By Deborah Clark, Medicine Wheel Collective

Greetings from Medicine Wheel Collective!

As summer rolls into fall, and wave after wave of change sweeps the wider world, we find ourselves deep in a season of change at Medicine Wheel. As the pandemic prohibited us from hosting our normal summer crew of work exchangers, visitors, and renters, it’s a bit wilder in our garden than usual.

Inside the house, it’s a bit wilder too. We are living in a construction zone.

We are rebuilding Medicine Wheel’s heart and hearth: the kitchen. Having sustained and nurtured residents, students, and Earthaven visitors for nearly twenty years, it desperately needed an overhaul. Lyndon and I—along with our advisory board—have paused with gratitude to consider how many thousands of meals have been cooked and eaten here.

As we rise to meet this challenge, we’re searching our hearts for answers to a couple of big questions: What are Medicine Wheel’s most authentic expressions of service? How does that service mesh with our individual personalities, needs, and visions for the future?

Ever since Patricia Allison—Medicine Wheel’s founder, and our beloved teacher and mentor—passed on more than two years ago, we’ve been examining and refining our purpose and goals, while striving to honor the depth of her commitment.

Lyndon is enthused about continuing the Medicine Wheel tradition of hosting permaculture classes and inspirational events. I am especially excited about the interplay between the bounty of the garden and that age-old question: What’s for dinner?

One thing we’re both sure of: we desire to serve those who want to learn to live more sustainably, for generations to come. That’s what gets us out of bed in the morning.

The kitchen is the hub of the Wheel. We envision being able to serve larger groups, with more ease and grace. When we ask you to contribute to our campaign to fund the Medicine Wheel kitchen renovation, we are asking you to join us in that prayer.

Consider Donating Today  https://charity.gofundme.com/medicine-wheel-kitchen

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Hard to believe this is our first newsletter since January, but it’s been busy and intense all around. Yes, another beloved senior member has taken her last journey—Patricia Allison left the planet (as far as we know) on March 19, after a relatively short bout with cancer. What we will do without Patricia is still a doleful question. A beautiful funeral was held in her honor, as well as a memorial party and (true to Patricia’s spirit) a workday at Medicine Wheel, the neighborhood she began developing with her family many years ago. Meanwhile, long-time Medicine Wheel co-leader Lyndon Felps and not-so-newcomer Deborah Clark are at the helm of the Wheel, following the intensive gardening paths Patricia spearheaded and continuing to house, teach and inspire students and work-exchangers throughout the coming years.

Patricia came to Earthaven as a budding Permaculture teacher, teaming up with Chuck Marsh, Peter Bane and Goodheart Brown, training Earthaven members as well as quite a few folks from around the country, in the basics of permaculture design and the essentials of its application. A Texan with a passion for simplicity, she loved permaculture and teaching it, and inspired hundreds, probably thousands, of students through classes and PDCs at Earthaven, as well as at several other developing communities and conferences. She was a dedicated consensus practitioner who also taught those principles on the road and at home.

For the sake of joy and teaching, Patricia collected songs. She laughingly referred to her favorites as her “eco-feminist spirituals.” They served as a calling in and meal-blessing when folks would circle up for dinner in the Medicine Wheel kitchen, and often had a place within her classes, and daily life. The recording she made of them in 1996 is available in digital form, for free, and on a CD for the cost of shipping. To obtain a copy, please write catherinebrooke@gmail.com.

above: Patricia (left) and students at Medicine Wheel.

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You’ve come for The Tour. Alone, with your family or friends, or packaged (with your permission) into a group tour. You partake of the guided two-to-three-hour meander around the Village Center and several close-lying neighborhoods. For many of you, it’s a new world. Can it really be done this way? So much to see, wonder about and ask!

By the end of your tour, if you’re full of questions, you can usually get your guide to answer a few more, and later, once you’ve had a chance to digest what you’ve seen and imagined about our neo-tribal village, you can stay in touch and learn more. Become a Supporting Member and come back and camp for free. Make friends and plans.

Chalk art by Kimchi Rylander

What makes Earthaven “neo-tribal?” Well, first of all we recognize our need to be together. We are required to give time and creativity to building a culture that knits us together in seasonal, economic, familial and spiritual ways. This is a felt requirement more than a legislated one, and some people need to let others do what they can’t do themselves.

We ask each other to take more responsibility for our individual and collective relationships with nature than modern Western culture offers, or even allows. What’s neo about it is that we want to infuse our somewhat tribal life with the most beneficial sciences and technologies—the ones that help us live in our chosen world without losing our grip on the one that surrounds us, such as the photovoltaic microgrid in the Hut Hamlet neighborhood (below).

The roster of tour guides includes elders and youngers, founders and even “Exploring Members.”

Right now you can sign up for a (2nd or 4th) Saturday tour or a privately scheduled tour. We request all overnight visitors and campers have a tour so they know where they are and how to get where they want to go!

If you have a particular interest, tell us what it is and there might be a tour guide you’d particularly like to meet.

Recently our guides were asked to share special moments from their tour histories. Long-time member and permaculture teacher Patricia Allison offered these:

Most memorable tour…

The one I gave to Thomas Berry, in 1998 or so. He wanted to be here, but his health prevented it. Seeing the satisfied approval on his face was a gift I’ll carry always.

Strangest question…

Consistently people ask, “Who’s the leader here?” What’s weird is that some refuse to believe we truly don’t have one. They will rephrase it a dozen ways to try to find out who’s in charge!

What’s best about guiding tours…?

I’m proud of what Earthaven has accomplished, and I like to show it off! Since the tour is often prospective members’ first impression, I want to make it a positive experience for them. I’m also a compulsive teacher, and I love presenting a different way of perceiving place and people. It’s a joy to see someone I’ve toured return to live with us. I always feel some pride that my tour may have helped convince them to come back.

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Before River Otter came to Earthaven, she was creating her own lifestyle in New Orleans. She was busy gardening, developing her healing skills, and giving tours of the city. Then Hurricane Katrina struck.

“The storm was really a turning point for me,” she said. “I survived the storm but a lot of people didn’t. It made it clear that if there was something I wanted to do, I had to do it now.”

In the aftermath of the hurricane, activists and relief workers moved into River Otter’s neighborhood. “It was joy beyond belief that my people had come to my neighborhood, but I couldn’t be involved the way I wanted to because I was focusing on my health.”

River Otter was in her late 30s, recovering from a major illness, and her marriage was falling apart. At the same time, she very much wanted to be somewhere where she could start a family.

Then one day, Patricia Allison came to New Orleans to visit her daughter, and someone told her there was a permaculture student living in the neighborhood.

“Patricia knocked on my front door and told me about Earthaven and Medicine Wheel,” she recalled. River Otter visited for a week in 2006 and moved to Earthaven in March of 2007 to apprentice with Red Moon Herbs.

Living in community was challenging at first. “There were times especially in the first year or two that I thought of leaving, but I realized it was really just my own issues. The fear of putting down roots, the fear of commitment.” All in all, it seemed that turning back was not a reasonable option for her anymore. “So I just walked myself through all of that.” River Otter became a full member in 2008.

River Otter gives tours of Earthaven, manages the campground, teaches yoga, organizes rituals, and helps new people integrate into the community. “I’m a really service-oriented person and I’m in a place where I can do what is needed. I feel like my being here has created positive change.”

As for the future, River Otter is committed to learning more about herbal medicine, healing arts, naturopathy, meditation, and yoga. She also hopes to start a family and learn how to achieve more balance in her life.

“My skills are being valued here,” she notes. “Even the skills I’m developing are being valued.”

Being at Earthaven has proved to be much more fulfilling than the life she left in New Orleans. “I felt lonely. I would do all the harvesting and everything and then I’d go to a Vietnamese restaurant and get a bowl of noodle soup ’cause I couldn’t bear to be alone. I can get my needs met in community.”

Davene Wasser came to Earthaven in April 2010 with her son Eli and husband Jamie to simplify her life and live more closely to nature. She is a writer, editor, educator, and artist. After ten years of researching community, Davene is thrilled to be living her dream.

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Culture’s Edge

We have also become the umbrella organization for independent educational projects, including the Forest Children Program, Camp Katuah, The Natural Building School, Patricia Allison and Friends’ Sustainable Living Skills internships and classes, and a program we simply call Earthaven Ecovillage, our volunteers who host tours and facilitate long-term on-site work study opportunities.

This year we are planning to sponsor workshops in Qigong, The Power of Manifestation, Homeopathy, and Plant Wisdom.  See www.earthaven.org for a listing of current classes.  Tax-deductible donations of any size can be earmarked for any of these programs.  You can support scholarships for education, or tell us that you want us to use your donation wherever it’s most needed for education and outreach.

Culture’s Edge was established as a not-for-profit company in 1996, shortly after Earthaven was formed. Culture’s Edge was a way to focus our passion for education and create opportunities for livelihood.  At first we offered courses in the three areas central to our own development: permaculture, natural building, and consensus decision making.  Over time, training in the agricultural arts, building arts, communication arts, and healing arts were added, filling almost every weekend from May through October for several years running.

While focusing on internal reorganization in 2006, we slowed down and most of the classes held that year were privately organized.  This past year, the introduction of Health Dept. requirements into Earthaven’s midst (see article, Are You Hep?) cut short our educational calendar for the season, which, though hard on the village economy, did give us the opportunity to consider how our future plans might branch out.  In particular, we feel excited about expanding longer-term internship programs, in which the opportunities for life changing experiences are the greatest.

This year, Culture’s Edge is offering the courses and programs that nurture a healthy & sustainable world and offer you practical solutions.  Our programs are taught by a dynamic team of instructors and contribute to Earthaven’s village economy.

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