is stuck to the wall, basically. I fell in love with the mud and then I fell in love with the straw also, eventually, but my first love is definitely cob and plaster and earthen paint and the clay-y stuff.

Feminine aspects of natural building

It’s very feminine as well. Working with cob. There are traditions all over the world of not only women, but men also, but a lot of women plastering and basically doing mud work. And sometimes I’ve called myself Messy Mollie because I tend to wipe mud all over myself. Not on purpose. But I’ve seen some amazing pictures of women in the southwest and in Mexico who are wearing full dresses, what I would consider fancy clothes, and not getting mud on themselves while they are plastering with their hands.

It blows my mind. Home building can be a very feminine thing to do. And I think it’s great to have both genders come together and it’s heavy work. 

Things Mollie learned doing natural building

One of the things I really learned early on is that a five gallon bucket of mud is really heavy. No reason to fill a five gallon bucket up with mud. I’m not macho. I don’t need to carry that. I can fill a smaller bucket or two people can carry a five gallon bucket full of mud. A two person bucket carry is awesome. So it’s like I might not have as much upper body strength, but I have a brain, so I can figure out how to do things that are too heavy for me, even if sometimes that’s asking somebody to help. 

I’ve learned a lot about building because a lot of natural building is just building: foundations, roofs, frames, post and beam, that kind of thing. One of the things I think is most important that I’ve learned by my experience at Earthaven is to insulate your foundations or any part that’s buried. We’re building a lot of times on hills where part of the building is dug in to the hill and there’s concrete block or some other form of water resistant material. It’s not going to rot. Insulate that or you will get condensation on the inside because of our humid climate. And that can create mold. So condensation. 

I’ve learned a lot about moisture when it comes down to it. Dealing with liquid water and humidity are huge learning curves. There’s still lots of debate even in building science about how to deal with humidity in houses, how to deal with liquid water. 

But, you know, having a breathable house, they even have recognized it in conventional building by Tyvek and all those house wraps are breathable. They’re like Gortex. They’ll let humidity out and not let liquid water in. Well, that also is done by lime plaster and earthen plaster. So you don’t want condensation happening in the middle of your wall and you don’t want it happening in the inside of your building because that part that’s underground is ground temperature. And then liquid water happens there. 

And drainage is so important. Drainage, roof overhangs. I’m a real big fan of gutters bringing water down to the ground instead of water flowing off the roof and then just blowing onto the wall or even just close to the house, making moisture around your house. You can get away with less need for dehumidification, air conditioning or whatever. If you have good drainage and there’s not a bunch of vegetation holding moisture around your house, airflow, those are some big ones. And in a place like this where we’re using solar and microhydro power. A lot of those times those systems are shared with multiple people, multiple families, or in my case, the power is shared with a whole neighborhood. We really can’t support people running dehumidifiers and air conditioners. I lived here for eleven years like that and I definitely saw mold be a problem in some cases and not in others. 

How to prevent mold without dehumidifiers and air conditioning

How do you prevent mold without having to use dehumidifiers and air conditioning? How do you prevent it from the ground up in the building itself? In the building itself and in your stuff. And air flow is big, light is big, and blocking out the humid air by closing windows at the right time, that’s one thing. And what I really saw was having easily cleanable surfaces and not having too much stuff makes a huge difference. It’s just like mold grows on dust. It will. And if you can’t clean the dust very easily because you have rough cut lumber. I lived in places with rough cut lumber. They were really hard to clean and so it was easy for mold to get a foothold, places like that. 

In the tiny little eleven by eleven hut that I lived in, the only things that molded were leather. Leather attracts moisture somehow, and mold can grow on it and otherwise I think there was just so much airflow and light in that building that nothing else really molded that I can remember. And it was totally in the shade and surrounded by vegetation. Well, there’s south facing windows that got lots of sun, even in summer.

Mold is definitely an issue, and I will say, unfortunately, in my 100-year old conventionally built house in town that I live in, we’ve resorted to a summer air conditioner. There was just mold growing on the walls in that house. So I guess my point there is it’s not unique to natural buildings. Mold will grow on paint, latex paint, mold will grow on whatever the finishes are on our wooden walls, in our house, the wooden paneling in our house, especially in this kind of climate.

Learning about the height to width ratio of a building

Well, this is an interesting one that I think that all the builder people at Earthaven learned by trial by fire or trial and error or whatever you want to call it, which is the height to width ratio of a building. So there’s a couple buildings here that have big outdoor bracing because we were like, oh, well, smaller footprint, build high. That way you don’t have to build as big of a foundation. That really makes a lot of sense to do that. But these buildings and then we wanted solar access, so they weren’t very wide. So they were tall and narrow. So three stories tall, but only basically one story deep, a little bit more than that. And that did not work structurally. So it ended up feeling like those post and beam structures were too wiggly, both for mental comfort and like, oh, is this thing going to fall down? And also because plaster’s going to break if you have a lot of movement in the building. So those braces were added after the fact of the frame going up. 

And then we did more research. Someone did the research, it wasn’t me. I was like, oh, that exceeded the height to width ratio that we should have paid attention to. And then after that I was like, oh, well, we won’t do that again. Unfortunately, both of those buildings were being built at the same time, so it was like only discovered when they were both already built. But yeah, that was a really great lesson. I love the build high thing. Take up less space, have a smaller roof, have a smaller footprint, and you have to consider that structural parameter when you’re building.

Building the road as we travel and life is a big experiment

That makes me think about a quote that I attribute to Paul Caron. I don’t know if he got it from somewhere else, but the sort of Earthaven motto of “we build the road as we travel.” And sometimes if we did a little more research into how to build the road, it would have served us better.

I would say, though, that it is all a big experiment. This is kind of my motto, life is a big experiment. Natural building is a big experiment. This community is definitely a big experiment. No matter what we’re doing, we build the road as we travel. And there was tons of research. I’m not sure if I could say it was actually pre-Internet, but it was not like it is now.

We were looking at books and getting calculations. There’s books that have calculations about spans of beams and with different species of wood and all that. So much stuff to research. So somehow that one got missed. Or maybe it was because it was on a really steep hill, it seemed like it was only two story, but then it was almost a story below it. Sure, it might not have clicked mentally, but yeah, I feel like it’s all the experiment. We do build the road as we travel. 

And also another little motto, which is what I thought you were going to say, is the wonky hut, which is a straw bale, is a great example of this one. We used to talk about making a little plaque that would say “how to do everything wrong and still have it come out right,” because mistakes were made in the building. That was the first straw bale that was built here. Well, actually, maybe the council hall was the first straw bale. I don’t know if they were. I can’t remember. But yeah, the roof overhang didn’t end up being long enough.

They added some roof on. The straw bales up near the top are kind of wonkily stacked, and it actually gives it a lot of charm and character. So it’s still a good house. It looks pretty funky and it’s still a great little house. So I’m sure it has its issues.

What was it that was hard to get into about straw?

“Oh, God, it’s so pokey, itchy and scratchy.” No, I don’t think it was that hard to get into. It was just that I loved mud, and that was the first thing that I was doing. So I really got into building a straw when I got together with my husband, Steve, and he and his wife deceased, were some of some straw building pioneers of what we like to call the straw bale revival, because straw bale building actually started over 100 years ago back in Nebraska, the sandhills of Nebraska, because white settlers, who were moving west,  were building sod houses, but the grass was not holding that sandy soil together. And that was right about the time of the invention of the straw baling machine. So a baler. So they suddenly had all these bales that were laying around and they were like, those look like great building blocks to protect us this winter, and we’re going to build a real house eventually. But then some people, I’m sure did, but others were like, this is a great house. Why do something different? And they plastered them and made them last.

Steve and I met at this event called Build Here Now, which does relate to Be Here Now. It was at Lama Foundation in New Mexico. That was one of the places I went and got some early training. I really wanted to learn how to do earthen paint. There was a woman that was going to teach it there, another friend. And I had already been teaching natural building before I ever took a class. I was like, I maybe should take some classes. I know enough to do this, but maybe not some other things to teach what I was teaching. 

We met there and ended up teaching apprenticeships there. We built a straw bale sauna and a bigger building. We didn’t design these. We just were the teachers of the apprenticeship doing the wall systems. So the roofs were already… Actually the roof was not up on the sauna. We did the whole sauna. 

You have morning circle and everyone comes together who’s at this event. It’s like a volunteer event where people are learning and teaching natural building. It’s a really cool event. The leaders of each project will say, okay, over here today, we’re going to be doing this. And it might be a straw oriented or straw bale oriented thing, or it might be putting the roofing on or something. And other people are like, we’re replastering the dew drop, which was a little office building that they had. And so there’d be a little competition between the mud people and the straw people. And they would be, “you don’t want to do straw bale. It’s itchy and pokey. Come with us and do the smooth, sensuous, mud job.” And the straw people will be like, “you’re going to get so dirty.” It was just fun and games. 

But yeah, I fell in love with straw because of its insulation properties. It’s a renewable-resource carbon sink that’s going to moderate the temperature of your building. We’re about to build a straw bale house in West Asheville, and I’m very excited about doing it for ourselves.

Mollie and Steve’s work now

We met before that workshop, but we got together several years after we met. He had a natural building company that was straw bale focused. And he had written some books and did a video, the first straw bale video. And I had my own little natural building company. And when we got together and fell in love, we decided to join our companies. We have really focused a lot on education, like teaching apprenticeships and classes and stuff, and also doing jobs. Sometimes we will teach a crew to do it, do whatever the step is. Like, a couple of times we’ve gone and just taught each step as it is occurring, like how to stack the straw bales, how to make cob, how to make plaster and apply it for each project. So we’ll go and basically consult like that. And we also do a bunch of consulting just on people’s designs. Sometimes people want to know,  they’re trying to figure out what they want to do and just having a conversation with them about the different methods, kind of the pros and cons, what might be appropriate to their situation. And then my favorite thing is doing, like, sculptural cob and plaster and earthen paint.

Partly I love doing it because it’s fun for me, but also creative. But partly I like doing it because you can do it in a conventionally built, latex-painted house, basically renovate a quote normal house. So it’s a way of incorporating the earth into a quote normal house. And you don’t have to build a whole straw bale or straw clay or waddle and dob or whatever house. You can actually bring the mud inside in a beautiful way. And it has a great feeling. Clay actually gives off negative ions and so negative ions are positive vibes. So you can really bring that into your space and transform it just by doing pretty thin plasters and paints. And if you really want to go for it, like cob details. I love the curving corners. I love just the sculptural fun stuff, like around windows or mantle pieces or that kind of stuff. You can also bring in a lot of personality into the space in that way. 

The house Mollie and Steve plan to build

We’ve been designing it for what seems like a long time. It’s going to be a post and beam, straw bale insulated, so straw bale walls, house in the middle of town in West Asheville on an infill lot. And we have gone back and forth about how big it is. It seems big, and then we’re like, but it’s not too big. But is it too big? All the design details. We’re going to have a little earthen floor in the bedroom and the upstairs, which is like a south facing thing. So it’s passive solar as much as we can make it. The narrow end, because of the lot, has to face south. So I’d rather have it 90 degrees. But that can’t happen. There’s natural building purists, and we are not that. For instance, we’re going to have a concrete basement. Some people will be like, you need to build that out of stone. It’s like, no, we’re not actually.  I’m really excited about building something for ourselves and having classes and apprenticeships that are going to help do that. And friend and family volunteer work days.

Natural building as a community building experience

Part of what’s really cool about natural building is it can be a community building experience. And I think that is another thing that really attracts me to it. My dad makes the joke about Tom Sawyer. Ho ho ho, you’re going to get people to wash your fence, paint your fence, or whatever. But people actually really want to connect in that way. And working together, doing something physical that’s not too hard and not too dangerous, is actually a really great way to make and deepen connections. It is the heart and soul of natural building. It really is. And I just got chills saying that.

Mollie’s website is mudstrawlove.com.

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Broadcast July 3, 2022
Featuring: Kaitlin Ilya Wolf and Sara Carter

In this podcast, Kaitlin Ilya Wolf discusses how creating a cycle of annual seasonal rituals helps Earthaven ecovillagers sink into the cycles around us and within us to become a part of this land. She then shares the parts of a ritual, challenges of facilitating ritual at Earthaven, and offers tips for rituals for people who don’t have a community or piece of land to connect with.

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Welcome to the Earthaven Ecovillage podcast, where we meet people and hear ideas contributing to Earthaven ecovillage’s living laboratory for a sustainable human future. In this episode, our host Sara Carter talks with Kaitlin Ilya Wolf about how ritual helps us connect as a community.

We’re recording this on a beautiful summer day in Earthaven’s village center pavilion. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping.

About Kaitlin Ilya Wolf

I’ve lived here at Earthaven for almost 15 years now, with my husband. Actually, my husband and I met here at Earthaven and got married here. I am a priestess of cycles. I’m an ordained minister, and I’ve been leading rituals here at Earthaven for a long time; pretty much since I first got to Earthaven and also working with SpiritWalker Orb here at Earthaven, which is the group that organizes rituals. I’ve been leading ritual here and working with other people to help us sink into the cycles here through ritual.

Place-based living and becoming naturalized

In our larger culture at Earthaven, we use the words “place-based living” a lot. Robin Wall Kimmerer takes that a step further, and she speaks about becoming naturalized to a place. I think of you in having a big role for us as far as creating culture here goes with ceremony and with ritual. Can you tell us about what that looks like for you and how that concept moves through you?

That’s the biggest part of a lot of our work here at Earthaven. In many different ways, physically, spiritually, energetically, emotionally, intellectually, working to naturalize ourselves. I think that’s a really great way to put it, to really become part of the land that we live with. The way I work is through ceremony and ritual — really sinking into the cycles around us and within us to become a part of this land.

At Earthaven, we have a cycle of rituals through the year. We celebrate the solstices and equinoxes and the cross-quarter days as a community. We have specific rituals that we’ve built over the years, created together, and they look similar to each other. We just had the summer solstice. We have a specific ritual for that that looks similar every year, but it also changes. So, it’s both sinking into that rhythm of the year, remembering where we are in the year, in the solar cycle. It also can change and morph through time and our work naturalizing ourselves with this land. Really sinking into these rhythms is a long-term process.

Cultural orphans

A lot of us really feel like cultural orphans. Coming to this way of living can be really difficult. And there’s a lot of finding our way. It can be really hard. And so finding our way together and sinking into the cycles can really help us define that. And it takes time, though. It takes time to really let ourselves be together and let ourselves learn from the land.

I think a lot of us feel like the wider culture, mainstream culture, has left us longing for more connection; more connection with other human beings, more connection with the land, more connection with ourselves. And a lot of our own cultural knowledge has been erased. We all come from indigenous roots. Every human being has ancestors who are indigenous to a place in this world. And a lot of us feel a longing for that connection, of being connected to a place, connected to a tribe of some way. And a lot of the knowledge that our own ancestors had has been erased. And so there’s a lot of ways that a lot of us are trying to reclaim that and reclaim a certain way of living.

Cultural appropriation and learning from indigenous people

There’s lots we can learn from indigenous peoples that exist now. And also, really claiming our own heritage is important and claiming that all of us have connection with land. I speak about this, it’s touchy because the issue of cultural appropriation is real. And that’s something I work with a lot in trying to be respectful and, especially if I’m doing anything with other people, always knowing that I have permission to use anything, especially if it’s of a culture that exists now.

And so it’s been really important to me to learn from indigenous peoples that exist now, but also to learn my own heritage, learn the practices that come from my own ancestry and to find new ways to find new ways for all of us to reclaim ourselves as human beings connected with the earth.

Parts of a ritual

There are many different ways people hold the word “ritual.” When I say ritual, I mean being in a specific place, creating a container for sacred space, and holding a specific intention. Usually there’s raising of energy and it’s about connecting between the worlds. Creating a sacred container lets you can reach inside yourself, reach other spirits, other worlds. There’s lots of different ways to talk about this and different people hold it in different ways. So, usually in a ritual there will be a beginning that you create that container in some way. And there are many different ways to do this.

Often here at Earthaven and in the ways I have learned, we will call in the directions. We’ll call in the east, south, west and north. Here at Earthaven, we’ll also call in above and below and center. Calling in the directions to witness us in our rite and hold us in that container can be really powerful, especially when you have a practice of doing this at the beginning and end of your ritual. It helps you as a human being to get in a rhythm and teach yourself to switch your gears, to sink into yourself, to sink into your connection with around you. Having some kind of practice that you begin and end each ritual with, whatever that looks like for you, can be really powerful if you continue to do it and continue to teach yourself that that is the cue your body knows.

The middle of the ritual can also look like many things. It’s hard to talk so generally because ritual looks like so many different things. I work with larger groups, smaller groups, and individuals. There are common things in all these rituals and they all look very differently. So, often in our group, like I said, we’ll begin with calling in the directions and we’ll state the intention of the ritual. And then we usually have a group meditation to begin with, to connect all of ourselves together. And then we’ll go into the practice of the ritual. And like I said, for the different holidays, the different rituals, that will all look differently. But it’s always about raising energy of some kind or enacting a practice to connect with the energy that’s going on in the land around us at that time, especially for the solar cycle rituals.

Earthaven’s summer solstice ritual

We just celebrated summer solstice, which is the height of the sun. It’s the longest day of the year. For that ritual every year we have a drum and dance circle. First, we gather together and light our fire and call in the directions and have a meditation where we really sink in to this longest day.

Solstice also means to be still because when the sun rises and sets throughout the year, it moves along the horizon. During the solstice it looks like it’s rising and setting in the same place for three days and so the word solstice means to stand still and so during our ritual this year we took a moment to really sink into that, to be standing still within the height of your power and really sinking into the energy of that and what is to come for the rest of the summer.

Then we have a blessing of the community with nine sacred herbs. Nine different people bring nine different herbs and ask for different blessings on the community (lavender for beauty, rose for love, cronewort for wisdom, comfrey for abundance, yarrow for health, rosemary for awareness, motherwort for family, thyme for serenity, and St. John’s/Jane’s wort for magic) and offer them to the fire. We raise some energy and continue into drumming and dancing throughout the night, knowing that all of the energy we’re raising through the drumming and dancing is contributing to that calling in the  blessings for our community. It always feels really appropriate to be drumming and dancing on the summer solstice. This is an ancient tradition, it’s one of the fire holidays.

The next morning, usually on the actual day of the solstice, we’ll meet to sing up the sunrise. We have a fire and say prayers and welcome the sunrise. We sing up the sun for all the solstices and equinoxes in the year.

For the summer solstice we also have an annual work party that we’ve been having for many years. We gather together at our swimming hole every year usually on the weekend closest to the solstice. We have many creeks that run through the land here at Earthaven and there’s one spot that we call the swimming hole. At this work party we work to deepen a little area. We call it the swimming hole but it’s really more of a dunking hole and often throughout the year, rains will come and it’ll get filled in so then every year at this time we go and deepen a spot, work on the steps, build a little wall to keep a little area a little deeper, and beautify the area, work on tending that area. It’s a really fun work party everyone getting in the creek together and it feels really good to really embody something that way in a ritual. It is its own mutual in a way. We gather every year together and do the same thing and tend to our spaces.

There’s a few different times throughout the year that we’re really working towards connecting yearly tasks in the village with the holidays and building that together to really embody the cycle in our bodies as well. More than just gathering to celebrate in ritual, also tending the land and tending different aspects of our village life together as a community.

Imbolc at Earthaven

Another holiday that we celebrate is called Imbolc. It’s at the beginning of February. We also have a few things that we do that are tending different aspects of our village life. We have a ritual where we gather together to tend our council hall altar, and for the few weeks before that, all of the altars and shrines and sacred spaces around the whole community are tended in different ways by different people. In this way, we’re making sure that all of these alters are getting tended at least once a year. These are alters are in public spaces and were created by different people for different reasons. Many of us work every year at Imbolc to tend them. And then we gather together to all tend the Council Hall altar, our main village altar.

We also have a tool blessing around Imbolc, where we gather together for a full day. At Earthaven, we have community tools that we all share and can check out and use. And on this day, we gather together at the tool shed. We call it the storage barn. We tend to the tools all day, cleaning them and sharpening them, and then at the end of the day, have a big tool blessing, giving thanks for all of the tools that help us live the lives we live.

Challenges about facilitating ritual at Earthaven

One  thing I’m still learning about, and will probably continue to, is finding commonality within a village that doesn’t have a shared religion. Here at Earthaven, there’s many different people who practice different kinds of spiritualities and religions, and yet I really feel like having some kind of spirituality in common is important. I feel it’s really important to have some things we can share to sink into these cycles and to sink into village life on a spiritual level together. The one thing we do have in common is the land. Everyone here has a deep devotion to connecting with the land and tending the land, serving the land, connecting with the spirits of this land. So, that’s one of the things in the community rituals that a lot of us are always continuing to work with —  finding ways to be together in ritual as a community that are general enough for everyone who comes from different spiritual traditions, general enough to all feel welcome ,and feel like it is theirs, and also specific enough so it’s real, because if you get too general with ritual, it’s meaningless.

I think continued practice, through these cycles, through coming together every year and having rituals that we come back to at each holiday, has really helped us as a community to find this place where we can meet in the middle together, knowing that what we all have in common is our connection with this land. We all have our own ways to personally connect spiritually with the land and with each other, but having chosen to be here in this place, in this community, with this land, we do have that in common. The cycles of this land are within all of us because of that.

Kaitlin’s training and background

I’m trained as a priestess and an herbalist. I’ve studied with Susun Weed in a Shamanic herbal apprenticeship, which really helped change my paradigm and really connect with the earth. I’ve also trained with Temple of Diana, a Dianic women’s church, international church. I’ve trained with them and am an ordained minister through Temple of Diana. I’ve also studied with Martin Prechtel in his school in New Mexico, learning the spiritual traditions and history of the world. And I’ve studied with other people. Those are my main teachers. Linda Conroy was my first. I like to mention her as well, herbal mentor and helping me connect with the land. And since being here at Earthaven, while studying with other people, I think my main teacher is the people, the community here at Earthaven and connecting with the land.

Other types of rituals at Earthaven

One of the other things I do here at Earthaven is lead the Red Tent, which is a women’s circle or women’s group. We meet at a space here at Earthaven monthly celebrating our cycles.

I also facilitate personal ritual. Anyone who is wanting some kind of ritual in their life, which could be a rite of passage, honoring something that they’re going through, some kind of transformation, it can look like many different things. If we really embrace personal ritual in our lives, the rituals can be sign posts throughout our life. When people feel they need support in that, I have a process I can lead people with, either to facilitate it or help them create their own ritual, they would facilitate themselves.

Other spiritual practices at Earthaven

There are lots of different ways people are gathering together and sinking into different cycles. Here at Earthaven, as I mentioned, the Red Tent, with women gathering monthly. There are people that gather weekly for a Shabbat ritual and dinner. There is weekly meditation that someone leads, and there’s men’s groups and women’s groups that are meeting regularly throughout the land. There’s a lot of different individuals and groups here at Earthaven that are all working towards sinking into cycles and sinking into the land and really weaving the web of our community together many different ways.

Tips for rituals for people who don’t have a community or piece of land to connect with

Even if you’re not living on specific land that you feel connected to, we all live in this world that has specific cycles. Really tuning into the cycles around you, whatever they are, the yearly cycle, as we’ve talked about, the monthly cycle of the moon or the cycles of your life, is a good start.

And I would encourage you to really hold intention with that, to think about what these cycles might mean for you and your life and to really hold strong intention when you sit with those cycles and enact ritual in whatever way that looks like for you.

I think holding a specific intention is a strong base, and it’s really important for any ritual. Think about why you are doing this and what are you hoping to get out of it. Think about what you hope to feel or do after this ritual. Are you hoping to feel a certain way? Are you hoping to bring some kind of transformation into your life? Are you hoping to connect with the land? Connecting with the land or cycle can be enough. For example, “My intention is to connect with these cycles.” Just holding that can help you focus during a mutual.

Why Kaitlin is dedicating herself to creating ritual

In a way, it feels like ritual is a way for us to focus ourselves and to connect, as I’ve already said, to connect with other humans, to connect with the land, with the earth, connect with ourselves. And ritual is a way to have a container for that focus and to have a way to keep coming back to it. Our bodies are made for ritual. I believe our human bodies remember things and when we enact them in a ritualized way, we can go much deeper. And I feel that ritual, however that looks for you, is a way to connect and keep coming back to that connection. I feel as human beings, that is what we’re here to do — to connect in all the different ways that that means.

Kaitlyn’s website is priestessofcycles.com.

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