We have been creating a big, beautiful patio between the common house and the garden. It was first conceived by Fred Lanphear a long time ago and we have been working on it since 2014 when we put up a quirky bamboo shade shelter and covered it with a lovely handcrafted, artistic tent. 

We also built a little test cob oven...which was cute and fun...but was too small to cook even one pizza and all of the heat fell out of the bottom.  

In 2015 we got serious.  Well, Brian got serious and decided to really figure out how to build a proper cob oven (he is actually a rocket scientist).  So we helped him build it that summer.  

We loved the new oven!  Such great pizzas and pizza parties.  But the uneven ground was a real pain. 

In 2016 we had lots of pizza parties and experimented with the oven.  But the uneven ground was still a pain. 

So in 2017 we started leveling the ground and built the elevated patio space. That was a lot of work!  We even engaged the services of a proper front end loader.  We still found time to have plenty of pizza parties....and in the end we have a beautiful, flat, garden overlook patio.  

In 2018 we got lucky.  We had this idea that we would install a cement counter similar to the one at the Beacon Hill Food Forest...but were a little short on the skills to accomplish that.  But low and behold Larry Walton (an intern for that year) joined us with exactly those skills!!!  Amazing. 

It is beautiful...but it still needs the mosaic to be added (that is what the aluminum sections are for)...maybe this summer?

This spring we are adding steps from the common house level down to the plaza.  The plan includes a small stage two steps above the main level of the plaza.  We are inviting those of you who have a "heart connection" with Songaia to join us in etching our names in the bricks used to pave the stage.  
As we have sent out inquires to former interns to ask if they want their name on the stage we have gotten great updates from them.....check out our next blogs to hear where they are and what they are doing.  

Written March, 2019

I moved my bed closer to the window last night. It seems that I rearrange my room with the seasons. It hasn’t been intentional, but I’ve noticed that it’s been a pattern. And now I wake up to the early sunlight of these lengthening days, and to the scratching of the brown creeper that’s come, year after year, to build their nest in the cedar siding outside my bedroom window. I should say, the brown creepers that have come to build their nest, as they nest in pairs. Has it been the same creepers every year right outside my window? What of their offspring? Wikipedia told me this morning that brown creepers usually build hammock-like nests under loose flaps of bark on Douglas fir (čəbidac, Pseudotsuga menziesii) snags. Apparently, in human dominated landscapes, cedar siding makes a cozy nesting spot. In April, just as the native vine maple (t̕əqt̕qac, Acer circinatum) below my window starts to think about leafing out, the female creeper will lay 3-5 eggs that both the male and female will care for. ​

​Living as an intern is like jumping into a swimming. There's lots of spontaneous interactions in a short period that lead to down many pathways. It's impossible to know beforehand which road will unfold as a dominant theme or energy for my experience. However, it is this potential and versatility of being community that I believe is what allows so many different personalities to thrive and voice find their language of experience.  

How do I share an authentic heart-space with people over an extended people without jumping on a repetitive intellectual hamster wheel of what's most familiar to me?  


Before coming to Songaia I had never really been tested in a thorough daily routine to share and express this outer reality with other folks in community. Finding and creating Love in Public became the primary focus for me because as an intern you don't really have a lot of private space to retreat back into. 

There was a song Anita shared with me that we sang loudly with the refrain "We may not have it all together, but together we can have it all". This conviction about happiness and radical simplicity was also important to me during my time at Songaia. That when there is a quorum of love and friendship. It is easier to show up to my day knowing that what we have together is enough.

I learned a lot about harvesting and cooking with new herbs like chickweed, nasturtium leaves and doug fir tips. It is like be a painter and discovering it's possible to eat with several new shades of color that had not previously been available. 

At the Bastyr Herbs and food festival I learned about foraging for many new foods like young oregon grape, stinky bob, and indian plum. It is really empowering to walk through a forest and start to gain confidence noticing how to eat and identify more plants. This speaks to the movement that happening of rewilding and of sharing identity with the earth that was strengthened during my time at Songaia. It has been healing to shift my story and energy to feel more strongly that I belong to the earth and that we belong to each other.    

I thought Susie Fox did an awesome job of sharing new tips and tricks in the kitchen. I learned about making fire cider and other shrubs to add apothecary medicine and flavor to salad dressings and sauces. The potential to add more plant medicine into our foods here is very exciting to me.

Elizabeth, Helen, and Anita also taught me a lot about how to nurture living things in the garden. Many of them are little details that filled in my knowledge about how to care for living things. 

For me Music and the Earth are the two most potent love languages that bond strangers and community members together. The space they occupy has a timeless quality that does not rely on intellectual belief system. The mirror and vessel they use helps me see myself and others with a kinder and more universal lens.  

 
Many of my favorite memories at Songaia involve the interaction of these two elements. Spending time in the garden. Finding connection, silence, and grounding with life giving energies. Then coming together with music to find a playful chorus that expresses delight in the connection of being together.   

I remember when Jacob showed me how to play dandelion as a trumpet during the festival of the earth as one of the spontaneous moments that shifted my perspective 180 degrees. It was right around sunset, and we went from a mindful contemplative garden walk talking about plant medicine and healing old traumas. Then Jacob stopped and picked up a dandelion and made a high pitched buzz. Moments later I gave it a try and we turned into a squawking flock of ducks running around and tooting to our own rhythms. Olive, Anita, Brian, and Misty Dawn joined us at different points that week to partake in the experience. And just like that the heaviness from our conversation lifted and we were in a very different kind of feeling in our hearts.

Songaia helped me dream of the future. Of the new stories and shared experiences being held by children and babies. My parents are aging and there is no story of regrowth from this new movement of people who are influenced by the great turning. Psychologically it is very difficult to keep telling a story that does not involve these types of new beginnings. How we dream and the source of our creativity our deeply influenced by our subconscous perceptions of how the village and our peers are changing into something new from what's existed in the past.   

I was also exposed to so many new ideas that are still fermenting in my experience...

Ian's deep awareness of bacteria as medicine for plants and people. Misty Dawn's perspective on personalizing a theatrical reality to help catalyst personal transformation. Elizabeth's generosity in teaching me about the ukulele. There are countless more examples that I keep going on and on. Little seeds and feelings that have left me curious about the potential for me to reclaim and remember some missing or forgotten part of my personality. Oh yeah! I can be feisty and tender and contemplative and musical all in one day. It was really positive to feel that there is a surprising amount of wiggle room for my ego's personality could adapt to a new setting, so long as there is a shared story of care and concern being nurtured. 

​Hey There,


My given name at Songaia is Lucas Brightwater. I am a resident intern for the 2019 season at Songaia. Please note that my legal name is Brian Steyer in case there is some confusion. 

Bio:  I grew up on Bainbridge Island, WA. Growing up I traveled to China and lived Japan which were the coming of age experiences where I felt my identity and voice where shaped as a young person.

During my last semester of college at the Univiersity of Washington, I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. This radically changed my life - diet, career, and life path that I could reasonably pursue. It is greatest teacher and highest mountain I've had to climb to take back control of my life. It's been a long journey, but now I live a healthy and active life where about 90% of my symptoms stay in remission during my day-to-day life here at Songaia. 

For myself, I feel that the Taoist approach to health most closely mirrors the principles of regeneration and synchronicity that is also present in permaculture and mycology. Returning the earth or my own vital energy back to an original state of health before the trauma or disease was able to take hold. 

Coincidentally, the best Qi gong school I could find in the Seatte location is also located in Bothell. I started practicing Qi gong here in 2014 when it became clear that I needed a better form of self care to heal from the lasting trauma that had occurred when I was really sick. The Qi Gong school I am most active with is called IQIM (https://www.iqim.org/ ). They offer training to health care practitioners at Bastyr to release any extra energy from their clients. My mentors have in this school have healed themselves from lupus and lymes disease, so I had a model of individuals that had taken this journey themselves. Currently they are doing scientific studies to show that you can permanently reverse diabetes (Type 1 and Type 2) by empowering the pancreas to become more sensitive to insulin. 
 
During this past year I have also learned some computer programming doing front-end web development as a practical way to make an income. My long-term vocational goals would be to find cool heart-centered projects where I could help build website or software applications.

Over the long-term I would also like to focus more on creating an educational curriculum for mushrooms and soil health that I could use to be an educator and advocate for the health of the planet. However, at this stage I envision that being a meaningful side income that I would grow slowly over time. Whereas, the programming provides the stability and security from the get-go to begin living an independent life which is essential for me to write the next chapter of my life. 

Right now I am looking for more clients to do my first few pro bono portfolio website projects that I could use on my website -- http://briansteyer.com/ -- so if you know someone who wants to work on a free custom website with me let me know and we can discuss the details.  

Why Songaia?

I first became interested in Songaia in 2015 when I first visited Songaia to attend a permaculture workshop with Jessi Bloom and Cameron Whithey. This exposure influenced me to coordinate a rite of passage for myself in the summer of 2015. 

​I applied to this internship as the elective of my dietetic internship with Garden to Table Nutrition.  There are a lot of different places I could have done this elective, but I have always envisioned myself in a community that works together to be more sustainable.  As a Bastyr graduate, I feel that whole foods are the key not only to proper nutrition and health but a quality life. Now I’m taking the next step by getting some experience living in the kind of community I would like to be part of some day. It is my plan to participate in a community garden after this experience and to start my own garden once I am working as an RD if I am not able to find a sustainable community to live in.

Some of the skills I hope to acquire include fertilizing, planting, harvesting, canning, and permaculture of course. I am also very interested in the food forest concept which Songaia is incorporating as well as sustainable agriculture.  Lastly, I’m hoping the Songaia garden will teach me many things about the process that food takes from garden to table. I’m hoping my onsite living experience will give me a sense of how to organize a co-housing community. As an intern at Songaia for two months, my passion to learn this process will help to give me a solid foundation in this process and an idea of how I would apply it to my future goal of connecting my clients to food in a natural setting.

​

Some others things I like to do beside learning about food and nutrition include cooking, hiking, taking pictures, and reading.  Some recipes I have been experimenting with lately include pumpkin and blackberry pie. The pumpkin pie is dairy free and made from fresh blended pumpkin I cooked and froze myself.  I also like to experiment with food and herbs as medicine. For instance, boiling ginger, chamomile, and oregano together can take away cramps. ​

Again, I’m looking forward to joining the Songaia, sharing my knowledge of nutrition and cooking and learning more about gardening and community to become a more well-rounded person.

​