Shambhala School Students

As I wrote about last week, Windhorse Farm and the Shambhala School have had an ongoing relationship for the last 15 years. It has been a wonderful opportunity for urban and rural to meet and share vision, as well as a rich and challenging experience for students and teachers. After spending 2-3 days at the farm this past spring, students were  asked to answer some questions about their time at the farm. They reflected on what their favorite aspects were, what they would like to do next time and how they felt this experience contributed to their education. Here are some of their favorite things.

“Probably my favorite part was the interaction between everyone. No one was quarrelling with another person. Everyone was friendly. We got to know each other better.”

“Getting out of school and learning in a new environment was great.”

“I particularly enjoyed the night walk because it was so interesting to be quite near everyone and yet it was easy to imagine yourself as being totally alone.”

“The best part of this trip was that we got to learn not only about farming, but also about ourselves during the time alone we had. I loved being alone and discovering the other part of me.”

“My favorite was probably the food we ate. All the meals were delicious. I also really enjoyed the night walk.”

“The most valuable moment was the night walk. It was very interesting to hear people thoughts after walking in the forest. Laying down in the field under the clear sky at night was one of the most breathtaking experiences I’ve had in a long time.”

“I loved being able to just relax and talk to people in the class I don’t hang out with outside of school. Windhorse was an opportunity to get to really know each other.”

“The best experience that I had waas the night walk. Just the sense of vulnerability that I felt while in the night was amazing.”

I have been so inspired by the experiences of the Windhorse community, but I am particularly thrilled to have such amazing young leaders and learners spending time at Windhorse. I hope to have many of them featured on this blog in the future.

Justin Hardin

I have known Justin all my life. Our mothers were close friends and we grew up playing together. Later we attended the Shambhala School together, though Justin was a couple of grades ahead of me.

Justin was one of five students from the Shambhala School who attended Windhorse Farm in the early years as part of the curriculum. The 10th grade class went to the farm for week long visits, once in the fall, the winter and the spring. They lived in cabins in the forest and learned about all the things that were happening on the farm at the time. They cooked meals, fed chickens, collected eggs, mucked stalls, and worked in the forest and garden.

There are many funny stories from these trips that I am attempting to collect…

Like the time Ella and my Dad caught a rooster and put it in Sweetwater cabin, where Justin and Nye were sleeping, before dawn. They woke to a crowing bird flying around the tiny house!

Justin remembers listening to Neil Youngs “After the Gold Rush” non-stop.

He also recounts “We had a lot of fun with the horses and were amazed at watching the two old men, Sam and Earl, work with them in the woods . The would yell commands at them from a good distance as they were hauling a large tree out of the forest. There was one horse that was lazier and one that did most of the work…… can’t remember who.”

After the trips to the  forest with the horse-logging team and Justin and Nye begged to be able to use the chainsaws… They had to settle for having their picture taken.

I hope to post more about the adventures of this class. It was an awesome time at the farm. There are new groups of Shambhala School students attending programs at the farm now and I hope to post their stories as well.

Leila Bruno

“Because of the chaos of the family life I grew up in, I have been a person who always found sanity and safety in the out of doors. Coming to WHF just seems like the best experience of “coming home.”  It’s the most natural thing in Nova Scotia, this gentleness and strength of the landscape. When a place (and beings) are accorded honor and respect, then the best comes forward in everyone, in everything. This is my experience and memory always of WHF — a place where who your parents are, (Jim and Margaret) and what they do, magnetizes the best people to make things happen in a good way.”

Leila shared these words with me after visiting Windhorse Farm for the Earth Gathering in April. She also shared a moon meditation practice that she encourages anyone to practice who is so inclined.

“The beauty and learning of this meditation practice over a minimum of 2 weeks (either waxing time or waning time), we get to realize deeper qualities of what we “see” all the time and kind of take for granted, — which is the phases of the moon. We get to track the changing position, light and shape of a heavenly body. This is what surely we could call “ordinary magic.” Until I started doing this mindfulness practice, I couldn’t explain to myself or anyone else the why and how of the moon’s appearing form and movement. So this practical, daily, outside practice, seems appropriate for all our programs — and certainly the ones I’ve done at WHF.”

Moon Meditation

This is a simple 2 week practice (so it requires discipline, Ha!)

Begin on the full moon.

Find a place to stand outside that has the biggest view of the horizon.

Go out early in the morning before sunrise while it is still dark.

Always stand in the same place at the same time each morning.

Relative to a tree branch, standing rock or other fixed reference point:

            * notice where the moon is situated in the sky

            * notice which direction the moon is moving thru the sky over the 2 weeks

            * notice the daily shape of the moon

Immediately after observing each morning, go inside and draw the shape and movement of the moon on a sheet of paper, using arrows to indicate the drift.

Jim Tolstrup

Jim Tolstrup is another wonderful friend from Colorado. Like Dan he was visiting Windhorse Farm for the Earth Gathering in April. He sent a few beautiful photos that he took  while at the farm. I was particularly struck by this one. Jim’s comment is also a great reminder for me in our wet gray spring!

“I also took a lot of pictures of rain which, coming from Colorado as I do, was very exciting to me.”

Hope you are all enjoying the rain as much as those seeds in the soft ground.

Dan Hessey

Dan Hessey is a wonderful friend of Windhorse Farm. He visits us from Boulder, Colorado and has been known to teach awesome programs at the Farm. He was last here a few weeks ago for a gathering of earth stewards. He shared this description and poem with me today.

“I wrote the first draft of this poem with frozen fingers as the sun rose, having spend the night under the full moon in a sleeping bag in the woods next to the stream at Windhorse Farm.  I felt that the ink was mixed from my heart and the sky, and all my confusion, sadness and aspiration welled up to meet the paper. “

In Deep Woods

I rest against a moss-covered rock-bench before dawn.
It reminds me of a lime velour banquette in a cheap hotel.
Before me lies a dense lattice of untidy trunks and
Branches withered by striving, dark and dumb;
Above, the green canopy awaits the sun.

Hidden codes impel this arbor up,
No eye, no ear, not feeling. All
Elbow and jostle for a portion of bright sky; and as
Greenland’s icy mantle melts, our little brook prattles on.
But soon this forest shall be gone, gone, completely gone.

Star-swept sky, cure our knowing, for
Such sadness cannot be well-borne by us.
You, your head-pennants catching the rising sun, beaten
Silver helm and crystal mail shining, riding a snowy mare,
Wielding the pure spear, bearing the perfect sphere!

Unknowable heart of the senses, Earth’s secret soul:
Cleanse our despair, heal us, show our being whole.

Dan Hessey
Windhorse Farm
April 18, 2011

Julia Feltham

“Last year, around this frigid February time, I headed with a handful of kids and young adults to Windhorse Farm for a Leadership Retreat. Then, as the Director of High School Programming for a not for a not for profit called Mavericks for Social Change, I was put in charge of running the retreat and happy to see everyone boggled by the beauty of Sunshine House. We arrived before many of the kids so I played a chilly cello on the deck to claim the space for my own, overlooking Wentzell Lake and the pasture for horses across the dirt road.

I often run events in a collaborative style, and, though I had some of the scaffold planned for the leadership retreat, I left much of the programming open-ended. In running the weekend that way, it left a lot of room for personal transformation. Being in such a beautiful and contemplative place, I began to realize it was funny that I (who had never even considered titling myself a ‘leader’) was running a Leadership Retreat. Why did I renounce that title? How was I to tell other people what it meant, and they should be one, if I wasn’t even sure what it meant to me?

So, over the course of the weekend, Windhorse housed many of our life-changing discussions with youth from 13-25 and diverse backgrounds: Over what it means to be a leader, using examples from Hitler to Ghandi, Stephen Harper to High School Student Council while we talked about what our visions are for our own future and what are our responsibilities as visionaries. Tears were shed, stories told, our cold bums were warmed in the sauna, and Sunshine House made us feel like we were in our family home: Our own lil’ Mavericks weekend family. Even if many of us didn’t even know each other before that weekend. Things perpetually surprised me– as work in-kind, we silently harvested birch bark with reverence for the trees and laughed ourselves silly knee deep in snow, the heart wrenching and warming tales we shared at night brought us close together and took us all off guard and let us know we were not hiding. When Jim took us on one of his famous Night Walks, I was surprised that many of the Haligonian youth had never been silent for that long and had never been in the dark once in their entire lives, let alone in the woods in the dark. Some thought it was one of the best things in their lives, others were terrified but glad they had done it. The horses were beautiful and friendly, we often chased the ‘handsome’ and rugged barn cats, and teased one girl who was irrationally terrified of the chickens and had to explain composting toilets many times.

Over that weekend, I realized that, by being myself, doing what I think needs to be done, I am being a ‘leader.’ To me, it suddenly just meant that being the best I can be just gives other people permission to be the best they can be. So why clip my own wings? It would be a grand disservice to others, let alone myself. Sometimes I only act when I feel destiny slaps me in the face, and leading the way has been scary to me–because I would hate to lead the way were I to realize I was blind, or had planned something wrong. But mostly I realized, doing what is right was the end of excuses. I could no longer be lazy or blame others for leading me astray. I had to be responsible to myself and the world. That weekend re-framed what I thought leadership was, what I think success and failure are, and now I always keep flexible visions for the future so I could stop being so lazy about my own direction and cultivating the visions of others–I began to trust myself as an actor in the world. I could actually accomplish much more and stop being afraid about trying to make my dreams come true. In that beautiful place, which I shall always hold dear to my heart, I began writing this song.

Thanks for all that you are, Windhorse. I am indebted to your delight!”

Steve Murray

“Winter Fresh Morning at Windhorse Farm, Feb 22 2011

This morning I woke up in Blue Dragon cabin and peered out the window to see the sun rising above the tree line on the ice covered Wentzell’s Lake. The sun’s light and warmth was appreciated as it filled the cool off grid solar powered cabin.  The ice formed on the lake had receded a little more as we approach spring. A solitary hawk is positioned on the ice’s edge where open water turns into the mouth of the Lahave River. Its mind is likely thinking of the feast that is to follow in a few months when the salmon and bass return to freshwater after a winter of feeding at sea. Stepping out the cabin’s front door into the Great East Gardens evidence of wildlife is everywhere. Tracks of the nocturnal animal’s night journey criss-cross through the freshly fallen snow. The nearby apple trees remain dormant, anticipating warmer spring temperatures to trigger their blossoms. Natural rhythms and transitions are felt all around in the early morning silence. My life is also in transition, can we learn from the early morning silence to maintain a silent mind through transition?”

Steve is our program co-ordinator at WHF. He is a wonderful host and friend.

 

Aftab Erfan

“Last July Sera and I arrived at Windhorse Farm a day or two in advance of the annual ALiA board meeting. We were both on the design-hosting team for the meeting, and since we were both also pregnant we were determined to take it easy while we did lots of work. It was a hot summer day and half way through our design meeting Sera convinced me to go swimming in the little pond in the middle of the forest, even though neither of us had appropriate swimming attire that we could still fit into, and the water looked … clear as mud – which is to say, rich with all kinds of plant and insect life! We got in cautiously and swam slowly around the pond, moving branches out of the way occasionally, staring at the blue sky, disturbing the muddy bottom by mistake, forgetting about the meeting, remembering that we were animals. When we crawled out of the pond we were both covered in a thin layer of green algae, which eventually dried and fell off our bodies. There is something about that experience that is the essence of Windhorse Farm for me: warm, beautiful, quiet, following a perfect natural order but also full of girt, not overly sanitary.
In the last few months of the pregnancy I have often had dreams of the baby emerging with a thin green layer of tiny living organisms on his body, courtesy of that visit to the pond so early in his life. I hope that at some level he remembers.”

This beautiful story came to me on a very cold day in January. I read it and felt a sweet longing for Summer at WHF. Aftab is expecting her first baby very soon and Sera’s baby Jack was born in November. I hope to see both these babies back at WHF next summer

Christine Mitton

Christine came to visit WHF for the first time in November of 2010 for a program. She described her love of the land and appreciation of the stewardship. Here is a excerpt from her letter.

“I am so grateful that a place such as this exists and is protected by all that love the land. Thank you for this. As I explored some of the woods and sat by the brook I felt such joy and love in my heart.”

This inexplicable space that occurs in the forest is echoed by many of the letters I have received. Christine also commented on the kind host, Steve, and the fantastic food.

“I have been telling many people about Windhorse as it deserves to be shared. I am planning to return in the Spring for a private retreat. Those little cabins are delightful!”

 

Vickie Gray

Vickie wrote to me after returning from a group retreat at WHF. Her snapshot was inspired by a night walk led by Jim. Here is her beautiful description. “The snow was crystalline, clouds drifted past a basket moon, and the walk took us on a metaphorical journey in darkness from the safety of a bonfire to the unfamiliarity of a wooded path past a river that we knew was there only by its sound, into a wide open field of possibility, and then through a difficult gate back into dark woods and finally home. The walk became a metaphor for the journey the organization was going through, and enriched our work together.”