I have just recently returned from another trip to the Pine Ridge reservation where we were planting trees this time. Our sixth season of planting windbreaks and shade trees there!

One of the places we planted trees this year was at the Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center (RCREC). The Center is a joint project of Trees, Water & People (TWP) and Lakota Solar Enterprises (LSE). Henry Red Cloud is the owner of Lakota Solar Enterprises and also serves as TWP’s Pine Ridge Coordinator.

The Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center is being developed as a place where Native Americans can go to learn about community and family scale renewable energy approaches from other Native Americans. While still under development, we already have a variety of renewable energy demonstration applications installed as well as other sustainable living aspects on-site.

We use our main quonset hut for assembling solar heating systems and sometimes for manufacturing the solar panels themselves. We have several of our solar heating systems installed there as demonstration units. We also have a windbreak planted and some shade trees and there will be a small wind turbine installed there soon. In the future we will have a larger wind turbine installed as well as a solar electric system. Additionally, the RCREC has a straw bale mini-office, a greenhouse and garden area, a Lakota sweat lodge, a small camping area for visitors and Henry now has two of the buffalo from his larger herd living there also.

Our work over the last several years has been mostly installing solar heating systems for poor Lakota families at Pine Ridge, who pay exorbitant utility bills as you know. This last year was particularly terrible due to the greatly increased cost of fuel.

Our solar heat systems cost about $1,200 and we have raised the funds and installed more than 200 systems so far.

These are absolutely amazing units that provide supplemental heat any time the sun is out for just pennies a day. They reduce family’s heating bills by 20-30% (depending on the size of the house) and will last for 20-30 years. There is only one moving part that is easily replaceable and there is almost no maintenance required.

It is truly a new way… to honor the old ways.

I sincerely hope you will consider supporting this project that will actually reduce the amount of propane used.

In September, we will be inviting people to spend a week at Pine Ridge with us… exploring the Lakota’s past and present. It will be a very powerful experience so if you are interested or know others who might be… I would be happy to send along some information about that fall adventure…

A Longtime Lover Returns...
3/12/07

The earth again moves beneath my feet.
My longtime lover, returns to me once again
In an endless cycle of fertility and form

She writhes beneath me.... undulating in surges of energy
Chemical processes are brought to life
Starches begin to accept the call to transform into energy

The underground drums to her tune
Growing stronger... beating louder
She cries out and a patch of crocuses appear

She lives as always... but now in a state of awakening
Her energy growing... expanding... reaching out as each day passes...
Her desire is still sluggish yet the first whispers of grass emerge into the world of form.

Soon she will begin to pulse as her magick develops
The trees begin to swell and anticipate their annual birthing push from below
As her energy begins to build and her desire to create life and form grows

Unleashed she will once again yield some of her mysteries
As she makes new bodies for trillions upon trillions of plants
As spring migrates through another year in an endless cycle.

Plants emerge from the sacred earth and begin to harness the sun and grow
For soon she will be in full explosion mode
And they must be ready

Before long... all of nature will once again line up and help her bring about this new and unique Spring
Ants and bees and birds will all cooperate in a courtship of infinite powers
A vast eruption of flowers will emerge...her love expressed once again in a unique and ever changing landscape

Her palette paints for all to see a worldwide mural of changing colors and scents
The flowers become seeds that guarantee a continuing reality
And creates a smörgåsbord of food for all that crawl and fly and walk in the woods

The skies fill with a symphony of sound from the life that comes forth from the land.
She will wallow in the trough of conception and nurturing
And all that know her will tremble at the power of her love

Spring Returns....


Blessed Be
Renard