The Edenhope Nature Preserve

Dear Brothers, Sisters, Friends & Family….

Well, things are ‘flying’ again, big time. It is almost impossible to fully report on them without making the effort a central theme of our life, and there’s not enough time for that. Still, we have tried to share as much as we could. Which of us would have thought it would take this long to achieve the acquisition of land for Edenhope? Really, though, now that it’s done, it’s cemented a fact in our life that also affirms the quest we’ve devoted ourselves to ….precisely, it is but a moment in a continuous journey.

I speak for Ruth, too, as she/we speak [for the most part] as one …maybe we were individually inspired but we recognize we were both in it together. Though I don’t know anymore if it were ever otherwise. Maybe just thinking it was an imaginary trip invalidates one’s part in it…. Perhaps when the last trip is made and our soul is each departed, only one of us will be on that trip. I don’t even know whether that is so; it is still a mystery to me, even more durable.

Then again it might be that this November is 40 yrs we’re together. Yet the last three have been here in this island, just next door to paradise. This is our destination, the real one, not the one developed for excursions on moonbeams….

By morning again, all the commentary from the wind will have spoken. Perhaps heard, too. Meanwhile, I am loath to presuppose what it will have been, what we might have been ….or where I was going when….  Life really is a plate-full for poets, is it not?

It will be only a relatively short time now that the diminishing integuments with life as we know it together will be supplanted by a heavy [and dramatic] recasting….  And thus our role in it too, with you, will be diminished with respect to the attenuated traffic that will then be possible. Only the half-deserted streets of extra-temporal travel will succeed when that happens.  [Perhaps we have taken a pivotal role in a spiritual travelogue. Does it make sense that way?]

= = = = =

Each of us has taken irrevocable steps into the nexus of a very particular journey. Few are there who are as prepared for it as we; in truth we have met no one else along the way that even approximate our ….trip.

The Lease [signed ceremoniously in the Villij one month ago] was finally ratified by the Minister this past week. It was the inevitable outcome of what was once only a possible future which became a probable one ….and now is a historical fact. Is it mutable? This is a question for all those who perceive the material world to be an illusion, the expression of ego and not ….the great spirit.

I don’t treat such profound questions with levity. Though words can never speak for the resonances that read between their lines, that vibration is always present, just as the perception [and consciousness] of the whole natural world is now our only Ithaca. We are blessed to share even the fantasy of it….

In this month of dynamite unfoldings, we were also joined here by a lovely family [the Forcinellis – see photo attached]. Though they are also traveled plenty, they now came from a prior retreat in the Caribbean, Dominica.  The children [all six of them] are so much more ready for Edenhope than any we have known because the parents had well separated themselves and the kids from the looney bin that passes for a social system many years ago. So we were destined to learn together, and remember together who we are ….and why we are here. It’s hard to believe it is almost four weeks they are here already, three of which there, in ‘our’ villij, undergoing a real-time briefing the …Vanuatu way!

Tomorrow they go up on the Edenhope lands, the first of us to pioneer the Edenhope bush. We have just returned from a quick visit to them, to send them off and wish them well, and to ensure they have everything they need, including back-up from the villij to carry up food, young banana plants and other food plants, and other necessities of starting a life up there. They are a courageous and able family, and we are blessed to have them pioneer for Edenhope as Ruth and I continue to deal with the bureaucracy, and prepare other needs – a storage and maintenance shed in the villij, equipment to push a bush road, install a coconut oil operation in the villij, start planning boat charters to carry everything up the coast, including many fruit and nut trees, timber for the bungalows, furniture and supplies, and much more besides.

Edenhope should also be certificated as an ‘ófficial’ conservation area this week.  It will then enjoy a ‘status’ and the protection of the government of Vanuatu [and the whole world] for that matter. Even accepted are its unprecedented but timely objectives. It turns out that our Shangri’ la is almost 1,800 acres, occupying a space equally, if difficultly, accessible from both sides of the NW fork of the island ….for those who have the fortitude the trek to it requires. I think I already told you it took Ruth and me seven hours to get to it in May when we had the privilege of being the first of us to sleep on the land.

And it further develops that we will be joined soon by another of our friends from Florida, straight from a previous raw-vegan life there. So, it is a reality for more than just the eleven of us now……

Outside, the signs are ominous. The Red Sky in Australia picked up across the globe, awesome in its impact on all of us. New eruptions appearing on the surface of the sun …after [what is it? 700 days of no activity at all, months going on years of quiet [before the storm]. How fragile, precarious the world is; its civilized nature a barely operative convention that mesmerizes all who participate in it missing the point [like J Alfred Prufrock].

That this paradigm has stood its ground, even presumed to grow more powerful, more invidious, more-god-like and arrogant ….is a patchwork of destiny I could never understand, no less accept. So much suffering has been endured in the backwaters and consequences of it. Thus nonetheless did it stand ….for all to see, bigger than life in a grand illusion sort of way, seeming to obey none of the laws of nature we mortals depend upon. In the end, though, it is really no different than every last one of all the illusions of divinity that ever lived…. And which have all succumbed to the sirens that are always there for such schemes.

None of these pretenders can ever survive though, garbed as they are in unique, magnificent ….almost astonishing splendor. How it could ever have been thought otherwise is beyond comprehension.  Yet here we are again, on the same precipice we’ve stood upon so many times, failing each time….

We now have Edenhope [with all our heart] to return to the old ways….

What a dream it has become!

Edenhope now, more than ever.

Love from us both,

Stephen & Ruth.