For the first time in a very long time, I have hope.

Hope that we can make it. That it is possible to clean up toxic waste. To re-green our damaged planet. To halt the cycles of war and exploitation. To provide abundance in just a few acres per person, and restore the majority of land back to the wild.

This is not just hope, but certain knowledge. We can do it with the technology we have, with the resources we've got. I know because I've seen it with my own eyes, done it with my own hands.

I know, because I went to Earth Activist Training.

For two weeks, Starhawk and Penny Livingston-Stark led fifty people to learn, live, and practice skills for ecological living and magical activism. Kind of a "Save the World 101."

What it comes down to is permaculture—an outlook and method for working with nature's processes, rather than against. It's not just about growing large amounts of food on little land; it's about building houses for $500 or less, redesigning urban environments, restoring damaged lands, and living on the planet in harmony. It's a huge leap beyond simple sustainability. It's about giving more back to the planet than we take out.

And that's what humans are good at. I know it might not seem like that's true—most of the time it feels like all we really do is create war, suffering, and destruction. We do still live under the shadows of pollution and the bomb. Still on the brink of killing off not just ourselves, but all life on Earth.

But that's only half of the story. For example, did you know in nature it takes about 100 years to create a quarter inch of topsoil? But in a compost heap, humans can help create a full inch of soil in just four years. We're natural soil-builders. If we have an evolutionary niche, it's to work with the worms, fungi, and other little life-makers—and we're phenomenally successful at it. Look at China, where they've been doing it religiously for thousands of years.

Enhancing natural processes is our biological right and our inheritance. When Penny explained that, I felt like she'd given me back a piece of my soul. Right after, she and Starhawk took us outside and showed us how put a pile together. We got in there with our shovels and pitchforks. We piled manure on straw, layered on buckets of kitchen scraps, and finally brought in those wonderful worms.

Then—this is a key piece—we left the compost pile to do its own thing. "If you have a choice between two equally good options," our teachers advised, "and one takes less work than the other, always choose the one with less work." You can turn and fuss with a pile a whole lot. But if you set it up right, you can just walk away—heck, you can even plant your crops right in the compost pile—and only deal with it when you're adding more material.

That's a major principle of permaculture: minimum effort for maximum return. To put it another way, life demands we conserve as much energy as possible. And that means setting up self-perpetuating, synergistic systems that work with nature ("weeds," "pests," and other "nuisances") rather than trying to eradicate them. In one example, we saw video footage of a permaculture site that had been untended for several years. Left to its own devices, the garden had developed into an Eden of fruits and vegetables, without human guidance or interference.

The workshop was a non-stop, total immersion course in options. After an early breakfast, we'd gather and cast a circle for the day—playing games, grounding, singing, and invoking the directions. Then off to the first of three, three-hour sessions (usually two lectures and one hands-on) plus affinity group gardening, permaculture design group projects, and individual offerings from other students in the course.

Daily themes were divided by elements—Earth: natural building, gardening, and how to finance the land you live on; Air: windpower, design process, and global climate; Water: water harvesting, roof catchments, global politics, graywater and remediation; Fire: renewable energy, biodiesel, and direct action; and so on.

Without the morning's spiritual foundation (plus Witchcraft mini-lessons throughout the day) we could easily have become exhausted by the pace. But most days I felt invigorated rather than overwhelmed. The hands-on activities really helped, too. Actually digging earthworks and building graywater systems took the knowledge out of our heads and planted it firmly in our bodies. The work was hard, but when you're planting trees or digging swales (strategic ditches for erosion control and remediating the water table) with the intention of working with nature it feels a whole lot different than doing chores in your parents' backyard.

In fact, I was often struck by how counterproductive much of the yard work I'd done as a kid had been. So many weekends my parents had me digging up dandelions and other "weeds" that we could have eaten, raking and tossing leaves that would have provided excellent ground cover, and spraying noxious chemicals that probably seeped into the water table long ago. How much easier if we'd simply let the trees mulch themselves, rather than spend all that effort and money trying to manage Nature.

Working with and for the Earth can take a host of forms; most days we'd have guest instructors, bringing a variety of views and knowledge. Hilary McQuie (of the RANT activist training collective) and her partner, Mike Dolan (Green Party organizer), discussed grassroots organizing from the anarchic global justice and traditional political models. Joe Kennedy from Builders Without Borders taught us cob construction and other low-cost housing options. Folks from the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center showed us how to look at the land from a permaculture design standpoint, taught us a history of the rise of corporations and resources for curbing their power, gave us the tools to set up land trusts and other financing options, and discussed group process and how to live in community.

The first few days were a little difficult, as many of the lessons focused on discussing the full extent of the world's political, economic, and ecological challenges. You've got to know what you're dealing with before you can start to fix it, but the sheer load of information had many of us on the edge of despair. Luckily, we were also learning the elements of magical activism—grounding, nonviolent action, how to cast a circle, how to ground while moving, how to read each other's energy patterns, and a host of other skills for nourishing ourselves while standing up to power.

There was an amazing water trance, where we envisioned ourselves as a pure drop of water, rising to the clouds, falling to earth, joining other drops in a torrent from stream to ocean and back to our unique selves. Lisa Fithian (long-time activist and EAT co-student) led several non-violent training and simulations, and also gave us an inspiring history of the Global Justice movement. We also discussed trauma and how to heal from the perils of activism, from physical violence to emotional exhaustion.

Spirit sustained us throughout the course. My companions came from a wide variety of locations and cultures, including activists from India, Croatia, Montana, and the Pomo nation. Some identified as Pagans, others as Christians, Hindus, Jews, Atheists, or Seekers. Given this variety of backgrounds, the techniques we learned were introductory. But the lessons ran deep as we applied them directly to the tasks at hand. The lessons were also pretty much dogma-free (beyond a basic love for the Earth), making magic accessible to everyone in the class.

For me, the most magical technique we learned was bioremediation—using biological processes to restore damaged lands. In Australia, techniques for digging swales hundred of miles long have replenished water tables drained