Trathen Heckman is founding executive director of Daily Acts Organization, executive director of Green Sangha, and publisher of Ripples Journal. An author, activist, and wordsmith, Trathen organizes to harness the power of daily actions to restore the world. He teaches permaculture in the Bay Area and lives in the Petaluma River Watershed where he grows food, medicine, and wonder while working to compost apathy and lack.
The whole Bay Area is a blessed slice of life. Once fecund with grizzlies, salmon, a sky full of birds, ancient redwoods, oaks and old growth grasses, this confluence of fertile relations is our true heritage. While there is still much richness here, like sacred places all across this planet; this land, sky, and these waters have been devastated. And so what grows here now? Tucked away in nooks and crannies all across northern California is an emerging culture of connection deeply committed to stewarding life. The gift of living in these painful and inspiring times and in this amazing place is to connect the dots between our brightly lit high spots and to boldly be a beacon for others. For this, we need healthy and tasty place-based relations as models and a new set of cultural reference points. From here we can better recognize, support, and cultivate within our communities the spirit, tenacity and creativity to restore this land and restore our lives. What follows are few of the people and places that leave me astounded by the beauty and bounty in and all around us.
At the northern reach of the Salmon Creek Watershed in West Sonoma County lie the long, soft views of Ocean Song Farm and Wilderness Center. On 360 acres of coastal hills with views from Mt. Tamalpais to Point Reyes, the inspiring folks at Ocean Song host events, retreats, provide environmental education and empower people to grow their own food. While many amazing stewards have tended this land through the years, land manager Benjamin Fahrer infuses permaculture design with bio-intensive techniques to produce whole-systems farming. While amidst an expanse of land, Benjamin and his wife Gabrielle, an amazing artist and chef, are living-large in eco-efficacious quarters. For his thesis project at New College of California, Benjamin designed their self-reliant 465 square-foot solar, moveable, and micro homestead.
Two watersheds over, the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center is teeming with biological diversity and hopeful solutions for a sane future. Once the site of the famed Farallons Institute, for over a decade Occidental, an organization and intentional community, has been addressing environmental, social and economic crises with innovative and practical solutions, style and beauty. The land is eighty acres of meadow, mixed oak, fir and redwood forests with bio-intensive organic gardens and orchards containing 3,000 varieties of heirloom annuals and 1,000 varieties of edible, medicinal and ornamental perennials. The richness of this place is matched by the community of artists, educators, biologists and boundless activists that tend it. They teach a variety of eco-groovy courses and workshops, as well as have seasonal plant sales to sow seeds of edible delight and conscious might.
Of course not all of us live in such beautiful rural places, but with the spark of inspiration we can reclaim our urban spaces. In the wilds of San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury sits the humble abode of Kevin Bayuk, Holly Edson and their daughter Sophia. Taking the inspiration of the above-mentioned sites to the cityscape, in less than two years Kevin and Holly have transformed their backyard into a place of food, medicine and rainwater fed wonder. Powered by omelets from their three Indian Runner ducks, who bathe in a recycled tub and nest in a reclaimed desk converted into a coop, they are growing a diversity of garden treats, including shitake, hen of the woods and reishi mushrooms, two dozen reseeding edible annuals, eight varieties of berries, two dozen herbs, artichokes, asparagus and a diversity of fruit trees including figs, mulberry, plum, apricot and sour cherry.
Everyday there is a world that is rapidly unraveling and also one that is being born. Which do you feed? Can you recognize the difference in the grocery aisle, walking down the street, in the relations you keep? There are amazing people and places all around us. The more we put our attention to recognizing, supporting and cultivating these biological and social communities, the better our ability to honor and renew the fertile relations that once roamed this land. Why not cultivate your ability to be astounded into daily sustainable action by the beauty and bounty in and all around you?
