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After Helene there were glaring gaps, communities in distress and stranded from aid, and this project and collective healing time are intended as responses to that pain and isolation. Both Celo and Barnardsville (the two locations marking the ends of our trail) were seriously affected by the storm, and the dream is to interlock these two hurt spaces and let them nourish each other through the natural, heartfelt traffic of wandering boots and packs full of goodies to share. To let each of us grieve and look back with confidence that the fear of the past won’t define the possibilities that await us in the future.

 

Ernesto Van Peborgh, a regenerative theorist says, “Aliveness means being in a regenerative process - continuously creating conditions for more life.” Another marker of the aliveness of a system is how well it dances between entropy (the drift towards disorder, the inevitable tendency of a system to wear down) and syntropy (life’s counter force, the ability to build coherence, order and regeneration).

 

Negentropy is the capacity to build order, structure and possibility instead of sliding into chaos.  For me, this captures the hope of this trail, to hold us together in a long term proximity of building, discovering, singing, playing, skill building, fire wall making, disaster prepping, learning the forest, following her contours, walking on land we’ve never touched or seen, recovering our own precious relationships with the natural world, all the while, giving our communities a beautiful pilgrim’s trail, with places to do sacred ceremony and our own camp-outs and play in the forest. Also, a metaphorical connection between two communities who have long established roots and are only 10-ish miles away as the crow flies!