Nova Scotia is as beautiful as ever. Here in Lunenburg County the season is about a month behind that which I left in Victoria, BC. The blossoms are still on the apple trees and the daisies are just blooming now. The lilacs are just starting to wane and the wild strawberries are beginning to come out now. I enjoyed my first delicious taste this morning.
The Earth Sea Eco-Village is on twenty acres of ocean front property with a main house made of straw bale, one other large living house, and a bunch of little cabins and cottages for guests to stay in. There are a few different models of permaculture gardens, growing herbs, vegetables, fruit and flowers. The land is beautiful, blessed with a pine forest and grassy meadows that extend to the sea bluffs above the rocky shoreline. Earth Sea�s land is adjacent the �Ovens Natural Park Camp Ground,� famous for its spooky and awe-inspiring sea filled caves that thunder with the pounding of incoming Atlantic waves.
At first, this ocean was like a stranger to me. Its foreboding silver hues lined the distant horizon with darkness, and for the first days I gazed skeptically at the beauty before me, not ready to accept it as friend or foe. Those days were stormy, and the wind and rain put us �Ripplers� in instant survival mode. On my first night here there was a lightening storm that shook me awake and thundered over my little tent without any lapse between sound and light.
The weather is now often hot and our little Ripple garden is dry. The Ripple Project (http://www.geocities.com/rippleproject/) consists of five of us who have committed to spend the summer living outside together, practicing intentional community and creating a livable place to share stories, skills, good food, songs and whatever else comes around. Known by the people of Earth Sea as the �Ripplers,� we are: Kathleen (Age 17, from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia), Genevieve (24 from Trois Rivieres, Que.), Jonathan and Emma (Jon is from Edmonton and Emma from New Brunswick�they are expecting a baby in November!), and myself (Justine Cara, known here as Cara to feel more familial with the group and to stay mellow away from Justine�s recent world of intensity). As mentioned above, we have a garden that is growing tomatoes, zucchini, basil, corn, peas, onion, garlic, dill, lettuce, mesclun greens, beets, radishes, flowers and more.
We are constantly discussing and redefining what it means for us to be practicing intentional community. So far it is that we have decided to live together, cooking and eating together, working together, and communally sharing the chores of living (given our living situation, which is basically camping, this can take all day). We are a learning group and hope to have a more complete understanding of intentional community as we go through the summer�s lessons and trials.
Other activities involve building and creating things to make our lives easier. For example, we built a large table and benches so we no longer have to eat squatting over stumps around the fire. We will build a composting out-house next week, a stall for the solar shower, and a clay oven to bake bread in. We are �intent� on simpler living, using mostly the materials we find around us, including harvesting food from the garden and sea, and salvaging wood from Earth Sea�s scrap wood pile. Another intent is to live with as small an ecological footprint as possible. This is relatively easy in a camping environment where we are not dependent on hydro-electricity and other highly consumptive inputs. We ride bikes for transportation and when the season dries out a little more, we will recycle our grey water.
We are doing a course together called �The Artist�s Way� which involves writing three pages of �stream of consciousness� into a journal each morning and doing different creative exercises throughout each week. We have weekly check-ins to discuss and share how we have been feeling and what we have been up to.
We are also working odd jobs and going to or hosting different gatherings, sometimes in conjunction with Earth Sea. This weekend we are going to a place near New Brunswick called the Nappan Project, for a gathering called Ecotopia. Nappan is a project geared towards teaching and practicing environmentally sustainable living skills and technologies (http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/nappanproject/nappanintro.htm). Ecotopia is weekend learning event for youth who are interested in becoming environmental activists. Emma and Jonathan have been hired to cook for the gathering and I will give a workshop on the Walbran, BC old-growth in general, and how to get involved in protecting our local places.
Earth Sea is an eco-village and shamanic intentional community. Their intent is to live sustainably with the world around them and with as small a footprint as possible. In practice this is manifest in their straw-bale house, their permaculture techniques, and their philosophy of simplicity and recycling. By sharing and living communally they use less time and resources, which allows them to attend to their culture and individual economic needs.
The shamanic aspect of Earth Sea is what they consider to be the glue that holds them together. For me, it is an interesting window to alternative spiritual practices and cultural celebrations. There is drumming and ceremony and lots of primitive skills to learn such as hide preparation for tipis or drums. I joined a traditional sweat lodge on my first weekend here and on Solstice the dancing ceremonies and feasting was fantastic. Nancy and David, who started Earth Sea in 1997, are going to Alberta soon to dance the Sundance with the elders there.
Ciao to all,
Justine Cara
