Solheimar, Iceland

Solheimar, Iceland
Solheimar Ecovillage in Iceland

Earthaven Ecovillage

Earthaven Ecovillage
Earthaven Ecovillage in Black Mountain, NC

Yogaville, Satchidananda Ashram

Yogaville, Satchidananda Ashram
Yogaville in Buckingham, Virginia

Sunday, December 5, 2010

End of Chapter One

"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterward, when you've worked on your own corner." -Aldous Huxley

"We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future." -John F. Kennedy

"Look! Look! Look deep into nature and you will understand everything." -Albert Einstein

On November 26th, the day after a super-American holiday, I returned to the good ol' United States to conclude the first chapter of my eco-village visiting story. Its been nine days since leaving Iceland and I still feel the transition happening within. Traveling on buses and airplanes was uncomfortable and unpleasant, but the trip was made more comfortable by our visit to the Blue Lagoon just hours before our departure. This place was the Disneyworld of spas. It is the largest hot tub I've ever been in by far. What many of the tourists who pour into this pool every year don't know is that the Blue Lagoon is simply the wastewater of the nearby geothermal power plant, which sounds worse than it actually is. The CELL group learned this when we toured the plant prior to the swim. Although it is not a natural hot spring, the water is still healthy to swim and and contains several beneficial minerals and silica mud. Needless to say, we were all fairly relaxed for the strange experiences of saying goodbye and flying back to our respective homes.


The two largest differences I have seen between Iceland and America are the sun and the trees. There are trees EVERYWHERE. And they are all thick, tall, and covered with leaves. The first thing I did upon arriving home was run to the nearest long leaf pine tree and hug it, gazing in awe at its sheer height! Shortly after, I realized the intensity of the sun and laid in a t-shirt on a bed of dried pine needles in the hot rays of southern North Carolina.
Mornings seem odd to me since they are not the pitch black mornings of Iceland, but full of light and birds.
Reconnecting with my family, friends and cats has been pleasant but I miss my family in Iceland. I am so thankful for the connections that were made in Solheimar these past three months and for all that I have learned and absorbed.


So I will be using this time before my final semester at UNCW to process my Icelandic journey, read lots, meditate & do yoga, conduct some wrap-up research and edit all my photographs from Iceland. You will soon be able to glimpse my artistic photography since I now have the time to sort through and edit them. I did not use my free time in Iceland to upload photographs onto my flickr page since I was in Iceland and would have rather frolicked outside, spent time with my friends and roomies, or actually take more photos. So I will put up another post with a link to take you to my photography when I upload my first batches. I also have a few more videos I'd like to put on youtube, which I will inform you of when they are up. Watching the videos I took in Iceland may be the best way to summarize my trip & experience, so I urge you to take a trip over to http://www.youtube.com/destroythisday
Thanks for reading, Bless bless!

Monday, November 15, 2010

Poems in Iceland

My facet of expression here has seemed to be a form of spoken word poetry. For our mid term assessment, I chose to read a long poem describing my feelings and experiences from the summer before Iceland and my first month and a half here. Now, for my final project I have again taken it in the direction of poetry. I would like to share these writings with you in an attempt to synthesize what I have absorbed for three months living in an intentional community. The videos are too large to upload here, but I have posted them on YouTube and I ask you to watch them there. I will share the words with you here, but these are more spoken word than poetry so I encourage you to listen to the delivery.


"My Personal Vision of Sustainability"

What does sustainability mean to me?
Living exactly oppositely of how I used to be for the first eighteen years in this body.
It means to strip away the veil we see, that society tends to feed.
It means the ability to sustain not only me, but thee, and we, and trees, please don’t refuse responsibility for those we cannot see.
Sustainability is not invisibility; it is accountability, nothing behind the scenes, honesty, truly opening.
See, the problem with my personal vision of sustainability is its very personality, its internality.
Sustainability does not work individually. It’s got to be spread widely, not hiding inside me as a cut & clean clarity, child of the intellect mind game, but a blatant, visible, evolving, raw, exposed, breathing being outside of me, beside me, that I carry for all to see how I turn arbitrary into epiphany, “holy shit, it works.”
Holy shit, it’s so simple, but so foreign, totally out of the ordinary to parents and old folks and nuclear baby boomers who have left their mark and we frail fallout fragments must clean up in their wake. We now know how not to go down the dirty path forged by the last ringmasters, the bastards that raped this poor planet; private property produces poverty!
Growth has grown on us as a group, but it’s a loop we can’t pull ourselves out of.
Shall we shrink instead? Shrink our stuff? Shrink our scope of awareness to hone our awareness onto smaller chunks so solutions surface so we don’t drown in our global problem pool?
Super fast mass media fills the pool faster than we can drain it; remember, the people you trust to give you “news” are just working nine to five for cotton cash just like you.
Sustainability equals only looking around you.
Your immediate environment is the environment too, not just the rainforests and wetlands and glaciers.
By all means if you live near one of those, aim to save, but if you don’t then don’t.
If everyone in the world focused solely on saving his or her immediate environment, that problem pool would be empty!

Epiphany: true balance does not exist, only a striving for true balance. Chaos and imbalance is ever-present in this world, this solar system.
Epiphany: learn to live with contradictions in your world.
Epiphany: concentrate on questions, not answers.
Epiphany: moderate, don’t eliminate; money, minutes, medicine, machines, most everything actually…
Epiphany: efficiency eradicates bio-mimicry; efficiency is nowhere to be seen in nature, but rather fractals and spirally and vortexes.
Epiphany: connecting with nature includes reconnecting with the cosmos, don’t fret, it could come naturally. Heart, Mind and Body. Lose thyself in cosmic thoughts, feel thyself through cosmic forces, create thyself through beings of will.
Epiphany: eco-rebirth just might work to rework your wiring, I invite you to be reborn into a world of sustainability.

Everyone seems to struggle with sustainability, so lets throw away that word, one word cannot encapsulate the complexities contained in a “sustainable” existence… but let’s stick with it till this poem ends simply for the sake of its overwhelmingly prevalent rhyming properties.
Steps to sustainability? Seems silly to easily package a twelve-step program to save the world.
The world is too big to expect one word to fix its ailments! Hone hone hone it down, take a step down homo sapiens sapiens, can’t you see most of the steps toward sustainability and conservatory actually spiral us further down to where we don’t want to be?
Spiral up is only feasible by letting go of the paradigm we grip so so tightly to for no no reason other than pleasing the senses and once that one’s pleased the next one needs more attention, did I mention that it never ends?
Endless dwell in material hell means constant thirst for the black blood of Earth, our worst surfaces when value is lost, when meaning is lost, when energy is lost, when love is lost, when fear and doubt and drought and children without hope take the reigns and insane becomes not only acceptable but desirable.

I know that change is unavoidable.
I know that brains are pliable.
I know that spiritual amalgamation is inevitable.
I know that sense-free perception is possible.
I know that bodies and minds are deceitful.
I know you and I are indivisible.
I know that love is always successful.
I know that no animal is truly sustainable.

Writing about sustainability is somewhat hypocrisy because it can’t be summed up intellectually, enforced bureaucratically, understood theoretically, explained systematically, investigated linearly or discussed hypothetically.
It only works practically, daily, hourly, minutely, secondly.
Nay nay nay! Cast away this foolish play you’re wasting time every day by waiting for someone else to say, “Okay, the old paradigm was yesterday and the new paradigm is today.”
Sustainability is not an answer, it is a question posed to every earthling constantly, presently; will you destroy or maintain, respect the flow or drain the very vein that feeds you, for surely you know when you kill the earth you kill yourself.
Sustainability comes more easily when I accept the divinity that surrounds me, I walk more lightly, see more vividly, speak more quietly, conserve more frequently, consume less energy.
Sustainability is viewing our earth more heavenly, viewing our life as eternity, re-entering the dance of community.
You get the point, I can already see the shift in your eyes compassionately understanding that love is understanding and that I need you and you need me to make this dreamy vision of sustainability manifest in reality.


"Prana"

Flying fast away from familiar faces and the ultimate comfort
Rows of gray, leaving dirty trails in the sky, hug the coast make the most out of this once in a lifetime experience
Unprepared lost and scared
Have faith in the unknown
Unsecured baggage last minute scourge
Forgetful morning, strange male energy
Hazy air still allows my vision to pass through its layers to see our concrete veins below pulsing with more machinery
The people, all the people below, who will control?
Why have we taken control of something that already worked?
I will miss the forests here, the thick untouched splendor of tree cities. The secrets and answers are already in front of us, we are just too afraid to go into the woods to find them.
I will miss the people here, the small army of peaceful warriors I have strung together.
I will miss the food here, the growing emphasis on local and organic items, the 7.69 a pound plates at Tidal Creek co-op after hot yoga classes.
I will not miss the cell phones, automobiles, televisions, alcohol, gasoline, coal, guns, trains, planes, fast food and drama.
I’m in for a shock, inversion indeed, with an open mind much can be achieved.
Liminality.
Tracing the roots of live oak trees.
Mechanical minds cannot compute nature.
Industrial brains have a different definition of progress.
Where are we going?
I already see the irony in polluting our skies to fly to an ecologically minded community.
Travel partners are necessary – while traveling and while motionless.

Not hard to stay on track, some of us lose sight of the right wrong morning song take turns writing lines on folded sheets of trees or bees in boxes for pollination in a nation of ice cubes and flicker flames big wicks homemade candle flicks.
Have you considered the end?
You have to be 2 dimensional for all of your body to be touching the ground, you just can’t. You just have to be the ground, try to make the same sound again and you will be surprised about what comes out, the cameras follow you and watch you wait in line.
Line up the stones perfectly so they stand atop one another.
Rock garden stop gardening outside, try it in between panes of glass opposing the sun and touching one another.
Let the tunes flow, kundalini know the whole path up the spine.

Four days raw, not a flaw, doesn’t matter if you miss a stitch you can always knit backwards, right girl?
Sun your eyes, make em dry wash em wet don’t regret or forget this exercise, walking wise through the thin forest of a dry land. Tap it in let’s begin and try to make sense of things with your eyes closed, let it flow forget the dough, chant it over under the fur, tire scent mixed with incense nonsense cleanse the past tense hope for the best, just try the test!
Olafur Oh laugh at my fur! You’re the first settler! Scaley scales of the neck grasp the woody bamboo stick there’s two now, behind, around, under, pop it off!
Permafrost now we’re lost, toss aside your concern the only worry is worry itself.
Seven ducks on a wall, notes left behind hidden for all to find in search of the cardboard church display even when you press play the sound don’t come out of this damn piece of plastic, give it a second give it some love, treat it like your own creation. Everyone around you is you.

Crossroads hot loads of H two Oh that’s how you pronounce that
Build a house get some help make the shelter dig dig dig down into the ground
Rediscovered roots manifest in creation
Greenhouse on your house bring in the life
breathe it in work it out
Put in your hours, you are the only one

I know we’ve all met before, like cells that have died and come back alive on the same body, surprised to see each other again in a different time.
Don’t eat that mushroom its gills will fill your stomach like poisonous pills, maybe kill or at least berserk will it work? Edible landscapes leave room for mistakes no need to hit the brakes cause you’re already going slow slow slow your roll mister and misses volunteer simpleton transition town
Having trouble squeezing this into sentences,
Everybody asking me the same questions,
Giggle hard giggle we squiggle free from community
just to see what happens on the outside, hitchhike along
highway one the thumb’s got a different meaning here, different for everyone the numbness of oneness melts in the sun if you confront that ugly lonliness, son
struggle food attitude sudden shift of mood from innocent innocuous to biased uneasiness
Confidence roots deep and tries to break through to the daylight, is your skin concrete or soil?
Digging dirt staircases is the best way to find out if they’ll work
Liesaboutlentils.com doesn’t exist, if anyone wants to help me trick other CELL students into it sign this list
No matter how far you fly you can’t escape this midterm stress press against the glass to test the chill & determine dress to make the best impression on the rest surrounding your guesthouse nest, magic booties won’t impress the sheep infested hills or attendees of wool-obsessed knit fests.

Flower of life represents everything I have to say here, it’s finest strength is its lack of words to communicate, this is the language of love, the intertwined circles relate to every branch, require each other make up each other take up each others space, overlap intersect come together to create magnificence since, what else is there to make? Why take up time doing anything else but nurturing the self, plenty of chances before your shelf life expires whyareyas waiting whyarentyas exercising power cast away laziness like the exorcist take a trip outside your skull to higher vibrational kingdoms, this world’s not dull you’re already in heaven meditate your monkey mind sitting still doesn’t trap you it is your soul’s vacation time, don’t make it work overtime now you’re prime, we’re ripe in this galactic season heathens knew this, jesus knew this, please just don’t miss the point of life: to use your body while you’re in it, you’ll have plenty of time to be lazy once you leave it so treat it like a vessel with a wide opening, open to all the prana pouring in.

They do things differently over here kids,
Mellow your criticisms until you live here for a while
You’ll be surprised to find that sustainability will make a fool of the one-meaning school of thought, widen your mind and forget what you’ve been taught, you are the teacher that must balance what comes from within versus comes from without

Under armor underwear flown by air much faster than a snail, doesn’t have to go all the way to space, redefine the space between two individuals recognize what can’t be seen, why is invisibility so hard to believe when we know our eyes can only see a sliver of the spectrum?
The silver lining is everywhere once you realize it’s just a rock. Cross the bridge to another being and look back at yourself, you’re just a mirror anyway.
Deflect the hate reflect the love for fellow frightened folks let’s test the ropes at this new way of life, I’ve got your back hammer away plant to stay diversify your fields claim some dirt while there’s still some and make it home, make a stand grow your own, use your reflective mirror magic to make others want to join in your complex web of simplicity. This city will be like one you’ve never seen, couldn’t dream of something so serene, no cars to gleam, no exhausts will scream, no shoes with seams, no clocks to make time seem linear

Wait what am I saying? I’ve got to say yes!
Yes this is a place you’ve seen in a dream, yes you can imagine something so serene, yes we begin to see each other as we are, yes we begin to accept mother nature back, yes we treat water like a living being, yes to less! Yes to the undomestication of all of us!

Friday, November 12, 2010

Two Weeks Left

I fly away from Iceland in fourteen days. CELL classes have concluded, our final Icelandic tests have been taken and the semester wrap-ups have begun. These include finishing our Solheimar projects and presenting them to the community, planning and preparing a Thanksgiving feast for over one hundred people, putting together a piece of work with each other that captures the essence of what we've learned here, and some final community activities.

I have uploaded over a dozen videos from my travels through Iceland on my YouTube page. A few are posted here for a taste, but you should really head over there for the full effect. The videos give a better description and feel for what I've been seeing and doing as well as the people I've been sharing this experience with.





Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Colder & Darker


Two months have passed in Iceland. I am just now cracking open my bottle of organic Vitamin D-3 to supplement the lack of sunlight. We are losing over six minutes of sunlight every day. The sun rises around 9.30 or 10.00 and sets between 17.30 and 18.30. It’s great on the weekends because I get to watch the sunset every morning no matter how late I sleep and I get to readily use the morning and evening suns to help heal my eyes. I am diving deep into a self-healing of my own eyesight, which has been unperfected over years of improper use: staring at the television, spending hours on the computer, squinting my eyes at small cell phone screens, straining to see things without my glasses. I have been reading Ben’s book entitled, Mind and Vision: a handbook for the cure of imperfect eyesight without glasses by Dr. R. S. Agarwal and inspired by Dr. W.H. Bates, which is opening my eyes (literally) to a new world. I am re-learning how to blink properly, how to relax my eyes, how to use the sun to treat them, and how to read correctly.


I am still getting used to waiting for the water to get cold when you turn on a faucet. Back home the water coming out is cold and I had to wait for the gas-powered water heater to warm it up. Here the closest source is boiling water underground so I must place my finger under the steam to test if the cold water being piped in from a nearby farm has reached the faucet yet. Below is a picture of the pipe that pumps water up from underneath Solheimar. After the hot water circulates and is used throughout the village it is sent down this natural spring and steam rises all the way down.

Snow has finally made an appearance. The previously bare brown surrounding mountains are now snowcapped and seem much closer and more present in Solheimar. In fact, it is snowing right now, harder than it ever has yet. This is the first time it has stuck to the ground as well. I finally feel like I’m in the arctic. Every Icelander we’ve spoken to has commented on how warm it has been lately though. They say that at this time of year it is usually 5 or 10 degrees C cooler. The CELL group is getting a sobering look at climate change in action.

I have been pretty busy lately with mid term assignments and assessments. I have also been asked to take on the special task of photographing every Solheimar worker and resident for the updated phonebook. This has been an amazing opportunity to literally meet every single person here and practice my Icelandic conversation with him or her. This week marks the beginning of my anthropological journey here. I will begin conducting interviews with people here for the sake of my ethnographical research. Solheimar is the first eco-village and intentional community I have been in and I hope to gather some useable information here to compare others to that I may visit in the future. To get an idea of how many other eco-villages there are, click on the “Eco-Villages” tab at the top of the page.

Many more links have been added to the "Enlightening Links" page if you have not yet checked that out. I have been exposed to so much new content here that I have a deep desire to share with others, so make your way on over there and take some time to challenge your thinking and wake up to some urgent issues we all face.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Reforestation in Hekla Forest

















Q: What do you do if you get lost in an Icelandic forest?

A: Stand up!



From Wednesday, September 29 until Saturday, October 2nd the CELL group traveled to Hekla Forest to contribute to the reforestation of Iceland. The word "forest" has a different meaning here than elsewhere in the world. As the joke at the top insinuates, forests are very sparse and consist of fairly short vegetation. Iceland has almost reached an Easter Island status of deforestation, who cut down every last tree on the tiny Pacific island. Unlike Easter Island though, Iceland still has a chance of survival. Forests have gone from covering nearly 40% of the island at settlement in year 871, mainly concentrated around the perimeter, down to slightly over 1%. The birch woodlands were cut for timber and heating, cleared for agriculture and grazed by domestic sheep. Destruction of forests leads to uncontrollable soil erosion, which furthers the problems of deforestation. Iceland's harsh climates and regular volcanic eruptions do not favor forests much either. Therefore the afforestation goal of Iceland is ambitious and in the early stages, one that we were all anxious to get involved in.


Hekla Forest lies on a small farm near the base of Mount Hekla, Iceland's most active volcano, which was visible from the guest hut we were staying in (pictured above). We arrived during a downpour, which kept us indoors for the first day. Our hosts prepared us a bountiful lunch and we met our reforester guide, Hreinn, who gave us an in depth presentation on the reforestation efforts in Iceland. It was still raining the next morning, but I didn't mind going planting in the rain since I could try out my brand new rain boots, which I paid much more money for than I had initially calculated in the store. 7,950 krona does not equal five dollars... more like fifty! Lesson learned.



So we all hiked from the farm to the forest, got equipped with planting supplies, broke up into groups of two and ventured out into the barren landscape. One partner would have a red and green belt with six compartments to hold up to seventy five baby birch trees (left) and the other partner would have a hollow pogo-stick looking tool (pictured up top) to transplant the seedlings into the ground. Each pair would plant clusters of trees, each about 2 meters from the last, with expectations of wind and birds naturally spreading the seeds to fill in the gaps between the human-planted clusters. As a group, CELL planted 3,455 birch and rowan trees in a total of six hours over a span of two days! On the afternoon of the second day of planting, a graduate student from the University of Iceland in Reykjavik taught us how to collect birch seeds and we spent a few hours strolling through the forest squishing wet seedpods into plastic bags. Both the planting and seed collecting were very meditative activities that brought me great joy and peace. On our bus ride back to Solheimar, we stopped at several gorgeous waterfalls, a hydroelectric power plant, the ruins of an ancient viking longhouse, and one of Iceland's rare "old forests" with tall trees (pictured below).


I will be planting more trees this upcoming Sunday on 10/10/10 for 350.org day here in Solheimar. The interns here have extensively planned this global work day toward climate solutions and the CELL group is assisting in the several activities planned from 14:00 to 18:00. I will be helping Icelandic participants plant trees in the shape of the number 350, which will be photographed from above.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Community

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured. -Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Our tiny CELL community of fifteen people is beginning to settle into the larger Solheimar community of about one hundred. We are getting to know the residents better, experimenting in different workshops in the village, and refining the goals of our individual service learning projects. We are all expected to offer something to the Eco Village of Solheimar to either increase sustainability, disseminate knowledge, improve well-being, facilitate growth, or simply benefit the community. I am getting involved in two projects. I am teaming up with Cassie to work on maintaining existing paths throughout the village as well as creating new paths to promote travel by foot rather than vehicle. I dug one natural staircase today outside our guesthouse, but it needs more work. My second project is yoga. I will be teaching yoga classes for all people here on Sunday mornings and Tuesday evenings every week for the next two months. I am excited because I have never lead a yoga class before & to bring the joy of inner union to new people.
Some other projects being looked into by this year's CELL group include, creating an outdoor music garden, building or remodeling a meditation hut, compiling educational materials about sustainability & writing a workbook for children, organizing a week-long summer camp in Solheimar for special needs children around Iceland, improving the role of compost and fixing the amount of nitrogen in the soil, and spending time with the elderly and disabled population in Solheimar.


Another thing that helped make Solheimar feel more like home was our recent departure from it. Last weekend we embarked on a four day backpacking trip through the southern interior of Iceland. We walked 56 kilometers from Landmannalaugar to Þórsmörk. We saw indescribable landscapes, crazy boiling water pools, geothermal mud pits, steaming vents and volcanoes, massive melting glaciers, deep dark ice caves, innumerable caverns and hills to hike, wading glacial rivers & drinking from the streams all weekend, black sand deserts, ash-covered mountains and eating wild blueberries... just too much to process in four days.

We went to the base of Eyjafjallajökull, the glacial volcano that erupted this past April, which was still steaming.

___________________________________________________

Today we discussed the importance of personal change, and that you must live the way you would like others to live before you can point fingers at others and tell them how to live. It's also very important to be pro-active about the future of our species rather than living in fear and adopting a threatening doom & gloom method of facilitating change. I am willing to change for the sake of the Earth. I don't want to use a car. I want to consume less. I want to create a quieter and subtler existence and smile and love.

My experience with community here has been profound. I wonder if stronger community is a key to harmony with the Earth and it's other inhabitants. The splintering & expansive division of humanity can be repaired and reversed through strengthening community and recognizing the existence of those around us, moving from individualism and separateness to entity and oneness.

Friday, September 10, 2010

A week in Iceland

I've been in Iceland for seven days now, but it feels like seven weeks. I have seen so much and learned much already. I am learning Icelandic slowly but surely. It is much more different than German than I thought it would be. Less people in Solheimar speak English than I thought too, so we have been experimenting with other forms of communication. The CELL group is finally settling into a routine schedule. We have classes Monday-Saturday and have Sunday off. We will be going on a field trip once a week. Next weekend we are going on our 4 day hiking/camping trip before it gets too dark and cold. The weather has been so enjoyable, and a pleasant change from the humid beach in Wilmington, North Carolina. Here is a more detailed look at our daily schedule here at the Eco-Village.

Every morning at 9:00 everyone in the community gathers at the first building that was built here in the 1930s, holds hands in a circle, gives daily announcements in Icelandic, and then sings the Solheimar morning song in Icelandic. Then we hike up to the Sesseljahus eco-center (pictured below) where we have a 1.5 hour Icelandic language class, then a 1.5 hour Icelandic history and culture class, both taught by Katrin Magnusdottir, our Icelandic friend.

We then go to lunch buffet from 12 to 1 and eat with the Solheimar community. The food is delicious and fresh, and the view from the cafeteria (pictured below) is phenomenal. I have sat with different people each day, which has been a nice way to meet new people who live here, even if we cannot carry a conversation!

After lunch we begin our CELL classes where we have group discussions about sustainability, environmental issues, and what we can do to change. The titles of our books are, "Voluntary Simplicity", "Menu for the Future", "Global Warming: Changing CO2URSE" and "Choices for Sustainable Living". They are simply collections of articles and together make up the most interesting and important curriculum I have ever dealt with in my entire academic experience. The discussions that these readings prompt are critical and crucial in my understanding of the world and how humans can and should fit into the ecological continuum. We have been challenging previous understandings, forging new definitions for worn out words (like sustainability), and inspiring each other to practice what we preach. We are in a perfect place to facilitate growth and apply the theories that we all grasp. Speaking of facilitate, each session is taught by 2 different facilitators in our group so the students guide the discussions providing more freedom and flexibility. This type of learning is the best I have ever encountered.

I will have a lot of reading to be doing while I am here, so my blog posts will be few and far between but I will not abandon you! I may upload more pictures than words onto my flickr account, since they will do a better job of giving you a glimpse of Iceland than my inadequate description here. Our group took our first field trip yesterday to Reykjavik, the capital city. We had an amazing time and got several top notch presentations from important people, but I like it better here on the farm. I tried to post a video from this morning while walking around a field before lunch.. I found some friendly chickens walking near a house with a turf roof and an Icelandic flag with gorgeous mountains off in the distance, but it wouldn't let me upload it. I will continue to try though.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Settled In

Góður dagur. Good day.
I flew from Wilmington, North Carolina to Boston, Massachusetts on Wednesday, September 2nd. My friend Caleb picked me up from the airport and let me crash on a couch in his new apartment right near downtown. We took some intense walking tours of the city and I bought a few items that I forgot to pack in my rush. I like Boston from what I saw in 28 hours. I met the rest of my CELL group members in the International Wing of the Logan Airport on September 3rd. We introduced ourselves and waited for our group leaders, Katherine and Karin, to arrive. We checked our baggage, went through security, ate airport food, and all crossed our fingers hoping that hurricane Earl would not effect our travel plans. Happily, we all boarded the 747 Icelandair jet around 9:00 pm and lifted off promptly.

I barely slept on the flight - too excited. After five hours, I watched the sun rise over the left wing of the plane and saw the jagged green edge of Iceland below. We landed in Keflavik at 6:30 am, claimed our bags, walked through customs and met our Icelandic guide, Katrin Magnusdottir. We hopped on an aqua bus and got a 1.5 hour tour of the southwestern Iceland countryside. We went through Reykjavik (the capital city & most populated area), Selfoss (the closest big city to Solheimar), and Borg (Solheimar's neighboring town where the children attend school). We finally arrived at the sign reading "Solheimar: A Place in the Sun", and drove down the red volcanic rock road.

The CELL group is staying in a large guesthouse named "Brekkukot". We were immediately greeted with a breakfast spread at our giant 15 person table and then got a quick walking tour of the Eco-Village. We were all exhausted so we returned home and tried to combat jet lag. There are three double rooms, one of which I am sharing with my meditation buddy Jason, and the rest are single rooms. There are two bathrooms, a large kitchen, a common room with couches and chairs, a sun room and a balcony. The views are breathtaking, and my breath is indeed taken from me each time I exit a building. It is soon replenished by crisp, clean, cool air. The weather has been comfortable and an enjoyable change from the humid Wilmington summer. It is unpredictable and sporadic though, with high winds, frequent rain spritzes and quick moving clouds. I already recognize positive connections with everyone I am sharing this experience with and we are all still feeling blissful and thankful for this opportunity. It will be an interesting and wild experience, full of figuring out how successfully feed 15 people every night, how to integrate into a self-sustainable 100 person community, breaking the language barrier and learning Icelandic, along with many other unpredictable things. Dinner is ready now though, so I'll update you with many more specifics and some photographs as soon as I can.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Renewable Energy


Two weeks remain until i depart for Iceland. Many of my friends like Tess, Mat, Haley, Dare & Brendan are just now returning to America from various study abroad locations around the world. It saddens me to leave them after such short time together, but Their stories have gotten me more excited than I already was. I will also sorely miss my parents who recently moved closer to my university, my yogi Emily, and my boisterous beatboxing best friends & roommates Justin, Aaron and Eric.


Almost all preparations for departure are complete except for packing and reading. I have compiled two pages of interview questions I hope to ask people in the village as a part of my own ethnographic research. I plan on meeting with my Cultural Anthropology professor this week to refine the direction of my individual study as well as get in touch with one of his Icelandic friends who is an anthropologist at the University of Reykjavik. I am still waiting to find out if I was awarded the National Geographic Glimpse Photo Correspondent position that would pay me for photojournalistic coverage of my trip. My sister will be mailing me her HD Video Camera to bring with me and I am getting re-used to my old digital camera. I will be shipping some or most of my belongings to the village in Selfoss to bypass the cost and stress of checking baggage through several connecting flights. The book we were assigned to read is called "Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to save civilization" by Lester R. Brown, the president of Earth Policy Institute in Washington DC. Below you will find a response to some of the themes I have read about so far in this thought-provoking book.


Plan b calls for a substantial transition from coal, Oil & natural gas to wind, water & solar sources of energy. Renewable resources must be embraced for the sake of every species on the face of the planet. The transition is in the early stages, but will spark when more & more people realize the clean potential in front of us. Lester R. Brown says that the transition needs to be executed at wartime speed, similar to our nation’s effort to transform domestic factories during World War II. It seems that such swift action on a massive scale could only be spurred by a major national rising of awareness. Surely, then the consciousness of the masses would rise to a level of self-awareness of what we are doing to all earthlings. Was the most recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico not such an example of an event that shook everyone up to the same level of disgust with our current methods of energy production? Please do not overlook such blatant opportunities to demand change. What will it take for wind turbines, solar devices, organic eating and farming, de-scaling the food chain & waterless composting toilets to catch on? We are now inhaling the final exhaust fumes of the Industrial Revolution. We are now entering a new phase in human existence in this ever-changing world. A paradigm shift from competition with everything & everyone to cooperation with everything & everyone should unfold, and we are the only ones who can do it. Namaste.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

(Un)sustainability

The overall emphasis of this trip to the Icelandic Eco-Village of Solheimar is sustainability.
Coming from a notoriously unsustainable land, my transition into a 100% self-reliant (and foreign) lifestyle will be abrupt and challenging. But the opportunity to exist off the grid of mainstream society while maintaining a mutual coexistence with the Earth will ultimately provide me with the most stark and necessary realizations about my own environmental responsibility back home. It will also give me something to compare the capricious consumption and lifestyle of most Americans and/or capitalist countries to. American free enterprise breeds unsustainability and spreads it across the planet. Its economic system began successfully but no economic system can persist forever. We have reached a point of absurdity in our country's history with proof in the many side effects of a self-destructive economy, including the encroaching constriction of social institutions (Government & Power, Banks & Money, Education system & Time) laziness & ill health sweeping the country (Fake food, Fast food, GMOs, Soda, Sedentary lifestyle) and even mindless herd-like symptoms (Television, Wage labor, Alcohol & Cigarettes). The general consensus in the upper western hemisphere seems to consist of playing into a single persistent global drama, which includes dismantling and polluting the natural landscape. The point has come in America's evolution to stretch out a little bit, to break free from the tiny cage we have constructed around the potential of so many marvelous minds.

Sustainability can certainly be found in America and numerous progressive concepts and ideas seem to be permeating our
language and minds, but we still have a long transformation ahead. Although more and more Americans are aware of the steps required to create a sustainable life and society, not all of them act upon those efforts. We are privileged to have access to ample amounts of valuable information about the world we live in and we must act upon such knowledge. For instance, it has been exposed that most bottled waters are the same or worse quality than household tap water, yet billions of dollars are spent on bottled water anyway. Also, it is known that reducing meat consumption by 50% would drastically cut back energy and water usage, but millions of Americans gobble down meat once or twice a day. We know that oil causes worldwide disputes and despair but we guzzle gallons of gasoline in motor vehicles every day. By now it is common sense that money does not lead to happiness and is an unnecessary & arbitrary idea, but everyone still goes along with the greedy, slavish paper chase.
C
onvenience and consumption are two of USA's most prominent attributes.
"I'll start using solar panels once I drive to and from the city five days a week for six months in order to afford one". "I will start my own garden and shop locally after the sales at Wal-mart end". "Money is evil, but I'll sacrifice half of my existence to obtaining it". Do you see the paradox? Capitalism and Sustainability do not seem compatible.


























I envision my trip to Iceland to be a glimpse into the future of sustainability. I feel as if I may foster several worthy ideas for sustainable pathways in my home country, and I will absolutely develop them in an already functioning Eco-village. Iceland and America are two highly different places, but valuable cross-comparisons can and will be made.

The intention of my blog and research are to inform and inspire people living in parts of the world that fall behind in environmental awareness and excel in one-way environmental degradation, to awaken to the ease of a sustainable lifestyle through the participation of community.

Eco-Villagers are strong proponents of the idea that actions speak louder than words. All they must do is show the rest of world that living in tune with the Earth is possible and indeed quite purposeful and fulfilling. I encourage you to open your heart and mind and let these forward-thinking people make an impact on your life so that after waking up from an unsustainable stupor you will never act mindlessly again: because that is what is necessary for a new paradigm.
Letting Go. I honestly have no idea what to expect from my trip, and do not wish to spend too much time or energy in predetermining my experience, but I do have a few things I am anxious to observe in the microcosmic culture of the Eco-Village.

1) Money
I know from experience that moneyless societies can work. The only moneyless economy I have encountered was the gift economy at Alchemy, a beautiful 4-day peace gathering in Lafayette, Georgia in 2009. Greed creates the problems we encounter on Earth today, which is a direct side-effect of money. I am absolutely thrilled to meet people who value each other and collective labor more than bills and coins.

2) Food
Solheimar grows all their own food organically and sustainably in the village. The village hot spring supplies all their vegetables and animals with geothermally heated water, resulting in their production of 18 tons of vegetables a year. Eating locally in Iceland is easier since globally imported goods are highly taxed.

3) Water
Did I mention the village hot spring? Drinking water directly from the ground will be positively life improving. America's outdated water piping system is crumbling underground and exposes us to chlorine, uranium, lead, industrial solvents, rocket fuel, and cancer-causing chemicals.

4) People
I will travel with an anthropological mindset and refrain from practicing judgment of the people or cultural insensitivity. Solheimar began in 1930 as a place for neglected orphans and disabled children to live. About 42 of the 100 villagers have disabilities.

5) Places
From what little I have seen, Iceland appears to offer absolutely stunning landscapes. I am anxious to get some camera lenses over there and share with you what I see.

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My name is Nate Oxenfeld.


I am a constantly curious, life-loving 21 year old photographer, musician, lucid-dreamer, smiler, bicycle rider, and undergraduate student studying Cultural Anthropology and double-minoring in German and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

During the fall semester of 2010 I will be living and learning in the small 100-person self-sustainable Eco-village of Solheimar, Iceland. I'll let that settle for a little while and let you check out CELL's website, who is making possible this amazing opportunity, as well as a few other informative links.

http://www.cellonline.org/programs/iceland-program/
http://www.solheimar.is/Template1.asp?Sid_NR=546&E_NR=518&VS=1VS1.asp&VT=546
http://static.rnw.nl/migratie/www.radionetherlands.nl/documentaries/051012doc-redirected