It’s been a good weekend despite discouraging news like this one. After an environmental disaster of such devastating proportions like the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig explosion on April 20, the Obama administration has still granted oil and gas companies more than 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico. Or the decline of honeybee colonies by a third in one single year? Where are we heading indeed knowing that our own survival might be closely linked to these little creatures? But despite all this, it’s been a good weekend and mainly because of this wonderful place, the Nature Institute and it’s wonderful people. We took two of their workshops, on Regenerative Land Practices in Colombia and Brazil, and Edible Mushroom Cultivation, both workshops by Justin West. And it’s always so regenerative and rejuvenating spending some time around its director Craig Holdrege and his wife Henrike Holdrege. For those who has an interest in this check their 2010 Summer Course: Transformation in Nature and in Human Knowing. It’s a truly marvelous and transformational experience. We got to know them through the last summer week long workshop on observing wholeness in nature. And glad I am I went. Rediscovering a sound path in a world that seems it lost the direction, it’s quite refreshing and encouraging. It’s a bit hard to describe the experience but I would call it contagious. Having a glimpse of a better understanding of how nature works, I cannot name a better way of spending my time. While I cannot say that I learned how I can restore a depleted soil yet, I truly enjoyed the Shiitake mushroom workshop. As a musical instrument maker and woodworker enthusiast, learning how we can “eat” out of the beautiful logs of wood beside trying to model it into “useful things”, it completes the whole picture. I am so looking forward for the whole experience, from searching the woods for the best logs suited for such a task, inoculating the spawns etc, to simply observing how nature does its magic things and of course enjoying the fabulous taste of real fresh mushrooms. It really helps me to change how I look at things. For example, when I see a beautiful figured maple or exotic wood, I couldn’t help but imagine what a beautiful guitar (or any other musical instrument) that wood would make, the timber frame or that piece of furniture etc; and that despite of my desire of letting the forests just the way they are. Through this I hope I can just watch the nature do its things (and have a taste of it) and slow down a bit from the hectic pace of life we keep.