Community Power

This post is a celebration of both the land that I live on and the amazing beings who I am blessed to live here amongst. I live in a beautiful, secluded shallow valley of woodland and pasture on top of a mountain plateau, with a clear, bubbling stream running along its length at the centre. Nestled into the valley lie probably around ten or so different projects with a diverse array of amazing beings all caring for the land, living life in a way that makes sense to them and making magic in the world in their own unique way. We have an incredible artist, a jewellery maker, at least two published authors, the world champion beat-boxer (three times running), a performance poet, a professional singer-songwriter, a choreographer, another poet, an inventor, a long-distance horse-rider, a yoga teacher (me), a massage therapist and dance facilitator, two sustainable buildings experts (one is Trev, one is, awesomely, a woman), a pilgrim (temporarily ground to a halt here due to the magic of this place), a cranelift-operator, a couple of shamans, a family constellations facilitator, a graphic designer, a fireman and more. Despite this huge diversity and explosion of creativity, on the side, each of us is united by our own personal journey to become a land steward/farmer/gardener living sustainably with nature. We all care deeply for the land and this precious valley that we call home, and all share the same dream of living in a biodiverse heaven on Earth, with clean, flowing water, healthy soils, vibrant wildlife populations and abundant organic or biodynamic food coming out of our gardens and from the innate abundance of the land itself.

Until now, it has felt like we have all been in an intense ‘pioneer phase’; clearing the wilderness of neglected land that we’ve taken on, creating homes for ourselves, first with temporary structures such as caravans and, gradually, building more substantial structures for example by renovating the ruins of original old stone buildings, previously hidden in the dense undergrowth. Also, for many of us, it’s quite a process to fully ‘land’ in this kind of alternative existence. Despite sounding romantic and whimsical, the reality is a lot of hard work that doesn’t really ever stop. It’s not for the faint-hearted and the lifestyle itself acts as a natural filter to test if someone really wants to live this life. You have to want it bad to stay the course!

Many people have come and gone, passed through the valley for shorter or longer periods of time. Yet, gradually, it feels like a solid, more ‘permanent’ community of sorts is fully bedding in. It’s becoming almost like a scattered ‘village’ feel and, significantly, two babies have now been born into this community, creating a sense of both roots and generative future. Apparently many decades ago the valley was a thriving community of families with children, all tending the land and helping each other out. Then, gradually, younger generations left this very rural, quiet and relatively poor area to seek their fortune abroad or in the big cities and a huge depopulation occurred, leaving large areas of land such as our valley neglected and unloved. So, really, we are just reinvigorating a long tradition of the land being worked and loved by a solid community.

Anyhow, the Saturday just gone seemed to me to symbolically mark the tentative move from pioneer phase into collaborative phase. We have been talking as a community about some kind of ‘valley vision’ in different ways over the years, with lots of different ideas on this such as taking on publicly owned land to manage for native forest regeneration (most of the forest here is commercial plantation of mostly pine with, increasingly, eucalyptus). What finally prompted us to move forward in a more proactive way with collaborative action was an intense year of forest fires close to our valley last year combined with the worrying trend of new eucalyptus plantations in the valley, a scarily incendiary species of tree.

After a couple of community meetings where we all shared our hopes and visions of the valley for the future, it became apparent that our common ground was our desire to, firstly, protect our homes from fire by bringing neglected pieces of land into care and by replacing plantation forest with natural regeneration of native oak and chestnut forest (far more fire-proof for many reasons plus far more biodiverse). We also all shared the dream of clean water, healthy soils etc that I already spoke of.

Saturday represented the first time we, as a community, have taken action to make these collective dreams our reality. On the initiative of one of the valley members, whose particular dream is to have a connective pathway running through the valley along the edge of the stream, joining up all of our projects, we gathered together in the afternoon in order to begin to open up the stream on a neglected piece of land right in the centre of the valley, having received permission from the Portuguese owners. Together we donned our tools – a hard-core crew going ahead with strimmers and chainsaws and a more genteel group following with loppers, pruning saws and secateurs – and began to reveal the watercourse, hitherto shrouded in dense bramble, for the first time in, possibly, decades.

I can’t really describe how momentous, heart-warming and empowering this felt, for so many reasons. One, it touched my heart to see our community coming together to create our desired future together, laughing and smiling whilst happily grafting away, shoulder to shoulder. Two, in this turbulent world it felt like the most powerful thing we could do, to make a stand for what we truly believe in, enhancing nature and building community. Three, I could feel the ripple effect of such roots-up, local action spreading out into the ether. It might have just been a tiny stretch of stream that we revealed in the grand scheme of things, but the effects of such decisive, positive local action can never be under-estimated and I am keen to see what might occur next to take us further in the direction of the valley vision as a direct result of this.

I wish I had taken a before and after photo – the difference was astounding, the resultant view of this steadily flowing, clean, pure watercourse beautiful and it brought a tear to my eye as I heard Trev say, ‘I’ve literally never seen this stream here in over ten years.’

It is amazing what we can achieve together – let us never forget this! Thank you to this amazing community I live within and thank you to the valley that holds us so generously and teaches us so much.