How to Bake Monkey Cupcakes: A Place Called Terrasante

WELCOME TO TERRASANTE

8:00 A.M. Tuesday, March 24th we are heading toward Tucson, Arizona Charly filled with excitement and I with some trepidation. Stopped at a cute bakery for a good sugar rush to help the situation. ;) We head to an ecovillage also called an intentional community, southwest of Tucson called Terrasante Village. We have no idea what to expect. What do we bring to eat? Where do we set up a tent? Where will we get water? What will we be working on? How does this whole thing work?

So with equal amounts apprehension and excitement we we arrive at Terrasante Village. Meeting up with Charly's friend Holly we get a brief tour of the new harmonic sweat lodge in progress and meet some of the residents of Terrasante. Holly continues our tour showing us the main building and community kitchen. Charly and I head out to set up our tent while Holly finishes making a salad. Later we gather for a potluck lunch and meet more community members and see the community kitchen. After lunch Holly continued the tour showing us the yurt she was living in and ending at the Terrasante community meeting. This turned out to be an awesome chance to peer inside the community and get a sense of the scope of projects and the internal politics of the community.

At dinner we learned how to forage through the community fridge to scare up a meal. After dinner we attended a presentation by a community member on Bio-harmonics in Architecture. We learned about how to create the framework for dome earth structures. We also learned about Bio-harmonics which for me was a jumble of right brain and left brain power, swirls and vortexes, and feng shui theory. Interesting information here, a little out there at times but gave us ideas and concepts to contemplate.

Wednesday we woke to peace and quiet, a cool morning with the sun shining. We had intended to leave but decided to stay and extra day. Today Holly, Charly and I joined Ken who was visiting from Taos, New Mexico with work on the magic bus. The magic bus is a toilet they are building using a metal framework which will be covered in plaster. It's a functional work of art. :) We worked on tying wires attaching the metal lathe to rebar, tightening the entire structure to prepare it for plastering. After a few hours working on the bus we headed over to learn native arts from Danny. Charly and Holly worked on making cordage from yucca plants. I tried my hand at this but didn't do very well. Others worked on bone carving which I watched for a while and then dove into. I made and leather awl and a pendant. Keri worked on making a didgeridoo from an agave stalk. It was a beautiful day, peaceful and serene and I spent several hours in the himdag village sanding my awl to a point on a piece of sandstone.

Terrasante proved to be a wonderful place, full of inspiration and contemplation. I felt our journey leap forward into a new kind of adventure. One with less hesitation and deeper experience. We spent the evening in the main building playing scrabble, chatting with the community, and browsing books from the book shelf. Another serene night in the tent with coolish weather.

We decided to stay yet another day to work on the magic bus (we had hoped to take part in plastering but it wasn't meant to be). This day the wind kicked up as a storm worked it's way across Arizona. A storm that left the Denver airport delaying flights due to snow was causing wind which at times seemed like it might blow us away. While it was a dusty day we spent some time wandering Terrasante and visiting the Moonscope (Interstellar Light Collector) the harmonic sweet lodge and other areas of the community. It was really a day spent walking and thinking. That evening we joined a celebration of the new moon. After this peaceful and harmonious end to the evening we were challenged by a wind storm growing in intensity. The wind gusts were at times a little frightening and would blow the side of the tent knocking me on the head or back. We slept with handkerchiefs over our faces and our sleeping bags over our heads, yet we prevailed. We didn't abandon the tent and the tent didn't abandon us. We woke up in the middle of the night to silence the wind had ceased and all was serene again.

Leaving Friday was difficult we were sad to be leaving...maybe we'll be back.

For info on Terrasante: http://terrasante.org/community/home.html

For info on WWOOFing: http://www.wwoofusa.org/

For info on the Moonscope checkout (Make sure you check out the last name of the inventor of the Interstellar Light Collector): http://starlightuses.com/index.htm