Good Life Revival: Permaculture, Rewilding, Homesteading – Details, episodes & analysis

Listen to Microphones in 2020 by The Microphones (Phil Elverum).

What are you doing with your life?

What are you trying to accomplish? Where is this all going?

Do you even have a goal?

Do you have a retirement plan? Do you have a savings account? What happens when you get sick? What are you going to do when your truck breaks down on the side of the road?

When are you going to become a productive member of society?

There is no debate: our planet’s rapidly changing climate is now a fact of our everyday lives.

Unpredictable and extreme weather events are becoming more common and more frequent worldwide, and both their unpredictability and their extreme nature is increasing over time.

Flood waters rise higher, tropical storms blow harder, droughts last longer and wildfires burn with more intensity, and all of the above happens more frequently and in seasons when we would not expect any of it to occur.

We know that we are currently witnessing what’s described as the earth’s sixth mass extinction event.

The last time such an event occurred, to the best of our knowledge, was when the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago.

The last time the Earth experienced changes in climate as dramatic as what we are witnessing today coincided with an earlier mass extinction event, some 250 million years ago, which is believed to have essentially wiped the slate clean and killed off up to 97% of the Earth’s species at the time.

Species are disappearing and ecosystems are collapsing as global weather events defy predictable patterns and the rise in average temperature accelerates.

One of the key themes that I continuously explore through this podcast is the idea that human culture is a reflection of its environment.

Thus, it is my belief that we are currently witnessing the collapse of human civilization due to rapid and catastrophic changes to the global ecosystem caused by civilization itself.

Humans are responsible for our rapidly changing climate and our rapidly declining ecosystems.

But not all humans, and not just any humans.

A relatively small group of civilized humans who worship at the altar of the limitless free market did this.

100 corporations are responsible for over 70% of greenhouse gases emitted in my lifetime, since the mid-80s.

More than half of all emissions can be traced back to just 25 corporate entities.

So please, explain to me again why I personally should feel guilty for drinking out of a disposable coffee cup or using a plastic toothbrush or showering with hot water for more than 5 minutes.

Your decision to drive an electric car or eat less meat has no effect on the system as a whole.

Individual consumer choices are essentially irrelevant when stacked against the consumption of energy by corporations and governments.

You did not cause climate change, or the sixth mass extinction event, and you will not solve them through your individual choices as a consumer.

If consumption itself is the problem, then we are never going to solve it by consuming more stuff, even if that stuff is significantly less bad than the more conventional stuff.

Will anthropogenic climate disruption inevitably lead to the extinction of Homo sapiens? Only time will tell.

But for those of us who are tuned in, we can’t ignore the deafening silence from the canaries in the coal mine any longer.

Early on in my journey back to nature, I realized that I was going to have to get creative in order to overcome the unique obstacles in my path.

Knowing that I would never work towards a six-figure salary or a thirty-year mortgage, I had to seek out ways of working with the land that did not involve ownership.

…But what does it even mean to “own” a piece of land, anyway? In what sense do space and time and ecosystems “belong” to you?

Rather than working harder to increase my income over years or decades in the interest of a future life, I opted to downgrade over a period of several years, whittling away my lifestyle and my material needs down to the bare necessities, in order to maximize my personal freedom from day to day — in the present moment.

I consider it an ethical imperative to minimize my participation in the forces of exploitation and oppression which fuel our modern culture.

Understanding that there is no such thing as “opting out” of civilization, I prefer to focus my time and energy on work that is largely *irrelevant* and *illegible* to the dominant culture.

Why pursue this path? Why swim upstream and create problems for oneself that can easily be solved through conventional means?

It’s not for everyone, and what works for me may not necessarily work for you. But I hope my approach to lifestyle design in the context of irrelevance and illegibility might help you to better frame how you view your own goals and desires in life.

The Powers That Be will never offer you an exit, so it’s up to you to seek out novel strategies for engaging on your own terms.

How can we create beauty and discover joy in a world so badly wounded by the machinations of our modern culture?

This is a question that Trebbe Johnson strives to answer, both philosophically and in practice, through her work with the organization she founded ten years ago, called Radical Joy For Hard Times.

I was so moved by Trebbe's book — also called Radical Joy For Hard Times — when I read it last fall that I ended up joining the Board of Directors for Rad Joy, because I felt that the organization's mission lined up quite neatly with my own: to learn how to deal with and heal with damaged and degraded landscapes, and to encourage others to do the same.

In this conversation, Trebbe and I talk about:

how she came to start the organization;

how we, as individuals, and as a culture, might come to terms with the wounded places that surround us;

how and why to practice radical joy;

the role of activism in the face of overwhelming obstacles;

and why, according to Albert Camus, "one must imagine Sisyphus happy" even as he absurdly pushes a boulder up a mountain for eternity.

Don’t forget to subscribe if you dig the show!

To learn more about Radical Joy For Hard Times and the upcoming Global Earth Exchange, click here.

To pick up a copy of Radical Joy For Hard Times: Finding Meaning and Making Beauty in Earth’s Broken Places, follow this link.

To sign up for the Foraging North America online course, click here.

To check out the brand new Good Life Revival t-shirts, head this way.

Today’s theme song is called “Clear Mind Canine”, written and recorded by me especially for this episode. Subscribers who pledge $5 or more on Patreon can download this tune along with all the others in my ever-growing podcast music archive, including my most recent full-length album, Bliss, released in April 2019.

If your life came to an end tomorrow — would you feel like you’d made the most of it?

For episode 59 of the Good Life Revival Podcast, I met up with Kelly Moody, creator of the Ground Shots Podcast and companion blog, Of Sedge and Salt. Since we're both pretty unconventional podcasters who currently reside in California and like to talk about plants & people, we thought it'd be fun to do a kind of joint interview to get to know each other better.

Though originally from the deep south, for the last several years Kelly has been based on the west coast while rambling 'round the country in the vintage camper-adorned Ford truck that she calls home. Like me, she's fascinated by the ways that humans relate to their environments, and she is equally passionate about sharing big, challenging ideas.

In the end I think our chat serves as a great introduction to both of us, and we covered a lot of fertile ground at the intersections of our common interests. Among other things, we discuss the age-old question of whether to stay where you’re needed or relocate where you fit in; the challenges of working with the land when you lack a permanent residence; the romance versus the reality of #vanlife; and the importance of keeping an eye on Death looming in your rearview mirror as you voyage through life.

I left Kelly's camper that day with so much food for thought echoing through my head, and I hope you'll walk away from this conversation in the same state of mind!

To learn more about my upcoming Foraging North America online course, click here.

If you want to stream my latest album Bliss, you can do that right over here.

Today’s theme song is called “Natural Bridges,” written and recorded by yours truly especially for this episode. Subscribers at any tier on Patreon can download this tune along with all the others in my vast podcast music archive!

When your neighbor comes to you in a panic and tells you that her house is burning — how will you respond?

For episode 58 of the Good Life Revival Podcast, I ventured up to Oakland, CA to meet with Aaron Johnson, Porsha Beed, and Jennie Pearl, three of the individuals who form the core of a group called Holistic Resistance, which aims to combat racism by fostering deep personal connections.

Their work is at once profound and subversive, both in its goals and in the methods they employ in their efforts to meaningfully reach out to people.

Though they are of African heritage, Aaron and Porsha make it a point to specifically focus much of their efforts with HR on reaching white folks, and helping white people come together to hash out some of the more difficult and painful questions they might have about race in an atmosphere of mutual honesty, vulnerability, and trust — where you don't have to be afraid of saying the wrong thing or making the wrong move in your genuine efforts to better understand your place in the world relative to the lived experiences of people of color.

This is of course extremely exhausting work, involving an enormous amount of emotional labor, but all three of them shine with a level of confidence and satisfaction that makes it clear that there's nothing else they'd rather invest their energy in.

I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to sit down with these three in person for an immensely insightful discussion about:

how and why they do what they do;

the power of intimacy to combat racism;

the need to replace internet conversations with direct action;

and how nature connection plays into the broader struggle for compassion, trust, and understanding across (perceived) divisions of race, class, gender, and all the rest.

This serves as an excellent followup, I think, to the conversation that Ev'Yan Whitney and I had last time around about sexuality and sexual liberation as a means of dismantling oppression.

In this case the question is not about sex, but about intimacy in all its forms: how do we foster deep connections and build trust with individuals whose life experiences might dramatically differ from our own?

And why is not okay to simply "opt out" of the struggle by deciding that "we" (you) have moved "beyond" race, or by concluding that focusing on issues of race only serves to perpetuate racism?

Ultimately, as you'll hear Aaron describe, we will *all* (yes, white people included) continue to suffer as long as white folks don't put in the work on themselves to examine these questions.

I hope this conversation encourages you to do just that, and I hope that the example set by the folks here at Holistic Resistance will empower you not to shy away from whatever painful, shameful, or otherwise difficult answers that arise as you venture down the path of dismantling all of the racism you inherited from the dominant Culture of No-Place — whether you wanted to or not.

And stick around after our conversation where I take some time to examine my own whiteness and how it relates to my heritage as the great-grandchild of Sicilian immigrants in the United States.

Don’t miss Reaching For Blackness, the three-day workshop hosted by Holistic Resistance in Chico, CA, taking place from May 18 - 20, 2019.

When all we’ve ever known is unhealthy, imbalanced examples of sexuality, how can we even begin to step into our power as self-actualized, sexually liberated individuals?

For episode 57 of the Good Life Revival Podcast, I invited Ev’Yan Whitney of Portland, Oregon, to join me for a conversation about how we might start to heal as a culture from the toxic and repressive social norms we’ve inherited about sex and gender.

Ev’Yan describes herself as a sexuality doula, which is to say that she offers holistic guidance for women as they navigate the difficult transitional process of owning and defining their sexuality, on their own terms. I shouldn’t have to tell you that this is very radical work, and Ev’Yan knows better than most just how dangerous it can be to stand up to the patriarchy and boldly proclaim your truth.

Although Ev’Yan’s work is focused on individuals who identify as female, I asked her to come on the show specifically in the hopes of opening up this conversation about sexual liberation to men.

I think our culture, and especially my generation, is ready to begin unpacking some of the more “toxic” elements of this rather nebulous thing we call “masculinity,” and I firmly believe that men like me really need to learn from women educators like Ev’Yan if we have any hope of defining a healthy, balanced sexuality for ourselves.

Believe me when I say you’re not going to like what you find as you unpack the baggage you inherited from civilization regarding sex, but I hope that Ev’Yan’s example will inspire you to ask these hard questions of yourself anyway, and not shy away from the especially ugly, painful, or embarrassing answers that you might find tucked deep down in the darkest corners of your psyche.

Ev’Yan has documented many of her stories and experiences with women over the years through her excellent podcast, The Sexually Liberated Woman. You can find out more about her and the services she offers through her website, EvYanWhitney.com.

Stream and download episode 57 at the top of the page, or listen through iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play.

Don’t forget to subscribe through your podcast app, and leave a review & rating if you dig it!

All music you hear on the podcast was created by me, Sam Sycamore. “Alameda”, the theme of this episode, was written and recorded specifically for this installment of the show. The tune at the end is called “Hummingbird Drinks Jewelweed Nectar”, and was recorded in September 2018. It will be featured on my forthcoming album Bliss, set for release later this year. Stream and download it for free over on Patreon.

As always, if you get some value out of the work that I put into this podcast, and you’re able to translate that value into financial capital — as little as $1/month — I hope you will consider becoming a supporter over on Patreon! Your contributions allow me to devote quite a lot of my time and energy to this work. I would love to do even more, with your help.

Where ocean meets land: that’s where you’ll find Heidi Herrmann of Strong Arm Farm, who spends the better part of each summer meticulously hand-harvesting wild seaweed along the California coastline.

For episode 56 of the Good Life Revival Podcast, I traveled to Santa Rosa, CA to meet with Heidi and pick her brain about the ins and outs of seaweed foraging, and find out how this pursuit came to be such an integral element of her annual workflow.

As you’ll hear in our conversation, the California coastline boasts over 600 (!!) native species of seaweed, many of which are edible and some of which are highly sought after by chefs and health-conscious consumers who value the nutrient density and that inimitable local marine terroir. (Can you call it ‘terroir’ if it comes from the sea?)

But beyond her collection of wonderful macroalgae, I really enjoyed getting to know Heidi and learning how she makes ends meet in the remaining nine months out of the year when she isn’t solely focused on seaweed.

Heidi’s story as an educator who practices what she preaches is a great example, I think, of what’s possible when you’re willing to dive headfirst into sharky waters — so to speak :) — and work through the trial and error process of determining what niches you might be able to fill in your local community.

You never know where this might take you!

Personal health is not just an extension of environmental health — they are one and the same.

For episode 55 of the Good Life Revival Podcast, I was fortunate enough to speak with Adam Haritan, creator of Learn Your Land. Nowadays he’s best known as a forager, naturalist, and educator, but these pursuits came after a sea change in Adam’s life which began when he woke up to how he’d been neglecting his health as a touring heavy metal drummer.

“My body was kind of slowly falling apart on the inside. Nothing too serious — other people would look at me and think I was fine — but I didn’t feel fine inside.”

As his interest in playing with the band was waning, Adam decided to pursue studies in nutritional science, and although he found the conventional academic approach somewhat lacking, he was lucky enough to connect with mentors who helped him discover the holistic health benefits of foraging for wild foods.

Because gathering wild edible plants and fungi is about so much more than mere nutrition: it is physical and spiritual sustenance for the whole human animal, which cannot be summed up in terms of macronutrient content or calories burned.

Adam and I had a great conversation about his background and his work; the health benefits of nature connection; and the kinds of perspectives we can take on when we learn how to read the landscapes that we inhabit.