our evolution

In a week I will be in the Virgin Islands at the Virgin Islands Sustainable Farms Institute beginning my journey as an Associate of Gaia University.
The program I’m starting is a Masters degree in Integrative Eco-Social Design.
For those of you who have know me in this lifetime, you may find this confusing. “Kyra” and “Masters degree” are not congruent words. Some may think that I have decided to give in to social pressures to “legitimize” my life by having a paper recognizing my ability to suffer through an institutional system in pursuit of my eventual freedom and dreams.
But no!
The reasons I have decided to participate in the Gaia University program is far from a submission to the current systems demands for academic recognition of individual accomplishments.
For the past couple of years I have felt the need for a more structured approach to my self-education. I have been looking for people to hold me accountable and to support me in exploring new parts of myself/the world.
Through my openness to new encounters I have begun working in the field of Permaculture and ecological design—aka living interconnectedness with the rest of existence. My artwork has been concerned with earth activism and healing humanity for many years now, and having my hands in the dirt was a very natural progression to this. In fact, it is more like a return to my childhood and upbringing on the land that is called Heartroot Farm.
Gaia University appears to me as an amazing beginning of the alternatives to the current education system that I want to support and propagate. It is through providing alternatives in the realm of education that the coming generations will be able to complete the transformation of destructive systems to healing and holistic ones.

Additionally, the framing of eco-social design seems to encompass all the work I’ve been doing in my life over the past years. How to create healthy community with all the other beings of the world? This is what we need to be working on in order to transition to new social structures, in order to ascend to a new level of consciousness, however you choose to say it.

Gaia U is based on action-learning, a philosophy that makes perfect sense to any self-educated person. It is a non-hierachical, self-directed, place based program. Participants design their own rhythms and course and work on projects from wherever they are based.
For me, this means extra incentive and a supporting network of advisors and peers to help Heartroot Farm and my work as an artist flourish and manifest their full potential.

I feel myself at the beginning of something that started long ago.

Blessings on my journey!

Fall has hit and with it unrelenting waves of nostalgia and the desire to curl up into my cave and digest this years whirl of activity. In meditation these days I can feel every cell of my body searching inwards- the image I that comes to me is of a bird tucking it’s head under its wings in preparation for darkness and sleep. My heart is full…to the point that I feel at times incapable of keeping it open. My emotions are volatile as the weather- clouds melting into rain, breaking open to let the sun shine through…violent windstorms and floods flow into the stillness of night air, the smell of winter on its way.

Following the rhythms of nature autumn is the beginning of new cycles (not spring, as our culture has come to portend)- the seed falls to the earth and our journey to rebirth is initiated. At this time last year I had just attended my grandfathers memorial service. I was arriving in Scotland at the Findhorn Ecovillage, my feet nervously feeling out the path laid before me, a path towards myself.

Speaking of paths, for the past month my left leg and ankle have been in constant pain. The left, the foundation of movement forward, my direction…acceptance of the earth’s energy, intuition, my existence as a woman in this time and place… This is the pain of transformation, rapid fire and unstoppable. Rather, the pain one experiences when resisting change of some kind…? Does the snake look back wistfully at it’s old skins, I wonder?

A recent batch of emails from the angels I met at Findhorn asked: what have we achieved since we met one year ago? A first thought is—I have become much better at not measuring events in linear time!

Achievement: the viewing and measuring of life’s experiences through the lens of predetermined social values. This summer I danced at length with the part of myself that is attached to achievement. It was only in the final week of workshops at Heartroot Farm that my mother and I had a conversation that freed me to see how I had fallen into a new iteration of valuing typically “masculine” activities over “feminine” ones. Aside from wanting to learn new skills that I had not been given the opportunity to explore beforehand, there is a part of me which definitely feels that hacking away at 10 cords of wood is more important work than cooking a meal for 30 people.
Despite my desire to live in a world where caretaking work is equally valued to “heavy labour”, I am still making my way through internalized hierarchies. I was also able, in this final week, to take up the space that belongs to me as an organizer and person with the knowledge and abilities to run our ceremonies and events without constant supervision. Something inside me finally broke out of its fears.

Realizations of this year: I am a healthier, happier person when the majority of my time is spent in the countryside as opposed to the city. In order to live and be fulfilled in a rural lifestyle, I need to be surrounded by interesting and motivated people.

Therefore, if I am to be at Heartroot Farm, I need to weave some stronger webs of support. I need to gather friends with similar visions into my immediate environment and be engaged in both the details of everyday life AND be feeling invigorated by ongoing long-term projects with attainable steps.

More on this soon…

There is not a cloud in the sky this morning. I sit perched in my favorite spot on the land, that is, the front porch of our house, which looks out over the horse field and the mountains. In the bottom of the field dozens of cords of wood are waiting to be chopped and stacked.
A twisted ankle has allowed me to permit myself a couple of days of r&r, which I was in desperate need of. After spending a week as staff at leadership camp for Leave Out ViolencE  at camp White Pine near Haliburton, Ontario (this involved 5 days of 3-4 hours of sleep each night, plus days full of emotionally intense workshops and leading groups in various activities…and was altogether an amazing and exhausting experience— I got to lead my first chanting workshop in combination with a body percussion teaching, something I’ve been scheming of for a while now…) I got off the bus from the 8 hour trip back to Montreal, got into a car and drove 4 hours home to Heartroot Farm, and started helping run our Unschooling Camp the next day.
The road to burnout is paved with good intentions?

The week of our unschooling camp was…a flurry of activity and people dipping in and out of our lives. The kids who attended the camp spoke three different languages and all of them were basically uni-lingual. This led to some interesting exchanges, lots of translation, but also a renewed respect for the ability to communicate without language.
It was interesting to notice myself feeling stressed by the uncertainty of whether the parents of said children would understand the value of a camp where pretty much all the days activities are directed by the kids desires. I grew up doing what I wanted, but in the context of a retreat center I was also responsible for helping out with lots of chores and organized activities. None of my learning was ever measured quantitatively, as if it could have been.
For people who are accustomed to the traditional school system, quantitative measurement is the one and only assurance that their child/they are “learning”. Learning has therefore taken on a whole other set of association and values than what I personally experienced growing up and from what I want learning to mean.
When I started going to school one of the things that struck me the most was that everyone there who had been in school there whole lives had learned to hate learning.
The format and structure of school being familiar to them, anything that resembled that structure and format was dismissed as worthless and boring.
Boring.
I didn’t understand boredom until I started attending school.
Friends would get off the bus in the afternoon and I would ask what they’d done during the day and they would say “nothing…it was pretty boring.” I didn’t get it. Boredom was a completely foreign concept.
Then came government-required curriculums, and all was made clear. Boredom was having information thrown at you to memorize for the sole purpose of attaining quantifiable results, so that you could then forget said information, which was never intended to serve you in your daily life anyway.
“Welcome to the real world” people said when I joined the school going masses. I thought this quite funny. The real world according to the majority of people in North America between the ages of 4 and 20-something resembles prison and/or forced mental decay. Hm. I wonder why we have so many problems in our society.
I wonder why youth violence rates are constantly climbing. I wonder why there are so many dysfunctional families. I wonder why so many kids are depressed and suicidal.
Certainly there are the odd “normal” few for whom the current educational system works splendidly, who see nothing wrong with it and who thrive in the type of “learning” environment available to the majority. But these are few and far between.

Needless to say, this years Unschooling camp was the first of many to follow. It is intended as a place not only where kids can learn to love learning, but where parents can learn what learning can look like, unlearn expectations and judgments and find support in transitioning out of the system.

The chant “Step into the holy fire…step into the holy flame” that I learned at Findhorn rings true- the rain has left and we are soaked in sweat and sunbeams…the sun’s firey rays beat down and make movement sluggish and thought halting. Sleep is restless, particularly in the city where machines hum all through the night and people come out after hours to avoid the weight of smog and concrete heat haze.I am grateful for the wind and the cool nights of the mountain range we are snuggled in to.

This past work weekend was a whirlwind of activity- none of it quite according to plan, of course.The fluidity of circumstances and dedication to attentive listening to these changes leads us on many a winding way. “Planning is invaluable but plans are useless”  after all.

With the help of a few new friends, and some old, we managed to : clear a large area around the little garden I’ve created by the house (the wacked weeds given as hay to the horses and donkey) ; sheet mulch a few feet outwards from this same garden patch- we will soon be doing some transplanting into this new bed space!; finish -almost completely- putting in the cedar posts for the retaining wall in front of the barn. It was an exciting and physical couple of days, inclusive of good food, music and meditation as per full holistic health requirements. It’s always inspiring to see how much a group of clear-intentioned people can accomplish in a day…and such a blessing to be at the center of these intentions.

Many thanks to the beautiful group of people who blessed us with their help this past weekend.

Every now and then someone mentions to me that they have been checking my blog regularly and I am reminded of its usefulness in communicating my whereabouts in space and experience…thanks Andrea for this week’s nudge!

When people ask me what I’ve been doing out here (with a tone of “what on earth do you fill your time with???”) I’m not quite sure what to say. I seem to do a million things in a day—but it’s hard to give a summary when everything has a cumulative, historical quality to it. One of my main learnings this week has been that I take a lot of things that I am accustomed to for granted. Over the weekend I encountered the reality that some people don’t know how to deal with walking through mud and horse manure, can’t tell a cedar from a birch tree and have never dug up a patch of dirt in their lives. These are all very valid realities, but I am constantly forgetting that they exist.  Gratitude for my “habitudes”, to throw some quebecois bilingual jingle in there.

Time has a much more flexible feel to it here. I am rarely aware of the date, and wouldn’t be at all if I didn’t check my agenda every few days to remind myself of when people are planning to show up here, for whatever purpose, and thus, what I ought to be preparing. This upcoming weekend we had been planning to build a strawbale wall for a bioshelter we’ve been wanting to set up behind the house- after much investigation, it looks like the actual strawbaling will have to happen next month when the farmers nearby have more in stock and the prices are low. For now we’ll be starting on the foundation and sheet-mulching a large area of the garden.
The Garden! I take immense pleasure in both our wild and somewhat more organized garden spaces. I’ve gone a few weeks now with every meal including something from our land. “What a feeeeli-ing…”

This past week I took a bike ride “around the block” – it was pretty funny to realize that “the block” consisted of an hour and 45 minute ride up and down extremely steep hills (read “mountains”) with gorgeous views, to the background of hay-drying fans in every barn I passed by.
I also played at the Lac-Megantic Farmers Market with my good friend Matt Stern. We busted out the classic rock fake books and went home with a couple bags full of fresh produce, cheeses and jellies that the participants had donated in thanks- better than anything I’ve been given for a performance before! Needless to say, I will be back there next Saturday, with a banjo on my knee.
I’ve also been invited to perform at a local monthly full moon celebration. I’m excited to be finally meeting some musicians from the area and to see what kind of collaborations this could incite.
I feel like perhaps, just maybe?, I am finding myself some communi-ties, something I was, I admit,  a bit doubtful of for a long, long time. And so, perhaps, a chance to heal that sense of un-belonging that I’ve had in me this far…we shall see!
My little brother David has threatened to out me, so I will just let you all know that I have cut down a couple trees since being here. The front of the house was in need of clearing from a hoard of saplings (who would not have had enough light to share, and whose untimely demise allowed us to uncover some resuscitated bamboo that we had thought lost to the deadly wild marmots!) and a retaining wall in front of the barn is being made out of cedar posts…which entails a few cedar sacrifices. I do, however, now know how to chainsaw a tree down and how to make fence stakes, and have accomplished the feat of driving a four-wheeler with attached trailer and load. The older neighborhood men have been a bit shocked to see a young lady wielding power tools I hear.
I’m going to see if I can make some baskets from the stripped bark from the cedar posts.

The full moon has just passed and we spent a night watching shooting stars in the hot tub. Not a bad evening activity, methinks.Otherwise I spend my nights with my nose in a book, the cats batting at my toes to the intermittent braying of the donkey.

Get off the internet and go outside!

 Here are a few photos to show what’s been going on at Heartroot Farm these past few weeks…

First, a photo of what the front of our barn and workshop space used to look like…

 and then along came a backhoe…

and dug out the front

and began placing slate which our friend Jacques Boulanger brought over for us.This was a very lengthy process and it was wonderful to have some of our friends from the area helping us out…i.e. we would never have been able to do any of this without support from other people (hint , hint…got any free time and energy?).

      until finally…

a butterfly evolved on our doorstep.

We’ve also been working on starting some gardens again – below is our herb garden, which has been around for quite a while-in the middle is the little garden I made this summer behind our house with peas, greens, beans, carrots, nasturtiums, borage, parsley, calendula and probably a few other things I’ve forgotten. The whole area surrounding this will eventually be made into gardens as well.The far right photo is the front of the house where we have some kale, greens,nasturtiums , transplanted rhubard, valerian and lemon balm.

Well, it’s done. I’ve come back to the land where I grew up and survived the first month. This week I feel that I’ve finally hit my stride here- I can wake up with a sense of easing into the day, the sun rising through my window around 6 a.m. every morning. The questioning and second-guessing have lessened, replaced by the simplicity of acceptance. It’s so much easier to be here.
Opportunities to catch a ride in to the city pass me by and I realize I have no reason to go, no drive to be surrounded by the bustle and hubbub and stress and electricity and smog and heat glare of the city. Even the streets full of festive, summer clad people, the diversity of food and culture and art and projects to support doesn’t feel so tempting right now. Give me mountains, dirt roads, lakes, wide-open spaces…sunsets and starscapes unhindered by street-lights and skyscrapers.
I’d forgotten what it was like to not have to question everything.
But when your body is vibrating from a chainsaw, or aching in all the right places from stacking wood and turning garden beds…well…existentialism takes second place to the bliss of a body well connected and utterly exhausted.
I know I will go back to the city for many reasons sometime, probably soon, but its nice to remember the feeling of not “needing” to.

The past couple of weeks have been full of reflection and tumult. The week prior to the solstice our whole area was whipped by wind and rainstorms…exterior manifestations of my own feelings and, I suspect, those of many others.
A feeling of paralysis and “stuckness” was like a lead weight in my stomach. The wind was speaking to the feelings being held in with shallow breaths.
All my old fears of incapability and alienation, feeling overshadowed and alone were writhing around as I tried my best to ignore them.
It was as if something in me had no desire to solve anything, but was content being blocked up where it was- safe from growth and the unknown. Safe from both success and failure. In limbo.

Many ceremonies and hours of emotional venting later, I am feeling hopeful and inspired again. All the hurdles I was seeing as mountains are a bit more like rolling hills, and I can see that I’m not walking this incline alone.
On that note, yesterday I was liberated from my fear of chainsaws by spending an hour sawing scrap wood into stove-size chunks. My lower back and forearms are aching like never before, but I feel pretty excited about this new skill. It seems to be the norm here that women are scared or ignorant of most machinery, but particularly chainaws- that is, if they have a man around to do the job. It feels great to be breaking through that barrier without having a sense of needing to prove myself “equal” or feel that I have to be “tough enough” to take care of myself. It’s a simple act of self-growth, and a sort of freedom that feels healthy. And I have made a promise to not use it when no one else is around, for those of you who might worry…

In terms of outward transformation, there have also been quite a few. As I sit here typing away, our neighbor and his bulldozer are shoveling out five feet deep and fifteen wide in front of our barn. Yes, I am hiding!
The foundations have been slowly washing away in the flow of downhill water and this it seemed like it had come to the last leg. The next few weeks will be pretty messy. The back of the barn is also going to be having jacks put under it to keep the structure from shifting anymore.
The cabin that will soon (hopefully) be my home (finally! Somewhere to unpack all the leftover boxes…) is going to be moved from its place behind the barn to up above the pond behind our house to avoid future flooding and foundation problems as well.
In the back of the house we’ve planted our first vegetable garden in 10 years or so—mostly with basic annuals such as peas, greens, carrots etc, but also with some medicinal flowers. We did do some companion planting, but started too late in the season to really make and implement a detailed permaculture-esque design. Next year we will hopefully have installed our greenhouse and will be able to plan a bit better having observed how things grow through the season here. I’m on the lookout for inspired/inspiring northerly permaculture designs on large pieces of land…anyone?

During the solstice retreat we dismantled the sweat lodge, which we have held ceremonies in for as long as I can remember. We will still be holding ceremonies on all the solstices and equinoxes, but they will be made up of different rituals according to the needs of the participants. Sweat lodges will be happening less frequently. This is in part due to the huge amount of resources and energy that goes in to making them happen…and the feeling that what we accomplish with this ritual can be done through other types as well.

When there aren’t other people around and the phone isn’t ringing off the hook I get some time to compose, something I’ve found challenging in city spaces. Here too I have to remind myself to make time for musical creation, but when I do I can just sit down and go for a few hours without interruption. In august I’m going to be recording a new cd at a friend’s chalet near Lac-Megantic—the most beautiful recording studio I have ever seen! Hopefully I will be getting some artists friends in on the recording as well…
I’m excited to take on recording with time and planning- two elements, sorely lacking in all my previous productions, which have been wholly last minute affairs.
I’ve found two nice potential venues in Lac-Megantic as well, something I never thought to exist, and am looking forward to the challenge of writing more French music and organizing a few shows for myself here.
It will be a good way to distinguish myself from my mother, which can be difficult when I am working on what most people see as her project- Heartroot Farm.

Amidst the slate-laying and raking gravel and using heavy machinery I’ve also been collecting herbs, having long chats on the phone, reading and drinking lots of tea and continuing my work writing the Gaia University monthly newsletter, which allows me to have many an interesting connection with people involved in permaculture and social change around the globe. If all goes according to the current “plan” I will be starting my Masters with them in December and going to my orientation in the Virgin Islands at the Virgin Islands Sustainable Farms Institute (VISFI).
The Permaculture course I’ve been part of organizing and facilitating since January in Montreal recently received a government grant, so I’m excited to see how and where we will choose to grow with this new funding (whereas once there was none J ).
It feels a bit like being inside of a freeze frame and trying to figure out how all the elements relate to each other in the grand scheme of things. The feeling of perspective is a fuzzy one on the edge of my sense, but it’s getting stronger.

There is a Mauri saying that I hold with me these days, which says “Joy is change without end.” Based on that definition, my life is most certainly a joy-full one.
Blessings to you all.

“Time is short
until you see
that each moment can stretch out to infinity
And if all that we need is a place of return,
The least we can do is be home for each other…”
(-me, 1987- and counting)

Just thought I’d share a link to a post and the above photo on TreeHugger.com about the Montreal Permaculture Guild classes I’ve been co-facilitating since January …a good excuse to write a few reflections on the whole experience!

Tomorrow is our last  class of the spring semester- it’s hard to believe it’s been four months! Wednesdays have become the highlight of my week and also the source of many a lengthy meeting…I’m looking forward to creating a self-managing system out of the class and getting participants to share their own knowledge and experience through summer skill-shares. We’ll also be having a lots of fieldtrips, which will hopefully mean a bunch of people coming down to visit me at Heartroot farm while I’m there…the prospect of living mostly on the farm this summer has been exciting up til now, when it’s getting quite close and I am realizing that part of me worries that I will end up isolated and that the many people who’ve expressed interest in coming down this summer won’t make it…recognizing this fear has been a big shift for me this week. At the beginning of the year I had a presentiment that there would be a lot of movement around connecting my “city” and “country” selves this year, and such certainly seems to be the case…but I digress.

The semester of MPG has been a whirlwind- I’ve come to understand myself in a facilitators role much better- my needs and strengths and limitations… I’ve come to appreciate the power of music more than ever through our weekly vocal jams and spontaneous round-singing during community dinners after classes…I have so many hopes and desires for the future of this group- the potential is amazing! but for now our energy is not unlimited. The reality is that we all have multiple other jobs, school, projects that we are juggling and cannot dedicate our whole lives to making a strong network of permaculturalists in Montreal and Quebec, but the hope is that we can at least get the ball rolling for others to do so…