em-path

2016 Apprencticeship at Turtle Crossing Farm

me

I’m looking for a person or two willing to learn and help out at Turtle Crossing Farm this year. The commitment would be one, possibly two days a week. It would be an opportunity to learn about the small homestead lifestyle, possibilities and complexities. It will be an opportunity to learn skills such as gardening,

Garden in late spring

Sometimes it helps to have a chainsaw to get up the…

At Home on the Earth: Harvest and Hearth Day

In the spirit of the change of seasons, transitions from the activity and outward directed energies of summer, to the infolding and gathering energies of fall, I’d like to invite everyone to join me at the lovely Riverstone Farm in Floyd, on Saturday, October 17th, from 12 noon till 8pm.

  Among the activities of the day will be introductions to natural way-finding, shelter-building, fire-makinga…

Tracking Workshop, Riverstone Farm, Floyd, June 27 and 28

An Introduction to Holistic Tracking: Learning to Read and Live The Great Story

  “I am trying to teach you that this alphabet of “natural objects” (soils and rivers, birds and beasts) spells out a story. Once you learn how to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or with it, and I know many pleasant things it will do to you.” –Aldo Leopold

 The ancient and modern art/science…

Stephen Hawking Is An Idiot

There, I said it. That felt good. I mean, I’m sure Hawking’s got game on other fields, but his comments last week betray a serious misunderstanding of how things work in the real world. Hawking took the trouble to beam his hologram half way across the world to say: “I don’t think we will survive another 1,000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet.” Hawking’s dream is just another…

Riots and Quiet Cats

I live alone with a quiet cat. I don’t know that she’s quiet by nature. She likes to go outside when the weather warms up in spring. When April greens up, she gets a little restless, and will begin to turn in gentle circles by the back door. If she sits there and glances at me, she is waiting for me to let her out. In any case, I have learned that those circles she makes, punctuated by the…

Earth Week: More Reasons to Hope: The Emerging Personhood of Animals…and plants?…and ?

The intellectual traditions established in Classical Antiquity and cresting in the European Enlightenment that somewhat defensively established humans at the peak of the great pyramid of existence, are in transition. It seems that a new study documenting social, linguistic, symbolic, cultural, or emotional intelligence in animals is released every few weeks.  A nice overview of this trend is…

“Are We Special?” Day 5 Earth Week: Reasons to Hope

I had intended to write about something different today, but as I drove in this morning, I listened to a brief NPR piece on the 25th anniversary of launch of the Hubble Space Telescopeand suddenly found myself wiping away tears. Because of Hubble,  and its widely shared images, we have come to understand that the universe is more vast by many degrees of magnitude than we had thought. “There have…

"Underground Springs" Day One, Earth Week: Seven Reasons for Hope

I’m going to try to write briefly each day this week, Seth Godin-style, offering a reason why we should be hopeful about the state of the Earth, and its future, and ours.

What do you see here?

  Aha, more green at the base of the cart return.

I was in the parking lot of Kroger’s in Troutville after work on Friday, noticed that bright clump of green at the base of the light pole, as I loaded my…

A few years ago, I had the great pleasure of enjoying a Gatsby-esque moment on a terrace in Tucson, Arizona. I was there attending a conference to initiate new Udall Environmental Scholars. This was a gathering of amazing, high-powered young people, all committed to environmental causes. As a collegiate advisor to several Udall Scholars in my role at Virginia Tech’s Honors Program, I was there to…

What Life Might Look Like In An Ecozoic World

Who’s that in my headlights?

Last night, driving up my mile of dirt road driveway, in the dark, in the pounding cold rain, I realized what time it was. I realized with a start and a swerve, that it was the Spring Frog Rain. After an inch of rain, and two days of warming sandwiched in between weeks of unseasonable cold, all the wood frogs on my mountain realized it was time to meet up and boogie…

Natural Intelligence in Action

Nature-Based Mindfulness and Connection Work

Bringing wood down from the woodshed this morning I heard a few notes of Cardinal’s spring/mating song. He’s just tuning up or maybe just practicing or saying his piece. It’s not time yet. Yet, tt’s been a few months, September maybe, since I’ve heard that simple melody, and now on a cold, rainy mid-winter day, that phrase ripples through me and assures me that indeed spring will come, and before…

Trees, Heartwood and the Nature of a Broken Heart

“…landscape … furnishes us with the metaphors and symbols with which we pry into mystery…In approaching the land with an attitude of obligation, willing to observe courtesies difficult to articulate – perhaps only a gesture of the hands – one establishes a regard from which dignity can emerge. From that dignified relationship with the land, it is possible to image an extension of dignified…

Introduction to Understanding Bird Language

9:00am-12:00 noon, Saturday, September 6th.

Riverstone Organic Farm, Floyd County,Va, 

Rain or shine (unless it’s bucketing)

“A little bird told me…”

Based on the work of acclaimed naturalist and tracker Jon Young , this experiential workshop will introduce participants to learning the language of the birds and understanding what they are telling us about events on the landscape – and ourselves.