Amy Lenzo

Lessons from Kanab

John Lynch has been bringing outdoor leadership students to Kanab Creek Wilderness for over ten years. Each visit, however, offers the clear truth that the land is the real teacher. Kanab Creek, and presumably all wild places, have a knack for providing insight around the greater lessons of life. In this case, they are uniquely delivered to each individual through the voice of the earth as translated by the desert. The attached articles is a short reflection describing a day of communion and muse between a man and Kanab Creek: Lessons-from-Kandab

Let’s Go Outside

Cool video from the Let’s Go Outside Revolution, sent in by our keen web-watcher Chitola Utsanami.

Beautiful Omo

A link to this video showcasing the beauty of the Omo people was sent to us by Chitola Utsanami (aka Jorge Conesa-Sevilla)

Recovering the Eco Unconscious

By Robin E. Gates

Abstract: Western culture has a history of union and subsequent separation from nature. This split between spirit and nature, psyche and soma, intellect and emotion, science, philosophy, and religion, manifests in our individual and collective consciousness creating crises that span the spectrum of human experience, from the psychological to the environmental. Since we have within our unconscious memories of our being in union with nature, it is a matter of recovering them through what Carl Jung called the individuation process; whereby, a person develops one’s unique individuality from that which has been imposed on him or her from the environment. An expansion of consciousness and recovery of the eco-unconscious is achieved by the confrontation with and integration of unconscious material culminating in coniunctio, or union of the opposites. Download the full article (pdf).

Sleeping Bear

Friends from England were visiting us here on Vancouver Island. On a beautiful crisp, clear Autumn day we took them for a hike on the Holt Creek Trail by the Cowichan River; a great place to enjoy the Fall colours. It was very beautiful but it didn’t smell too great because of the rotting salmon carcasses along the river bank. We encountered one dead salmon on the trail some distance from the river. This was a bit of a mystery. The salmon was too big to have been carried by a bird and it had been bitten but not eaten. The mystery was probably solved a few minutes later when we came upon a very large bear sleeping on a log. He/she was apparently too full to finish the last fish and took a nap while digesting. We did not wake the bear, but photographed it through a zoom lens and then quietly continued along the trail, feeling very fortunate.

John Scull

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John is a volunteer environmental educator and community conservation activist living on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. He is a founding member of ICE. Visit www.naturecowichan.net to see what he does or Click Here for links to some of his articles about ecology and ecopsychology.

Ecopsychology Journal

If you don’t yet know about the peer-reviewed quarterly journal, Ecopsychology, you’ll want to! Volume Two, Issue 4 contains a review written by our own John Scull of ICE: Review of Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy by Peter G. Brown and Geoffrey Garver, with Keith Helmuth, Robert Howell, and Steve Szeghi.

Ecopsychology and the Generative Approach

from Daniel Schwab, a video relating the correspondences between ecopsychology and Christopher Alexander’s generative approach to architecture, in several parts:

Schwab argues that the ecopsychology platform is shared to a high degree by architect Christopher Alexander (author of A Pattern Language and The Nature of Order) and that an ecopsychological understanding could enrich a nature-like approach to architecture.

The video was created for the 2011 Portland Urban Architecture Laboratory 2011 International Conference on “Generative Process, Patterns and the Urban Challenge.”

The EarthLab Carbon Calculator

Nick Uren from the EarthLab Foundation sent us this tool to help us each make a personal difference in the fight against climate change.

“They Know Not What They Do”

What the Oil Spill Reveals About Our Ethical “Gulf”
by Catriona MacGregor

The recent oil spill in the Gulf is one of our worst environmental disasters with thousands of gallons of oil pouring into the ocean every day harming thousands of living things from Sea Turtles to Dolphins. This occurrence reflects our society’s disconnection from Natural Laws and lack of regard for life. Since all life is sacred and connected, we not only harm other species, we harm ourselves.

The oil spill and other man made damage to other life – affects us at a deep level. More and more people are experiencing a profound sadness and sense of loss when our actions harm other species. Since we are connected to other life forms at not just physical level, but also at an energetic and spiritual level, it is no wonder that we experience emotional and psychic pain when we destroy life. In “Partnering with Nature: The Wild Path to Reconnecting with the Earth” I refer to this rising syndrome as “eco-anxiety”.
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From John Seed: October 2011

News
John Seed has just received word that The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s “Australia-India Council” has agreed to fund his expenses for 6-weeks of Climate Change, Despair and Empowerment workshops around India from Feb 2012.

Reports
The International Day of Action for the Amazon on August 22, 2011, was great! Photos (downloaded as a pdf) and TV News Clip:

Upcoming Programs
November 4-7
Nourishing Ecological Identity – A Wild Journey in the Tarkine with John Seed
Nov 25 – Dec 2
Buddha by the Beach (download pdf), Dharma Gathering, Mid-north Coast NSW, Australia

Links
The Rainforest Information Center

Body of God

“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature… God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature, and it has often been said by philosophers that nature is the will of God. I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see.”
– Frank Lloyd Wright

Eco Friendly Church

The Sacred Garden Love and Light Church in Lake Worth, Florida holds an eco friendly church service that meets outdoors only.

New Television Series

Tony Wright just launched a new television series in the UK that “pulls it all back to our symbiotic origins (with plants)”. Here’s a sneak peek:

An Engineer’s Guide

Clark Mumaw’s paper, An Engineer’s Guide to Better Health and Applied Ecopsychology, describes his studies with Dr Michael Cohen and his Institute of Global Education and shows how he has applied these studies in his own life. Download the pdf here.

Clark grew up in rural farmland in northern Indiana near the conservative Amish settlements. As a young man, his life was interrupted by a stroke, and on dismissal from the hospital Clark needed a wheelchair, due to almost complete paralysis in his left arm and left leg. Clark now finds himself working towards a PhD in eco-psychology, which he plans to use as a new career path teaching others how to benefit from nature like he has. His recovery is progressing well enough to hope for a full recovery. Clark lives in Oxford, OH and may be reached at crumaw@yahoo.com.

Finding Galleon’s Lap

by John Wickham

As a child I was perplexed why mountain climbers would return empty-handed. They always ascended as if hunting for something lost or left behind. Then venturing up with my parents to Camels Hump in Vermont, I too looked around. But the journey down lasted 30 years until I climbed back for the meaning of the summit.

Still a youth, my descent from the mountain began with a emotional detour. I weathered internal, opposing forces. While discovering the passion of the guitar and composing, I was playing war with friends as soldier-boys. As a young adult I pursued both vocations, music and the Army. But lurking in the underworld were the disharmony and battles for my soul. Psychic-combat left no victors, only a downward trail into fog and darkness.

My last Army duty was at Fort Carson, Colorado. The Post sits like an armpit wedged between the Great Plains and the jutting Rocky Mountains. Fierce lightning storms would often park there in the Summer. It was then I felt a magnetic tug upwards to misty peaks that seemed to pierce through into sunlight.

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