Curt's Ponderings From The Bioshelter

  When I walk in the hills around my house every evening, I am moved to an ever deeper awareness of the beauty of the relationships that make our world function.   The glaciers melt and provide the water for the river in the valley. The salmon spawn in the rivers, providing food for bears and Eagles, which leave the uneaten parts in the forests to decay and fertilize the soil.   The plants flourish in amazing abundance, nourished by the soil as well as the fungi and other micro-organisms that are necessary to upload nutrients for the benefit of the plants.   The humans in this region have set aside this land as a state park, where only certain areas are to be used for human habitation and the rest is a nature preserve.   All of it is about relationships, in which what one creature does affects all others, resulting in a complex, and marvelous ecosystem. The amazingly relational nature of God's creation offers a window on the nature of Christ's birth, as well.  As

  For Christians the Christmas season traditionally runs all the way through the celebration of the arrival of the magi on January 6.   I have been using these days since Christmas to reflect more on Jesus and what his birth has meant for humanity and for all creation.   As this Christmas week has passed I have collected an amazing mixture of impressions.   I have enjoyed family gatherings, I have listened to the ongoing news of political brinksmanship, I have walked in these December evenings and marveled at their beauty, and I have learned of people struggling with things like the after-effects of storms and the grief and fear of the Newtown shootings. Through all of this I have wondered about the import of Jesus, born among us on that first Christmas.   I have been thinking about how to understand the difference it makes in our day-to-day lives that Jesus was born. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a well-known 20 th century theologian, pointed out that we approach the m

Yesterday I harvested the last of the peppers from the plants we grew in our neighbor’s greenhouse.   The use of our neighbor’s greenhouse was a wonderful gift.   She had to go South for work over the summer, and her greenhouse was going to go unused; she offered it to us.   However, the gift really was not just about the peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers we grew, it was also a fabulous opportunity to observe how her greenhouse was constructed, what worked well and what did not, and to begin planning the greenhouse we want to build next year.                                                                       The Last Peppers of the Year   Observation is one of the key elements to both permaculture and to any true spiritual life.   Permaculture teaches us that each of us have impact on our environment, and that we should therefore take time to be very intentional about our practice of observing our environment as a whole system, planning a desired future outcome, and then

Life has been busy and full this summer.   Between working on the various projects that go along with life in our Bioshelter Home, the subsistence fishing and gathering that go along with life in Alaska, and various family activities, we have been busy.   As a result, this blog has fallen on the back burner for some time.   Today, however, I feel moved to write. One of the great joys this summer has been experimenting with growing things in a greenhouse.   Our neighbor took a job in Oregon and had to vacate her house, at least temporarily. She knew that we wanted a greenhouse eventually, but did not have the time to build one, yet.   She therefore suggested that we use her greenhouse this year.   What a gift! Our friends might have said that it was predictable that one of the problems Cindee and I ran into with this amazing opportunity was a desire to try EVERYTHING in the greenhouse at once.   Indeed, we decided to try three different types of tomatoes, and tried growing

In Alaska the three-day Memorial Day weekend is traditionally planting time.  By the end of May the soil has thawed and those plants that thrive in the ground can be planted.  We have been right on time this year, I suppose.  Last weekend was Memorial Day weekend, and we got most of our planting done, and I am thrilled.  It feels almost like the first harvest, though we have only just planted.  It’s just that it took a lot to get this year’s planting in, and we did it! In fact, we have been working hard for a long time to prepare for this month’s planting.  Last June a number of our friends and acquaintances helped organize the Alaska Food Challenge .  The idea was to participate as little as possible in the inefficiencies that go along with getting most food in Alaska.  Participants in the Alaska Food Challenge pledged either to avoid all food that is not produced in Alaska (only a few were quite that hard core), or to take specific measures to drastically reduce their consum

When it comes to raising one’s own food there are certain times of the year that require more time and effort than others.   This is especially true in Alaska, because our winters are so long, and winter restricts so much outdoor activity.   So, springtime and early summer are busy times at our bioshelter home—and May is extra-busy. One of our goals in the bioshelter has been to try-out strategies to become more self-sufficient and less a part of the consumer culture.   Recently, this has meant focusing on how to produce more of our food, either through hunting and fishing or through small-scale gardening.   Now is the gardening season, so we are at it. The big task this week has been filling the garden boxes on our garage roof-deck.   This has been a bigger project than some might think, since it began last year with the harvesting of our own cottonwood trees, then continued by eventually finding a friend to mill the trees into lumber, then discovering a garden-saf

Yesterday really felt strange to me.   On the one hand it was a great afternoon to be outside.   The snow is gone, the ground is drying out, and the mosquitoes are not biting…much.   I found myself reveling in the work of cutting out some dead wood and making room for the new growth we are planning this year.   I almost never get to do brush-work when there is no snow and no mosquitoes.   What a day! On the other hand, I was doing this work with my Smith-and-Wesson .44 magnum handgun hanging on my hip.   You see, the day before yesterday our neighbor was attacked by an 800 lb grizzly bear .   The bears are particularly hungry this time of year, given that they haven’t had much to eat in six months, and that the salmon won’t be in our river for another six weeks.   The bear chased our neighbor down, clawed him up a bit and the, mercifully, left him alone.   As I enjoyed being outside preparing ground for permaculture-style gardening, it somehow seemed wrong to do with

It is April 6, Good Friday 2012, and it is snowing outside. I am watering the small pepper and tomato plants that have just managed to peek their newborn heads up out of the soil. It seems incongruous—somehow not right—to nurture new life on the day we commemorate the sacrifice and death of the Savior. And it is really snowing outside. It is just plain counterintuitive to put effort into raising up new life on a day of loss—such suffering, pain and death. It is also counterintuitive to plant and water in a snowstorm. I know, of co urse, that life follows a cycle of seasons. There are seasons of building up a new idea and out of a growing sense of visions and conviction; seasons for watching as all the potential moves toward great fruitfulness—and doing the weeding and pruning necessary for even greater fruitfulness; seasons for harvesting and celebrating the plenty; and seasons for watching the old plants wither and fade away. I hate the season of death. Maybe