February 20-26

This will be a short posting as we are sitting at the airport this morning, waiting to catch a flight. We will be visiting the Theosophical Society in America headquarters in Wheaton, IL, this coming week.

It was another surprisingly busy week, as there was a lot to do before heading to Seattle on Friday for a weekend meeting of the Indralaya Board of Directors. The board meeting was on Saturday and a wide range of topics were on the agenda. One important topic was the consideration of proposed revisions to the by-laws which are intended to make the Board election process flow more smoothly.

The bylaw revision process requires that any proposed changes be sent to all members of the Friends of Indralaya at least one month prior to their adoption by the Board. So those of you who are members will be receiving more information about this in the next week or so.

Our flight is being called, so it’s time to go!

Minor, Lin, Kim, Jeannie, Meg, Megan, Kelly, Crystal, Leonie

February 13-19

Much of the week was spent preparing for the President’s Day weekend and first work party of the season. The work party was a relatively quiet one, with around 25 people participating.

A wide range of work was done, ranging from replacing posts for the garden fence to gutting much of the interior of Wisteria cabin. A good start was made on pruning the meadow fruit trees, potholes were filled along the road into camp, fallen trees were cleared off of the trails in the woods and garden beds were attended to.

Scott, Madeline, Amy & Liz tend a garden bed

Carol transfers tree prunings to the chipper area

Wisteria cabin was gutted

fresh bread

“Tree of Life Pie - thank you pruners!”

The kitchen prepared great food all weekend and a fine spirit of camaraderie prevailed.

All in all, it was a good start to Indralaya’s 85th year, with the promise of more to come!

February 6-12

Krotona Courtyard

We returned from Ojai on Saturday and got back to Indralaya on Sunday. The workshop on ‘cultivating virtue’ was well received. It was a busy time, and good to see many friends and connect with Krotona, which feels like a second home to us. All in all, it was a great week.

Less than an hour after arriving who should we see but David Christensen, who was also visiting from the NW and was showing some friends around the grounds.

Fritz Kunz & friends (that’s Fritz with the hat and mohair sweater)

The following incidental remarks about Indralaya come from the transcript of a talk that Indralaya co-founder Fritz Kunz gave in Seattle in 1958. The talk is titled “The Path - Its Natural Background” and included some insights on virtue that were referred to during the Krotona workshop. The transcript was prepared by Jen Edington.

There (at Indralaya) amid beautiful surroundings, where nothing has been killed for years and years, and where families have (spent time) together on the whole with wonderful amity, affection, and mutuality, and in terms of quiet, inner quiet given by trees that have been loved personally for years. I give you my word on this. Loved as much as animals, (these) individual trees.

There’s a kind of serenity and depth which those who have visited in right terms don’t fail to feel....I’d like to ask you where in the Theosophical Society you find people of advanced years, of middle years, young married people, children of all ages in goodly numbers, all studying the theosophical philosophy out of doors. Where do you find that? Not many places. You really are happy people to have something like that.

Fritz Kunz speaking at Madrona Point

Some 43 years later, much of what Fritz said still rings true, wouldn’t you agree?

January 30 - February 5

After a busy week, we left Indralaya on Saturday, bound for Ojai and the Krotona School of Theosophy, where I am leading an afternoon program this coming week on “Cultivating Virtue”. We are here now, and the wi-fi connection is incredibly slow, so this posting will be short and sweet.

The program is rooted in the idea that all cultures and traditions have pointed to certain human qualities as being admirable and worthy of esteem. Actions rooted in kindness, compassion, generosity and unselfish love seem to engender universal acclaim and respect. During the program, we'll be exploring our relationship with these and other virtues and consider how we can engender and give strength to these qualities within ourselves. It should be an interesting week and I'm looking forward to it.

We'll be back to Orcas on Sunday, and then on into preparations for President’s Day Weekend and the first work party of the season.

January 23-29

Last week ended with the announcement that online registration was now open for Indralaya’s 2012 programs. And the registrations started pouring in this week! On Saturday, we sent out 94 confirmations for upcoming programs and work parties.

The 2012 program catalog also was printed and mailed this week. Over 3,800 catalogs were sent out. If you are on the Indralaya mailing list, it should be showing up in your mailbox soon!

Early in the week, Thea and Mike left for a few weeks vacation in Hawaii. As a result, things were fairly quiet around camp. On Thursday, I went to Seattle to pick up the program catalogs and run errands, while Leonie stayed home.

January 16-22

As expected, more snow did fall as the week went along, though we escaped the ice storms that came further south in the Puget Sound area. The total snowfall was around 5 inches. The wind blew for most of the week as well and temperatures dipped into the high-teens Fahrenheit. This dose of winter weather led to a delay in the printing of the program catalog as the printer's offices were closed for most of the week. We hope that the catalog will be in the mail in the next few days.

Optimistic Crocuses

The weather also provided plenty of reason to stay inside working on updating the Indralaya website with 2012 program information and setting up online registration for the year. There are many links from one page to another and from the program information pages to the registration form, making this a rather meticulous and painstaking process. And despite the efforts made to be methodical, there are bound to be mis-connections and dead-ends that reveal themselves as the registration process gets underway.

Buddha field 7

So far, so good, however. Online registration opened up on Sunday and by the end of the day, close to 40 registrations had been received. With the beginning of registration, there are a few program notes that bear mentioning.

As has been done in past years, registrations for both family weeks are being held until March 15 so that everyone interested has a fair chance to register for these popular programs. If either week is over-booked (i.e. more than 95 people registered), then a lottery will be held to select those attending that week.

This year, registrations for the Deep Singing program will also be held to provide the same fair opportunity for people to express their interest in attending. The ‘hold until’ date for Deep Singing is March 1. If more than 95 people are registered at that time, a lottery will be held to determine who is registered and who is on the waitlist. For the Deep Singing program, registrations for local and day visitors are being limited to a maximum of twenty.

The Inner Temple Inner Convocation weekend with RJ Stewart and Anastacia Nutt, does not have a ‘hold until’ date for registrations and is expected to fill quickly. Maximum enrollment for this program is currently set at 50 participants and is already close to half full. If you are interested in attending this program, we encourage you to register sometime this week!

By the end of the week, the weather had turned more mild, and most of the snow was gone, allowing for a mid-January walk across the top of Turtleback Mountain.

Looking NE from Turtleback Mountain

(the forested knob in the distant center of the photo is Indralaya land)

January 9-15

What a difference a week makes ...

... not so much in terms of the ongoing work being done (see last week’s post for more on that), but more in terms of the weather conditions. First our mild winter turned colder, and that was followed by the white stuff seen in this week’s photos.

The precipitation started with some light snow on Saturday. On Sunday morning we awoke to the din of quarter inch hailstones firing down from on-high and hammering our roof.

The hail gradually turned to snow and by late morning there were a couple inches on the ground. As the week ended the forecast was for more snow ahead.

A good friend of Indralaya died this last week in a work-related accident. Herlwyn Lutz was an arborist who tended to the Indralaya trees for many years. Those who have participated in Spring work parties anytime since the mid-1990’s are likely to remember Herlwyn’s tree-pruning lessons. Outside of the work parties, he would spend many days each Spring tending to the trees and completing the pruning that is usually only partially accomplished during the work parties. He would follow up the pruning by bringing his chipper over and turning the pruned branches into wood chips for the pathways between the garden beds and elsewhere. He was highly committed to being of service both here and in the wider Orcas Island community.

Herlwyn attended many Indralaya programs as well and was a core member of the theosophical study group that meets here during the off-season. He and his wife Barbara have both lived deeply devoted spiritual lives. Herlwyn was 77 at the time of his passing. He will be missed.