This post is a re-printing of an old website page. Some of the concepts have evolved, and we've shifted the website to less wordy introductions, but it is an interesting look back at The Guild and Restoration Camping as envisioned in February of 2018, right before buying the domain name.
This is a conceptual design for the ecosystem guild and restoration camping in Q&A format; a hypothesis of how we can achieve our principles. It will have to evolve over time under principled stewardship of a community. Get involved. Please share thoughts or ask a question.
The ecosystem guild is a non-profit private foundation that supports restoration camping. The guild provides a simple legal and internet infrastructure to organize our information and labor. The guild is a network and a toolkit, but the camps and their watersheds are where we produce value. The guild is made of individuals. We practice decentralized cooperative democracy and delegation—decisions are made by those most affected. We look for and seek to understand the concerns of others. As a guild-member you are encouraged to exercise your agency and work in groups to serve communities and watersheds, and to find ways that the work serves your needs in return. Guild members make an annual cash gift to support our shared system of restoration camping. The most important decision of our guild as a whole is the allocation of grants, and loans of equipment, based on the systematic peer review of camp proposals.
The word "guild" has both historical and ecological meaning. It suggests that we are engaged in mutual support for a common purpose and applying tangible skills learned through practice and apprenticeship. Ecologically we are choosing our role in the ecosystem, as intelligent creatures that capture water, improve soils, and enhance biodiversity.
To develop a Camp a group of guild-members form a limited liability company (LLC) that meets Guild standards, and establishes access and conservation goals with a land base (for example the conservation holdings of a land trust) . As in millennia past, we pick our campsites carefully. The Guild makes cash grants and equipment loans to a camp to enable low cost operations. We envision that the guild and camps will grow reciprocally--like the roots and shoots of a plant--guild-members enable new camps, and new camps attract new guild-members. It might take around around 200-300 guild members to generate the dues to employ a coordinator and operate a camp. While we secure sponsors and grants to accelerate development, operations are sustained by member dues and modest residence fees, so our system is stable and independently self-replicating. The first projects of a camp are to develop the campsite and infrastructure.
Restoration camping is a chance to spend time among colleagues focused on supporting communities with ecosystem management, trading skills, and telling stories and songs around the campfire. Our community is a mobile research station to push the edge of restoration and regenerative technologies. We improve the watersheds where we camp. We cultivate vegetation to provide supplies and materials for restoration and sustaining the camp—cuttings, divisions, nurseries, poles, fiber, building materials, and semi-wild foods. Our basic infrastructure is mobile, and experimental: a bathhouse trailer, composting toilets, modular shelters and bedding, high draft clean wood burning utilities, modular photo-voltaic networks, and a well-maintained tool library. We are not an entertainment or education business, but rather a service club, with a clear social contract and purpose. Supplies come from local producers, and equipment is simple, well designed, durable, and where possible, manufactured and maintained on site. Read a vision for a day at camp.
Each camp has an on-site coordinator and a set of interns (supported by guild grants and the primary operating cost of the system.) Guild-members at camp adopt various roles to sustain camp productivity. Camp decisions are delegated by the LLC to a team includes resident coordinators, LLC members, professional partners, and project managers. The LLC defines the vision and strategies, and approves the projects of each camp, and reaches out to the guild and their watershed community for support. The Camp Team works with guild-members, the host, institutional partners, and neighbors to continuously update a digital calendar of seasonal programs and projects. Guild-members plan their camping trips to join projects of interest, meet up with friends, or to answer a call to service aligned with their skills. The calendar may include paid workshops, but most projects and programs are offered by guild-members to other guild-members. Over time, a community of long-timers refine the rituals and technologies of camp life, so that any guild-member can easily step into and support any camp. Restoration camping is family vacation, professional development, ancestral skills training, community service and youth education. The long-timers support the interns and coordinator by filling a set of consistent camp roles.
Guild-members sign up through an on-line reservation system and use social networks to rendezvous for service projects. A temporary membership is available for those considering full membership and who want to try camping. Guild-members participate based on their ability to account for their own safety and well-being. The camp team provides training and mentoring to all resident guild-members. To undertake more technical work, guild-members work as contractors to the Camp LLC and gain access the full tool library. We envision that many guild-members will develop the skills to become a small restoration contractor, empowered by guild resources. We are not an entertainment business. A guild member may ultimately join a Camp as a partner in the LLC, and become integral to camp operations, perhaps even developing an enterprise through the honorable management of a portion of the landscape under the stewardship of the camp. The camp is a regenerative production system. These relationships results in three levels of participation in a camp, based on the liability and risk management relationship: 1) visiting guild-member who contribute labor to projects, 2) professional partners under contract who perform a wide range of work, or 3) camp stewards that plan the life of the camp. All relationships and agreements follow guild traditions, and are transparent.
A camp has a set of protocols and taboos that make camping legible, predictable, safe, and enjoyable to all guild-members. Each morning begins with breakfast after which guild-members lead or join projects, as decided at the prior afternoon's design sessions. After lunch are opportunities for crafts, reflection, teaching, learning, tool maintenance, and project design. There is predictable variation to make the schedule responsive to weather. Cooking groups form the basic social unit and self-organize to using the camp infrastructure for water, cooking, washing and waste cycling. Over the course of the afternoon, some campers leave and others arrive, using an on-line reservation system. The campground coordinator, interns, and long-timers maintain the core rituals, enforces taboos, and maintain a stock of basic supplies available to all residents. You can use camp shelters or bring your own, augment the available provisions, or survive on staples and wild-crafting. Each guild-member brings their own stories and beliefs, skills and interests to the fire. Numbers swell during popular weekend projects and seasonal gatherings. The ongoing funding relationship between the guild and the camp maintains standards of operation, and guild-members use the internet-based network to share information about each camp, helping the camp team develop exemplary systems.
When camping, guild-members contribute four hours of labor a day to stewardship and restoration projects. Members of the camp team and their local and professional partners, lead project design and implementation based on their personal interests, skills and passions. Design teams serve the needs of the land, the camp, and respond to invitations by the land owner or neighbors who want help with their stewardship and restoration. The guild has clear standards for how we provide respectful service. Guild traditions support how we propose, analyze, implement and document projects. The main shelter doubles as a design studio. We maintain a continuous open source consultancy, curated on the Salish Sea Wiki. Our practices are interdisciplinary and cutting-edge. We examine the fundamentals of whole systems, value diverse ecosystem services, and evaluate the efficiency of our practices as we refine a regionally tuned system of integrated ecological design. Different members of the guild bring diverse perspectives to the design table. Ultimately however each project is owned by an individual guild-member or a small project team, approved by the camp team (or an outside client), and supported by volunteer labor. We support and encourage individual initiative, and help each other through the challenges of leadership and learning.
We design, cultivate, and rely upon systems of self-organization, which depend on agreeable procedures and clear communication. The development of ecosystem strategies, programming, project development, campsite reservations, and volunteer coordination is mediated by an web-based information platform managed by the guild for all camps. The guild network cultivates members as independent and responsible stewards by offering templates, strategies, resources, and mentorship. We are each responsible for bringing stewardship to the land. The ecosystem guild is not an entertainment business. The guild represents and serves its collective membership, and supports camp teams. The camp team cultivates watershed goals and objectives, working from regional restoration planning with local partners, and facilitates the project life-cycle. Guild members and local partners use camps as a springboard, to serve at the level that matches their abilities, and to extend those abilities. Ultimately camp teams have clear procedures for conflict resolution, and may decline to serve a guild-member that has difficulty with respectful self-organization and reciprocity. The camp has responsibility over its domain, even as it encourages guild-members to develop responsibility for the life of the camp life, and ecosystem management projects of increasing scale and sophistication.
The guild grows, because restoration camping is both challenging and meaningful, while moving at a relaxing and pleasurable pace. It strengthens our knowledge and skills as it strengthens our humanity by connecting us in common purpose through creative work. We balance labor, tending camp, private reflection, art and celebration, and learning and teaching skills. Weekday crews assure the basic rhythms of camp, while weekend volunteers let us push on larger projects. Every visit we make new friends and rendezvous with old collaborators. We celebrate and examine old projects, and envision new ones. We are one guild, and we go camping because it enriches our souls as it enriches the land. Join us, or read more about our principles and processes