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.

The post Member Profile-River Otter appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

The three conference organizers have been working together as a team for 5 years now. Corinna Wood and Lee Warren are both Earthaven members living and working in the Village Terraces Cohousing Neighborhood, and Ema Carmona is living a similar close-to-the-earth life in a neighboring community. “The conference gives us women the opportunity for a part-time living-wage income in a rural area without much opportunity for employment and allows us work that is deeply aligned with our values.”

The post Business profile: Southeast Wise Women appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

The Southeast Women’s Herbal Conference is the sister company of Red Moon Herbs –  sharing the same mother, owner and director, Corinna Wood. Corinna, a long-time Earthaven member, runs these two businesses here at Earthaven, employing not only herself but other local women, bringing much-needed income to families in our economically depressed Appalachian region.

Two Earthaven women, Corinna and Lee Warren, as well as a neighbor, Ema Carmona, work year round to organize The Southeast Women’s Herbal Conference, which offers hundreds of women the opportunity to learn, connect, and deepen in to the Wise Woman Tradition. This year marks the 5th anniversary of the conference which will take place in Black Mountain on October 2-4

The Wise Woman Tradition is very close to many of the values embodied at Earthaven. In brief, it means simple living, earth-based healing, and local plants. It encourages connection to place, honoring of cycles, nourishment of the body–of the human and of the earth, and community with each other. The conference is an opportunity to introduce these ideas to women from many different walks of life in a format and style that is empowering and deeply transformative.

The conference draws hundreds of women (expected participation this year is 500) from around the Southeast coming for classes taught by more than 30 teachers, herbalists, wise women elders, and gifted healers. They will teach more than 50 classes on topics such as: Herb Walks, Tea Blending Secrets, Herbal Skin Care, Herbal Baths, Menstrual Health, Menopause, Women’s Wellness, Nutrition, Phytochemicals, HPV, Shamanic Breathwork, Talking Stick, Self Esteem, as well as art, dance, yoga, poetry, and more.

The post The Wise Women of the Blue Ridge Are At It Again appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

Many of the women of Earthaven attended the Second Annual Southeast Women’s Herbal Conference held during the Fall Equinox, sponsored by Red Moon Herbs. Starhawk’s presence as this year’s keynote speaker was particularly significant for Earthaveners.

Starhawk is well known as the author of eleven books, including The Spiral Path and The Fifth Sacred Thing. However, it’s her more recent books that specifically and eloquently explain the fundamental values that are at the core of Earthaven’s existence. Webs of Power covers much of the political action spectrum, including the importance of bioregional economic self-sufficiency and its relationship to strategies of political power. The significance of understanding and working with Nature is made abundantly clear in her other recent book, Earth Path.

Starhawk’s focus at the conference was very much about the material in Earth Path. She led the intensive through a series of awareness exercises. The exercises enhance sense awareness, allowing participants to be more receptive to information from Nature. This information is always available to us, if we only give ourselves access to the natural world. A guided meditation followed the exercises. The beauty of guided meditation is that it allows us to screen out ego filters accumulated in the rough-and-tumble world, where abuse and failure can block our vision and limit our options. Then the information we glean from Nature can help us see the steps needed to care for our world and ourselves more skillfully.

Starhawk addressed the feelings of helplessness that come so often to people who are daunted by the enormous tasks before us, of changing consumer culture and cleaning up so much pollution. Hearing from her about advances in the use of bacteria and fungi to clean up pollution were very inspiring. She pointed out that we are part of nature and that nature can use humans to cure the distructiveness of other human actions.

If you would like to learn more about Starhawk’s work, the books mentioned above are a captivating and easy-to-understand resource. You may buy these books at your local bookstore, or through Red Moon Herbs.

The post Earthaveners love Starhawk appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.