Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: community, fire recovery, Glass Fire, home, intentional community, renewal, wildfire
Goodbye to the Structures of Our Lives
Just two weeks ago, seven months after the Glass Fire, excavators finally arrived at the Rill to clear away our burn debris – the remains of our homes, barn, community toy shed, wood sheds, cars, well, hot tub, greenhouse, garden shed, play structures… Our memories. Our lives the way they were. So often social media leans towards the light, the bright and shiny and resilient. So over these two weeks, to honor the grieving process, Amy posted just a photo or two or three per day of our beloved burned structures on our Instagram page, with small passages of gratitude and memory (with help from Thea and e), to say goodbye. To make room for and honor the shadow that we know is there, so we can move wholeheartedly forward with rebuilding and re-visioning the Rill.
Now we are posting them here. The goodbye passages have been edited and altered and extended at times from their social media incarnation, because of the collective nature that the project became. Other people’s words and memories are in some places woven in.
Thank you for being on this journey of shadow and light, with us.
Garden House. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for the beauty, the polished wood and broad panes of glass, for the late-night fire watches in the downstairs office, the happy hours amidst cascades of flowers, the parrot who once regaled us naughty cries, and for the garden – a masterpiece created over time. Goodbye.
Patio House and Ridge House. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for standing watch over the rill and the valley, for being at the end of the Daffodil Path. Thank you Ridge House, the first of all the houses at Monan’s Rill. For the massive stone chimney built by group effort, your whimsical art, your purple walls and the massive Mother Tree that stood outside your wall of windows and then didn’t. Thank you Patio House for housing so many families and growing better over the years, with gorgeous decks, your shady patio and many entrances. Goodbye.
Hill House and Studio. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for being a sweet spot way up on the hill. For your green roof, cool downstairs, for the root cellar, and the broad deck like a wonderland, under the Dragon Tree. Thank you for the sweet sanctuary of your Studio. Goodbye.
Oak Corner. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for your resilience, for holding so many families over the years, for allowing so much laughter and life to roll through your halls. Thank you for morning coffee on your lovely expansive deck, sunlight piercing the fog. That late afternoon iced tea brewed on your deck, enjoyed while the sun was setting, was divine too. Good neighbors rattling your screen door, delivering the best eggs. Half-buried matchbox cars, tucked in your foundation, memories of all the kids that played under your porch. Goodbye.
Barn. Thank you for sheltering our beloved animals. Thank you for calling us to the steady rhythm of daily chores, where we often overlapped into impromptu conversations. Thank you for storing a cider press we could drag out in the autumn. Thank you for your heavy sliding door, your hay dust in the morning light, and for holding our bursting, aching hearts as we learned lessons of life and death. Goodbye.
The Longhouse (West Wing, Long House, Pooh Corner). Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for your innovation, versatility, your devotion to community, your willingness to change. Thank you for the long sinuous stretch of yourself, your holdfast nature, your attention to the raucous red-winged blackbirds, the stately grebes, and the occasional heron on the pond. Thank you for the cool air that flowed through and around you at night, from the forest to the pond, like a quiet caressThank you for your hospitality – warm muffins and sparkling holiday trees and good books and a place to run and ask when we needed something at the Hub. Goodbye.
Coyote House. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for your solidity, up there at the top of the hill, watching the edge of the forest. For the ample carport, which stored so many people’s camping gear and tools and bikes. Thank you for the brilliant blue tiles, the rock wall at your base, the roomy closets, the claw foot tub, the dreamy sleeping porch under the starlit sky. Goodbye.
Manzanita House. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for being our cabin in the woods, our light-filled refuge, our original hub. Thank you for the welcoming front stoop. Thank you for the tall windows that allowed us to track the moon, and therefore our place in this world. Thank you for your roomy kitchen, and the loft that became a nest for growing children. Thank you for being so close to the road, so neighbors could wave and smile and easily stop by. Thank you for your tall ceilings echoing our laughter, tears, and merry shouts. Thank you for your expansive deck inviting us to play in the forest. Thank you for the crackling of deer hoof on live oak leaves, and for the birdsong. Goodbye.
The Yurt. Thank you for sheltering us. Thank you for being our most recent, and most astonishing, house. Thank you for the craft. For your circular embrace. For the many kinds of wood you held, bringing the forest inside. Thank you for having an ideal layout for games of tag with a toddler, for the built-in bookshelves and built-in bed Thank you for your broad dome of light, for your attention to detail, and for being a joyful, companionable gateway to the garden. Goodbye.
Garden sheds and greenhouse. Thank you for nurturing thousands of seedlings that became food for our community and flowers to delight our hearts. Thank you for storing the seeds and tools and equipment and infinite varieties of irrigation supplies that oscillated between chaos and order and chaos again. Thank you for anchoring garden committee meetings and Monday night barbecues and workdays and blind wine tastings and all the in-between conversations around your long wooden table with its rounded end, hosting laugher and tears and heated debates and hugs. Goodbye.
All the Other Assorted Structures of Our Lives: chairs, fences, cars, woodsheds, hot tub, well, toy shed, play structures (including the hollow tree at the bend that was an ancient, friendly playhouse), the Caboose (first a darkroom, later a writing/dreaming sanctuary), the Poultry Palace, the Round Table under the grand garden oak…. The debris cleanup contractors did not know what to do with you when they arrived. What are these odds and ends of people’s lives that don’t obey the rules of being tidily next to private houses? What is this place? “It’s community,” you whispered, and they shook their heads and we smiled. Thank you, Caboose and table and coop and sheds and playhouse with the poppies stenciled on your side and all the rest, for evolving alongside and amidst us, following your own logic (a logic held in stories), for meeting so many needs, for being our companions. Goodbye.
Don’t tell us
how to love, don’t tell us
how to grieve, or what
to grieve for, or how loss
shouldn’t sit down like a gray
bundle of dust in the deepest
pockets of our energy, don’t laugh at our belief
that money isn’t
everything, don’t tell us
how to behave in
anger, in longing, in loss, in home-
sickness, don’t tell us,
dear friends.
——
Goodbye, house.
Goodbye, sweet and beautiful house,
we shouted, and it shouted back,
goodbye to you, and lifted itself
down from the town, and set off
like a packet of clouds across
the harbor’s sandy ring,
the tossing bell, the untowned point—and turned
lightly, wordlessly,
into the keep of the wind
where it floats still—
where it plunges and rises still
on the black and dreamy sea.
From Mary Oliver, “On Losing a House,” in Michigan Quarterly Review, August 2017
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bioblitz, biodiversity, community, fire recovery, Glass Fire, intentional community, wildfire
Spring at the Rill has been lively! We’ve been able to watch the lush recovery of our land in real time. Birdlife, fungi, lizards and snakes, jackrabbits, new fawns, oak shoots, stump-sprouting toyon and madrone, honeybees (finally), and the flowers. The flowers! If you have been following us on Instagram you have seen some of the flowers. We were told they would come and we were not let down.
In charcoal-rich places where we reseeded, we have also welcomed a lush carpet of native grass, with small dabs of lupine and poppy. We will seed more before the rains next fall, after our salvage logging is done. We are removing burned firs on the southern slope of our ridge, in order to restore an oak savannah ecosystem. (Many thanks to Pepperwood Preserve for treading this tender ground before us – it hurts to see any tress come down, even when we know there is a larger reason.)
We have also been growing ourselves as human beings through this time. We held a small Easter gathering, to celebrate community. We are working with Kate Sassoon, a community facilitator rich in experiences with different kinds of cooperative groups, to reground in consensus decision-making for the long rebuilding road ahead. And we also have started planning and visioning our rebuild with the help of the amazing Robin Stephani of 8th Wave, a local architecture firm devoted to climate- and fire-resilient, affordable Sonoma County housing.
This coming Saturday, May 1st, we are celebrating spring in the way we know best – by connecting with the land and each other. We are hosting a Bioblitz, a citizen science project that brings teams of people together to gather information about local biodiversity. You can read about it in this lovely Press-Democrat article:
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/lifestyle/watch-for-wildlife-at-burned-down-monans-rill-this-saturday/
And if there is space left, you can sign up though our link tree here: https://linktr.ee/monansrill
While all this life is blossoming, we don’t want to sugarcoat the process. There’s a lot of hard physical and emotional work going on. Just today, the excavators arrived to start the debris cleanup on all of our burnt homes, well, garden shed, barn, community toy shed, and more. It still hurts. We are so grateful for all the ongoing support, through our GoFundMe, through our community workdays, and through sheer emotional connection. Thank you so much.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: fire recovery, forest health, Glass Fire, indigenous wisdom, intentional community, oak woodlands, stewardship
The Promise of Oak Restoration
One of the hardest things about this fire has been its impact on the trees. Yes, those of us who lost homes are grieving our homes, in our different ways. But we all share in the sadness of losing countless beautiful, beloved trees: many firs – including one that sheltered the ashes of a community founder; gorgeous oaks that graced our homes and barn; at least one maple – which always delivered a precious shock of vivid spring green or glowing autumn yellow as the year turned; and countless madrones and manzanitas, with their smooth tawny barks.
Some of these were lost to the Glass Fire itself; they toppled or charred as it moved through, or soon after. Some were declared hazard trees by PG&E or AT&T in the fire’s immediate wake, and were cut down. Some we have removed ourselves, as we know they will not recover. And PG&E is back on our land now, taking down trees they marked “P2” (Phase 2) that are in danger of falling on power lines. Later this year, we will engage a forester to manage salvage logging in some areas of our forest, taking out dead firs that can be used for lumber, reducing fuel load in the process.
We know that there is so much work to be done to heal and restore and rejuvenate this landscape we tend. We need to be on the lookout for erosion, invasives, and impacts on the habitat of our non-human neighbors. Out of all of this, though, something beautiful is emerging: a commitment to oak restoration.
Thankfully we have so many local resources and leaders to turn to, in order to understand how to do this work. Pepperwood Preserve, our watershed neighbor, burned in the Tubbs Fire of 2017, and its scientists and educators have a lot to teach us. Recently, a few of us attended a Pepperwood webinar on the indigenous meaning and tending of black oaks, taught by Clint McKay, Pepperwood’s Indigenous Education Coordinator, a member of Pepperwood’s Native Advisory Council and of the Wappo, Pomo and Wintun communities. (Monan’s Rill is situated on the homeland of the Wappo / Onasatis people.)
The acorns of the beautiful black oak provide sustenance for the Onasatis people and many of their non-human siblings. In his teaching, McKay told us about Pepperwood’s Black Oak Project. They identified 60 healthy specimen black oaks and studied their microenvironment. In order to replicate this health in other trees, they conducted microburns, removed invasives, and thinned the forest. At Monan’s Rill we have done some of this kind of work, in partnership with the NRCS EQIP program and Fire Forward, and now the Glass Fire has given us an opportunity to rethink large swathes of our land. We know that “oak woodlands” in northern California do not usually look the way they did when they were stewarded by indigenous communities, and that our mountains in particular have experienced a long stretch of fir overgrowth and oak crowding. How can we use this moment of devastation to plant beauty, share resources more wisely, and cultivate a healthier relationship with the earth we walk upon?
Some of us will walk with Clint McKay at Pepperwood this spring, to learn about black oaks and other plants and trees important to our local indigenous communities. We are also in conversation with longtime oak arborist Dave Muffly, learning about oak propagation methods that we could use here at the Rill. All of this is happening in concert with our work with Friends of the Mark West Watershed and the Sonoma County Forest Conservation Working Group, striving for watershed health and large-scale vegetation management for fire safety.
This is undeniably a challenging time for us at the Rill, and we are buoyed by the vision of a healthier forest and planet. We are humbled by what we continue to learn about indigenous land stewardship practices. We are nourished by the promise of oak woodland restoration.
p.s. You can support our work on oak restoration, and community restoration more broadly, through our GoFundMe donation page. Thank you so much!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: fire recovery, forest health, grief, trees
Madeline’s Tree
At the top of the lower meadow and pasture is Madeline’s Tree, named after one of the founders of Monan’s Rill, who died peacefully at home on this land and whose ashes are buried under a rock cairn at the base.
This sacred great grandmother tree has watched over our house at the Rill since long before it was built, embraced me in morning meditation during shelter in place last spring, and helped me find strength and clarity as I returned to the land after the fire in the fall.
Although the top branches are still green, an arborist has told us that the fire did so much damage that this tree has a very small chance of survival. So it is coming down, we are letting go, and feeling the loss.
I woke up this morning with the song “Clearcut,” by my former JED Collective housemates Ethan Miller and Kate Boverman, in my heart. As I expected, I can’t find a recording anywhere on the internet. I think I still have the CD, but if I do it is in the house below Madeline’s tree that we still haven’t moved back into. The house that is surrounded by a burned landscape and so many trees, both dead and alive, that are being cut down by PG&E contractors every day.
The chorus, which is what has been singing inside me since I woke up, goes:
I feel like I’m clearcut
I feel like my rivers have run dry
And I’m raw beneath the open sky
and the rain, when it comes,
will carry me away in a landslide
There are many verses to the song but these lines resonate most with me today:
If this broken world was all I knew
If all I hear was sorrow’s cry
What would I know of anger and hope
Or for what would be worthy to die?
But I have seen forests as old as riverbeds
I’ve seen trees that rise up to the dawn
And I have known love that rises above
The despair that this cruel world brings on
I’ve seen beauty in the eyes of another
I’ve heard music you would not believe
And the source of my pain is the source of my hope
In a vision of what this world could be
-Thea @farmerthea – 6-year resident of Monan’s Rill
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: climate resilience, community, earth, fire recovery, intentional community, rebuilding, wildfire
Community Renewal
It is hard to capture the tumult and sadness and hope and laughter of the past few months at Monan’s Rill. Though we have had to stop holding community workdays, we are still gathering every Saturday to do the work of repair and rejuvenation that we can do on our own. We have salvaged garden tools and fencing, built a new goat shed, trenched for water and septic and internet lines, removed dead trees where we can and hauled brush to careful burn piles, dug out invasive grasses and reseeded with native grasses and lupine and poppy. This weekend we pruned and mulched the raspberries, which are already sprouting!
We also have been meeting regularly, often over Zoom, to use consensus as we face this moment. We also gathered on Zoom for our Winter Solstice celebration, and for Christmas Day storytelling, and New Year’s Eve bingo!
And we have walked the land. As individuals and in small groups, we have meditated, sang, cried, rested on the healing earth. We also set up a Building and Design Committee and walked possible house sites, imagining the future. We are on our way.
You can still give to the Rill. Everything we have received through the GoFundMe has helped the efforts above, and every donation will help keep us going.
You can also sign up to receive our new e-newsletter. We will keep you up to date on our renewal work, and let you know when we can open for community workdays again. They were such big, beautiful, joyous and helpful events! And you can also follow us on Instagram @monansrill.
Thank you for everything you have done to help keep this dream alive.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: climate resilience, community, fire recovery, gratitude, intentional community
Community Works (and workdays postponed)
UPDATE 12/3: Community still works! AND in the interest of public health and all of our safety, we have decided to honor the spirit of Governor Newsom’s stay-at-home order and cancel volunteer workdays for at least the remainder of this month. Thanks and love to all of you who have come and who have wanted to come. We’ll do our best without you! And we look forward to working – and maybe even breaking bread someday – again by your side.
It has been over two months since the fire. We are filled with gratitude to all the helpers who have showed up – some multiple times and from far away – to do the meaningful work of healing and recovery.
We are holding weekly Covid-safe volunteer workdays on Saturdays, and together we have finished mulching the garden beds to protect the soil before the rains (and to keep the moisture in), cleared half of the ditched of leaves and debris, found important propane and water lines to prepare for repair, and got wattles in place around almost all of our burned structures to protect the watershed from toxins in the ash.
This is amazing! Community works. In both small and large ways.
Because the laughter and the conversation and the breaking bread (safely) together have been just as healing as the hands on tools and in the earth. Thank you.
If you would like to keep up to date on what we are doing, what needs to be done, and our vision for a beautiful climate-resilient rebuild, please subscribe to our newsletter here: https://mailchi.mp/f27c758d4d3d/monansrill
And you can also follow us on Instagram @monansrill
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: climate resilience, community, fire recovery, intentional community, wildfire
Fire Recovery at the Rill
It’s been over a month now since the Glass Fire took our homes and scorched our land, and we are busy doing the healing and recovery work, sustained by relationships with our broader community and by our connection to this land.
Thea writes: life is already coming back to the land. and new ideas are germinating for how we can renew and restore and revitalize our intentional community after wildfire. we are dreaming about mycoremediation and forest stewardship, replanting our garden and a new south-facing orchard, building a greenhouse and a barn that are more functional and spacious than what burned, bringing animals back to the land, and making heaps and heaps of biodynamic compost. we are dreaming about new homes with flexible floor plans that allow for different household configurations over time, built with cutting edge materials that are ecologically friendly, fire resistant, and support energy efficient heating and cooling, with rainwater catchment on every roof.
We are also working with fire ecologists, our local Resource Conservation District, and CoRenewal to learn about the way fire moved across the land, and to heal the land through bioremediation.
NRCS helped us tested the water infiltration for the soil on our burned chaparral hillsides, and were relieved to find that the water soaked in pretty quickly. Here’s hoping for gentle rains that soak into this bare slope and allow the soil to stay put while the plants regenerate.
Tomorrow Taylor Bright from CoRenewal will be guiding us in the placement of a novel technology called mycowattles. These will help researchers (and us!) understand how fungi can protect sensitive aquatic ecosystems from the toxic ash and debris of buildings burned in catastrophic wildfires
We held our first post-wildfire community workday this past weekend, to dig a trench and lay a new spring line. It felt so good to all of us to be together on the land, and return to the rhythm of community work and gathering that has been established for more than four decades. The nature of the work and the topics for discussion have changed dramatically, but the heart of Monan’s Rill is still alive and well. We will be working and meeting on the land every Saturday for at least the next month, and welcome helping hands to join us. Workday is 9am-12pm, and you can stick around for BYO lunch and afternoon meeting if you like. We hope to get an organized volunteer sign up process in place soon, but in the meantime please contact info@monansrill.org if you would like to join us. We’d love to have you!
And sign up here to receive our Monan’s Rill newsletter, when we get it going! https://mailchi.mp/f27c758d4d3d/monansrill
Lastly, if you have already made a gift to help us recover and rebuild @monansrill, thank you! And if you haven’t yet, please consider a generous contribution today. You can help us build a model for fire adapted, climate resilient, and joyful community living in healthy relationship with each other and the land. https://www.gofundme.com/f/SupportMonansRill
#lifeatmonansrill #wildfirerecovery #intentionalcommunity #intentionalliving #firerecovery #climateresilience
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: community, intentional community, wildfire
Please Support our Glass Fire Recovery
Dear world –
We are so sad to tell you that Monan’s Rill has experienced devastating losses in the Glass Fire, which is still burning in Napa and Sonoma Counties. We are all safe, figuring out next steps as a community, but 12 of our 13 homes have burned in the fire, and the land looks very different now.
The only home left standing was handbuilt by two of the founders, Russ and Mary Jorgensen. In addition to this one home, Monan’s Rill’s community building, shop with tools and equipment, and recently installed rainwater catchment system and solar array are still intact. These will be the seeds of a beautiful rebuilding of the community, but there is so much to rebuild, and we will need your help.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/SupportMonansRill
We know the wildflowers will be rampant in the spring. We know the oaks and madrones are resilient. And we will be moving forward with vision and dedication to place, ecology, and care for one another.
Support Monan’s Rill’s recovery by giving as generously as you can to this GoFundMe, organized by family and friends:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/SupportMonansRill
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: community, home, intentional community
Coyote House is Opening!
My great uncle always used to say “There have to be endings to be beginnings,” and it is of course true at the Rill, as well. Two of our beloved long-term members have departed, to start a new chapter in their lives. This means that one of our homes is opening as a rental.
At Monan’s Rill, we prioritize renting to people who are interested in long-term living and membership here, and we encourage renters to formally explore this possibility early in their time living here. We usually offer a 12-month lease for renters. However, due to the current conditions of COVID-19 and the lightning complex fires, we are right now also open to considering a shorter-term lease for those who may be in need of temporary housing. (So please do share this information – and our rental interest form – with any friends who may have lost a home.)
About MRA:
Monan’s Rill Association (MRA) is a collectively-owned intentional community on 414 acres in the Mayacamas Mountains. Our beautiful rural land is conveniently located within 20-25 minutes’ drive to Santa Rosa, Calistoga, and St. Helena. We are about 1.5 hours drive from San Francisco and the East Bay. Founded in the 1970s, MRA is centered on the core values of Honoring Every Voice, Relationships and Caring for Each Other, Stewardship, and Stability. For more about MRA, be sure to browse this site, see the recent article about us in Made Local Magazine, and check out our Instagram account!
Living at Monan’s Rill brings many benefits, including clean air and water, quiet starry nights, beautiful nature trails, and relationships with other community members across an intergenerational spectrum, from children to elders. Living here also comes with responsibilities to care for your home and for the community as a whole, working side by side with members. MRA works best for people who are actively interested in living in the country, knowing their neighbors, learning and sharing skills, and making a difference together.
About Coyote House:
One of our 13 homes, Coyote House, is available for rent beginning in October. Coyote House is a 1,373 sq. ft. two-story home with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a deck, a screened-in sleeping porch, and a 2-vehicle carport with built-in storage. It is located at the base of several of our hiking and mountain biking trails.
Coyote House rent is $2200 per month, and includes water, sewer, trash and internet. Electricity, propane and telephone are not included. $2000 security deposit plus $500 deposit for each pet (if approved by MRA), as well as a $500 cleaning fee. Each adult renter is asked to contribute 10 hours of work per month toward caring for their home and the community, with guidance from MRA members.
If you’re interested in exploring living at Monan’s Rill, please fill out our rental interest form. We will follow up to set up an initial Zoom call with a couple of our members, followed by a COVID-safe in-person visit if it seems like a mutual good fit.
We look forward to meeting you!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: azolla, biodynamic, community, intentional community, summer
Bountiful Azolla
We couldn’t resist posting some photos of our azolla harvest adventure. Azolla is an aquatic fern that has transformed our two ponds. At first, we were disturbed and flummoxed. But then we discovered that azolla is an incredible plant to use in our compost, and on our garden crops. So we are evolving ways to harvest it, and to have fun in the process. Enjoy!
