From the Berbo Homestead

A new home in California's Eastern Sierra

This past weekend, under the full flower moon, I moved into a new home on forty acres in the Eastern Sierra. The land—on the blurred edge between the Mojave and Great Basin deserts, at the foot of the great mountains—is dotted with springs, cut by ravines, and populated by cottonwoods and willows, rabbits and frogs, swaths of (currently prolifically blooming) yerba mansa, and endless, fragrant sagebrush.

Inside the house is an old fireplace built with local stone—big chunks of granite and gleaming black obsidian. There are small chips of obsidian scattered all over the property, worked into sharp points by human hands—evidence this place has long been loved and visited by people. I’m honored to be next in line to care for it.

After last winter, when whatever cosmic force in charge of earthly goings-on spat me out from the life I knew and into the wild unknown, I wandered for a while, embittered and embattled, not quite ready to meet what would come next. The fire burned away certain things I’d once known in my bones: the feeling of home, in a place and in a community.

In the aftermath, my relationship to my greatest teacher—the earth—shifted on its axis. I felt unmoored, like I was floating in space…nothing to hold on to…until I noticed there was still ground beneath me, only it was unknown to me. Unfamiliarity first felt like fear, until I started doing what I always do when I arrive somewhere new: get down low to the earth. Learn the plants, the soil, the rocks, the animals. Begin to know this new land.

Being here is a commitment to being with the land. To knowing it, tending it, and engaging with all the nuance and messiness that good relationships contain. I hope you’ll join me in this process. I intend to host all kinds of events here—workshops, retreats, gatherings, offerings from others. It’s far from town (but it’s far from lonely; life is pulsing, sometimes overwhelmingly, all around), yet it’s less than three hours from Los Angeles, where I’ll continue to travel to work and teach.

Here, I feel my connections within the web of life most acutely, and I’m grateful beyond what I’m able to describe that we are connected in this way. It is with a network of support that I’m ushered into this new phase; into further nurturing my relationship with the earth. This relationship is our right and responsibility, and what a joy that we get to engage in it together.

With love and gratitude, from the Berbo Homestead.

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Thank you for reading Tinctoria, the newsletter from me, Erin of Berbo Studio.

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