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Celebration brings the community together creating a shared experience, a time out of the ordinary. In the modern world too many of life’s celebrations have been eaten up by consumerism and other forces for their own ends. In order to create pure celebrations again I believe we have to create new rituals. We have to invent new ways of joining together in ceremony to recognize the important moments in life, to observe the cycle of existence. In this spirit we created the Mandala of Gratitude celebration. A chance for Evgenia & I to say thank you for our first year of marriage, a chance to say thank you for our friends for supporting us through this time and the chance to create a moment where our community can gather and reflect on what each of us is grateful for. Gratitude joins the cores of most religions and the latest research on human happiness clearly points towards it being at the core of a happy life. Taking inspiration from history and all we have seen in our lives we created a modern but timeless ceremony, welcoming to all irrespective of religious affiliation or spiritual belief.

All participants brought offerings to the mandala, the mandala remixed everyone’s contribution and everyone took back home a bottle of mandala spices and a bottle of mandala herbs.

The experience was enjoyable and even moving showing that the need for ceremony, for participating in rituals which take us out of the ordinary is a fundamental need in all of us.
_- Victor_

togetherness… the creation of beauty with what nature offers us… the importance of everyone’s contribution… important as a simple moment of communion, reinforcing a profound sense of belonging.
_- Roberto and Judith_

Making a mandala together is a sacred communion. Mandala serves as a microcosm of the ideal community life, creating beauty and harmony through sharing and exchange. Virtuous value system is most important to nourish in the community space. The forces of creating and destroying in mandala making, re-establishes one’s important life values, accepting the transience and giving gratitude to what was and what is, and learning to live in the present with peace and harmony.
_- Kira Zhi_

It is a beautiful experience to plan and create something that did not exist before, see it grow and then dissolve. This experience could only happen out of many voices, hands and hearts coming together and contributing equally to the physical construction of the Mandala but also offering their wishes and gratitudes at the ceremony. We believe that such mandalas have been used since times immemorial during celebrations in traditional communities and they are still preserved in many traditions of the World. They can have many forms and their meanings can vary but we have decided to create it living and edible, with everyone contributing and everyone taking a part. We will hold a Mandala ceremony every year, with new variations, to celebrate community life.
_- Evgenia_

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This weekend we spend three days in the area of Lousa, just east of Coimbra. On the first day we started with an extensive discussion with the real-estate agent and an architect specialising in natural building. The key learning points where:

• There are two basic types of land classification in Portugal in the countryside – agricultural and ecological reserve, it is almost impossible to get building permission on land zoned as ecological reserve, on agricultural land it is also quite hard thus buying land with lots of ruins is ideal – they already have the permissions to build
• In order to build legally need an engineer to sign off on the design, this is difficult for a natural-built house but there are some engineers in Portugal who can sign-off on a rammed-earth house, perhaps some who understand Cob.

Cerdeira village

As an example of the kind of village rebuilding which is possible we started by touring Cerdeira village.

Cerdeira is a beautiful village hanging on the side of a mountain at the end of a steep valley with a spectacular view. The restoration of Cerdeira was started by a German woman and now there are a number of people living there. They do cultural events, exhibit crafts objects, have workshops and a cafe. They are also supported by Municipality, which resurfaced the dirt road with asphalt and supports their cultural activities.

The houses have been restored as workshops, art galleries and housing for rent for tourists and art retreats.

There is a lot of activity but the restoration work looks to be done largely using modern materials (concrete & etc.)

Pedra da Se

Pedra da Se was shown to us as an example of the kinds of properties which exist, but not as something which we would likely be interested in. It consists of 12 houses constructed as tourist cottages, each with two or more rooms and modern amenities such as bathrooms, cable TV, etc.

The site is located on a small hill overlooking a big river in the distance (~1km away?). The property has lots of trees and shade, but the land looks quite poor and has never been calculated (how ever did they get building permission on such a natural land?) It is a beautiful land but the layout feels dead, the structures do not work together.

We don’t know the price of this property but the estate agent estimates as around €1 million.

Abandoned houses #1

This site is 3-4 hectares of land with about 10 of ruins of mid-20th century buildings surrounded by eucalyptus forest with a dirt road going through the site and above it. There is limited flat space for community buildings. The site includes a cement catchment for rainwater.

The site is on top of a small hill with a good view but feels very exposed, does not feel cosy. The surrounding forest is mostly eucalyptus and the surrounding area has a huge amount of eucalyptus.

The site does not feel like it has character or personality, and there is no running water in the area.

Real estate agent estimates price at €300-400,000.

Two neighbouring abandoned mountain villages

The third site we saw is on the mountain overlooking Lousa, a quite beautiful site with two small abandoned villages. Even though it is at the side of the mountain it is low enough on the mountain and the slope is gentle enough that it does not have the crazy eagle’s next feeling of Cerdeira of being exposed and hanging onto the side of a cliff.

The land includes a small church and a one-room school house. There is not much horizontal space, but given that we are not planning to do major agriculture there is probably enough. There are probably about 20 ruins in the upper village and perhaps 10 in the lower with some others spread around the land so building permissions should not be an issue, however the traditional houses are quite small so to build a house of modern comfort will likely require joining two adjacent properties. Somewhere below the village on the land there is stream but we didn’t go down and see it, it’s not large in any case.

Price is unknown but the real-estate agent estimates as around €1 million.

 

Quinta de Belide

Quinta de Belide is the land we originally found online, as is often the case the reality was very different from the online images and description. The land is in a very remote valley with access only by small footpath from a dirt road. It is a very steep valley with very little flat areas for any community buildings, etc. There are only 3 ruins of houses the rest being agricultural buildings and no surrounding space to build.

A great place for a monastic retreat house perhaps, but definitely not modern living or a community the size of EarthSkyLab.

Conclusions

We love Portugal, however there is a very wide variety of landscapes and environments even within a 30km radius. Sadly many areas have been planted with mono-culture of eucalyptus trees. Such monoculture forests besides being aesthetically monotonous and unattractive, environmentally destructive are a great source of fires and thus dangerous to live around.

It is clear that we need more time to do the search around the regions of interest. Of course to properly understand a region we need time to live on the land.

We look forward to coming back to Portugal and continuing our explorations, join us this winter!

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