Camp NeeKauNis

Disclaimer: this post explains my journey to Camp NeeKauNis this weekend. I highly recommend reading this to get a sense of the full-experience, though it is highly bike oriented. The post following this one should (I expect) focus mainly on what was an explosively spiritual experience.

It has been a long time since I've posted about spiritual matters, and I think that's perhaps because I have not felt the need to. Perhaps it's because I feel my lifestyle is an extension of my spirituality, and that they aren't merely separate "hobbies". My political and social action I feel are strong representations of my spiritual (and indeed religious) belief in God's existence within the world without. Political and social action itself to me is a form of worship.

This weekend, I was at my Quaker camp participating in administrative and operational meetings. Our camp is in the midst of growing, changing, and overcoming some pretty substantial hurdles in seeking our visioning. The process often puts each other at opposite ends of the room, polarizes us, and generally makes our time at camp strained. My friend Galen stressed that this is in part because we have not followed Quaker process to the extent that we should have been, and I'm beginning to agree. Quaker process is somewhat different from what I would see to be common democratic/Robert's rules style process. The intention is not only to be democratic, and egalitarian, but to seek out the light within members of a given meeting for worship (with a concern for business). It is difficult to conceive of a relationship where business is the focus, and yet the basis for decision making is the Light within. In fact, I can imagine that such a process might be seen to be easily corrupted for individual interest, on account of the lack of "procedure" for appeals, misrepresentation, etc.

I've been writing in some programming guides that for Quakers, building coops and playing with worms is a religious experience. Well, I guess I've been saved! Hallelujah! It's been nearly a week since Paul mentioned that the chickens may be coming in on Thursday or Friday, which meant I've been working 'a butt-load' to get this thing done!

I'm now looking for a really hip name for the sucker. In a book I saw a duck coop called "Duckingham Palace"; I wish I could have that in chicken form.

I thought I'd rub it in for a few of ya's. For what it's worth, I've been working long hours recently (I'll post photos of the chicken coop shortly). So, it's not all play no work. Incidentally, for those of you who were supposed to be registered by now and aren't (you know who you are), you should get in contact with me, or the appropriate director (all I will do is forward you to the director).

[img_assist|nid=39|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=240|height=166]I'm just posting a few pictures of my wonderful plants which I've been growing for camp. I would like to thank Wendy (though she doesn't have internet), our neighbour who has donated these plants to camp. I was pleasantly surprized that they had all survived a cold few days. I didn't soak them, as I was worried it wouldn't evaporate and then they'd be too wet. This I suppose proves what I had read, that cold isn't what kills plants, it's actually often wind.

[img_assist|nid=38|title=|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=75]But, it was windy a few days ago, and I was fussing about afraid that they wouldn't make it. So I found an old rusted cot, and bodged together what I guess would be a "green-shelter". The idea of this is to provide a windbreak, some climate control, and a neat place to store growing plants. This will be useful when kids are here, and I am to have hundreds of seeds on the go, it will be nice to have a place to put all of them and keep them organized. I would like to build more, but I'm insisting to myself to keep it all recycled and found-object oriented.

In a day and a half, I've dug and formed a foundation for an incoming building at camp. I'm posting this for my friends who are coming in for the concrete pouring. It was super buggy for the time I was working on it, however I found a wicked little net that fit my Tilley, and was able to cope with the hot weather in longs'n'longs.

Well, after moving the bucket into the sun to warm it up, we finally are seeing that the worms are getting busssseeeyyyy![img_assist|nid=26|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=240|height=180] It was so exciting! I'm looking forward to a substantial colony, where we might be able to process upwards of several meals worth of compost in a single day. The calculation that a single red-wiggler worm can digest twice it's weight in a single day!

I was also able to touch the compost in the starting up vermi-composter and see that it was warm-- a good sign! In other cases this might get warm enough to cook away pesky weed seeds.

For all those who have wondered what I was up to when I mentioned I was interning at Camp NeeKauNis, building gardens, and creating pr