How to Thrive in the Apocalypse, with Friends
A Collective Storytelling by the 2019/2020 Place Corps Cohort
Ancestral Land Acknowledgement
Authored by Lila & Jordan
We offer these words from unceded lands of the Mohican peoples. Many of their descendants, now called the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Community, or the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, reside in so-called Wisconsin state. Despite centuries of colonization, the connection between Mohican peoples and their ancestral lands remain.
The Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Community honors and protects their cultural heritage through a historic preservation office based on Mohican land, in what is called Troy, New York. They’ve partnered with Soul Fire Farm to create a “cultural respect easement” on the 80 acres of land that Soul Fire stewards. And accomplices like the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust & Network are uprooting racism in the food system by advancing “land sovereignty in the northeast region through permanent and secure land tenure for Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian farmers and land stewards who will use the land in a sacred manner that honors our ancestors dreams - for sustainable farming, human habitat, ceremony, native ecosystem restoration, and cultural preservation.”
We offer gratitude to those that have stewarded these sacred lands since time immemorial, and to the rocks, soils, waters, and more-than-human beings that hold the stories of this place, reminding us of all that was, is, and could be.
Learn more:
Introduction
Authored by Lila
Welcome, Friends :)
Welcome to our story, a story of young folks living together and in reciprocity with land. This is a story told by many, namely, eight individuals who embarked on a radical year-long journey birthed by the vision and love of the Place Corps community.
The Inaugural Place Corps Cohort
From Left to Right:
Eleanor (she/her), Jordan (he/they), Alessia (she/her), Sophia (she/her), Martha (she/her), Luke (he/him), Lila (she/her), Gopal (he/him)
Photo Credit:
Paul Rix
What is Place Corps? It’s an experiential residency program focusing on shared leadership and ‘practical skills for radical living.’ What does this actually look like? It looks like eight young people (that’s us!) living in a communal home, stewarding a garden, and collectively participating in a bunch of courses/workshops/trainings with educators from the bioregion. The ten months together offered us a chance to explore a huge variety of ecologically regenerative practices— including natural building, regenerative agriculture, cooking, food processing, permaculture design, biodynamic farming, herbalism, foraging, & medicine making— alongside a breadth of socially regenerative practices—anti-racist organizing, regenerative economics, shared leadership and cooperative movements, nonviolent & relational communication, spiritual/ancestral healing modalities, and many more.
Our time at Place Corps introduced us to the skills and wisdoms needed to birth a just and regenerative future. Our time at Place Corps also gave us space to explore our innermost selves and create conditions for our heart/body/soul/mind to come forth in full expression. And, goddess, do we have more work to do!
Gratitudes
Authored by Jordan
We would like to offer our love and gratitude to the numerous educators, facilitators, and organizations who have shaped our Place Corps experience:
Connor, Abrah, Juliette, Kennah, Laura, Moira, Deb, Ricky, Steve, Dave, Two Trees, Pete, Mohomad, the 2019 ELIP Class, and the entire ELIP Community
Dawn, Rebecca, Maya, Paul, Sandrine, Aviva, Faith, Mandana, Lauren, Suzanne, Danielle, and all our Guest Educators
Martin, Janene, Dan, Jeremy S, the Van, and the Hawthorne Valley Community
Rachel, Steffen, Jill, and the Institute for Mindful Agriculture
Jess, Spencer, Todd, the Apprentices, the Cows, the Pigs, and the entire Hawthorne Valley Farm
Conrad, Claudia, Delia, and the Farmscape Ecology team
Matt D, Michelle, and the Visiting Students Program
Grace, Jeremy L, Chandra, and the Hawthorne Valley Farm Store team
Matt S, Micah, Aja, Caitlin, Hélène, Terri, Susan, and the Good Work Institute network
Leah, Amani, and the team at Soul Fire Farm
Our Beloved Family and Friends
And you!
Our Story in Seasons
We’ve decided to tell our story the way mama Earth tells hers, the same way that our ancestors and folks all over the world have told stories for generations— through the the cycles and rhythms of nature…
Introduction to Summer
Authored by Jordan
With summer came a youthful energy of play and exploration
From formally meeting each other in June at the Ecological Literacy Immersion Program
To moving into the “Schnack Shack” at Hawthorne Valley
To embedding ourselves in the more-than-human world
Summer set the groundwork for all that would emerge in our year-long journey together
Ecological Literacy Immersion Program (ELIP)
Poetry by Jordan
Video Reflection Featuring Lila
Video Reflection Featuring Jordan
Moving into the “Schnack Shack”
First Meal at the Schnack Shack
Week One Reflection
Authored by Jordan
Wow… where do I even begin???
Arriving at Schnackenberg Road after the 4-week Ecological Literacy Immersion Program was one of the most exhilarating homecomings of my 24 years. Words cannot express the amount of love, care, and intention that were put in by the Place Corps team and Hawthorne Valley in order to receive our gittering bodies, anxious minds, and open hearts.
Our eight-person cohort had just spent the month of July deepening our knowledge and practice of permaculture design processing and thinking. At Omega Institute, I found every day filled with wonder, love, and something new to discover about myself, my peers, and this wild experience we call life. In fact, I spent a lot of time pondering what “life” and “being” truly mean. I’ll share an emerging and working belief of mine: that this notebook and the pencil I’m using to write (so that I can erase when I mess up!) are beings with as much worth as you or me. Why? Well, because they exist. It’s that simple and yet so challenging to fully grasp (I think). So many of the systems, structures, relationships, and beliefs that have shaped my life since the moment I was born are rooted in the valuing of some things/beings over others. To unlearn this training is hard work and yet I’ve found it critical to process through what it means to exist in the world from a place of love, abundance, and freedom.
This is the foundation our cohort began to establish at Omega Institute and one we’ve set out to cultivate further during our first week together. As you might imagine, and as I already indicated, it’s not easy! Our first week together has not been without its challenges. From understanding what it means to live with and cook for seven of our peers, to attempting a zero waste lifestyle, to inviting compassion and reciprocity into our communication and relationships, to organizing ourselves around our needs and wants, to sitting with not knowing and allowing paths forward to emerge, our group has moved head first into this incredible, funky, frustrating, delightful, and magical existence that is Place Corps.
With so many possibilities before us, it’s hard to say what exactly the next ten months will bring. But what is certain is that we will do it together and I just think that is the dopest thing I could ever imagine.
Alessia, Gopal, Luke, Eleanor, Martha, Sophia, and Lila (and Jordan!) … I say these names and with each syllable comes only a seed of the powerful magic we all hold and will only grow in community as we seek to know, love, and serve ourselves, our places, and this planet. For this, I am eternally grateful. <3
Here’s to all that has passed, all that’s to come, and our ability to shape the in-between.
Love,
Jordan Alexander Williams
Imagine what you need:
Stewarding Home in the Schnackenberg House
Authored by Alessia
We moved into the Schnackenberg house on a sunny day in early August. The sun filtered into the windows around the house in ways we’ve since gotten to know throughout the year and throughout the seasons. Cows were out to pasture around us. Raspberries were ripe and abundant on the branches just outside the back door. Tomato plants were tangled and full with mature leaves. And us, eight young people, accustomed to knowing each other by learning together for a month at the Omega Institute, housed in single tents and nourished by a communal dining hall. All pieces. Aligned in so many ways I didn’t know then. Wondering: how could we grow together with the energies of life in this place? How can our ways of living here learn from the process of pollination - nourishing the whole and the self inseparably?
In provisioning for ourselves through gathering and growing our food and cooking, zero-landfill practices, house cleaning and care, playing, celebrating, building and co-governing, we have turned attention and been witness to so many ways in which the stewardship of home and community is facilitated through needs met in relationship, connections between beings and energies that allow us to live well in community. As an invitation from our educator Faith Gilbert, we collectively articulated our needs for a good life, including food, water, connection, shelter, access to land, heat/energy, health/care, education, goods and services, and transportation (see photo below). Together we envisioned our seeds of a need-based economy, or stewardship of home, asking: How can we imagine what we need to live
well with each other, and how are we in relation to the practices that allow for our nourishment?
And then, working from these needs, how do we celebrate and care for ourselves and one another? Align our work together? Share with each other? How can we give and receive in processes of production, consumption, and decay that are sovereign to us, and rooted in interdependent relationships? In exploring these questions, I am often reminded of a principle that the Underground Center offers: “Work to meet all of our needs at a scale we can observe and experience.” Among so many ways of understanding what this scale means for us here, we co-created a relationship map, an exercise we shared as a cohort to better know, share gratitude, and imagine anew the web of relationships present in our life here (see photo below). For me this is a scale that is slower, deeper, and connected at its roots. It involves timescales that might at first seem new and unfamiliar but are at their core old and ancestral. Governing that is shared. Ceremonies of decay. An embodied knowing that no being is mine or yours, that there is more than enough to share, and that we all have a right to life here together. Amid so many processes of extraction, individualization, externalities, and anonymous markets, moving to meet our needs at the speed and scale of a relationship - with each other, the sun, water, cows, raspberries and all of the beings in this place - is the continuous work of our collective imaginations. “Work” in a way that restores vital energy to the word, a sweet, irresistible antidote, and a reminder that within and among us, we have everything we need.
Summer Recipe
Crafted by Eleanor
Seasonal Embodiment
Compiled by Martha
Wilderness Trip
Sophia & Alessia Snuggle by the Fire
Recorded by Lila & Jordan
… Transitioning …
Introduction to Fall
Authored by Jordan
As the Northern Hemisphere transitioned from summer to fall, we began to feel the earth’s energy shifting around and through us
And in this time of fruition, there was much to gather and share…
With apples, plums, black walnuts, and goldenrod, we busied our hands and our bodies with homestead chores and earthen crafts
Family and friends came to plant garlic and sip cider, and puppets with the Pings filled our Wednesday nights with laughter and joy
The sacred gift of cow and pig ensured our sustenance for the year, and from Soul Fire emerged our shared commitment to uprooting racism in the food system
Homesteading
Seasonal Embodiment
Compiled by Martha
Fall Recipe
Compiled by Eleanor
Friends & Family Weekend
Sacred Gifts
Gratitude for these Beings, Gifts of Sustenance & Abundance
Sacred Work
Visiting Soul Fire Farm
… Transitioning …
Introduction to Winter
Authored by Lila
Cold winds, firewood assembly lines, abundant teas, socks, and knitting needles. Potatoes and sauerkraut. Lots of maple syrup. Falling deeper in relationship with each other and deeper in relationship with our innermost selves. Back rubs and neck rubs and sharing calendula salve. Connection.
These are some of the gifts winter brought, along with the needed and welcomed invitation to slow down and be really gentle. We offered each other all of the love and care and nurturance that comes from a home heated by a woodstove hearth.
This time also brought three new components of our Place Corps experience:
intersession— a deep and extended break from our home at Hawthorne Valley… a time to return to our homes in other places
place projects— a multifaceted research project combining oral histories and public story telling
new core classes and workshops— a variety of learning experience with educators throughout the bioregion
See below for more on each…
Winter @ the Place Corps House, Taken by Lila
Intersession
Authored by Lila
Our intersession lasted 6 weeks away from Place Corps. 6 weeks of returning to our various places and figuring out what makes a place a home. Our task during this time was to reconnect with the beings and lands that make us feel whole and alive, specifically by observing, interviewing, exploring, and recording our experiences.
It was hard to part ways from our communal meals and shared home, but we were all grateful for the time to reconnect with other parts of ourselves and our lives.
This was the poster for our Place Story presentation event at The Good Work Institute.
Place Projects
Authored by Lila
We returned to Hawthorne Valley lands when the sunlight was still brief and the nights long. We shared our intersession learnings— what places do I call home? how might I be in right relationship with place?— first with each other and then with a kind and encouraging audience on the other side of the river (much love to The Good Work Institute for hosting us as we shared our stories out loud).
Winter Learning & Making
Authored by Lila
Winter time also glistened with richness of wisdom. Our classroom lights shone bright. We were gifted with the presence of numerous educators— herbalists from Good Fight Herb Co. and Wild Gather, farmers from Letterbox Farm Collective, social permaculturists from Regenerate Change, somatic therapists from Kinesoma, and natural builders from Hawthorne Valley— all of whom offered us skills and practices to deepen our capabilities to offer healing within and to beings and lands around.
We designed tiny houses, concocted immune boosting herbal remedies, tasted soils, made cash-flow budgets for regenerative businesses, protested for climate justice, and learned to identify and uproot white supremacist behavior in organizations and workplaces. Photos from some of these experiences are below :)
Just as the roots of winter trees were digging deep into the Earth, receiving the vital nutrients needed to blossom in the warm months to come, we too reached into new depths… intellectually, emotionally, physically, and interpersonally. Winter time filled our minds and souls and bodies to prepare for the growth that future sunshine inevitably brings about.
Winter Receipe
Crafted by Eleanor
Seasonal Embodiment
Compiled by Martha
… Transitioning …
Introduction to Spring
Authored by lila
Being witness to the unfolding of springtime feels like watching a child open its eyes for the first time. The time of divine creation… of birth, wetness, cleansing, and waking up. Walks around the Schnackenberg house suddenly became very exciting as we saw all sorts of green friends pop out of the ground. Garlic Mustard and early Dandelion found their way into our kitchen. Mornings now meant stepping outside to feel soft sunshine hit our cheeks. And garden planning was in full swing.
Transitions
Authored by Lila
As Gaia transitioned into visible and protruding forms, so too did we. Our relationships with the farmers and apprentices at Hawthorne Valley strengthened as we spent increasing hours seeding flats in the greenhouse. We gathered with the founders of Place Corps to discuss vision and language for the future of the program. We hosted moon ceremonies and game nights in our home.
This time was also characterized by deep communing with the land. From regenerative agriculture learning sessions to native plant seedings to digging trenches for our garden fence, our bodies were moving in sync with the emerging flows and rhythms of warmer times.
Just as the soils were softening and opening up, cohort member Sophia Hampton stewarded a silvopasture tree-planting project in the field across from the Place Corps house. Check out her guide to planting trees here on the right.
These are some of the organizations we looked to for guidance amidst quarantine— click on each to visit their website.
The Apocalypse
Authored by Lila
Then the whole world changed. Our normal rhythms of working in the garden, stocking our bulk pantry, and practicing shared leadership all of a sudden held new meaning. We watched COVID-19 sweep through other lands, wondering when and how and why our lives were going to be impacted. We blinked and were three months deep in quarantine, with millions of others adopting living practices that we’ve been honing since we stepped foot on this land. Resilience and sovereignty no longer seemed distant-- this is what our collective livelihood depends on.
We started the month of March with 7 housemates and ended the month with 5. With all of the uncertainties ahead, Gopal and Eleanor chose to leave the house (with the full love and support of everyone else) to return to their home families. They (and Luke) are forever part of this cohort, and we are grateful to know that we can all be held within meaningful community in and out of our shared home.
Slowly, a new not-so-normal way of life emerged, with a never ending undercurrent of unknowns ahead.
The End
Authored by Lila
The last leg of our journey was characterized by deep, deep, deep, deeeep connection.
Throughout April and May—our final months together—we truly experienced the liberation, synchronicity, and love that comes from shared leadership and living with the land. Our weekly house meetings (previously an arduous and complicated task) unraveled with ease. Our cooking rotations seamlessly flowed into our other rhythms. We communicated with compassion and presence. Our seedlings strengthened with the increasing sunlight, alongside our collective commitment to living, breathing, and being together… alongside our collective commitment to make space for our whole selves to manifest.
This doesn’t mean our struggles disappeared. Especially with the extraordinary precariousness of a COVID-impacted world, our final months together were decorated with emotional ups and downs. There were many pieces that held us together during this time—the gift that is the Place Corps house, Hawthorne Valley cows, walks in the woods, calls from our family, raw milk, and movie nights, to name a few— and yet, overall, there was something greater that kept us going. There’s some intangible magic of communal living that made quarantine not only manageable but overflowing with play, celebration, warmth, compassion, laughter, radical acceptance, and whatever is the exact opposite of “social distancing.”
Hence, the name of this collective piece:
How to Thrive in the Apocalypse, with Friends
Spring Recipe
Crafted by Eleanor
Seasonal Embodiment
Compiled by Martha
Spring Tree Planting
Authored by Sophia
… Transitioning …