journey to the Shire

June 19, 2005
Carleton, Nova Scotia, CANADA

First week at the Shire…

I arrived to Canada just over a week ago. I am here to volunteer at ‘the Shire’ for the next few months. The Shire is an ecological learning center where sustainable living is practiced and programs focusing on leadership, entrepreneurship and ecology will be offered to different kinds of groups. I quit my job with Habitat for Humanity at the end of April 2005 to take some time off from the work routine in order to clear my head and explore the possibilities into the future. My work with Habitat has been good and rewarding and I feel I left it when the time was right. To volunteer at Shire felt like a good opportunity to move into the next phase of my life. I hope to learn and ‘do things’ here as well as to get inspired by this place and people who are making things happen while I contribute to ‘the greater good’ and creating a space that aims to serve ‘the greater community’. Here, we are gathered around ‘basic goodness in the world’; we want a better world for ourselves and our communities; we want to empower people to see the possibility(ies) for a sustainable and sane present and future and we want to encourage ourselves and others to start to create ‘the world we want to live in’ now.

What is this place like? What exactly is (will be) happening here? What are we creating as the people of the Shire?

Owner and co-founder Tim Merry describes it as follows:
The Shire is 165 acres of land, forest, meadow, swamp, streams and lake. It is a protected ecological learning community, leadership training ground and venue. The Shire is an exploration into the best of human potential and an example of how self-reliant living could be…

Just imagine a big piece of land covered with green life. 165 acres is about 165 times the size of a football field…it is so big that when one walks on the land, one feels in total solitude wrapped up with the utter silence just to be reminded of the sentient life by the sounds of birds, flies and the wind. The green life is quite young; apparently the whole area was cleared off trees ruthlessly in the 60s by a lumber company. Fortunately circle of life continues and human touch is not so brutal anymore, so that everything grew back with its full force. The land is fertile; the nature is forgiving and generous. We, as humans, and the hobbits of the Shire only can learn from that and respect and protect what nature gave birth to. And that is exactly the intention here at the Shire.

Then there is the house where we are all residing: Horton house. It is big enough to home all of us: Merry family, four volunteers and our dog Meisja. It is located on a small hill so we have a lovely view of forests and lake that surround us.

Tim Merry and his brother in law Jimmy Condon bought this land in 2004. Tim and his wife Kate moved in summer 2004, shortly after got married on the land, and welcomed their baby girl Emma in November 2004.
Tim called in for volunteers in October 2004 because he wants to realize his dream and vision for this place together with people, wants to create a learning community (of hobbits) around the Shire. Along with me, three other hobbits responded to Tim’s call. Kairi and Piret from Estonia and Alan from Ireland. Alan and I have been here for about a week; Kairi and Piret joined us two days ago. We will spend the next three months together helping run this place, working on the land and getting to know each other. There must be some reason for us to be together and I am curious what we will learn from each other. They are all younger than I am but we do have similar ideals and interests which is simply manifested by the fact that we are all here.

In the past week I (we) have done a variety of activities, to get the place ready for the first group we are hosting this weekend.
Here is a list of what I have done:
mowed and weed-whacked the land
did some landscaping
dug a hole for a compost toilette
helped build a marquee (a big tent for meetings)
polished an old time farmer stove
helped set up a kitchen in a shed for the groups who will come here for workshops
drove a truck for the first time in my life! J

I think I established a daily routine already. I wake up around 7; read some and do some sitting. Breakfast and morning chat with folks here from 9 to 10. Then some outdoors work depending on what needs to be done…after lunch some rest and some more reading…and work outside until 6 or so…resting and some more reading before dinner oh and beer of course! (I have to say I do miss European beer here) or I might be cooking the dinner for the household which I quite enjoy…after dinner, depending on the intensity of work, I might call it an early night and go to bed early or hang out with the Shire team…

It was mostly physical and practical work and this helped me a great deal to settle into the space. The less mental activity the better for me these days. Emotionally I’ve been on a roller coaster in the last two months with all the changes happening in my life; therefore it feels great to be grounded this way. Well, of course, little bit of contemplation is not to be missed at a great place like this. Especially if you don’t know what you will be doing in four months’ time J Being here is already paying off; being in the nature and not being distracted by mundane deeds of city life allows me to listen to myself. This is one important passage in my life if not the most important. As a natural consequence of one’s evolution these moments reoccur in our lives over periods of time. I am in one of those gaps right now but I feel that this would or could lead to a radical transformation in my life.
Coming to live here in the nature was a deliberate decision. Having led a very segregated life from nature for most of my life, I found profound peace and realness during my few experiences in nature. Nature has much to offer to us, there is much sanity and peace in the stillness in it. One’s body and mind immediately tunes in with the natural rhythm and relaxes into a different state. There is also a sense of humbleness and simplicity embedded in the nature. Stripped away from clustered accessories of civilization, one sees clearly ‘the basic goodness of existence’. Voluntary simplicity. It makes one humble to live with the basics away from the impulses of consumption culture. It is a liberating feeling.

A lovely evening is setting in outside. The clouds cleared and the sun shines upon the trees and fields and people of the Shire. It is good to be here…



To be continued…

Filiz