Chile 2014: Volcano Climb

How do you climb the Villarrica volcano? The answer is: one step at a time, with instruction from professional guides who showed us how to use our ice picks to support our steady advance up the wet snow trail. The way up requires good knees, as well as a significant amount of sweat and patience, although no technical knowledge. At the summit, the volcano decides how long you get to stay – in our case, we had only just changed into our windproof gear before a cloud engulfed the view, and the wind began to send noxious gases our way. Our guides rounded us up and started us on our exhilarating descent, swiftly gliding on small plastic sleds down a snowy trail almost all the way to the bottom. After all our efforts to reach the top we would have liked to linger, but nature spoke, and this time we really had to listen.

Next up: Crunch time

Chile 2014: Dinner with a Friend

Max is not just our van driver – he’s a knowledgeable environmentalist, an organic gardener, a seasoned ecotourism guide, and he’s also our friend. Although the group of students changes each year, Max welcomes us as if we were old friends, even those of us getting to know him for the first time. On every step of our journey in Pucon, Max has been there to provide guidance, support and insight into life, ecosystems and culture in this corner of Chile. One piece of Max wisdom is that you can achieve great things through love, caring and respect, and that learning to value one’s environment starts with respecting the people immediately around you. Our dinner as a group was a celebration of the ongoing friendship that has become a valuable part of our students’ Chile experience year after year. Salud!

Next up: Volcano Climb

Chile 2014 : Overnight Hike through El Cañi

by Lindsay Cox

The hike through El Cañi reserve was long and uphill, and could have been very arduous. But we took the advice of Rod Walker, our guide and the father of environmental education in Chile: walk slowly so you have the energy to feel, observe, and maybe take a moment to talk to the person next to you. The breeze introduced us to the fragrance of plant species which were new to our senses, and the birdsong and running water formed a constant yet varied natural music.  In the steep sections, the rhythm of slow walking helped carry us up, and we had time to reflect on our experiences thus far, which have been many in a few short days. Our overnight trip in El Cañi was the culmination of some of the concepts of human ecology we had been discussing– human beings cannot exist separately from nature, there is intrinsic value in exploring our connection to nature, and our connections with other people help us to expand our vision of how we interact with our world.

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Chile 2014: A Glimpse into the Mapuche Culture

by Lindsay Cox

Ruka Kimun was built for educational purposes in the style of a traditional Mapuche home. Historically, families in a Mapuche community would get together and form task groups to complete various parts of the construction – cutting straw, logging, preparing food for the workers – all was done using local materials, sometimes prepared far in advance.

We dined in the Ruka while we chatted with Curi, our guide, who is also a wood carver who creates traditional Mapuche statues. During our tour, we also visited the native forest of Cerro Ñielol, where we learned about medicinal plants and herbs still in use in Mapuche medicine.

To end the day, we visited the greenhouses of a Mapuche women dedicated to collecting and cultivating the seeds of native plants in order to prevent their extinction. It was a fascinating glimpse into one culture’s intimate relationship with its surroundings.

Next up: An overnight hiking trip to El Cañi nature preserve.

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All photos courtesy of Piedrosa Obrera del Arte (Nayade)

Chile 2014: Mud-slinging in Los Riscos

by Lindsay Cox 

I don’t believe we’ll soon forget our first day of mud-slinging (among other work) at the building site in Los Riscos, the future home of a Waldorf school run by Pucon resident and environmentalist Jerry Laker. Jorge and Leo, our mentors and builders, made it look so easy – scoop up a handful of the sand, clay, straw and manure mixture, take aim at a spot on the wall, and release! Once stuck on the wall, smooth with a spatula and repeat. Keep repeating, and you’ll soon have a smooth surface that will be ready for painting once dry. This looked easy, so we took aim and fired with confidence; our mudballs flopped onto the floor like sad, somewhat stinky pancakes. But with some patience from Jorge and Leo, and over the course of the next couple of hours, our hands became acquainted with the texture, elasticity and unique nature of our building material. Slinging the mixture on the wall became easier; we acquired just the right touch for smoothing so that our recently completed work would not cake off. Both students and teachers reached a rhythm, a harmony with our surroundings and our teammates; it seems we reached the point where we could just begin to put our fingers on the pulse of sustainable building.

Over three days of hands-on volunteer work (not only mud-slinging, but also hauling rock and sand, carpentry, and equipment repair) and conversations with our new friends in Los Riscos, our students got a first-hand peek at what it means to be a sustainable “do-it-yourselfer”. Use what is at hand (old bottles, cans and bags were used to fill interiors of walls), use what is local (sand, clay and manure), and use simple building methods that are accessible to people who are neither carpenters nor contractors. In this way, great things can be achieved – the old scheme is broken. What we assumed was unattainable without someone else’s specialized equipment and knowledge, as well as significant financial resources, really IS possible to do ourselves – sustainably, in harmony with the surrounding landscape and the local community, and in cooperation with others who share the same vision.  We don’t know what path our students will follow down the road, but we do know that their experiences at Los Riscos will have an impact. Not only that, but our students have made their own contribution, one that goes beyond  the walls they helped build – in traveling from halfway across the globe to spend their time volunteering at a sustainable school, they are sending a powerful message that our planet, and our future, are worth the effort.

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A Day in a Cani Sanctuary Forest

This is the land where stars live

in this sky.  You can hear water

singing its dreams.

From beyond the clouds that surge

out of these waters and this soil

our ancestors are dreaming us.

Their spirit, it is said, is the full moon,

And the silence, their beating heart.

Elicura Chihuaiaf, Mapuche poet

Today we spent a beautiful  Chilean summer day hiking  in the Cani Sanctuary Forest with Rod Walker, the father of Chilean ecotourism and a wise and spiritual man. The forest is the home of the Araucaria tree as well as many incredible species of plants and animals.  The Araucaria are one of only a few species of plants that have survived on Earth for over 200 million years, predating the period of the dinosaurs. It holds onto its survival by a thread in only a tiny geographic area, surviving only through the efforts of private non-governmental organizations.  We talked about technology, philosophy, religion, science, and especially the ecological plight of mankind.  Rod has hope for human’s continual existence as a species and feels that we are only at the very beginning of our awareness of the universe.  Greater and greater cosmic understanding awaits us in our evolution if we can avoid destroying our environment.  His fear is that our awareness of our potential for understanding may only come when we reach the precipice our excesses.

Sustainability Work

“Don’t sit this one out.  Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet.”  Carl Sagen

Clare and Alexi introduced us to the concept of a perma culture, designing food production to imitate how nature functions—using less energy in production than is contained in the products produced and eliminating use of substances that are not renewable.  At the heart of perma culture is sustainability. Forest gardening is an example of a new way of producing products.  It is a vertical rather than a horizonal productions method. Instead of clearing all trees to create production, the trees become one of the vertical layers of growth, creating shade for other crops at lower levels including root and surface crops.  Wood or fruit from the trees becomes part of the harvest.  An ecology of multiple plants and wildlife can be sustained in this diverse ecosystem.

Today we also worked in a terraced garden of multiple crops, continued installing a solar hot water unit, mixed and used paints made from natural product, finished and painted adobe walls, and lanscaped for natural drainage—practical endeavors of sustainability.

A Visit to the Mapuche Community

“The Sun shines not on us but in us.  The Rivers flow not past, but through us.” John Muir, Author and Conservationist

Today we were privileged to have Hector Cuiqueo Melivilu introduce us to the philosphy, life and traditions of the Mapuche people. Hector walked us through forests and taught us about medicinal plants. We heard Mapuche intruments and music, visited a Mapuche hospital with him, and he shared  Mapuche food in a ruka house.  Most of all, Hector opened us up to a different way of thinking about ourselves in relation to the natural world and the forces flowing into us and out of us– a philosphy that sees no separation between nature and human beings.  In conversation with him, we explored how this perspective can be useful in uniting communities to work in consort with natural forces for healing purposes and a more enlightened way of dealing with destructive forces.

A Day of Experiential Learning at KodKod

“Today’s problems cannot be solved if we still think the way we thought when we created them.”  Albert Einstein

We spent today with Claire, Alexi, Jerry, and Nacho, amazing people who have dedicated their lives to thinking and acting in ways that move us to see ourselves of part of the web of life on earth instead of separate and dominate.  We participated in work involving the building of a sustainable life— installing a solar hot water system, building with adobe we mixed from local materials,  gardening organically, landscaping harmony with earth’s natural forces.  In the evening wrap up session, all agreed with Laurence when he said that while striving to achieve a sustainable life was hard, the process created a deep satisfaction within that he had never felt before.

Sustainable Building at KodKod

 

The Age of the Earth

Adapted from Greenpeace, 1984

Planet Earth is 4,600 million years old. To convert this inconceivable length of time into a concept easier for our minds to handle, let’s imagine the earth to be a person 46 years of age. (Each year of this person’s life would represent 100 million years.)

We know nothing at all of the first 7 years of this lifetime, and have only very scanty information until the age of 42, when green plants began to spread across the earth. Dinosaurs and the great reptiles appeared only two years ago, when earth was 44.

We mammals arrived in the scene only eight months ago. It was middle of last week when simians resembling humans evolved into humans resembling simians. The last ‘Ice Age’ to envelop the earth took place – last weekend!

We, so called ‘modern’ human beings, have been around a mere four hours. During the last hour of those four hours, we discovered agriculture. Our famous Industrial Revolution began just one minute ago!

In these last 60 seconds of biological time, we have converted paradise into a garbage dump. We have caused the extinction of hundreds of species of animals and plants, pillaging the planet in our search for fuels, and now stand proudly admiring our rapid and spectacular ascent into ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ … when in reality we are teetering on the brink of the last great mass extinction, and the destruction of this oasis of life in the solar system.

We begin our study of human ecology by assessing our individual personal relationships with ecosystems, both the positive and negative aspects of those connections. We are meeting in a place called KodKod, a private enterprise that strives to connect its business to ecological education and sustainability. We will work on sustainable construction projects and learn from designers of projects that draw awareness of the ecological footprints of human development.