Welcome from the Nature Center. Over the past two months, we've been drawn into the season of prolific buds and blooms. Highlights right now are Trillium ovatum and Trillium albidum, both opening their petals along the Creek Trail; Petasites frigidis var. palmatus, blooming next to Anthony Creek; the swelling red buds of Vaccinium parviflorum, following similar performances from Corylus cornuta var. californica, Ribes sanguineum, and others; the striped stalks of Corallorhiza striata emerging from the forest floor; leaves of Dicentra formosa, Thalictrum occidentale, Hydrophyllum tenuipes, and others blanketing the ground in our restoration area; countless lilies sending up leaves and stalks; various deciduous trees re-declaring themselves; and Urtica dioica sharing its stinging, nutritious bounty in both garden and wild. Kerry and Chris have been harvesting nonnative Cytisus scoparius for compost and firewood, freeing up more space for blooming Oemleria cerasiformis and Berberis aquifolium, budding-out Toxidendron diversilobum, and other native vegetation along the Cedar, Pine, Fir, Elderberry, Madrone, and Pond trails. Meanwhile, the raucous calls of pileated woodpecker and ring-necked pheasant and the loud thumping of ruffed grouse ring out across the land, accompanied by the swooping of newly-arrived swallows and rufous hummingbirds and obvious nest-building activities by several year-round resident species, including American crows, one of whose favorite activities seems to be peeling old twigs and leaf stems off of the lichen-draped branches of ashes and oaks. Please read on...

In this early part of spring, all things are possibilities. The emerging cascara leaves show their veins dark and distinct: tiny, more perfect versions of what they soon become. A lacewing, hatched in the women's bathroom, unfurls wings which harden pristine and unspoiled, and I wonder what his/her plans are. Beautiful enough, she certainly isn’t in need of any grooming. The weather is mild, but ecstatic; first pinching us with frost in the morning, then warming to a glow that shimmers with webs and other signs of life, always with the possibility of enthusiastic gusts of wind or hail. With hail, the rule appears to be the more unexpected, the better. It seems that nature enjoys most to bring hail at the very moment when you have gradually yielded to the sun and laid first the raincoat, then the sweater, then the long underwear on various tree branches here and there.

 

In early February the Synthyris reniformis started blooming, and it is scattered around most of the paths and trails at Lost Valley still. For a time the Snow Queen really was queen as we all relished the first thoughts of spring it heralded. I don’t know what advantage its early blooming lends it, but the honeybees were very appreciative of the early nourishment. Sometime over the winter, one of our hives ran out of honey and the defeated honeybee bodies littered the front stoop of their hive. It is with great focus and apparent enthusiasm that the rest of the hives gather pollen as fast as the flowers can deliver. They seem to take little notice of all the other things coming to eat or gather at the same flowers. Bee Flies and Mason Bees and a variety of hemipterans come to probe with their long proboscises into nectaries. The mouthparts of the Syrphid Flies probe the stamens for the pollen instead, reminding me of horse lips grappling with large golden hay-flavored lollipops. The fawn lilies have leaves like ballet slippers. Their heads rest on stems like swans and their petals are satin dancers. These are blooming everywhere at the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, escalating in number with the rarefied air as we climb the hill to old Ole’s Oak.

 

Always with spring comes the relearning and learning of names of all the newcomers. A name can be a useful thing. The name can sometimes further our adventure and allow us to perceive more of what we are seeing. A certain character with a dark waving pattern on the leading edge of his wings and long proboscis appeared next to me in the meadow, looking dazed and cleaning himself. If I knew then what I knew now, that he is called the Greater Bee Fly, Bombylius major, then I might have learned that as a larva he ate the young of burrowing solitary bees. If I had known, I would have looked around for a little hole that might resemble such a cave of carnal delight from which he emerged into the daylight. Along the Creek Trail and on our other wanderings, Chris and I examine vegetation, seeking out leaf patterns and the shape of rosettes, and try to identify the young things before they are betrayed and outdone by the distinction of flower and color. The act of conjuring the names also summons images from far-flung mountains and meadows and the events and people that are linked to those places. Words like “Lousewort” and “Saxifraga” help to call back all of the fragments of my past and connect me to a larger story, delightfully complex and full of color and texture.

 

On one of the warmer days in February, I climbed up Eagles Rest to get a different perspective on the hills and forest around our Lost Valley. On the way up, I came upon a particular lichen that had a shape like one I am familiar with, except that it was brilliant chartreuse, like a strange appendage separated from its extraterrestrial. The fragment that I put into my pocket was either lost on my way home or sent through the washing machine. I didn’t see that lichen again until recently. At the base of a big old grandmother fir tree, I discovered another one like it, fallen from its perch higher up in the canopy. I think I have found a possible name for it and to call the thing Letharia gives it a measure of solidity it didn’t have for me previously. I know it wasn’t an anomaly or a dream or a trick of the light, or something an alien left in the woods. It was something that happened, and something that happens still, particularly on pines and junipers, according to my reference book. I haven’t sent it through a dichotomous key or found a species for it, but it is a place to settle for a while, the way the flies and bees do on the crabapple flowers. It gives me hope that I will see it again, and I look forward to being surprised again by some other aspect of it and its kin.

 

Sometimes, though, I prefer the soft focus approach to my surroundings. I find myself in lovely dusk light with stars overhead, heavy tree branches still bare that twirl as I pass them, all serenaded by the evening songs of newly arrived birds and I don’t need to know what star? What tree? What birds? In those moments, it is less important to be separate individuals than it is to all be part of one beautiful place.

 

Learn how to live more sustainably, and how to design environmentally and social healthy human settlements! This two-month residential program at Lost Valley Educational Center focuses on building a range of conceptual, design, and hands-on skills to help you create sustainable communities from the home scale to the village scale. This course includes a full Permaculture Design course and Ecovillage Design Education course. Students may be able to receive independent study or internship college credit at this course. Check with EPI and your department if interested in taking this course for college credit. Subjects include organic agriculture, natural building, appropriate technology and renewable energy, ecoforestry, landscape site analysis and design, and organizing and structuring intentional communities and ecovillages for social sustainability.

Have you ever wondered how to create a home that is energy efficient, environmentally friendly, and designed for both human comfort and integration into the natural surroundings? This three-week intensive offers a broad overview of the elements of home building and design with a focus on Permaculture principles. Learn about the basics of building from foundations to roofing. Become familiar with natural building and sustainable techniques. Participants will have direct involvement in hands-on practice sessions and ongoing building projects in various stages of construction. Find out more about appropriate technologies you could be using in your home today.

This is the same overall content as our summer course, but in a shorter format, with a bit less hands-on activities.

The Ecovillage and Permaculture Institute at Lost Valley Educational Center offers experiential education for adults in subjects related to ecological sustainability and regeneration and sustainable communities. See www.lostvalley.org [0] for more information.

Lost Valley Sustainability Tour:
We are creating a series of more than thirty engraved interpretive signs to educate visitors about sustainability features of our developing ecovillage. These signs will explore such topics as bike/pedestrian-friendly design, local food, reusing/recycling, and the ecological benefits of cooperative living, and will explain features such as the cob welcome kiosk, cob phone booth, solar water heaters and showers, solar wood-drying sheds, sustainably harvested wood floors, solar cooker, hayboxes, photovoltaic system, cordwood sauna, papercrete pumphouse, forest gardens, energy-saving retrofits of existing buildings, and more.

Nature Center Handbook and Trail Guide Development:
Work on a Nature Center informational handbook has been partially completed, but has stalled due to time and funding limitations. A Nature Center Handbook and Trail Guide would complement the already-existing trail signs and plant identification signs to make our trail system much more educational for visitors.

Native Plants and Permaculture May 2007 Conference Proceedings:
We recorded every session at May's Native Plants and Permaculture conference--all that remains is to finish transcribing the presentations and discussions, edit the transcripts into readable form, and publish. It's not a minor undertaking, but with your help we can bring it to completion.

Shrub and Tree Planting, Carbon Emissions Offset:
One of the most effective ways to offset personal carbon emissions is through the planting of trees and shrubs to sequester carbon. Our permaculture designs and ecological restoration efforts depend on our ability to acquire plants, including nursery stock of species and varieties that we cannot grow ourselves. Your contribution will help us establish edible, useful, and ecologically beneficial plantings here at Lost Valley, increasing both our long-term sustainability and our ability to educate others.

Ecovillage and Permaculture Design Program Scholarships:
Help those who cannot afford to pay full price for our Ecovillage and Permaculture Design courses to be able to attend. We are especially interested in reaching diverse and disadvantaged populations with these courses, which provide essential information and skills that empower individuals and communities to design their lives more sustainably and live more cooperatively.

Lost Valley Internships:
Some of our most essential work is done by interns--those who come to us for periods of three to twelve months to assist us in our various project areas (kitchen, garden, land, outreach, technical support, etc.) while acquiring valuable skills and learning about community. Hosting, housing, and feeding interns entails expenses to us (approximately $200 per intern per month). Your support in this area will allow us to accept more interns, which in turn will enable us to accomplish more work, more effectively.

For more information, please see www.lostvalley.org/sponsorshipopportunities [0].