Help! I'm Lost in Nature!

The honeymoon phase is over. It's getting real. But we are getting past it. All eight fellows at Allegheny Mountain.  Ok. Let me back up. For those of you that haven't been following, I am living on a mountain with about 11 other people: 8 fellows, a village manager, and a farm manager and his family. It has been an absolutely incredible, fulfilling experience so far and I am working to make the most of each and every second. Through foraging for medicinal herbs to leading children in the school garden, I have been exposed to more nontraditional ways of life than I even know existed in America. With this ongoing learning and working together, we have formed a community of farmers, educators, and students on the mountain. And this has worked really well and is continuing to work really well. But, with all communities and families, there are rough patches. The chanterelles I picked in Idaho. Fingers crossed I find them here too! Yesterday, as part of our perma...

This blogpost is double dipping a little bit. Although it was intended for the Allegheny Mountain Institute blog, I thought it also fits here too as a summary of how I have grown since I was a little 5 year old. My mom says I took some poetic license in writing this one, but in hindsight it all rings pretty true. “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”  -Aldo Leopold, father of environmental ethics and author of A Sand County Almanac Grayson and Mary-Ellen carrying groceries from the well-lit aisles of the garden When I was little, I dreamed of being a cashier at a grocery store. Because, like so many others, I fell trap to the danger of believing food lives in the well-lit aisles of a store. I wanted to do something important. What could be more important than working where the food lives at the grocery store? Though I hail fr...