Ronny Mueller, 34, has been on a worldwide quest to understand permaculture ever since doing an internship with Harald Wedig.
“Permaculture,” Ronny explains, “designs landscapes in harmony with nature, as if we’re creating landscapes by dancing with nature.”
As a response, what comes to mind are late neoclassic and early impressionist landscapes, but one thinks also of a line from John Dryden in the 18th century,
“From harmony, from heavenly harmony/The universal frame began.”
Ronny was born in Fuerth, Bavaria, and grew up in Langenzenn, a town near the Zenn River.
His quest to understand EcoVillages and permaculture started at a mountain forestry project, which in its turn sent him on his subsequent project to visit and study EcoVillages and intentional communities that are trying to live in harmony with nature and to lower, as much as possible, man’s carbon footprint on earth.
His report about his Lebensdorf Odyssey includes what the reader might want to know, as such villages are of the advance party of what lies ahead. The following is what one learns from his narrative.
Mueller started out in an EcoVillage called Sieben Linden in Germany. (The Linden Tree is symbolic of nature’s power to heal, and detoxify—a great place to begin the quest).
He then went to Findhorn, a spiritual healing place in Scotland where people talk to plants, and to the spirit of the Natural World, where man and nature are one.
(Does this not bring to mind Prince Charles, who is famously known as talking to plants and playing music to them?)
Mueller then went to the Hollies, where the Irish construct green buildings made of straw, clay, and mud.He moved on to Lebens Gut Pommritz to understand sustainable agriculture; next to Lebensgarten; and then, journeyed to Steyerberg, between Bremen and Hanover in Lower Saxony, Germany.
Steyerberg holds daylong retreats and is the venue for circle dances from all over—from Europe, Asia, North America, including Native Americans circle dance, which is also known as Ghost Dancing, a dance form that the interviewer finds fascinating in its ancient spiritual inspirational aspects.
Mueller’s next stop was Whole Village, Toronto, Canada. There he explored Community Supported Agriculture.
Then followed his first visit to Earth Haven. It was a good way to learn about consensus building and to consider ecological buildings off the grid.
In Germany, Mueller went next to Keimblatt Ecovillage to study
First Sprouts, as the name suggests: first leaf/sprouts.
And then, to Italy to Torri Superiore, where he observed how they revitalized an abandoned village.
He went on to the foothills of the mountain in Damanhur where they conduct evolutionary research about human development.
Finally, he’s here in our Ithaca EcoVillage, New York, where he has been camping as part of his Lebensdorf Odyssey. EcoVillagers who have met him, and another visiting Lebensdorf intern, have nothing but praise.
Afer Ithaca, Ronny Mueller is going back to Earth Haven to catch up on developments six years after his first visit.
