Charlie Laurel: My Permaculture Journey

Hi everyone, Charlie Laurel writing here.  I was living near Flagstaff, Arizona when I first heard about permaculture twelve or so years ago. My friend Lisa Rayner had taken a Permaculture Design Course (PDC) and came back to town full of enthusiasm. She gave a presentation at a local book store and talked about digging swales, capturing rainwater, planting perennial polycultures, and working with patterns of nature.

I began to put some permaculture techniques into practice on my homestead on the edge of the Painted Desert. I didn’t take a Permaculture Design Course until about five years ago, and it’s clear to me now that I didn’t really “get” what permaculture was about until I took the course. Of course, I’m still in the process of getting it, and now I ask myself, “Well, what is it?”

Part of practicing permaculture is learning to approach life with a designer’s mindset. If I can remember that anything that I do intentionally is designed, then I can draw upon the best models for design: patterns in nature. Reading about design principles derived from observation of nature was interesting, but putting them into practice during the Design Course, in collaboration with others–that was when something started to click. One of the great surprises for me in the course was the participation of such a diverse group of people: low income renters, wealthy landowners, young folks, “retired” folks, people with different political leanings, college students, professionals.  Quite a crowd!

We all came together to create efficient, abundant, beautiful designs. And, I would venture to say, we all experienced some kind of inner transformation as well, perhaps something to do with cultivating a designer’s mindset in alignment with nature. I expect others might describe their transformation differently, but to me there was a very apparent spirit of empowerment and optimism at our graduation at the end of the course.

So, I’m super excited now to be part of the teaching team offering the first Permaculture Design Course to be held in Southern Vermont in recent times.  There’s so much more I could say here, but for now I’ll just say: “Sign up soon!”  This course will fill up quickly.