Over the past 2 weeks, I joined the Cabin crew with five other strangers on the Azorean island of Sao Miguel.
The ask was simple: work ~3 hours per day pruning trees on an orchard with a variety of fruits in the beautiful town of Furnas. In exchange, you receive locally-sourced, home-cooked food and private accommodation at the Laughing Orchard.
In practice, I knew it was going to be a challenge to how I have become accustomed to living. Already before the trip, there were already several questions rising from within:
How do you co-live with people in a community, opening to and learning from others whilst remaining secure in yourself?
How do you escape daily routines to connect with nature whilst spending half of your time in a virtual world on back-to-back calls?
How do you manage your time and emotions to allow for the magic of serendipity whilst accepting that punctuality and consistency are a necessity?
Balance has been an ongoing question throughout my twenties. Landing into Ponta Delgada airport, I understood the tension at the centre of all the questions: finding a middle way between two extremes.
There was no better place to discover this than the Azores. Stranded roughly in the middle of the Atlantic - equidistant from Berlin and New York - the archipelago was formed by a series of volcanic eruptions 36 million years ago, and has only been inhabited until 1439.
Arriving in Furnas, the town seemed to be a quaint 19th century town with curvy Portuguese churches, detached houses and citrus trees growing on front lawns. Looking down from the hills surrounding on all sides, cows grazed and occasionally stood for an opportune photo.
The gardens surrounding the accommodation contained intense green. Life was bursting out: trees covered in oranges, lemons, strawberry guavas, dragonfruits and leafless trees nearly ready to restart the cycle for figs, plums, and apples.
The group had been informed by Aleks, the owner, that Laughing Orchard was a place had a particular volcanic energy that “accelerated relationships".
Walking just two minutes down the road, I instantly understood. The focal point of the town were the twenty hot springs, streaming steam and chemicals from deep within the earth. You are instantly confronted by the earth’s power. You could embrace it, resist it, run away from it. But you couldn’t ignore it.
Living among us was also our guide for the duration of the two weeks: Helder. He had the near impossible task of teaching a group of highly-productive and neurotic tech people to embrace the fundamentals of permaculture and create a space for us to slow down. Amidst destructive volcanic energy and extreme life, he held the balance.
I surprised myself how much I learned in these two weeks, both about the land and myself. Here are some of my main takeaways:
“All good things are wild and free.” HD Thoreau was acutely aware of the dangers of staying indoors, both physically and psychologically. Yet being a member of the laptop class", I know that I spend far too much time on my laptop, Zoom calls and Slack.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, my balance of real and virtual worlds shifted dramatically. Consequently, I found my thoughts becoming too cyclical and riddled with anxiety. I was stuck in the unhealthy routine of wondering what these other, virtualised people were thinking.
I have been lucky over the past months to spend time in a cabin in Poland and in a permacultural paradise in the Azores. When I have felt most balanced, is when I have allowed myself time to participate in nature: chopping wood, pruning trees, making a campfire, building a cob house. They were chances to enter a natural flow state.
My remedy for the future, will be regularly trying to find awe-some natural places and contribute to the landscape in some way: mountains, dense forests, oceans, lakes.
These places are what Alain de Botton calls sublime, because they put your life in perspective: “See how small you are next to the mountains. Accept what is bigger that you and what you do not understand… Our life is not the measure of all things: consider sublime places a reminder of human insignificance and frailty.”
That extra hour to breathe each morning for a couple of weeks can provide fulfilment, prevent a downward spiral and even save a life.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found there are fewer moments to be spontaneous. Work needs to be done, bills paid, dishes washed, all the fun stuff. I can’t be as spontaneous as I’d like to be on a day to day.
Spontaneity thrives where people are open. Within our group at Cabin, there were a variety of cultures and personalities, giving the opportunity to connect with people you otherwise wouldn’t have.
Throughout the weeks the whole group co-learned. We collaboratively constructed and shared knowledge without a central teacher. We sat down at lunch and dinner to tell stories, experiences and random facts about the world. It was an eclectic forum of knowledge where curious minds met.
I made a conscious decision to nurture a spontaneous mindset. I had a whole host of other firsts: pruning trees, making cob (dancing on the mud), baking a pizza in an outdoor oven, participating in a family constellation, bathing in a hot spring in the ocean, eating a tamarillo, drinking hot sparkling water straight from the source.
The novelty of places, partnerships, businesses naturally fade over time. The only way to keep them alive is to build time for spontaneity, surrounded by people who are open to both teaching and learning. As Helder said: the best teachers are the best learners.
The garden hadn’t been pruned for about 5 years. It showed. Branches were spread everywhere, leaves over-growing, and smaller fruits budding. To transform the garden, we followed a four step process:
Connect - understanding the tree’s environment (climate, soil, water, organisms, other trees); and how it intertwines with itself. This gives you a plan of where to head.
Trim - pruning small and large branches that grow up, down, across other branches or that are dead, to create space and concentrate flows of nutrients.
Heal - creating a special concoction of aloe, clay, sugar, vinegar, flour and painting it on the wounds to prevent disease and ants.
Feed - adding lime and mulch around the trunk and drip line to neutralise acidity in the soil, feed micro-organisms, produce more nitrogen and accelerate growth.
The most important part of the pruning process is to connect with the tree itself. “Let the tree tell you where to cut”. This is particularly important if you are removing large branches or trunks that change the shape of the tree. We always looked to give the tree some balance.
We too are natural systems. Yet I have found that I often ignore what is important for me. In the past, I’ve been hesitant to cut aspects out of my life - people, places, routines - that no longer serve me. The deliberation comes from being out of touch with our intuition, focusing energy outwards to the world rather than inwards.
Instead of looking for answers from business influencers, spiritual gurus or familial ancestors, my aim for the future is to listen to my body. When I can start making quick decisions that I fully believe in, I know I will be at equilibrium.
The act of cutting is productive: you take a given input and change its form. The act of healing is regenerative: you apply something and have to wait for it to grow; you cannot force or push.
Helder advised us not to take too many branches off the tree this year. This would potentially send the tree into shock, spread disease and even kill it. Instead, we took off enough to rebalance the trees and then gave attention to the wounds.
I noticed this particularly last year: I had Covid and wasn’t getting better. I was expecting a day or two in bed with paracetamol would do the jobs. I then listened to a meditation series by Lama Rod Owens called Radical Self Care over a couple of days. I realised how much stress and expectation in my body in a need to be productive. When this was released, I started to get better/
I now know “the body keeps the score”. Like a tree, both the physical and psychological body requires care and regeneration. It needs kindness and to be free from expectation.
“Come back next year and you will see your work”. The garden we worked on will take multiple years to transform from an overgrown and wild orchard to a stewarded paradise. By then, my contribution will be deep within the ground. But I know it will be there.
Playing highly competitive sport since the age of 4, I grew up focused on short-term achievement and quick wins. Consequently, I’ve struggled to map change throughout my life. I have spent most of my time in two states: (a) constantly looking forward to a better self; or (b) looking back on the past with a critical eye to what I can improve on.
I’ve realised now it’s never too late to start celebrating your own change. When I had time to breathe and look back over my twenties, I can finally see how far I have come as a person. My whole character has shifted year after year: through highs and lows.
Sometimes we need a focused change at the beginning (stop smoking, start exercising, learn the basics of a new language). However, without a long-term vision of yourself, you can’t expect that change to be consistent or fulfilling.
Early on, I watched Helder whip out the red spray paint. The little red dots indicated which branches to cut. After each spray, he would stand back like an artist and observe where to cut next. He taught me permacultural design is an art not a science.
I have always felt the tension between knowledge and wisdom. As much as I like acquiring new skills, understanding technology and economics and building businesses, I realised early on that these alone will not lead to fulfilment. Too much focus on the “what” of knowledge can lead us to dark places outside of ourselves.
Wisdom is knowing how to live your own life. There is no one-size-fits-all; every person is unique. You can read the great philosophers and scientists until the end of time but their ideas must be digested and internalised to truly become your own.
Art is the loved sister of wisdom. It is the ability to simultaneously be in and stand aloof from the world and create something from within that becomes without. Wisdom provides the means to survive in the world; art provides the energy to be fulfilled.
The act of creation for its own sake from painting to pottery to Tai Chi to massage provides a vehicle to connect with yourself and the world around you like no other. Great art, like great life, is pure expression by a person who knows themselves.
A big thank you to Chalice from the Cabin team, who brought together an amazing group of people and facilitated the whole week for a life-changing experience 👏
Cabin DAO - for the coliving dream
Laughing Orchard - for the volcanic energy
New School Permaculture - for the timeless wisdom