“Earth Mother is calling, her children home”
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She saved my number as DJ Sweatlodge, but I hadn't had a phone since the national guard bulldozed my last one, and I was on my way off-grid to finish my anticulture manifesto, while I moonlit as a farmhand. Honestly, I had no idea what kind of scenario I was walking into. I only knew that a small group of water protectors would be sweating for the solstice, no other details, but a complete trust that I would be in the right place. Not building expectations, leaves you much more free for adventure. Who knows what type of opportunity this return to ceremony could manifest? Who would want to?
And now this particular tale of crossroads has brought me to my own. I've internally debated the logistics of writing this book, and always landed on the ultimate faith that I will follow my heart and do whatever feels right in the moment. Well, the moment has come. How can I share the elegance created by the interwoven paths of the water protectors, without simultaneously drawing a blueprint of the movement and faxing it to dapl. Sure, I wrote about all that other stuff at camp, but I changed names and kept descriptions vague as I switched up a few details. Even with their admitted use of facebook hacking to map our infrastructure, the close-minded intelligence community would be hard pressed to get anything useful out of such a freshman attempt at prose.
But if I started connecting the dots of our family tree, while it would create a more compelling invitation for you to join us on this fantastical journey, I would have to remember that the journey is now. We're still in it. We are the resistance, and even though I know in my heart that we will win, I must resist the urge to write as though we already have. I can't risk compromising the revolution. If I am to build on characters previously seen on the Standing Rock Show, then I will be forced to censor myself for the good of the cause. I can't do it. I can only write from the heart.
So only one option for anonymity, extreme makeovers all around. Witness protection program for the whole family. You get a new name, you get a new name. Intentional vagueness and misinformation as I lead you on a narrative that one should assume, is more interconnected than even I understand. You may speculate on who is who and what it all means, may even get some of it right as I struggle to mask my love for the closest of allies, but for any definitive proof, you'll have to wait for the post-completion animated series I'm saving for retirement. And they say I don't plan ahead.
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I got to town at dawn, on the second day of ceremony, where Benjamin scooped me up and hauled me to the outskirts of the matrix. "Hoka, brother." Or "c’mon" or "it’s time to ride" or "s’go den." A Lakota battlecry to rally the team, though it seems that before we started shooting at them, it was more like an enthusiastic cheer at a pep rally.
It was still a good day to die, a spiritual warrior’s commitment of living life to its fullest, but also the heartsong of all who hold death as sacred as the life they live, and what better day than today? What an incredible honor to give my energy back to the Earth on such a magnificent day as today, and with that in your heart, nothing can stop you.
I remembered Ben a bit from the winter, we weren't too close, but I musta left a good enough taste in his mouth that he didn't hesitate to cover the import cost of getting the chef to camp. Well, not quite a camp, or even much of a farm for that matter, more like an elaborate homestead with agricidal tendencies. One could imagine the interesting conflicts with my new worldview, but I just practiced a little humility and saw this synchronicity as an opportunity to better understand another perspective. To see more clearly the gray area between gardening and farming. Plus, he was a water protector. A guardian of the sacred. A defender of the Earth and all participants of life. This was a biologically clean operation as humane as humanly possible. Maybe not a design of divine perfection, but certainly as close to Eden as I could hope to stumble onto with the first step of my new adventure.
And what is the possible alternative in today's concrete jungle? At my grandmother's, I ate the genetically modified run-off of mainstream factory farms, and had to fight just to keep it out of the microwave. So this has to be a better solution, right? Cutting out the cage of capitalism, but hanging onto the fences of ownership. Where exactly is the line between managing the garden and controlling it? What are the morally sound transitional steps we can grow through, as we wean our agricultural civilization off of the formula that led to its own obesity? Therein lies the question, the philosophies that consume my waking life, and how miraculous that I should arrive at such a destined nation at the precise climax of my aggregated culture. Or the coincidentally remarkable launching point for this next inward trajectory of breaking out.
This place was pretty much paradise. I couldn't hope to pray about envisioning a manifestation of a more perfect place to return to a good way of life. I stayed in the Apple barn, no longer an orchard, it served as a sort of hilltop headquarters and the primary kitchen on the farm. So, I have a room built onto the back of the kitchen? Mmhmm...
There were still a few Apple Trees though, and the Nectarines were exploding with flavor for another week or two. Fruit filled the bottom of the fridge, then a shelf stacked with egg cartons and big jars of raw milk at varying stages of separation. Matter of fact, picking me up had delayed the morning chores, we had to milk Lacey before she got too upset at us.
A quick walk to the horse barn and I was officially milking my first Cow. Neat. Trying to stay open minded as I explore the grayer areas of my unconscious conscience. The barn kitty rushes over for her payment, a few warm squirts to the face of today's on tap crème du jour, utterly delightful. Lacey doesn't seem too bothered by the whole ordeal, she led the way and knew exactly which stall we'd be in. And she knew we were late. Because everyday when she gets milked, she gets a nice big scoop of milled wheat. Her neck is in bars, and loose chains keep her from kicking, but this is certainly the highlight of her day. Far more luxurious than the animal farms in my head. Her and her cellmate share the fence with a big field, grass fed happy Cows, and the scoop of Wheat is as clean as kitty's milkbowl. Although he does have a hand crank mill, we used a half-Horse motor to finish grinding up last years grain harvest. Now, I might not be all that edumacated, but I don't reckon half a Horse would be all that strong.
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Horsepower. A modern day unit of strength, but one spouted out with little-to-no thought of what it really means. Here, there were two giant work Horses, complete with a utility belt of gadgets to be implemented at a moment's notice. The entire farm could be operated without oil. Very cool. The Wheat could be collected to the acoustic whoosh of a Horse drawn harvest, instead of the toxic vibrations of diesel exhaust. A two horsepower engine. Two Horses, being held in captivity, as they trade their lifeforce for the universal right of access to food. Sounds similar to both the slavery of our past, and the current brainwashing of the working class. Better grab a whip.
But these dudes have a kush job, never more than a few hours a day, a bucket of feed to convince us that it's symbiosis, plus they get a big fence to run around in, while they imagine what it's like out in the other 123 billion acres of planet that we are all supposed to be a part of. And they do seem to like working, they've been humavolved for that exact task, and their ability to follow commands remotely, actually expands their range of cart pulling convenience.
Could I possibly prefer petroleum over the sweat equity of an indentured servant? But how could I even own a Horse to begin with? How could I claim command over my brother's life essence? The two-legged came from the four-legged. Mitakuye Oyasin, we are all related. #endhumansupremacy
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But this is still the first day, I'm just taking it all in and experiencing the transition into the cleanest way of life I've ever experienced. This was my happiest day since camp, emotionally healthy, mentally stable, I had been working through my issues, and my prayers had just literally come true. And it hasn't stopped getting better since. This expectationless lifestyle has me expecting the impossible tomorrow. And somehow it just keeps happening.
We hopped in the truck and drove up the mountain to the sweat lodge, with gridless bootcamp already underway, it was time for me to learn to firetend for the inipi. I was pretty stoked. The coals were still smoldering from an overnight stump, so we prayed with some Tobacco and Saged the city off of ourselves. We sang a few songs into the hills, I had only picked up that one from camp, but I poured it out for all to hear. Less a poetic romanticization of nature, and more directly directed at the ears of our brother Charlie. He was out there on hembleciya. Up on the hill. Vision quest. Four days alone with our mother. With our creator. In ceremony. No food. No water. Left only with the distractions of internal dialog, as inner demons start to voice their opinions. It's time to pray.
Charlie was my homie, so I couldn't help but be bummed about waiting three more days to see him, but I also understood the importance of this sacred ceremony as he prepared for Sun Dance. Or I was beginning to at least. He was getting some work done inside that circle of prayer ties, purifying his mind, body, and spirit, to ensure maximum prayer capital at Sun Dance. I've even heard someone say that hembleciya is just as powerful a prayer as the vibration of the dance itself. A personal journey within, no distractions other than your own psyche, a connection to the stars as you cry out for a vision, a different way to pray than the collected effort of communal ritual. And we'll be at the foot of the hill, in the lodge, praying for you brother. You'll hear our song through the heat and darkness. You'll know that we're beside you. God it feels good to have returned to ceremony.
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So a couple of big logs running east to west, a bunch of small stuff between them, then four split pieces crosshatching a platform. The cradle. The mechanics of getting the rocks so freaking hot. Here, we don't need a fire big enough for a giant pile of lava rocks, we'd only use seven stones, or grandfathers. Benjamin credited the age and density of these east coast rocks with their warming sensations, they hold so much more energy of our ancestors, seven will be plenty, load 'em up.
We alternated holding stones as we prayed to the four directions, we thanked the spirits for hearing our prayers and joining our ceremony. A stone for Tunkasila, Grandfather Sky, the rain of the sun and all of the universe. And Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth, the world we came out of, not into, and our direct connection to the hierarchy of universal macrocosms. The last stone goes inside, the seventh direction is inward, and there lies the key to the entire map, yes, the creator within is the stuff legends are made of. With the cradle now rocked, we fully encapsulate the whole deal with wood, stones pop sometimes, so we have to fence them in for their own safety. No worries though, they'll burn their cage down in no time.
This time yesterday, I was stuffing the anxiety of surviving society into a knapsack, and now here I was in the calming spiritual center of such a magical mountain majesty. This spot was even more disconnected from colonization than the farm, which fostered a deeper connection to everything that actually matters. I was back. My body had returned to spirit. Felt like home. Then the others started showing up.
Brothers. Whether I knew them or not, they were water protectors. We are all related. But of course this infinitely complex fabric of existence never seems to disappoint, or we can just call it luck that every single person there, had also been in my very first sweat back at camp, my maiden voyage into the frozen depths of universal consciousness. Pretty cool, and I've spoken to other protectors who shared similar stories of uncanny coincidences surrounding their returns to the inipi. I hadn't really known most of these guys at camp, but we remembered each other enough to share the ultimate trust that comes with being a card carrying member of the water protecting club. JK, I don't carry an ID, sorry officer, musta left it in el segundo.
So we sweat, hot as fireballs, spiritually out of shape, but also more connected than ever, felt good, felt clean, and then came the best part. Instead of the fourth door leading to a winter wonderland of instant frostbite, we completed the purification ceremony with seven dunks into the clear water of the spring fed pond. The crispy mni ignited a new wave of connection, and apparently he does this year round, yikes. A few big gulps of water before the mud gets stirred, the only pollution making it this far up is that raining from the chemtrails above. It's a pretty solid platform that this dock provides the structural integrity of our circular life, I can't imagine a time when I would have eaten seafood less touched by the taint of man.
We regrouped around what was left of the fire, passed the chanupa, and sent our final heartstring vibrations into the universe through a puff of smoke. I grabbed a few Wineberries, wild Raspberries, and then back to HQ to light a fire under the chef. We still had hours of best daylight ever left, and I got to spend it in the kitchen I had been dreaming about. No electric stove. No propane. It was the exact woodburning kit that I had already written into manifestation.
A small compartment on the left for old barn wood to burn, super dry, doesn't take much if you split it up and make a crisscrossed stack. High heat above the fire and a gradient of warmth across the surface of the instrument, definitely took a little finesse to tune the fretless temperature gauge of the cast iron. There was a knob that redirected airflow once the fire was going, it retained the heat better and slowed the burn, as it circulated hot air over and around the central oven compartment.
Aho. Wopila Tanka. The exact farm implement I'd been actively trying to manifest, and there were still secret compartments and upgrades under the hood. There were sliding doors on the warming cabinets up top, and another warming chamber on the right that could also heat liquids, but it was the retrofitted aquacycle that kept us perpetually in hot water. A small tank was mounted inside of the firebox, and as the water inside it gained temperature, it was propelled towards the exterior reservoir that collected heat as it recirculated to the firebox tank. The by-product of this stove was a radiator full of hot water that lasted into the next day. Now that's convenience.
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Though nothing is ever quite as innocent as it seems, there's of course another eco-impact to take into account. Wait, are you talking about fire? Burning wood. Fire is who we are. It's even more fundamental to our under-evolved existence than agriculture. Certainly you're not going to suggest that we cut fire out of our diet too.
Doubtful. I have a sacred relationship with fire. Each Earthly path to spiritual connection is elemental in nature, and mine is most assuredly through the flame. But it has also given me the humility to take an honest look at what it means to be human. What it means to share the responsibility of learning the depths of our destruction, while understanding that we are the only ones that can do anything about it. So hopefully I don't have to put the heat on blast, would be a canon backfire if that happened, but just because we founded a civilization on it, I'm still not trying to burn down our planet. Luckily, the synchronistic conveniences of the natural world lighten the load of firewood a bit, it seems that wood releases the exact same amount of carbon emissions whether it's burned, or decomposes on the ground. Score.
So is that it then? Doesn't this mean that I can cook dinner without dilemma? Minimal impact and maximum flavor. I also realize that I'm out there on the spectrum, at times extreme with my philosophical meanderings, but I also feel that the approach is the only way to fully realize our greatest potential. My style of systematically shedding the artificial conveniences of the material system, is directly correlated with my concept of sharing the planet with the rest of the world. Do unto others. We are all related. So I can't do something that I wouldn't want you to do. Or that I wouldn't want everyone to do. All at the same time.
For a way of life to truly be non-destructive, it would still have to function at a global scale, and with our oversized population, this is more critical than ever. I could drive to the neighborhood grocery store, and if I was the only car on the planet, I bet she'd hardly even notice. But if all of a sudden there were billions of cars, and car factories, and car junkyards, and gas stations, and oil spills from leaky pipelines, well, now I can see that the little things do add up.
I want to be a positive contribution to the delinquency of society. I don't want every person to fence off an acre of ecosystem out of fear, I want them to give freely with the heartfelt feeling of abundance. I don't think they should each create a daily bag of garbage without thought, but I do think that if they considered the facts, if every single person realized that the pollution of the money train is the engine behind the entire clockworks, if every human Earthling joined me in boycotting the dollar while picking up trash and loving one another, then the world would be a much better place.
Now I'm just confused though, does that mean I can get fired up or not? My small cookstove is certainly of minimal impact, but what does a planet with eight billion fires look like? We're greenhousing this mother. But equal carbon emissions, remember? That wood would have had the same footprint, even if ours were nowhere to be seen. So, fire good. How long does that take though? For wood to decompose and release its energy? Way longer than burning a hole in your pocket. So it may have the same log-term effects in each tree's environmental impact study, but if eight billion fires each reduce a single tree's half-life to half a day, there will be a surefire change to the chemistry of life on Earth.
And just like fire, changes to our planet's melting pot are completely natural, and were happening long before we manifested our destiny. That's how we got invited to the party in the first place. It was the Cyanobacteria to be more specific. Some of the original inhabitants of our secondhand home, except that we didn't inherit it from our parents, we borrow it from our children.
For hundreds of millions of years, they pretty much had the place to themselves, as they excreted hunourmous amounts of the specific toxic emission that led to their own mass extinction. A poisonous by-product of their civilization's method of converting stored energy into motion. And they just let it spew into the atmosphere until the entire species suffocated in a cloud of fumes. A prehistorical precedent of an organism on a collision course for self destruction. And what was this life crippling substance exactly? Oxygen.
They created the oxygen rich skyline that choked out their worldview as it empowered the complexity of life on Earth. So does that make the Cyanobacteria the bad guy? A single species causing a global extinction event. But they followed natural law, so it was completely legal in the eyes of our mother, she was better off for it as she leveled up to a new stage of planetary evolution, it seems it was only the Cyanobacteria who fell out of paradise. Just like how she'll be way better off after the destructions of our civilization, once carbon breathing plastic eaters fill the next planetary niche.
Wide scale shifts in chemistry happen in nature, which result in temperature changes, which result in water cycle variances, which drastically change a giant island's ecology. Nothing to worry our pretty little heads over, global warming is a totally natural occurrence, it's just that so is a worldwide extinction of the particular species that brings it on. And their millions of years of experience, kind of nullifies the argument of a so-far-so-good track record.
So now we have to assume that each and every fire has a specific environmental impact. We can also assume that the ancient wisdom of the indigenous firekeeps, was just as in-tune with the language of the garden as anybody else was. Through their deeper connection to the bigger picture of the planet, they used ritual and prayer to find equilibrium between the yin and yang of the natural world. We pray to the Buffalo Nation, Tatanka Oyate, and through our sacred practice of taking only what we need, abundance remains for everyone. If instead, we lose sight and slaughter them all as we harvest their skin for profit, then the entire nomadic ecology that followed their migration is out of luck. So if my community's way of life preserves oxygen abounding habitats instead of clearcutting them, then there's a good chance that I'm all up to fire code.
And, also, we evolved with fire. Not for most of the trip, but longer than agriculture, by far. Pre-humans caught on to fire, which probably led to us being human in the first place. Anthropologetic scientists think that the use of fire led to adaptations of the jaw, meat was easier to chew when it was cooked, which selected for lighter mandibles. With less demand for energy to eat, the excess was converted to brainpower as the evolution of the ego grew out of hand. Central heat also greatly reduced the calories required to survive the night, which enabled farther travel into expanses previously unthinkable. So obviously fire is here to stay, even I'm not crazy enough to suggest otherwise, but it need not be overlooked that everything we do has an environmental impact, and once we've destroyed the environment, we will be the ones most impacted.
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Good thing I landed on yes, otherwise I'd have missed out on the best popcorn of my life. Benjamin had grown it last year and put it in the freezer before it was completely dried, so the moisture in some kernels, caused them to only half explode into little yellow puffs that almost tasted buttery. Even the unpopped ones crunched, now just a splash of super heady salt and it was on.
Salt was one of the few items imported to the farm. Salt, Black Peppercorns, Coconut oil, and the occasional dark chocolate bar. He had actually once gone three years without buying a single thing. But even in this land of plenty, it seems not everything can just materialize out of the Sun and the Earth and the water. Most of it though.
Assuming we can get the whole salt tree thing figured out, we're probably still a few years of global warming away from the appalachian Coconut orchard's fruition. So what are our options? If we can reduce the radius from which we obtain ninety-nine percent of our calories, what's the big deal of importing a select few of the necessities of nutrition? Well, we could start by looking at the monocropping practices of the impoverished countries who supply our growing demand, but I'd bet you already know where I stand on the single-handed homogenization of our planet's dwindling biodiversity.
Clear-cutting the Mangrove forests that regulate erosion, is likely the only way to meet production requirements, but the math gets a little tricky once this balloon of hot air gets over-inflated. Over the last ten years, our country's Coconut consumption has increased by 1000%. Isn't that grand? Especially for the equatorial economies in the equation. You'd think, but most people don't, and don't want to. Faced with the implications of impact, they'd have to examine the extreme poverty of Coconut farmers, some of the very poorest in the world.
With the single-crop success of a low-yield drupe eroding profit margins, growers only pocket about a dime per Coconut. In a good season, discounting of course the unnatural increase of natural disasters, they can expect to harvest around 18,000 pesticidal nuts per acre. Seems like a lot when I consider the dangerous task of climbing all those corporate ladders, but it's only eighteen hundred dollars a year per acre. Makes it a little tight to provide a proper healthcare package, but that works out since the child labor pool often employed, aren't really that experienced at contract negotiation. And if kids aren't your thing, if the animal nation makes up the priorities of your prerogatives, then it's probably worth mentioning the chained necks of the enslaved Monkeys who hand-picked your pina colada. But is it still vegan?
And is it any worse than all the other third world productions? Conscious consumers can always research the various fair-trade practices of purchase, but even once diesel powered industrialization revolves around to their side of the globe, they still have to ship the commodification of their backyard to ours. How much oil are you willing to burn for that piece of frybread? What are the acceptable limits of collateral damage? How long of a list of ecological destructions and primate rights violations, does it take before the cost of doing business outweighs the health benefit? How much oppression are you willing to personally spread into the world, so that you may enjoy a life of luxury? Only a sixteenth of the Earth's population live in this world of excess, the other ninety-four percent pay for it.
But how would we ever survive without it? The important importation of a non-native menu is a fundamental building block of colonization. Of course, so is a non-native population. Certainly they were on their way out anyway though, unless they were canoeing for Coconuts then their fragile little bodies would never have survived a winter without the tropical fruit. I'll hope that between my sarcasm and your intelligence, it's understood that I'm joking, and also that it's not funny. That's pretty standard though.
The Coconut explosion is arguably healthier than the long-chain fatty acids of hot oil mechanization, but there's no argument about the superiority of naturally evolved local food systems. The locavore enjoys the undeniably reliable nutrient richness of symbiotic partnerships, ones that simultaneously benefit the systems of ecology and digestion. The indigenous inhabitants of the land your grocery store sits on, were far healthier than the colonicization of our current occupation.
The promoters of agriculture and western medicine, who of course are one and the same, love to boast about their boost to human life expectancy. They do, however, forget to mention the part about agriculture being directly responsible for the very ailments that plague our population. Studies around the world have shown that when a culture transitions into an agricultural way of life, they suffer from widespread disease and bone deterioration. We become far more brittle than a planter’s Peanut farm.
Of course, the indigestion of inferior food isn't the only culprit, the decrease of personal living space and the increase of un-ergonomic hard labor can't be discounted when totaling the cost of this american life. Then there's the modern tradition of broken dental records. It's highly documented that pre-agricultural humans had way better teeth than their current counterparts, but we have to ensure the income brackets of the working class dentist's union somehow. American natives not only chewed with champion chompers, they regularly lived over a hundred years and were more highly evolved than us in every way. Well, every way except one.
While agriculture definitely lowers the quality of life of all organisms it encounters, humans are a pretty resilient group of people. We can even adapt to the agrinomic culture of civility. Only takes a few thousand years of weakened populations dying off, often the lower class with less access to healthcare, and not-so-suddenly we're able to digest gluten grains with the best of them. Kinda.
Egyptian archaeologists have found proof of deteriorated skeletal structures coinciding with their advent of agriculture, and then a slow restrengthening period spanning millenia. Native Americans, however, are just a few generations into the recovery program, and it's easy to see the degeneration of the so-called colonized cleansing of the continent. The Lakota have only been pushed into the white man's world over the last seven generations, starting with a treaty that pressured the tribes to cultivate the land that we temporarily deemed infertile enough to let them keep. Predisposed to diabetes and alcoholism, as well as a host of other diseases, and not nearly as known for their pearly white supremacy.
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So what were they like? The