Join author, activist, and green architect Nathaniel Corum and Austin singer/songwriter Patrice Pike for a glorious week on the Colorado River in Utah’s spectacular Canyonlands National Park.

Launching on the Solstice, we will focus on community, gestalt, and architecture and design in nature. We’ll explore indigenous land use and community, nomadic art and agriculture. We’ll paddle, journal, and sketch a new vision for the way we inhabit our environment. We’ll design and build environmental art and collage from the occasional trash, debris, and natural flotsam and jetsam that we harvest from the riverbanks. (We’ll re-camouflage back into nature after we document the work.) We’ll discuss appropriate technology for mobile and off-grid systems, super-green materials and systems, indigenous technology and appropriate use of emerging technologies, salvage and waste-as-resource materials approaches, low-impact building techniques and foundation systems, and characteristics of “sustainable” communities.

We’ll learn how to sit in a circle around a fire and listen to each other much as the ancestral Puebloans did. We’ll learn to sing along. With the help of our OARS trip leader, we'll investigate ancient rock art and archeological sites and learn about the natural history of the Canyonlands as well.

Award-winning Austin singer/songwriter Patrice Pike, co-founder of the Grace Foundation (an Austin organization that provides services for homeless teens), will play music and coordinate our open mic! 

Inspiration for early adopters of an emerging paradigm, tremendous music (made collaboratively!), a spectacular setting, some of the biggest whitewater in North America, and friendships to last a lifetime. This is an all-ages trip, which provides for a diversity of perspectives and insures that our floating temporary intentional community actually feels like a community. Join us for an unforgettable week! 

DATES: 
June 20 to 27, 2012

COST: $1,399/adult
($1,199/student)

*+ $80/person for R/T transportation from Salt Lake City to Moab

AGE: All ages

RIVER RATING: Class III-IV

To reserve your space, or for more trip details, go to www.oarsfoundation.org.

In the pic! Author and architect Nathaniel Corum from Architecture for Humanity around the campfire. 
Photo by Chris Hall