Monday, August 14, 2006

Regreening the Proverbial Desert
I am in Santa Fe, New Mexico and have attended several meetings for my friends' conscious real estate development project, Na'avoteh and The Rainmaker Institute, which has been birthing itself for several years, but is now actually happening. They are a spiritually-sophisticated group, with much knowledge about the ecosystem, sustainable buildings, and the subtle underlying patterns that need to be aligned before a truly correct form can manifest. They are basing the project around the water element, and acting as the ancient Native American rainmakers did, calling for the regreening of the arroyos and the regreening of our minds—by loving the water and letting it love them. They are doing it right, building to high "green" standards, and the plan is to have an incredible spa combined with a learning center like Esalen or Omega, as well as a variety of housing, a plaza and village center with live/work spaces, and an egg-shaped kiva with a water feature as the heart of the place. My designer-self is in heaven watching this love-based vision come together!