Sigh Moon’s Home and Wellness Fundraiser
Donation protected
Hello amazing friends!
This fundraiser is to help me further the activation of my magical wildtending faery land project.
I and several friends have been burning mountains of dead brush resulting from 100 years of fire suppression.
I have found a wonderful person who leveled, filled, and graveled the entryway for $1500. What a guy!!! The driveway is finally solidified.
My big goals are to be able to hire a company to put in a well (essential), and build shelters!
Water. Sheter. Access. Check!
I made a video explaining everything.
https://youtu.be/bFhxXkqmfds
All this will easily be accomplished for $30,000. $15,000 for well and pump, $15,000 for driveway and buildings.
While $30,000 sounds like a truly huge amount of money to me, it is actually only 3,000 friends with $10 to share. So doable!
$5, $10, $20...whatever you are able to share with me I will be so gratefull. I will use the accumulated funds to actually make solid reality my dreamy little rewilding, ancestral skills, queer meca of a home land project.
Sharing $10 with me would be like taking me to a nice dinner, and instead I get to build this amazing Squirrel Palace!
Would you be able to help me ignite my vision?
This entire region is the traditional homelands and gathering/tending grounds of the Klamath and Modoc First People. I am extremely grateful to get to be in, and interact with this place on so many levels.
I am excited to make this land a fully FUNctional faerie fort where to be quiet and away from the electricity and endless noise buzz of civilization. A place to be able to have my friends, allies, and family come stay and learn and share with me!
My deer friend David will be storing all this money for me, so as to not mix it with my food and gas money.
A company in town quoted the well at $11,000 to drill. They said it will need to be 400 feet deep. I hope it will not have to be that deep. The nice vegan neighbors down the road said their well was only 250 feet. So we shall see.
I would like to get this amazing high elevation hand powered water pump which is around $3,000. Having ease access to fresh water does and will change everything about living in a place. This particular pump will make us not reliant on electricity, and also directly physically connected to the water. The energy required to be in tune with the value and essence of clear clean drinking water is so worth the a bit of arm work. The gratitude comes naturally. Keeping things simple.
The permits for both the well and the pump are around $500 each to install.
So that is already $15,000 which is half of the fundraiser.
My plan is to build with reenforced ferro-cement. Most of the building constructed will be of the 12’ by 12’ size, circular, with a raised dome shape.
I will build a Bathhouse/Bathing Temple as a well protection house. This will have an attached south facing Greenhouse for solar gain and to grow food with the water runoff. This is an “Earthship” inspired style.
I am building a large 35’ by 35’ circular open air Kitchen Gathering Space. This will serve as wind-block to shelter us from the intense winds and sun and also as a place to hold small groups for learning and sharing information about ancestral skills information as well as making food for us all.
There will be a small Library for reading, a dug out “Cold House” for krauting, curing, and food storage, a sweet little warm “Healing/Massage” space, a Sauna, a small “Acoustic Temple” for meditation and loud sound making, a “Sensual Lounge” space, a composting toilet, lots of camp spots, and of course several small shelters.
I am estimating the building materials and permits will cost $15,000.
Totally doable! Right? YES!
With the recent generous help of a new friend there are now five large flat spots to work with on this little sloping plot land. After the muddy mess compacts down, and I get the driveway sorted, there will be space to park, and also all these spaces to camp out on. It is good to be with this spot in the Klamath Basin high desert that I love. And there is so much to explore.
I’m thinking big and casting my wishing coins far and wide.
You, my friends, are my wishing well.
I believe that this beautiful vision will serve me as a home and also afford my community a functional and gorgeous place to meet up and share information, inspire and co-create the culture and lives we wish to be in. My dream is coming true, and I am asking for aid from all my network of friends, family and accountancies who believe in me.
1500 people with $20 to share, to be precise.
I need your support and love. I can't do this alone.
Whatever you have to give is so helpful. $5 is fortunate, $10 is terrific, $20 is tremendous, $50 is fabulous, and $1,000 would be beyond incredible. And hey, if your drowning in moolah and just ADORE me and wanna give more (please make all sharings under the $12,000 limit tax free donation at a time), YES please and thank you all!
This is the start of a really wonderful thing! A whole fae fort and magical temple space land project that can be easefully accomplished with $30,000. This is my wish-vision. I would love your assistance bringing into physicality to enjoy.
Whatever you are able to donate to my wellness fun(d) vision activation is amazing. Even as prayers and thoughts and blessings! This should be graceful and easefull and fun! And please, no stress.
I know many of us really have to watch what we spend. I don't wish you to tax your resources.
My friend David will helping me by receiving and tracking all this money. He is very helpful and trustworthy with big things. He is able help me purchase the big items (like hiring a well). His is very clever and grounded and I have known him for over 15 years. I am great full because if I had all this money pouring in I would get confused and most likely have a hard time tracking it and spend a lot of it on food.
Blessings back to you three times three!
oh yes, I am also able to accept donations on pay pal ven mo and even checks, though my location changes often.
also the train comes to Klamath Falls and during the warm seasons of Spring, Summer, and early Fall I am here often and would love to have a visit from you.
__________________________________________________________
And, for those of you who want more details about what I'm creating and some backstory.
THE KNOTT TABLE
This entire region is the traditional homelands and gathering and tending grounds of the Klamath and Modoc First People. I was once a vast marshland of Camas, and other wild roots, home to thousands of thriving persons of all sorts both human, bird, elk, deer. It is today a very changed landscape. One I hope to help aid in recovery and returning to the abundant rich inspiring legacy that was paved over by this capitalist settler colonialism we are all surviving today. I’ve been coming to this beautifull place, off and on, all spring, summer, and fall for the last six years. These three acres situated on the lips of vast wild gardens overlooking the Sprague River Valley called to me. As I walk up through the juniper covered landscape it feels wonderful. Coming to the top of the land I emerged onto the table and it just gives me life. There are HUGE old gnarled grandmother juniper trees that are bonzied from the winds, and miles of Apaz/Yampa, camas, onions, and Caush, easily accessible to wildtending and learn from. WOW!
It is three beautiful acres on the sandy southern lips of the Knott Table, an ancient sacred garden mesa, shaped by lava flows, and thousands of years of tending. The Table is a wild-food tending stronghold (meaning the white colonial settlers could not decimate with their pigs and cows and plows it due to the rock formations). It overlooks the Sprague River Valley in an area of Klamath County that I love so much and lies between two little draws packed with violets, sinkfoil, and mallow. This piece of land is several miles walk to the Winema and Fremont National Forests.
I am surrounded by amazing rolling landscapes of land, water, sky, wild sacred foods and medicines to plant back and love! I wish to plant this place full of the local flowering medicine plants that are here and have started this venture already with the aid of friends. The national forest land is a few mile walk away. This land is just off of a winter accessible dirt road in good condition (kept up by neighbors who live a little over 1/2 mile further). I am doing forestry practices to ease the fire danger. Now, because of the generosity and sharing of friends, I have access to land for a fabulous camp. Its been an adventure learning, healing, growing, listening, planting, and seeing. What a blessing!
I ferocious elemental power in this area is so powerful. The sun, the wind, the storms, the open sky and vast high desert valleys and mountains. It can often be freezing, and boiling hot all in one day.
This fairie needs protection.
THIS LAND
I have no structures or utilities at this time. I do not plan to ever connect to the power main, for obvious expense reasons, and for my interest. Shelter and dry space on my land however is essential. And right now the driveway is freshly dug out and a slippery snowy mess. It is 10 degrees or less at night often. My tent is amazing but my land is so very not ready to stay on this winter. I've been staying off and on at Sand Crane since the snows came and driving over to work during the day, as well as driving to other places to visit friends and be warm and cuddle. I do like winter. Shelter, gravel, in the driveway, and a Faerie Fort will be so NICE!
BUILDING
The buildings I will be constructing are going to be elevated dome structures. Imagine if you would, the love child of a yurt, and a dome, with a Moroccan inspired building style. They will be constructed using the techniques layed out by Micheal Reynolds and his friends in their research and developement (and interesting mistakes) over the last 40 years in their Earth Ship community outside of Taos, New Mexico. I will be utilizing a sculptural basket weave of layered metal rebar, various kinds of fence, chicken-wire, and construction fabric as well as recycled rust free metal objects, rocks, and other recycled materials as the structural bones and shape for the ferro-cement. Ferro-cement is a basic mortar mix of 1 part portland cement mixed to 4 parts sand, gypsum, or another aggregate). I will be using micro shreds of fiberglass to make the ferro-cement even more amazingly structurally sound. I’ve gained knowledge of these methods from years of studying and witnessing and building with friends. But I am still learning and so open to help and ideas and information. Ferro-cement is very practical, well-tested, sculptable, and will not burn, which is extremely important to me. Look ferro-cement up on line; it's amazing.
A Bathhouse, a Bathing Temple, a Wellness…a sacred bathing space. I’m not just building any well house. This will be a place to connect with and be with water. The acoustics alone will be stunning and so healing. The well is often the center feature in most villages in the world. After the well is drilled, I plan to build this sturdy ferrocement Temple of Wellness, to sing to and thank the life giving magical fresh earth liquid as we bring water up. It will feature a sturdy hand powered well pump like the ones used in high elevation U.S. campgrounds and most other third world countries. It will be long lasting and available for all. It will have a 12’ wide by 8’ deep Greenhouse on the south facing side (Earth Ship design) to grow a garden of greens and foods. All the water used in the bathhouse will be directed via small rivulets to a sand filter and then into the greenhouse. There will be a low bench around the whole parimiter of the inside of the building (and maybe the outside too) for sitting and scrubbing ourselves down as we bath. Bathing (hot water) is such a luxury in a place with such limited access to clean water. I will build a rocket stove water heater for hot water use in bathing. The rocket stove is a wonderfull device with a small L shaped stove pipe built into a barrel, the heat is drawn through convection up into and circulates around the barrel dispersing it’s warmth into the surrounding material (in this case the water in the pipes coiled around it and the room. I will have large container of water with pipping moving from the bottom, wrapped around the rocket stove to heat the water and deposit it back into the container at the top. Heat rises. It’s pretty basic and uses an incredibly small amount of wood and fire to heat a large amount of water. I will also build a small fireplace underneath the container to have more rapid heat available for winter time fun.
I am planning on building a Sauna as soon as I can and I would love to have these structures close to each other, we shall see.
The large 35’ by 35’ circular open air Kitchen Gathering Space will be protected from the cold blasting winter winds and intense summer sun by the curving concave walls. It will be like a sort of hollowed out doughnut shape, with entrances from both east and west. This will be the largest sculptural construction on the land. There will be a small acoustic amphitheater on the north side, a fire pit, and of course, an area to dance around it. It will have two tears of seating on the north side (south facing). There will be a long counter for processing food and a large italian style wood fired stove for cooking on the south side. This will be the marvellous center of making and sharing food and also a place to hold us as we learn and share information, practice ancestral skills, practice interpersonal transparency, theater games, and concur up our new paradigm.
There will be a small Library for reading the sacred texts and keeping them safe from the erosion of harsh elements and the eager (and delicious) wood rats. The wood rats here are very vigorous in their delving and appetite for ALL things chewable. I am starting to really want to eat them all, even though they are really really cute. They take all my shiny things if I leave them out. Grrrr…
There will be the essential dug out underground Cold House/Root Cellar for krauting, curing meats, and all sorts of cool food storage. Finally a place to ferment and tincture and concoct all these yummy things I’ve been learning.
There will be a sweet little warm Healing Temple space to practice our skills in bodywork, cranio-sacral, and other somatic trauma informed modalities. A shady spot to share our techniques and help each other feel healthy in body, mind, and spirit. It will be warm and dry and out of the rain and snow and sun. Maybe just a little moonlight.
I will build a few small Acoustic Temples for singing, meditation, and loud (underground) sound making. I love caves. Ive been inspired by cave singing temples all over the world. Acoustics have incredible healing capacities and singing together fills my heart with joy.
A dry clear clean cozy well ventilated and well heated Sensual Lounge space for all sorts of magical spiritual interpersonal consensual practices.
A composting toilet station to transform our poo into delightful healthy dirt as fast as we can using charcoal, ash, probiotics, and all the latest tricks. Separating our pee easily with building methods so we can use it in specific and desired places for the health of the plants and land.
So many little dreamy flattened camping and star gazing spots.
And last but not at all leased, many small shelters of various sorts. I will build at leased three tiny winter ready shelter/storage structures.
I also will build some tree houses, no nails in the trees just post and beam and wood, as well as willow lodges and even more simple sleeping shelters out of all the branches we need to clear from the entire area.
Drying Rack for food dehydration in the desert wind!
So much! And all the time in reternity.
I am quite sure that I could think of more to do, but these will be a LOT of hand work, finding and hauling the materials (I have a Honda I live out of), and it's an ongoing to be a labor of lurv.
THE PAST
So much has happened in the last five years, and I am very grateful to all the teachers who have shown me these ways to follow. This area is the place I first began to learn the ancient practices of traditional ecological knowledge and tending the wilds. It is the place I first ventured out to learn from my friend Seda and meet the infamous Finisia Madrano. It is the area that I got involved with the educational non-profit I have been volunteering at for the last five years. Its web page is at http://highdesertwildtending.weebly.com if you are interested in learning about what I am learning about. This piece of land is 3.5 miles from the Sand Crane Center, which is an immense resource. This Sand Crane Center is a place for people to come and have a safe place to leave their cars and go up on the table to learn the wild foods. As you may remember a few years ago we were caught up in a huge long court scenario for unknowingly trespassing on lands that a man thought were his but he also thought it was like 1974 due to his dementia. The charges were dropped due to many things but it was pretty stressful. We learned a lot about the legal system and what we need.
After so many years of wandering, and living in communities all over the world, I found a place that is truly singing to my heart. Ive been thinking about, researching, studying, and building all sorts of wild off-the-grid things for years and years now but mostly in more temperate and tropical environments. Now it is high desert living! Social Forestry and Wildtending the area are my goals here, and I intend for this land to be a grounded space to learn and share with my friends the traditional ecological knowledge and the wildtending practices I have been learning about in recent years. I’ve had the fortune and privilege to participate in many other peoples lands and home projects and live in so many interesting communities both “intentional” and not so much. I do feel very inspired by all the possibilities! This area is so rich and meaningful for me. I wish to plant the place full of local flowering medicine plants. I have actually already started, with the aid of several industrious friends. Now I need a well and structures to make a home and viable winter camp.
WHAT I AM DOING
I’ve been gathering the dead sage and buck brush understory, and high pruning the lower dead limbs of the juniper. By removing the brush that would make a fire burn hot and get into the trees I hope to create a zone where if and when fire does come through it would move low and slow over this land and not get into the Juniper and Ponderosas. They are shade and life and so much, I love them. Since the rain and snow has returned I am able to burn all these brush piles I’ve been making. It feels amazing, and now there is so much ash and charcoal for the land, the shitters, and the gardens to be.
But the stars burn like gods dancing through the blackness.
I am traveling around doing this wild food skills learning adventure, living pretty simple, volunteering for the non profit, and doing wild planting experiments, and just being. I do Social Forestry and help people get their permaculture garden food forest scenes together, sometimes I just help decorate, or haul their garbage to the dump. Its what I do.
I will be sending all donation moneys to my dear friend who has helped me so much with so many things in the past. I completely rely on and trust him. He has kindly agreed to store it and save it up for me, till I reach each goal. He is a very mature person, a virgo, and totally able to do this and also help me in paying for the well, the pump, and the building materials with a card when I get to each goal. If I have the money in my account it would be hard not to confuse it with whatever I am living on at the moment, so I am grateful to him for helping me with this.
My heart is blossoming in amazed gratitude and awe.
Thank you for helping make my dreams come true.
I am confident that this vision I have will eventually materialize.
"Until one is committed there is always hesitancy,
the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative and creation,
there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:
The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help, that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising to ones favor all manner of unforeseen accidents and meetings and
material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
by Goethe
WINTER CAMP & SUMMER CAMP
SPRING CAMP & FALL CAMP
SOIL KNIVES & TITANIUM DIGGING STICKS
CANVAS TARPS
SINGING CIRCLES & FULL MOON DANCING
CLOUD GAZING
FRESH WATER & WILD SALADS
CAMP FIRES & FULL MOONS & STARS.
TENDING THE WILDS
TRADITIONAL ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE
QUEER SOCIAL FORESTRY CAMPS & CONNECTION
A PLACE TO BE & SACRED SPACE & COBB SAUNAS OUTDOOR KITCHEN & DANCE PLACE
BARREL SHITTER & SOLAR DEHYDRATOR & TINY LIBRARY
SOUND CHAMBERS & HEALING SPACE & TINY LOFTED BEDWOMB DREAM TEMPLE & WILD GARDEN
This fundraiser is to help me further the activation of my magical wildtending faery land project.
I and several friends have been burning mountains of dead brush resulting from 100 years of fire suppression.
I have found a wonderful person who leveled, filled, and graveled the entryway for $1500. What a guy!!! The driveway is finally solidified.
My big goals are to be able to hire a company to put in a well (essential), and build shelters!
Water. Sheter. Access. Check!
I made a video explaining everything.
https://youtu.be/bFhxXkqmfds
All this will easily be accomplished for $30,000. $15,000 for well and pump, $15,000 for driveway and buildings.
While $30,000 sounds like a truly huge amount of money to me, it is actually only 3,000 friends with $10 to share. So doable!
$5, $10, $20...whatever you are able to share with me I will be so gratefull. I will use the accumulated funds to actually make solid reality my dreamy little rewilding, ancestral skills, queer meca of a home land project.
Sharing $10 with me would be like taking me to a nice dinner, and instead I get to build this amazing Squirrel Palace!
Would you be able to help me ignite my vision?
This entire region is the traditional homelands and gathering/tending grounds of the Klamath and Modoc First People. I am extremely grateful to get to be in, and interact with this place on so many levels.
I am excited to make this land a fully FUNctional faerie fort where to be quiet and away from the electricity and endless noise buzz of civilization. A place to be able to have my friends, allies, and family come stay and learn and share with me!
My deer friend David will be storing all this money for me, so as to not mix it with my food and gas money.
A company in town quoted the well at $11,000 to drill. They said it will need to be 400 feet deep. I hope it will not have to be that deep. The nice vegan neighbors down the road said their well was only 250 feet. So we shall see.
I would like to get this amazing high elevation hand powered water pump which is around $3,000. Having ease access to fresh water does and will change everything about living in a place. This particular pump will make us not reliant on electricity, and also directly physically connected to the water. The energy required to be in tune with the value and essence of clear clean drinking water is so worth the a bit of arm work. The gratitude comes naturally. Keeping things simple.
The permits for both the well and the pump are around $500 each to install.
So that is already $15,000 which is half of the fundraiser.
My plan is to build with reenforced ferro-cement. Most of the building constructed will be of the 12’ by 12’ size, circular, with a raised dome shape.
I will build a Bathhouse/Bathing Temple as a well protection house. This will have an attached south facing Greenhouse for solar gain and to grow food with the water runoff. This is an “Earthship” inspired style.
I am building a large 35’ by 35’ circular open air Kitchen Gathering Space. This will serve as wind-block to shelter us from the intense winds and sun and also as a place to hold small groups for learning and sharing information about ancestral skills information as well as making food for us all.
There will be a small Library for reading, a dug out “Cold House” for krauting, curing, and food storage, a sweet little warm “Healing/Massage” space, a Sauna, a small “Acoustic Temple” for meditation and loud sound making, a “Sensual Lounge” space, a composting toilet, lots of camp spots, and of course several small shelters.
I am estimating the building materials and permits will cost $15,000.
Totally doable! Right? YES!
With the recent generous help of a new friend there are now five large flat spots to work with on this little sloping plot land. After the muddy mess compacts down, and I get the driveway sorted, there will be space to park, and also all these spaces to camp out on. It is good to be with this spot in the Klamath Basin high desert that I love. And there is so much to explore.
I’m thinking big and casting my wishing coins far and wide.
You, my friends, are my wishing well.
I believe that this beautiful vision will serve me as a home and also afford my community a functional and gorgeous place to meet up and share information, inspire and co-create the culture and lives we wish to be in. My dream is coming true, and I am asking for aid from all my network of friends, family and accountancies who believe in me.
1500 people with $20 to share, to be precise.
I need your support and love. I can't do this alone.
Whatever you have to give is so helpful. $5 is fortunate, $10 is terrific, $20 is tremendous, $50 is fabulous, and $1,000 would be beyond incredible. And hey, if your drowning in moolah and just ADORE me and wanna give more (please make all sharings under the $12,000 limit tax free donation at a time), YES please and thank you all!
This is the start of a really wonderful thing! A whole fae fort and magical temple space land project that can be easefully accomplished with $30,000. This is my wish-vision. I would love your assistance bringing into physicality to enjoy.
Whatever you are able to donate to my wellness fun(d) vision activation is amazing. Even as prayers and thoughts and blessings! This should be graceful and easefull and fun! And please, no stress.
I know many of us really have to watch what we spend. I don't wish you to tax your resources.
My friend David will helping me by receiving and tracking all this money. He is very helpful and trustworthy with big things. He is able help me purchase the big items (like hiring a well). His is very clever and grounded and I have known him for over 15 years. I am great full because if I had all this money pouring in I would get confused and most likely have a hard time tracking it and spend a lot of it on food.
Blessings back to you three times three!
oh yes, I am also able to accept donations on pay pal ven mo and even checks, though my location changes often.
also the train comes to Klamath Falls and during the warm seasons of Spring, Summer, and early Fall I am here often and would love to have a visit from you.
__________________________________________________________
And, for those of you who want more details about what I'm creating and some backstory.
THE KNOTT TABLE
This entire region is the traditional homelands and gathering and tending grounds of the Klamath and Modoc First People. I was once a vast marshland of Camas, and other wild roots, home to thousands of thriving persons of all sorts both human, bird, elk, deer. It is today a very changed landscape. One I hope to help aid in recovery and returning to the abundant rich inspiring legacy that was paved over by this capitalist settler colonialism we are all surviving today. I’ve been coming to this beautifull place, off and on, all spring, summer, and fall for the last six years. These three acres situated on the lips of vast wild gardens overlooking the Sprague River Valley called to me. As I walk up through the juniper covered landscape it feels wonderful. Coming to the top of the land I emerged onto the table and it just gives me life. There are HUGE old gnarled grandmother juniper trees that are bonzied from the winds, and miles of Apaz/Yampa, camas, onions, and Caush, easily accessible to wildtending and learn from. WOW!
It is three beautiful acres on the sandy southern lips of the Knott Table, an ancient sacred garden mesa, shaped by lava flows, and thousands of years of tending. The Table is a wild-food tending stronghold (meaning the white colonial settlers could not decimate with their pigs and cows and plows it due to the rock formations). It overlooks the Sprague River Valley in an area of Klamath County that I love so much and lies between two little draws packed with violets, sinkfoil, and mallow. This piece of land is several miles walk to the Winema and Fremont National Forests.
I am surrounded by amazing rolling landscapes of land, water, sky, wild sacred foods and medicines to plant back and love! I wish to plant this place full of the local flowering medicine plants that are here and have started this venture already with the aid of friends. The national forest land is a few mile walk away. This land is just off of a winter accessible dirt road in good condition (kept up by neighbors who live a little over 1/2 mile further). I am doing forestry practices to ease the fire danger. Now, because of the generosity and sharing of friends, I have access to land for a fabulous camp. Its been an adventure learning, healing, growing, listening, planting, and seeing. What a blessing!
I ferocious elemental power in this area is so powerful. The sun, the wind, the storms, the open sky and vast high desert valleys and mountains. It can often be freezing, and boiling hot all in one day.
This fairie needs protection.
THIS LAND
I have no structures or utilities at this time. I do not plan to ever connect to the power main, for obvious expense reasons, and for my interest. Shelter and dry space on my land however is essential. And right now the driveway is freshly dug out and a slippery snowy mess. It is 10 degrees or less at night often. My tent is amazing but my land is so very not ready to stay on this winter. I've been staying off and on at Sand Crane since the snows came and driving over to work during the day, as well as driving to other places to visit friends and be warm and cuddle. I do like winter. Shelter, gravel, in the driveway, and a Faerie Fort will be so NICE!
BUILDING
The buildings I will be constructing are going to be elevated dome structures. Imagine if you would, the love child of a yurt, and a dome, with a Moroccan inspired building style. They will be constructed using the techniques layed out by Micheal Reynolds and his friends in their research and developement (and interesting mistakes) over the last 40 years in their Earth Ship community outside of Taos, New Mexico. I will be utilizing a sculptural basket weave of layered metal rebar, various kinds of fence, chicken-wire, and construction fabric as well as recycled rust free metal objects, rocks, and other recycled materials as the structural bones and shape for the ferro-cement. Ferro-cement is a basic mortar mix of 1 part portland cement mixed to 4 parts sand, gypsum, or another aggregate). I will be using micro shreds of fiberglass to make the ferro-cement even more amazingly structurally sound. I’ve gained knowledge of these methods from years of studying and witnessing and building with friends. But I am still learning and so open to help and ideas and information. Ferro-cement is very practical, well-tested, sculptable, and will not burn, which is extremely important to me. Look ferro-cement up on line; it's amazing.
A Bathhouse, a Bathing Temple, a Wellness…a sacred bathing space. I’m not just building any well house. This will be a place to connect with and be with water. The acoustics alone will be stunning and so healing. The well is often the center feature in most villages in the world. After the well is drilled, I plan to build this sturdy ferrocement Temple of Wellness, to sing to and thank the life giving magical fresh earth liquid as we bring water up. It will feature a sturdy hand powered well pump like the ones used in high elevation U.S. campgrounds and most other third world countries. It will be long lasting and available for all. It will have a 12’ wide by 8’ deep Greenhouse on the south facing side (Earth Ship design) to grow a garden of greens and foods. All the water used in the bathhouse will be directed via small rivulets to a sand filter and then into the greenhouse. There will be a low bench around the whole parimiter of the inside of the building (and maybe the outside too) for sitting and scrubbing ourselves down as we bath. Bathing (hot water) is such a luxury in a place with such limited access to clean water. I will build a rocket stove water heater for hot water use in bathing. The rocket stove is a wonderfull device with a small L shaped stove pipe built into a barrel, the heat is drawn through convection up into and circulates around the barrel dispersing it’s warmth into the surrounding material (in this case the water in the pipes coiled around it and the room. I will have large container of water with pipping moving from the bottom, wrapped around the rocket stove to heat the water and deposit it back into the container at the top. Heat rises. It’s pretty basic and uses an incredibly small amount of wood and fire to heat a large amount of water. I will also build a small fireplace underneath the container to have more rapid heat available for winter time fun.
I am planning on building a Sauna as soon as I can and I would love to have these structures close to each other, we shall see.
The large 35’ by 35’ circular open air Kitchen Gathering Space will be protected from the cold blasting winter winds and intense summer sun by the curving concave walls. It will be like a sort of hollowed out doughnut shape, with entrances from both east and west. This will be the largest sculptural construction on the land. There will be a small acoustic amphitheater on the north side, a fire pit, and of course, an area to dance around it. It will have two tears of seating on the north side (south facing). There will be a long counter for processing food and a large italian style wood fired stove for cooking on the south side. This will be the marvellous center of making and sharing food and also a place to hold us as we learn and share information, practice ancestral skills, practice interpersonal transparency, theater games, and concur up our new paradigm.
There will be a small Library for reading the sacred texts and keeping them safe from the erosion of harsh elements and the eager (and delicious) wood rats. The wood rats here are very vigorous in their delving and appetite for ALL things chewable. I am starting to really want to eat them all, even though they are really really cute. They take all my shiny things if I leave them out. Grrrr…
There will be the essential dug out underground Cold House/Root Cellar for krauting, curing meats, and all sorts of cool food storage. Finally a place to ferment and tincture and concoct all these yummy things I’ve been learning.
There will be a sweet little warm Healing Temple space to practice our skills in bodywork, cranio-sacral, and other somatic trauma informed modalities. A shady spot to share our techniques and help each other feel healthy in body, mind, and spirit. It will be warm and dry and out of the rain and snow and sun. Maybe just a little moonlight.
I will build a few small Acoustic Temples for singing, meditation, and loud (underground) sound making. I love caves. Ive been inspired by cave singing temples all over the world. Acoustics have incredible healing capacities and singing together fills my heart with joy.
A dry clear clean cozy well ventilated and well heated Sensual Lounge space for all sorts of magical spiritual interpersonal consensual practices.
A composting toilet station to transform our poo into delightful healthy dirt as fast as we can using charcoal, ash, probiotics, and all the latest tricks. Separating our pee easily with building methods so we can use it in specific and desired places for the health of the plants and land.
So many little dreamy flattened camping and star gazing spots.
And last but not at all leased, many small shelters of various sorts. I will build at leased three tiny winter ready shelter/storage structures.
I also will build some tree houses, no nails in the trees just post and beam and wood, as well as willow lodges and even more simple sleeping shelters out of all the branches we need to clear from the entire area.
Drying Rack for food dehydration in the desert wind!
So much! And all the time in reternity.
I am quite sure that I could think of more to do, but these will be a LOT of hand work, finding and hauling the materials (I have a Honda I live out of), and it's an ongoing to be a labor of lurv.
THE PAST
So much has happened in the last five years, and I am very grateful to all the teachers who have shown me these ways to follow. This area is the place I first began to learn the ancient practices of traditional ecological knowledge and tending the wilds. It is the place I first ventured out to learn from my friend Seda and meet the infamous Finisia Madrano. It is the area that I got involved with the educational non-profit I have been volunteering at for the last five years. Its web page is at http://highdesertwildtending.weebly.com if you are interested in learning about what I am learning about. This piece of land is 3.5 miles from the Sand Crane Center, which is an immense resource. This Sand Crane Center is a place for people to come and have a safe place to leave their cars and go up on the table to learn the wild foods. As you may remember a few years ago we were caught up in a huge long court scenario for unknowingly trespassing on lands that a man thought were his but he also thought it was like 1974 due to his dementia. The charges were dropped due to many things but it was pretty stressful. We learned a lot about the legal system and what we need.
After so many years of wandering, and living in communities all over the world, I found a place that is truly singing to my heart. Ive been thinking about, researching, studying, and building all sorts of wild off-the-grid things for years and years now but mostly in more temperate and tropical environments. Now it is high desert living! Social Forestry and Wildtending the area are my goals here, and I intend for this land to be a grounded space to learn and share with my friends the traditional ecological knowledge and the wildtending practices I have been learning about in recent years. I’ve had the fortune and privilege to participate in many other peoples lands and home projects and live in so many interesting communities both “intentional” and not so much. I do feel very inspired by all the possibilities! This area is so rich and meaningful for me. I wish to plant the place full of local flowering medicine plants. I have actually already started, with the aid of several industrious friends. Now I need a well and structures to make a home and viable winter camp.
WHAT I AM DOING
I’ve been gathering the dead sage and buck brush understory, and high pruning the lower dead limbs of the juniper. By removing the brush that would make a fire burn hot and get into the trees I hope to create a zone where if and when fire does come through it would move low and slow over this land and not get into the Juniper and Ponderosas. They are shade and life and so much, I love them. Since the rain and snow has returned I am able to burn all these brush piles I’ve been making. It feels amazing, and now there is so much ash and charcoal for the land, the shitters, and the gardens to be.
But the stars burn like gods dancing through the blackness.
I am traveling around doing this wild food skills learning adventure, living pretty simple, volunteering for the non profit, and doing wild planting experiments, and just being. I do Social Forestry and help people get their permaculture garden food forest scenes together, sometimes I just help decorate, or haul their garbage to the dump. Its what I do.
I will be sending all donation moneys to my dear friend who has helped me so much with so many things in the past. I completely rely on and trust him. He has kindly agreed to store it and save it up for me, till I reach each goal. He is a very mature person, a virgo, and totally able to do this and also help me in paying for the well, the pump, and the building materials with a card when I get to each goal. If I have the money in my account it would be hard not to confuse it with whatever I am living on at the moment, so I am grateful to him for helping me with this.
My heart is blossoming in amazed gratitude and awe.
Thank you for helping make my dreams come true.
I am confident that this vision I have will eventually materialize.
"Until one is committed there is always hesitancy,
the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative and creation,
there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:
The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help, that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising to ones favor all manner of unforeseen accidents and meetings and
material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
by Goethe
WINTER CAMP & SUMMER CAMP
SPRING CAMP & FALL CAMP
SOIL KNIVES & TITANIUM DIGGING STICKS
CANVAS TARPS
SINGING CIRCLES & FULL MOON DANCING
CLOUD GAZING
FRESH WATER & WILD SALADS
CAMP FIRES & FULL MOONS & STARS.
TENDING THE WILDS
TRADITIONAL ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE
QUEER SOCIAL FORESTRY CAMPS & CONNECTION
A PLACE TO BE & SACRED SPACE & COBB SAUNAS OUTDOOR KITCHEN & DANCE PLACE
BARREL SHITTER & SOLAR DEHYDRATOR & TINY LIBRARY
SOUND CHAMBERS & HEALING SPACE & TINY LOFTED BEDWOMB DREAM TEMPLE & WILD GARDEN
Organizer and beneficiary
Simon Elsner
Organizer
Sprague River, OR
David Mac
Beneficiary