Puppy Shadow and I got on the road heading for Oakwood Center early Saturday morning, where we met with others for a weekend of visioning the future of the Oakwood. Takeaway, for me, was that no matter where we want to go, we need to start by identifying the specifics of where we are now. What is really happening? What new seeds are already sprouting? Plus, much of what Oakwood is going through parallels our recent journey with Green Acres, including the need for revamping the existing website to better reflect current realities. See our new

www.greenacresvillage.org

As ever, there’s a tension between plans made in advance from on high and organic evolution from below. Rather than getting upset when “reality” doesn’t meet with expectations, let us laugh and go with the flow. Our felt need to constantly tweak, or even completely redo the inevitably simplistic mental/linguistic frameworks we lay upon the mysterious diversity and complexity of ongoing organic processes is seemingly ubiquitous — at least for western minds. Makes me wonder how it all began. But then, as Wittgenstein famously said, “It’s hard to go back to the beginning — and not go further back.” In any case, just the fact of naming plants, for example, makes us think we “know” them, and, as a matter of fact, separates us from their living breathing reality. Once we name things, and even our very hunger to name things, is part of that same mentality that seeks to, if not dominate and control, then at least to know the future as an extrapolation of the present, based on the past. Impossible, of course. But there we are!

So, now to the iphone photo shoot, with puppy Shadow, on this hot muggy Sunday afternoon, skies full of puffy clouds and clear of chemtrails. Very unlike this morning, when Ted, Tamara and I all witnessed a plane actually start making a trail, just after I had mentioned that, for me, what proves the existence of chemtrails is when I see a plane actually start making one. Yep. Just then, we all three looked up, to experience the single shuddering synchronicity that started our day.

Back on campus, we pause for one more photo. Now the barn is to the right, with gardens in front.

Meanwhile, Shadow disappeared on the trail for awhile, and of course, did return, unapologetic. He figures that however mad I get at him, the freedom to explore is always worth it.