New Digs

At first, we see what we know, with repeated exposure and/or more intimate exploration, we find a more true nature of that which we see. When I walked in the room, I saw these lampshades as gourds. When I came close I was not sure, because all the gourds I know of have fairly thin skin. These are, in fact Earthenware, thown as a pear shape and then cut into this amazing lattice. ECO-Tours of Wisconsin, Inc. is moving to a new location. We will be near the shore of Lake Michigan, just a half-dozen miles from the premier tourist area known as Door County. Our first concern is to make the home on site liveable and to add two bedrooms for travelers and guests who come for classes and tours. After that, we will begin documenting the natural ecotones on site and putting effort into a large classroom space so in the event of inclement weather, we can still teach our biochar classes. By the coming Spring, we will be actively reforesting and adding to permaculture management strategies, getting the fruit trees and vines back to their prolific state and infusing the land with many, many more perennial food and medicinal crops.
For our supporters and friends, it may seem odd that we have drastically pared back the size of our new center, but in light of rapidly escalating prices for everything, not just energy, we want to place our home base in a more central area, so that we can serve a greater number of people at drastically lower cost. Instead of asking our guests to treck many hours into the Northwoods of Wisconsin, we are locating just a day's bicycle ride from over a million potential guests. The air quality is much better than where we were located and the night skies are much more full of stars. Although it may not be the remote backwoods experience that "Up North" has to offer, we are within about an hour drive of one of the state's dark skies parks and can arrange transport and camping expeditions to that location for stargazers and those who have not yet seen the Milky Way or Northern Lights. Kayaking opportunities abound and as we are located about a day's walk from the Eastern Terminus of the Ice Age Trail, those who want to hike have ample chance to find peace and quiet there as well.
UPDATE: We have been at our new location for about a month. We remain focused on the inside, it took months of Nancy and I working every spare minute to get it back to move in ready, but we are a little flexible in what that means. When we go to town, we still bring a load or two of laundry, our chest freezer is still at the old pod. We have planted about a half dozen things, like rhubarb and elderberries which had been in pots, some given to us, some purchased with gracious donations from supporters. As we do begin making holes in the ground, it seems that this will be an excellent property on which to showcase biochar and the effects of re-generation. Carbon sequestration will be meticulously documented and the results will be obvious. Each time we get a read on soil quality in different areas, we gain understanding of where we are, our place is based on the soil and in this spot, there are places with precious little of that. We will practice our own version of ecological triage, deciding what will remain impacted and what can be easily recovered, focusing resources on places that our intervention makes the greatest difference. I work hard to bring salient messages to this blog and for many reasons I have sought to keep it free and available. If you appreciate that, my paypal account number is the same as my e-mail. t (as in Tony) n (as in Nancy) saladino42 at (because We're old school) hotmail dot com.

Memorial Forests

Now, more than ever, we need to stand up for what our ancestors fought and died for. Our Land, Our Country, Our way of life, all depend on the lives sent to fight, in our names. Like it or not, and I definitely do not, innocent blood has been spilled over arbitrary lines, drawn in the sand, global economic empire and even to simply divide the people and wishes of entire regions amongst competitive factions who may have otherwise become friends. On this day, my own memorial observances involve not only the loss of those who died needlessly in war, but to their families who endured an even longer sacrifice, bearing testament to the frivolity of political antics that benefit no one more than the one percent (1%) We the People was never meant to include corporate entities or the money they spend on tailoring the arguments that get made politically. The generations of souls, who gave all, as well as the ones who gave some would spin in their graves if they saw the erosion of freedom that has gone on during the last ten years.

In America, terrorists could have never have guessed how lasting the homage we pay them, gyrating as if the whole social structure was a whirling dervish of police and police-like entities, people watchers have multiplied, while threats remain infinitesimally small. We are each far more likely to encounter a drunken driver and die at his/her hands than to be threatened by terrorists. The biggest threat in America today is, by far, the texting driver. They have the power to kill and it is set to randomly strike. In many ways, much more difficult to stop than someone who has a plan and is working out how to make it happen. Sadly, the events that took place in Colorado this past week prove the inability of big government to stop individual psychopaths from creating mayhem in our midst. There was no treatise or diatribe offered, no outcome desired other than to create pain and suffering for as many innocent victims as possible.

Those who have died on the battlefield and those who have served often have the most lucid comments about why war needs to be abolished. Just last week, My wife Nancy and I were reminded again of the long hand of war on our society. We were parking the car in Madison, Wisconsin and were approached by a man who  had been a Lieutenant in, I believe, the Marines. He saw in our eyes compassion and support for him, not an image of a warrior tacked up on a wall at a recruitment office. A real human being worthy of love. This man's Vietnam era question remains, Why? He cried with us, and we cried a bit with him. There are no parades that make up for the daily assault we feel from our government, our "leaders" or the media outlets that skew the numbers and spin every issue in terms of maligned hatred with undertones of psycho-sexual dysfunction. This man still carries an unbearable burden, having held brothers in arms as they bled out and having seen the eyes of the innocent young men whose lives he snuffed our for no good reason. Why?

When one takes the time to slow down enough to talk about issues, virtually everyone is in agreement. The giant chasm between the Left and Right is completely made up and although there are a few single issue voters, the vast majority are trying to vote for the lesser of two evils. There is probably not a voter in America who has not wondered why there is no one in politics who wants to tell us the truth about the issues that we face, because the stark reality is far more untenable than the public has been led to believe. When there is a pragmatic candidate, interests far more powerful than the voting box are threatened and the corporate machine grinds that poor fellow into a moderate mix of mush and pablum. The few candidates who cling to their foundational beliefs are ground to dust beneath the wheel of our military industrial complex. This train is so massive and powerful that even when it goes off the tracks, it continues to bulldoze through anything in it's way.

We need to demand the chance to get what we want. Representation free from the contamination and slant of big money campaigns, free from corporate influence, corporate welfare and free from the repression of the public will for change. Those who lost their lives, the majority of whom perished in far off lands, would not consent to have died for EXXON or GM, WELLS FARGO or Monsanto. they took an oath to our country, not the way of life of the 1%. Our way of life is far more than the sum total of our economic activity just as the lives of those touched by war will never be the same again. To the walking wounded, the mothers who lost sons, or daughters, to the families forever broken because of war, single mothers whose children are fatherless because of our rush to war, my hat goes off to you. I bow low to honor your service. I will continue to fight for the land that we come from, the earth on which we were born and the same sacred soil that we have laid to rest countless thousands in service to a dream. The American Dream that I believe in is not possible as long as people are sent around the world to kill in my name. My relationship with the planet demands that I respect all organisms, to be a true patriot in my eyes is to honor Mother Earth and work toward equitable distribution of resources worldwide, at lowest possible cost. Peace has never flowed from the end of a gun and it never will.

One facet of our approach to ecotours is that, the way we present our ECO-Tours, they reflect more about where we are spiritually than where we are geographically. Like the walkabout or pilgrimage that we may know of from practices of Aborigines or Catholics, breaking from routine, accepting the challenge, being willing to be humble amongst our fellow beings, all have their own rewards, if we are willing to listen. Quiet awake phase is when young mothers are encouraged to teach their new-borne babies to nurse. So too, our most open moments are in the quiet awake phase as well. Stillness, rhythm, repetitive ritualized motion, awareness, all enhance the trans-formative power of the environment. Our ECO-Tours have always sought to sanctify the landscape of which we are a part. Healing the scars made by "modern" man and his destructive ways unleashes a powerful sense of purpose in other areas of our lives. It is patriotic to plant a tree for a service person that you know. The powerful statement of hope that planting a tree is may be but a mere shadow of the sacrifice our service members have endured for us, but there have been whole forests of men cut down in the prime of their lives to give us this land. The least we can do for them is to recognize them with a memorial tree. Make it so!

100,000 Maple Tree Seeds

It has been a bumper crop year for maple tree seeds. If you have ever wondered how much space 100,000 maple tree seeds look like, imagine a feed sack, bulging at the seams. Of course they are light, but the bag would tip the scale at nearly twenty five pounds. Spring came early, and we had plenty of moisture for a change this year. As a result, the rain gutters filled and the sidewalks were coated with tiny helicopters, each bearing a single seed. Today I filled a seed bag with the seeds and spread them across several acres in the newest county park, near where I live. It took several hours to collect the seed and just a tiny part of an hour to spread them with the help of a stiff wind. With a bit of luck and some timely rain, there will be thousands of sprouts coming up in the not too distant future. The idea of helping Mother Nature rather than hurting her is new to some, but the work I have done for the last several decades has revolved around another type of life. This past week we had the great chance to hear a woman on Wisconsin Public Radio who has been studying what we used to call living better for less. for a time, the term green living was used to try to get folks to change their ways, but now the word for it is sustainability. trees know nothing of these words. When times are great, or when they are reaching the end of their lives, they produce many more seeds than can possibly grow in one area. Much like the rest of nature, the boom and bust cycle is more common than we might believe.

Working with the changes that we see around us requires commitment to the cycles of growth, birth and death that are reflected in everything from worms to the birds and trees around us. I know that the maples in my neighborhood are doomed to never procreate. If there is not paved land beneath them, there are garden beds and lawns that get mowed often enough to eliminate the possibility of new trees growing up there. Instead, I picked up as many as I could and transferred them to an area that is being reforested by both our organization and several others. It is a powerful moment in time that we have arrived at. for many on planet Earth, our needs are met in less time than ever, we are realizing the futility of mindless consumerism and the time for feeding ever larger appetites has begun to take a toll on both our lifestyles and the globe. Factors that were once never even considered have begun to be studied and questioned, in some cases, understood and in time we will all become aware of how much it really costs to continue raping and pillaging the land, the landscape and the ecosphere that we will all have to use to meet our needs over time. As Buckminster Fuller said more thasn two decades ago, there are no passengers on Spaceship Earth, we are all crew. finding ourselves at the helm, or pulling the lines that harness the winds of change that are blowing strong, we need to set a course for times when catch phrases are no longer needed to specify ecological sustainability. In time, there will be no cliquishness, no trendy marketing strategies that belie doing the right thing. We will need to adapt or surely perish from an utter lack of spirit.

There may never be a recreation of Eden, but with a more humane approach to how we live on the planet, we can all live a higher standard of living while we use less material, extract less resources, produce less waste and contaminate less air and water. I will continue to share the ways that i have learned about to do just that over the next few years, planting seeds of change as it were, not only across the landscape but in the minds of folks who choose to read this. I do encourage each and every one of my readers to consider donating whatever an hour of your time is worth to you. my employer considers my time to be worth nearly twenty dollars per hour and I feel that I am worth far more than that. Each of my entries takes about an hour to produce and asking for you to pay for something that is actually free may seem like supreme silliness, but for me to donate so many hours to the process of changing our world-wide culture for the better is actually priceless. Even those who think my ideas are useless may find a nugget or two of truth in them and the value of hearing the truth just once is beyond the ability of most of us to calculate.

Some of the first steps that I took to get myself a little clarity about what is important was to study nutrition. when I realized that much of what passes as "food" is actually devoid of nutrients, it changed the way I ate for the better. As our society has developed, most of us have been exposed to more and more non-food products and as we have gotten busier and busier, the time spent preparing, enjoying and understanding what foods are healthy and which are bad for us has dwindled. Imagine a car that was continuously driven faster and faster, being put under more and more stress and that is also never maintained or given fuel to use for energy. Our bodies are very much the same. The food that we need is often far away or expensive, so I taught myself about growing healthy food in a food desert right in the middle of town. Quickly, I learned that there was an extreme shortage of organic matter, so all of my food scraps and organic waste became a crucial resource. I turned to my hobby of keeping fish to help offset my protein requirements and also found that the fish waste that was produced by the fish made an excellent organic fertilizer. When my compost became riddled with bugs and worms, they produced extra food for the fish and reduced the cost of purchased nutrients for the fish. This was the beginning of a cycle that produced more than I could use. when I had too much nutrient rich water from cleaning the tanks, I would pour that "waste" water on the street trees that grew outside my apartment. Today, those trees are 30% larger, greener and healthier than the ones that never got the surplus from my tank cleaning. My trash smelled less, I never had flies indoors, the back porch grew more food than I could eat by myself and the give-away continued.

Even if not a single maple tree seed that I scattered grows, I got to spend time in the out of doors, walk for a little while and I kept sixty pounds of seeds from washing into the gutters and the local stream. All in all, there will be benefits that stand separate and alone. If a single tree grows, perhaps in five or ten years, there will be a little more shade, a tiny bit of flood reduction and a place for a bird to perch and perhaps even nest. If we continue to give of our own abundant resources, there is a chance that the redistribution will lead to everyone being better off.