In 1987 a small group of intrepid souls purchased 320 acres of virgin land out at the end of a dirt road in rural Northern California. Over the next 30-plus years, to that land was painstakingly added what was needed to create a retreat, while simultaneously protecting all that had been calling that spot of earth home since long before we thought of joining them.
When we first arrived the place was conspicuously silent. No birds. No squirrels. Not even a deer to be glimpsed. Conventional wisdom was that the introduction of humans would drive away everyone else, requiring shy creatures to melt further back into the brush. Not so. As we began to erect the structures (giant army tents at first) that we would need to be able to stay on the property, the creatures began to make themselves visible. This trend continued until, even at the pre-pandemic height of retreat season, there were always far more non-humans retreating than there were humans.
With the advent of the pandemic our lifestyle shifted dramatically, as for so many people. No more retreats. No more visiting monks. No more assistance with the always impressive list of tasks that must be done to keep up 320 acres of woods. The pandemic, of course, was piled on top of the obvious direction of global warming. We put in huge water tanks to capture the winter rains that would see us through the long, increasingly hot and dry summers. Yet even that extra water has not enabled the garden to survive the blistering sun.
Forest fires have been a part of forests for as long as there have been forests. As we’ve learned, fire is necessary to keep the forests pruned and vibrant. But global warming has turned a natural self-care process for the woods into a disaster for all involved. Temperatures reaching unsustainable levels each year for more and more days out of the year. Smoke from the hundreds of thousands of acres being incinerated making it dangerous even to go outside.
With the passing months, it has become increasingly clear that staying here is not an option. We can’t keep up the Monastery grounds, we can’t assist others who have made this their home, we can’t bring people here with the threat of fires, and we can’t in good conscience welcome people who would be traveling here during the pandemic.
When we watched the movie “Kiss the Ground,” we saw the possibility of the 320 acres we have loved so dearly and treasured so passionately having a new life in service to the planet, assisting to capture carbon, bring down the rising temperatures, and assisting humans to enjoy this beautiful home a while longer. We’re no longer pursuing a conventional real estate approach to “sell” the property and have begun the search for those who would want to care for the land as we have, only with this new purpose. Alas, those folks are hard to find.
However, we are making progress! We are in conversations with an organization that specializes in putting the people who want to preserve a forest together with a forest they can preserve. This organization that does the introductions between forests and foresters is very much in demand, but has decided to take us on, based primarily on how passionately we want this land to continue to be cared for.
As this process has unfolded, possibilities have regularly dropped in for us about where to go next. One of those came in the form of hearing about a little town in Western Washington called Sequim. Sunny Sequim. Western Washington is exquisitely beautiful but it’s always been just too wet. Temperatures too cool. A bit overcast too regularly. The last few years have changed all that.
We’ve made several trips to Sequim, trying to get a feel for the place. Would it work for us as a home for practice? What does the “sunny” part mean really. For those who haven’t already googled it, we can tell you this. It is in the “Olympic rain shadow” across the Puget Sound from Seattle. Natives joke that the sun shines in Sequim 305 days of the year—though sometimes for only 5 minutes. The rainfall is light, perhaps a little too light if the area is going in the same direction as the rest of the West, averaging about 16-20 inches a year. That’s roughly what we get here, but the temperatures are much, much milder.
As all of this is proceeding, we have moved ahead with securing a new home for the practice in Sequim.
We’ve always done our best to care for the earth, within our means. We’re off the grid, grow the organic food we can and purchase what else we need from a local natural foods store, avoid plastic like the plague (we’ve found a local fellow who turns plastic bags into “wood” for building), recycle everything we can, use bamboo tissue, etc. Since learning about regenerative organic agriculture and carbon capture and sequestration, we’ve been eager to do our little part in taking care of “a little part” of the planet. For this reason, we’re going from 320 acres to 25 acres. This feels manageable even with a pandemic.
Our vision is to plant primarily native planets and trees, grow flowers and shrubs for the native birds, butterflies, and bees, assist in the healing of land that has suffered ill-treatment through traditional farming practices, learn about the care and feeding of wetlands, put a small Zen garden and gazebo around the pond, and generally enjoy a close collaboration with nature. Just as our vision in 1986 turned out to be quite different from what evolved over 35 years, we’re pretty confident this one is going to do some steep modification as well. We’re ready.
We’re ready and we hope you are too. Yes, there are those of us making the move and being on the land every day, getting started what we can get started now, but just as that 320 acres belonged (still does technically) to all of us, so does this little slice of paradise. In much the same way the project in Kantolomba, our family there, raising those kids, getting them off to and through college, and into their careers, has been a Sangha venture from beginning to end, so this current one can be. We hope to share our passion for ripping out lawns and planting native plants, finding out what habitat butterflies, bees, and birds need in a particular area and planting those. Patio organic gardens? We can all learn the latest in reduce, reuse, and recycle together. The joy of compost…
What about visiting? Yes. When this pandemic releases its hold on us and it’s once again relatively safe to have visitors (apparently colds and flus are more virulent than ever having been robbed of our presence to feed on for nearly two years), we are very eager to do that.
Everything we’ve all grown familiar with about practice remains the same. Still silent. Still a privileged environment. Still using everything in our experience to see how we cause ourselves to suffer so we can drop that and end suffering.
Gasshō,
cheri and ashwini