BIGGER

As familiar as steps on the path this sound of children talking and learning together. This morning we are working on our first outreach program creating seed packages. Its a simple fast way to have a hundred or so packages made up very quickly for the broom corn seed we have to share out this year.

After our hot apple cider and millet cakes the teacher talked about reaching out to the world. I sat in the corner like a little kid myself on a short stool observing. Partly I was taking part in the discussion and partly I was taking advantage of the latent heat that the masonry wall dividing the classroom from the kitchen oven pumped into this part of the room. It was a chilly morning. Usually I liked a quieter start to my day however a couple times a week i like to bring my input up to our class lab and also take the time to stay close to the children.

It was simpler for us when our gates were open. Our mission was to teach and outreach. Now there is a lot of pressure to simply seal up the region since we have always maintained a basic level of self sufficiency as a bioregion. Partly being so cut off we never let our ability to provide our own basic needs slack. In our little cooperative workshops in the seventies and eighties alternative energy solar and radio phone, hydropower and wind power were born in invention. One whole invented way of life that we call "growers".

There are about a dozen kids in the classroom today and several teenagers and adults. We are all enjoying the atmosphere of excitement and the ready access to bandwidth, heat and human company. IN the corner I see my pal Asha doing her yoga quietly. We are all exceptionally stiff from bringing the harvest in the last few days. Its a good thing we have a boogie coming up.

Some of the children are cutting out packets and images of the contents along with directions and seedling identification.
This is the system that I developed for my Brazilian pal JorgeG's seed project. The idea is to create a way for people to quickly disperse high quality diverse seeds of useful plants to bio-regions that can use them for food, fiber, medicine and habitat and erosion repair. We are repurposing some old printed phone books for the project. It is important for the seeds to breath if they are going to be stored for any length of time or shipped any real distance.

My mind drifts off with the crunch of millet and flax and the taste of local honey. The teacher is drawing circles that represent the systemic connections between our tribal family and the surrounding community and the world. Already the children are familiar with the concept of the earth as a living organism. They have been raised to be naturalists interpreting the environment around them. The seasons and plants and cycles were the fabric of their daily life and their own position in it as part of a human element of the habitat was an often repeated idea.

This morning while we were all working together to make the stigmergic seed packets that would be simply sent off who-knows-where in the world we were not just telling the kids about these changes for our community we were asking them about it also.

They give good counsel these kids and sometimes they can think of things from another hidden view.

"so we want to help them but we cant have them come here?" said little Kenny. He was enthusiastically gluing seed labels on the packages. He frowned in concentration. For a moment his face shifted and he looked like a rabbit trying to find its way out of a series of blocked tunnels. Each idea seemed to lead to the same problem.

"We have to make packages"he said. Suddenly relieved as if he had found the way to the surface.

At first I smiled because we were in fact all making packages at that moment. Mostly my mouth was full and he seemed intent on an idea so I let him go on.

"We have to make BIGGER packages with more stuff in them". He said with a gleam in his eye. "we have to make a way to get out some of the things we can share".

"BIGGER". he said.

"You just have to love them"

Annie May is used to keeping company with men and animals as she has been a climate refugee her whole life. She is very determined and she is also trying to fit in and find a home here as an orphan, still the way the child has taken to the care of the donkeys is amazing. She and Tarran were up late last night making garlands for the donkeys to wear for our special harvest party today. All of the musicians are coming with us down to the river and we will share a special meal which has already been packed for us in steel containers.

The donkeys know something special is a-foot because of our excitement and our waking early. They are wide eyed and frisky with their flower garlands on their heads. The older lead donkey Whiskey has also got an old straw hat on. We could have taken the sorghum days ago except we needed the one petrol rig to have tires to help carry the children down to the river. Its just too dangerous to have them ride with the donkeys down on the carts all loaded up in the dark. The first patch is just under a mile away however there is a nice turn out nearby and we can bring along some extra food and temporary structures with the stationwagon.

Annie May will be riding with the donkeys. There was no way to convince her otherwise. She passed her health exam yesterday and we moved her into the yellow house next to the donkey pens with the other donkey wizards. Her cheeks are already gaining color. She says about the donkeys: "Its easy...you just have to love them". The donkeys do seem to like her, and she carefully explains to them everything that will happen next. She cups their ears in her little hands and whispers right into them the way Tarran does. She laughs when they startle her by braying. Tarran says he does not mind looking after her for now. She has had him make her hair into a stern bun in the habit of the donkey wizards. It is a hard question when to expect her to be able to interact normally with the other children and even possibly attend our small school and gain literacy along with her donkey wizardry.

After we press out the sorghum tomorrow, we will ferment some of it and bottle it with champagne yeast. The rest will be boiled for syrup. The seed will be saved and also used for animal feed. The canes are dried and stored for later alcohol fermentation; we use a biologic to ferment our tincture alcohol. My neighbor to the north will be coming along to cut cane specifically for brooms. Several of our patches have large sections of colored brooms which she makes into hundreds of brooms of several sizes and shapes for different duties.

This year we are pretending that there is nothing different. Usually we have lots of outside visitors and we used to even hold a small regional festival with this beer. Our sorghum beer (along with other botanicals) was the reason so many of these unusual and amazing young people came to us in the first place years ago. Now we will limit our visitors to our usual pals and other vetted members (mostly leaders) of the Upriver Downriver Alliance of Peoples (UDAP). We will still probably have several hundred people visiting and staying overnight, including my adopted Yurok relatives, the Mendo Wymmins collective, and the dairy farmers and drivers. We are also likely to get a visit at the festival from our caravan trader pals, and with so many people coming it will feel as festive as ever. There will be fresh Salmon and grilled meat as well as fry bread and coffee and family cook camps.

This morning as we left the green house and the musicians compound we closed and locked the gates. The sound of a small snaky violin made the perfect accompaniment to the morning light breaking Grey and cool across the valley. Even the donkeys felt the muse and were silent and thoughtful as they listened to the little song. They are easier to handle and they love it when we bring along the musicians. It was dark out and there was a hubbub of conversation and witty jest to soften the reality of it. I had always hoped that we would always keep our gates open, that the roads would always stay open. 101 used to represent freedom and independence. Now I am not sure who we are in this closed state. With the addition of the child we have reached our maximum number. Even with Paul and Theo conscripted (by force I must say) this last winter hiatus there are already two small children old enough to be considered in their place and several others soon to cross that threshold. We will have to consider expansion or contraction.We are considering suspending hiatus indefinitely. Some of the parents of small children want even more seclusion than we are providing. The Braddah force on the mountain has closed the long trail and the hobo's are trapped in the north. Two juke joints have been cleared out and seized in the last two days.

Our way is meant to be welcoming, to give water and food and salt to the traveler.

Who are we with closed gates?