Relevance: Pillars of the Earth

by Ken Follet

Take One:

     When we started to seriously look at the skill and tool set needed to achieve sustainability, we quickly realized that the period known as the Middle Ages was the golden era of sustainability in that it was a time when the vast majority of things that people used to sustain their lives were produced locally using techniques that preserved the fertility of their land. When bulk transportation was by oxen cart, and the rate of travel was ten miles on a good day, people built their lives around the things that their village could produce on a sustainable basis.

     In spite of their profound lack of technical knowledge regarding the processes they were working with, medieval craftsmen and agriculturalists created sustainable systems which stand as the first benchmark for anyone seriously attempting to re-create sustainability at the small community level. Using locally available materials, they were able to house, clothe and feed themselves generation after generation--so, learning how they did that can teach us a great deal about how sustainable systems function.

      Today, we're the beneficiaries of a vast accumulation of scientific knowledge, information that allows us to revisit those medieval arts and crafts, selecting and adapting traditional techniques and skills to suit modern needs and values. Imagine someone spinning wool hand-sheared from our sheep while watching their favorite YouTube videos via our satellite internet connection, and you'll get an idea of how we weave old and new ways together here at Windward.

     Currently there are hundreds of thousands of people who annually participate in living history events that re-create various aspects of the Middle Ages, and over the last dozen years, Windward has hosted a series of educational events focused on re-enacting various aspects of that period. One example would be the Festival of St. Hildegard [Click Here to view an excerpt from The Boke of Days, a journal from one of the first living history events held at Windward]

     The setting for Pillars of the Earth is a small town in medieval England that's grown up around a monastery. When their church burns down, they undertake to build a cathedral in its place--a huge undertaking, but once completed it will draw people from all over to come, worship and support the local economy.

     Windward's vision is similar in that it involves the creation of a sustainable living center where people can learn about how nature works in practice; a context within which modern-day pilgrims can seek a closer, more sustainable relationship with nature.

     Our goal is not to re-enact the past, but rather to en-act the future, and our ability to achieve that goal will depend in great part upon how well we understand the strengths and weaknesses of our life support systems. A key question there involves learning how to distinguish between that which is essential, and that which is not--Pillars of the Earth helps us do that by providing an engaging vision of a time when the world was lit only by fire, when people ate what was locally grown, and when they had to rely on each other as a community, or perish.

     As the age of cheap oil comes to a close, the ability of people to ship organic oranges from Australia to the United States will come to an end. As the import of the "Crude Awakening" makes itself felt, people will have to learn to live on what they can produce locally as a community, just like their medieval ancestors did.

     Fortunately, we have a great wealth of scientific and social understanding to draw on as we undertake to enact a sustainable future; but it's always important to go back and visit the basics--at least conceptually. Pillars of the Earth is a good place to start that process because it does an excellent job of bringing the Middle Ages to life in a way that allows us to see a time very different from our own.


 

Take Two:

     There's an economic dimension to historical re-enactments that supports the study of medieval sustainability. There are lots of intentional communities that operate a business that generates the income needed to pay expenses and provide the members with pocket money. Early on we knew we didn't want to go down that road, and so we made the decision to keep Windward's corporate form dependent on its members for the bulk of its funding; indeed, finding a way to avoid the traditional employer/employee dynamics was a prime reason for creating a cooperative association. So long as our members are financially independent, we have a good chance of insuring that the corporation will remain the servant of the membership rather than the other way around, and the study of medieval arts and crafts is one way we enable our members to become financially independent.

     By mastering medieval techniques, we not only gain the ability to provide cradle-to-cradle level goods for our own use, we also gain the ability to produce unusual items for sale or trade to other people who want to use sustainably produced products in their recreational lives, and once they've discovered the pleasure of using something custom made using traditional materials and techniques, well that opens the door to embracing other cradle-to-cradle goods.

     There are lots of groups active in what's popularly known as "the Current Middle Ages". Many are small, but some involve huge numbers of people. One re-enactment group has a yearly paid event attendance in excess of a hundred thousand people all told, and even that pales in comparison to the number of people who attend the various Renaissance Fairs held around the country. That's a market with gross revenues in excess of a hundred and fifty million dollars a year, an industry which supports thousands of artisans and craft workers who create the costumes and equipment used at these events.


 

Take Three:

     Creating a working understanding of another culture is a challenging undertaking. In the case of a culture that's also distant in time from our own, one way to start is through the creation of a "personna," that details the life and activities of the sort of person who lived in the time you want to learn about. From there, you can research what sort of clothes that person would have worn, or what sort of food she would have eaten, or what sort of work he would have done, and so on as you create a practical understanding of what that person's life would have been like.

     For example, my medieval personna's last name is "Kidman," a name that fell into place naturally since when I started attending living history events, I would often bring along a kid, i.e. a baby goat, and so the man with the kid became known as Kidman.

     In researching that name, I learned that in the Middle Ages, a kidman was someone who went into the woods to gather branches, tie them into bundles, and then sell them to housewives in the city for cooking fuel. A kidman was not allowed to cut down whole trees in order to obtain firewood, but he was allowed to pull down and gather dead branches. This "opened up" the woods allowing undergrowth to flourish and provide food for wildlife, as well as lessening the danger that the understory fuel could accumulate to the point were a seasonal forest fire could burn hot enough to harm the forest.

     In a time when metal tools were very expensive, two of the common tools that a kidman would use to pull down branches were the shepherd's crook and the weeding hook. A medieval farmer would often weed his crop by knocking over and stepping on a weed with his left foot, and then pulling the root end of the weed up out of the ground with a weeding hook, leavinge the uprooted weed in place to serve as a green mulch.

     While you've probably never heard of a kidman and the work he did, it's fairly likely that you have heard of the rule which established the standard under which he had to operate since by long custom he was only allowed to gather the dead branches he would pull down "by hook or by crook." Today we use a pole saw to accomplish the same purpose, but the goal remains the same.

      Early on, Windward developed a personna of its own as the University of St. Hildegard, a place where peole could study and learn about some of the "cutting edge" work done by Hildegard von Bingen in the early 1100's.

     Hildegard is arguably one of history's most influential women in that she did cutting edge work in areas as diverse as music, art, medicine and women's issues. As a case in point, I'd invite you to go to Amazon.com, do a quick search for "Hildegard von Bingen," and you'll find dozens of music CDs based on her works--something which is pretty impressive for someone who's been dead for almost nine centuries.

     But it's not Hildegard's work in art or music that makes her relevant to our mission of modeling sustainability, but rather it's her work in the empowerment of women and in the area of nutrition and herbal medicine that make her dear to Windward. As an example, Hildegard was an advocate of spelt, a tall, gangly plant grown throughout central Europe. In the days before the advent of industrial fertilizers and fossil-fuel powered farming equipment, spelt was a key source of grain nutrition for self-reliant communities. Higher in protein than wheat, it thrives where other grains wither, and growing spelt will enable us to be less dependent on wheat.

     One of our goals a bit further down our timeline is the development of a "Hildegarden" featuring the various plants and herbs that Hildegard grew and used. We're just waiting for the right person to come along and have their imagination fired by the opportunity to connect in such a life-giving way with one of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages. If you're still reading this far into the article, perhaps that could be you? ;-)


Notes From Windward - Index - Vol. 67