Regenerative Design and Nature Awareness Open House

In a damp half-mist dawn overlooking the coast of Bolinas a group of about twenty young men and women gently shuffle off into their own spots with a playful silence. Some are meditative, a couple tease and play with each other silently. We sit on stumps, rocks, in the thick dewed grass facing in many directions. There is no poise or "listening". It doesn't feel taut or tense like that. We are sitting, sitting and allowing what cals and songs and forms cross and present themselves into our awareness, and taking note of this.
Some coyotes sound off in the distance, it sounds like there must be twenty of them. We finish, gather ourselves, and walk gently and rested back to camp.
If my high-school was like Regenerative Design and Nature Awareness I wouldn't have "missed" over half of my classes in my Junior year. I would probably have grumbled about being up at 8 in the morning to milk the goats, but I would have shown up, because it feels important. I have never milked a goat before. Coddle, pinch, pull. Coddle, pinch, pull. I'm actually amazed this goat doesn't kick me in the face. She is very gentle.
The open house is a few sit down talks and explanations along with a tour. The only problem with the open house is I don't want a tour. When Penny shows us the greywater system attached to the main house, I want us to all build one right now. The cobb houses, I want to get my hands in that mud and straw. You almost don't need to see a curriculum, it's all right there, spread out and functioning in front of me. I want to do it now.
I have come here to catch up with Dave and Will, fearless adventurers into the unknown. I get to see the community that, not without it's growing pains, is a family of passionate, dedicated, intelligent, creative human beings. Watching Dave lead a basket-weaving workshop while another group builds drums from rough-hewn wood and buckskin makes me want to pitch a tent and not leave until I've absorbed every technique, ability, and technology that is being taught here.
There is a movement happening in this world, it is a movement to come back to this ground, this earth that we are standing on, and Will and Dave and the whole RDNA community are teaching and practicing and learning old and new ways to live on this earth together, abundantly, looking to the natural rhythms and cycles and ways for their model.
I wonder if the best economic stimulus package might be to send someone from every community in America to RDNA and other programs like it so we can bring it back and implement regenerative living and awareness of nature into our families, communities, and towns?
More than anything I am struck by the difference between what I hear on the radio and what I am seeing across the broad landscapes of California. Doom and gloom and economic disaster rock the AM and FM radio waves. I however, am sitting in record rainfall, on fertile ground, in one of the most abundant regions on earth. How can there not be enough? Which one should I trust-- an economic forecast I can neither see nor feel, or this rich soil under my feet, and a glowing red sun in the dusk of night?