When machinery doesn’t exist, then you have to do the work yourself. Or do you? I’ve just come from a visit to the Upper Rhine… ….where herdsmen have guided travellers over the […]
Technology, Labour and Environment
Understanding Nature
This field of swiss grain above Lake Constance is a good example of the kind of conversations humans have with the earth. This represents technology brought from Asia to Europe and used […]
The World as a Decorative Object
Willow, Lake Constance Formal gardens transform the earth into a system of social arrangement. Relaxed gardens, the English gardens of the 18th and 19th centuries and their heirs, recreate this social arrangement […]
What is Nature?
Stein am Rhein It is not to be confused with the Earth or the biosphere. That is to continue the white shaming of the earth that plagues North America. Sometimes “nature” is […]
When Celts Become Christians
Beauty happens. Stein am Rhein, Switzerland
A Summer Home for the Family, On Earth and in the Sky
Here we are in a community garden in Stein am Rhein, Switzerland, an old roman fortress, and before that a 4000-year-old settlement where Lake Constance becomes the Rhine. A shaded picnic bench […]
Water Sprouts
Beurre D’Anjou Pear Tree in Healing Mode In pre-scientific knowledge, these vertical shoots, the result of aggressive and wrong-headed pruning, are known as “water sprouts”. The old knowledge says it well. The […]
A Walk in the Fog
Boundaries show the limits of consciousness. When they are foggy, magic happens. Look how this grove inhabits the fuzzy boundary of the fog. It holds to itself and yet extends, not only […]
The Wisdom Path of the Trees
Trees open. The opening is us, not them, but we can’t do it without them.
Trees Know More
Until we are among them, then we know more, too. These ancient celtic forests in the Jura are still home after a couple thousand years. That kind of deep knowledge attests to […]
Okanagan Okanogan 