December Already?

The fact that it is December is kind of blowing my mind. This year has gone by at the most extraordinary pace, blurring together in my memory like the countryside outside a speeding car. Moving from San Francisco back to Sydney, moving into a new apartment, starting a new job, welcoming our son Bodhi into our lives, working hard to grow StartSomeGood into a success, traveling regularly for business and pleasure. I’m back to Melbourne this week for the Global Shifts Social Enterprise conference, my fourth trip to Melbourne in the last few months, which is completely unexpected. Two weeks ago I was there for the excellent FWD2012, Australia’s first conference on digital campaigning co-hosted by Oxfam Australia and the new Centre for Australian Progress. I flew there directly from Adelaide, where I was attending the Social Innovation Exchange (SIX) Summer School. Both events but particularly SIX have left me filled with ideas and thrilled to have met so many amazing people working in this space. While Social Innovation might be hard to define the people who self-select to join this conversation are unusually passionate, creative, caring and intuitive and it was both a pleasure and an honour to spend a few days in their company.

Going back only two weeks before that I was up in Far North Queensland to see the solar eclipse, which was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. The November 14 2012 eclipse outside Cairns has been on my agenda since I was unable to make it to the last full solar eclipse in Australia, near Lynhurst South Australia in 2002. Since then I’ve framed many of my plans around this event: we had always planned to time our return from the US to be able to attend and even with a 3 month-old in our lives, and with the support of the greatest wife a man could hope for, I was determined not to miss it (I’d be waiting another 16 years before the next one in Australia which will be in Sydney in 2028). And wow am I glad I could make it and deeply grateful to K for making it possible for me to do so.

Watching the moon blot out the sun and the day suddenly disappear into darkness was one of the most moving things I have ever witnessed. It’s impossible not to be awed by the experience, by the sense of galactic scale, the realisation that we are sitting on a little rock floating in space, surrounded by other rocks. The spectacle is unique and magical: watching the moon creep across the sun until, with a final solar glare, it is gone, replaced with a dark ball in the sky surrounded by a thin line of light. We happen to live at the perfect moment in the history of the earth when this is possible, a period of only 20,000-100,000 when the moon exactly fits the sun from our vantage point, before the moon’s inexorable movement away from us at about 3cm a year leaves only partial eclipses possible. I met a guy on the plane to Cairns who was going to his 14th eclipse and now having witnessed one and I understand the instinct. I’m not going to wait until 2028 to see another  - I’ve got my eye on the Eclipse Festival in Oregon in 2017 (heads-up American friends!).

And beyond the eclipse itself the week-long music festival held under it's path was the best I have ever attended (note: burns are not music festivals). Incredible production, inspiring music, good food and, most importantly of all, a wonderful big group of friends there to share it with, many of whom I hadn’t see for many years or if I had only briefly. Spending time with them, and making new friends, was the true highlight of the festival (as it always is).

Bodhi continues to delight and amaze K and I. Every day he seems to have a new movement, sound or ability. This is my favourite new photo of him, from our visit to my parents property this past weekend, if you’d indulge my parental desire to show him off (I have to restrain myself from saturating Facebook with Bodhi photos):

Time in the forest

I spent last weekend at Orb Festival in upstate New York. It's the largest pystrance festival on the East Coast, headlined this year by Hallucinogen, Shpongle, Rinkadink, Logic Bomb and many more top international artists. It was a lot of fun, camping festivals really are one of my favorite things to do.

But it wasn't the music or the people, great as it and they were, that made me most happy about being there; it was the forest.

Orb was my fifth multi-day camping festival since arriving in the States late last August, but my first set in a truly wooded setting. It was glorious: haphazard trees interspersed with ferns spread thickly across a hillside leading down to a lake, in which sat a flower- and moss-covered island, a single sapling rising from the middle. In a word: pretty.

There's nothing like being out in the bush to relax your mind and recharge your emotional and physical batteries. Back in Sydney we used to aim to get out of the city at least once a month. If I go too long without escaping the concrete jungle for trees and scrub I get worn down and frustrated. I had forgotten this and have, somehow, gone ten months since really getting away from civilization. I suspect that this lack of contact with nature is not uncommon for city dwellers, which is to say most of us. And I don't think it's good for us. I know it's not good for me.

Human civilization creates the illusion of order, filled with straight lines and moving machines. But underneath all that is chaos, fueled by the bewildering and often-bizarre actions and desires of humankind. The forest, meanwhile, is chaotic on the surface, the unique contortions of trees and folds in the landscape. But underneath the chaos is order, a world produced by laws which are complex and yet somehow simple, embedded deep in our unconscious. When you allow yourself to feel it the forest can feel, on a very primal level, like home.

I think much of our societies unsustainable lifestyle can be connected to a lack of contact with nature. People grow up completely disconnected from where their food, clothes and goods come from and where their waste goes to. They feel the effect of climate change as unseasonal weather, but usually do not see the real impact on watersheds and landscapes, like the cracked and blasted creek beds we so often see in Australia. It is spending solid time in nature, going to sleep in your little tent and waking up to the sounds of birds and rain on the fly, that reminds you that we are a part of this life force, that we come from the forest and rely on it still for so much.

Part of the relaxation of being out of the city is unhooking from screens. I'm away from my computer, I switch off my phone, I settle into a very different pace; slower, more measured, more aware of my surroundings. As someone who lives online I luxuriate in the peace and quiet of days away from email, text messages and phone calls, spent in good conversations, exploring, being in my body. If you're doing hard, emotionally-draining work, like organizing, advocacy and social entrepreneurship, finding time to get away can feel impossible, but it's critical to your sustainability and effectiveness. It allows you to step back and reflect on what's working and what needs to be changed. It allows your mind to meander down new mental paths, unlocking creativity and insight. It reconnects you to your humanity, and the slow pace of the sun moving across the sky. Unhooking from the constant pulse of digitized information and conversation helps you to understand it while the resulting time to think and consider helps you to understand yourself.

We are hoping to get back to the same location for Desiderata Festival in August, but I don't want to wait that long to get back out into nature again, it's too important to me, too affirming and re-energizing. And, frankly, too much fun.