Cairns #48
End of the Long Nights, 2007
The mission of H.O.P.E. is to turn the prow of our entropyship, the Earth,
back upstream so that Earth’s evolving consciousness may explore the
headwaters of the Universe for billions of years to come. The work of H.O.P.E.
is to make visible the larger relationships we live within - relationships that
inspire visions of wonder and works of hope.
Lowering
the baseline of winter floods
Every
side stream I see, as I kayak the Sacramento River, flows at the base of a ten
foot “gully” etched into a broad level expanse of fertile soil. I’ve never
read an explanation for this but have finally come up with my own: it may be an
unintended hydrologic consequence of a dam like Shasta Dam that is used for
“flood control.” The Sacramento River drains an area that receives most of
its precipitation as winter rains. Storms are often intense locally, putting a
lot of water in one sub-drainage of the river while not causing the main stem of
the river to rise significantly. But every ten or so El Nino years, we get rainy
seasons when it rains throughout the region for two or three weeks. Those are
the flood events that Shasta Dam controls. A lot of water rushes down from all
the headwaters. The lake level can be rising a foot an hour. The dam managers do
a dance with the weather forecasts. They want to keep the outflow low enough to
prevent serious flooding downstream but they also don’t want to have the
inflow so much greater than outflow that the water overtops the dam. So outflow
must increase. The main stem rises several feet. But it’s only a portion of
what it would be without the dam. It has been more than sixty years since the
Sacramento has swelled to full flood.
What
happened predam during full flood? The main stem would rise ten or fifteen feet.
The rising river backed into every side drainage, forming backwaters where the
flood current swirled off into slow eddies. Lots of a flood’s load drops off
in eddies. In addition, the eroding material being carried down by the side
stream hits this slack water and drops out. Over time, the lower end of all the
side drainages fill with level deposits of fertile sandy silt. It’s a
floodplain, not of the side stream, but of the main Sacramento. Loam soil
deposits are 30 feet deep in some places. Some of these stream floodplains are
ten miles upstream; the river backed up that far.
In
following winters, local storms would send floods down certain side drainages.
The local flood would rush across this level terrace and start eroding down
through it. Every ten years or so, however, the region-wide storms would fill
northern California and the Sacramento would back up into every side drainage
and level it again with silt.
But
now Shasta Dam prevents the main stem from rising high enough to back up into
all those side drainages. Now every flood that comes down a side drainage flows
towards a river held relatively low. Over the decades, all the side drainages
have cut down through their deposits and now flow ten feet below the level
terraces where the floods once swirled off in huge eddies.
Chrysalis
news
Chrysalis
is moving towards something amazing. Long-time readers know that Chrysalis, the
charter school my wife and I helped found, has been site-challenged for the last
couple of years. This has limited the school’s power. Using two inadequate
rented sites separated by five miles has caused all of us, teachers and parents
alike, to have to expend far more time and energy in everything we do.
The challenge has occupied far more of my attention and consciousness
than I would wish, as the school administrator. However, we have held steady in
the hope that allies will emerge to help us in our good work.
Suddenly,
in the last two months, a path is opening up more perfect than I ever could have
imagined. It is not yet definite and barriers could still arise, but we might be
receiving the donation of a 275 acre ranch that is perfect from the perspective
of Chrysalis’s educational mission. The spine of the ranch is a year-round
stream that has salmon spawning in the fall. The stream’s (actually Sacramento
River’s) floodplain forms more than a hundred acres of the ranch’s prime
agricultural soil. This portion of the ranch is currently being managed as
alfalfa and cattle range. The floodplain ends at a steep slope that rises about
fifty feet onto mostly open “plains” with a few inches of poor soil above
hardpan. The school would be on this non-arable rise with views overlooking the
fields below and looking out towards Mt. Shasta and Mt. Lassen. Near the school
site is a historic pioneer cemetery that is a wonderful educational—and
philosophical—resource for the students. (Many infant graves there.) On the
other side of the road is a 2000+ acre ranch that has a conservation easement so
between the two ranches, there will be a vast expanse preserved in perpetuity as
open space. This is important because there is a stillness and peace about this
area that drew Alysia and me instantly the first time we encountered the area
more than ten years ago. The first time I showed Alysia the pioneer cemetery,
she wanted to be buried there.
One
of the reasons the donors like Chrysalis is because we rise to the idea of
managing the land “in perpetuity.” As we and the donors talk to people
around us, they often say that “in perpetuity” means hopefully two or three
generations because you can’t control the future. “In perpetuity” is a
time scale we humans don’t practice much but it is a wonderful mindset to
operate from. The National Park Service, at its finest, practices that mindset.
In perpetuity means that ten thousand years from now, another Ice Age might
bring a glacier down into the valley so one can’t state that the land will
always be planted in apple orchards. One needs a managing governance that is
held firmly to the intent while being given the flexibility to maintain it in
the face of unpredictable changes. My current formulation of our intent is “It
is the intent of the Chrysalis Nonprofit to maintain the ___ Ranch in perpetuity
as an undivided and intact, vibrant, integrated living system that supports
local biodiversity while contributing to the well-being of the human community,
especially by deepening learning about the connection between humans and the
rest of the natural world.”
What
excites me about this possible donation, beyond the land itself, is the synergy
I envision within an organization that is immersing children in understanding
and caring for the land at the same time the adults of the organization are
learning to manage it more wisely. The two missions reinforce one another. At
this site, I truly believe Chrysalis will be positioned to develop into a
profound contributor to place-based education for centuries to come.
Another
wonderful advantage of a donation is that we would not have to spend our limited
funds on purchasing land. Instead they could go towards developing the site. Our
ultimate goal is a model “green” school. However, because of the
undeveloped, rural nature of the site and because our funds are limited, we have a cash-flow
challenge to get the site up and running even with using just the minimum number
of leased portable buildings. We received from the state a grant for $360,000
and a low interest loan of $250,000. That’s about what we have to work with
currently. If you know of anyone who would be interested in donating or lending
money to help us get established in our place for perpetuity, please let me
know.
Interesting
Convergence
This
year’s eighth grade class has gotten into an exploration of “our true
self.” I gave them the assignment of creating some expression either of their
true self or the interplay they feel between their true self and their culture
at large. Interestingly, most of them chose to express this through drawing.
Meanwhile,
the latest issue of Environmental Architecture and
Phenomenology had two
articles concerning the architect Christopher Alexander’s latest opus, The
Nature of Order.
In Alexander’s “Empirical Findings from The
Nature of Order,” I came
upon this complex but key sentence: “It appears that the process of making a
living environment succeeds or not
to the degree that the making process is based on the repeated use of the
criterion, ‘How much is this part, that part, or that whole like my true,
inner self?’”
I
think much of what I like about Chrysalis grew from our groping with that
question. Not in that particular phrasing but in that intent of the mind and
heart. An example is that the true self is always exploring, always stirring
together new experiences with established ideas. Chrysalis is a place where
students and teachers can bring in new ideas and pursue interests. We are not
confined to the track of a prescribed standards-based curriculum. An example of
this is that Alexander’s idea of the “true, inner self” as criterion tied
in so nicely with my eighth graders that I
read that sentence to them the next day and then asked, “what would a school
look like that matched your true, inner self? Describe that school.” I was
surprised at how easily the students got into productive thinking about the
topic. Interestingly, the most common response was some variation on a tree
house, both literally as a house in a tree and perhaps as a symbol of how the
roots grow down into the dark earth and the branches grow up into the airy
light.
“Beauty
is not on the map. Seek and ye shall find.”
I
love that quotation from On the Loose because it is so true. The
land draws us to beauty if we learn to follow its scent. I just love roaming
cross-country following my aesthetic nose. It is so different from following a
trail. One reason is the psychological open-endedness of it. I am responsible
for each step and each step leads to a new perspective that alters my intention
for the next step. When I’m off the trail, my eyes and mind are much more open
to being molded by the world around me.
But
there is another reason that has to do with the nature of the world. The way it
unfolds as I draw nearer. The way beauty nests. I’ve struggled with this essay
for a month and I can’t integrate it. So let me try two different approaches
to this subject.
The
first is specific. Cross-country hiking this winter led me to a terrain of
enticing gentle oak-covered hills set slightly higher than a vast prairie of
grasses stretching towards snow-capped peaks. The roaming uncovered an
unexpected side canyon full of green light. This canyon draws me back to roam.
One time I was just below its rimrock edge. A curving cliff of dark
emerald-green moss-covered rocks created an intimate, tree-filled space. But
with one step upslope, my eyes rose above the level of the rim rock and I looked
out onto a landscape of golden grasses and open slopes that left ample space for
a blue vast sky. I moved back and forth across the rimrock’s visual horizon.
In such a place I am fully aware of what an incredible gift movement, vision,
and consciousness are in combination with the surface of this earth. Two minutes
later, I am being lured by the expanding view up the open slopes towards a
gentle ridge. Living is dancing.
Here
is the second, more theoretical approach. In Christopher Alexander’s article,
he talks about “living centers” and how they arise in both the natural and
human-formed world. These centers interconnect in a recursive way that creates
other living centers on different scales. Through these connections, wholeness
is extended. These living centers induce deep feelings of connectedness. Perhaps
this explains the delight I feel on these walks. In seeking beauty, I am
exploring these connections, coming into the wholeness of a place. And this is
not metaphorical. Alexander’s deep theme is that these centers and connections
are empirical. They are the nature of the world itself, not a subjective feeling
we impart to it. The example that comes out of my walking is drainages. Water
flows and gathers and nourishes in certain ways and these patterns create
fractal drainage patterns that shape (and connect) the land and these shapes are
one of the constant forces guiding my cross-country walking. As I follow the
slopes, there is a rhythm, a predictable scent ahead of what Alexander calls
“living centers.” It’s part of the land, and seeking this beauty brings me
into connection with the nature of the world.
P.S.
I took Alysia to this area the day after writing the above. In the canyon, I saw
an example of living centers. Three large blocky boulders dominated a section of
stream channel. Each green moss covered boulder was a living center. A pile of
small, rounded rocks filled each of the voids between these rocks. Each of these
piles was another living center on a smaller scale filling in between the larger
living centers with an opposite (small, rounded many, filling in) pattern yet
echoing the dominant pattern. That is how wholeness grows and extends.
Moving
Upstream
A
metaphor I use in my book is “moving higher in the drainage” to find a place
that is within our power to shift. I’ve always kept this image as a
non-specific metaphor because I believe it is then a powerful brainstorming tool
for working with numerous downward spirals. However, many recent experiences
suggest the importance of the following example.
Do
the work of bringing into each interaction with others the magic of selfless
service. This is more than a Pollyanish sentiment of “be nice to others.” I
purposely combine “work” with “magic.”
I
believe one of the most important spiritual habits we need to adopt is that many
of the blessings of life come from work. Unfortunately, so many of us earn cash
by working for others that “work” has taken on the sense of something we
wouldn’t be doing if we had enough money. But I mean “work” in the way
physicists mean it; work is that which raises the potential energy of something.
Good work can be like a dancer doing daily stretches. A light yet steady upward
exertion; a bringing of one’s best with an intention of speaking truth; an
awareness that at any moment the light within us all might suddenly shine
brighter.
There was a period in my life when I was kind and helpful to those whom I thought might be helpful to me later. This was judgmental, manipulative, and, more importantly, limiting. The more appropriate image for each interaction is rain touching the ground. One of us is the rain drop; the other, the soil. The rain drop moistens the soil and creates a whole new biochemistry of possibilities. The soil absorbs the rain drop and stops its seaward momentum, transforming its kinetic energy into a potential energy that can create new possibilities. Possibilities emerge that neither rain drop nor soil alone could imagine. One of the possibilities that occasionally emerges in human interactions is the kind we later tell stories about—some unanticipated synchronicity creating a fantastic collaboration. These definitely happen but there is also a smaller magic happening on a daily level that is just as important. These courteous interactions create trust and friendliness and a gentle opening, which allow other such interactions to flourish. This creates the “magic” atmosphere of “who knows what is possible?”
YouTube
I’ve
taken the three minute “conclusion” of my DVD, The
Upward Spiral, and put it
on YouTube where hopefully its message of hope can reach a new audience.
You
can watch it by going to my homepage (www.krafel.net)
and following the link. I’d appreciate it if you could go there and both give
a rating to the three minute section and email the link to others who you think
would enjoy it. Those are the things that help YouTube submissions rise high
enough in the “rankings” to attract the attention of those searching for
something new and different. Thank you in advance for your help this way.
I also uploaded videos of two very short talks I gave at church that I think you would enjoy. One is a fun talk about the complexity of time lags. The other is a summary of what flowing water has taught me about dancing with upward spirals. You can get to them in one of two ways. One is to go from my homepage to the H.O.P.E. page where there are links to the two videos. The other way is, if you are at the Upward Spiral YouTube page, to click on the button to see other videos by the same person.