Food Intensive was Intense!

The food intensive really lives up to its name. It was really exhausting driving from place to place when each trip was an average of an hour away, inside a sweaty van with a bunch of opinionated teenagers that usually resulted in me wanting to scream. But lets not talk about the tribulations, lets talk about the good parts!

My favorite place was The Regenerative Design Institute. It’s basically a place where people go to learn about animal tracking, permaculture, natural building, village culture, and wilderness survival skills. The man who runs the show is called James. He was a sparkly, warm-hearted man that was really passionate about inspiring us to think about issues and how to find tools to address them. When we left the Design Institute, everyone in the vans were on edge. People either thought James was a total conceited chump of a man, or they thought that he was really neat, with really awesome ideas. I really liked James. We all had long discussions during the car ride about our views on James, and The Regenerative Design Institute in general. By the middle of the trip I was so ready to go home, because I was confused with my opinions on so many topics. I had learned many new things and I just needed some down time to contemplate it all. I didn’t have the time, so I just had to keep on trucking with the tours.

Going to Full Belly Farm at the end of the trip definitely brought my downward spiral back up again. Seeing how much consciousness was used during the creation of the farm, and how well the workers were treated made me feel much more hopeful about how my life was going to play out. It inspired me to live consciously and with intention. I came out of the trip motivated to work on creating my life to be dedicated to sustainability and social justice. Amen.