Teaching the simple life; University of the Wild tries to change views.

Byline: Paula J. Owen

PETERSHAM - Under the direction of Dr. Larry H. Buell, the University of the Wild at Earthlands is changing the way its students view the world, teaching them how to live more simply and sustainably on the planet.

Nika Fotopulos, 24, walked outside onto the large deck of the main lodge into the sunshine to talk. Ms. Fotopulos is co-director of the University of the Wild, an alternative higher education degree program at Earthlands, running in collaboration with Greenfield Community College. Students will receive college credit for nine credit courses offered this summer, including organic gardening, solar living, education and advocacy for the environment, and the 24-Hour Outdoor Personal Growth Experience.

Ms. Fotopulos moved from Montreal a year ago after graduating from college and working with environmental activism, she said.

She said the programs were created to bring people together to start creating sustainable ways of being in the world through ancestral, indigenous knowledge accomplished by immersion in the natural world.

"It's the foundation of creating a new dream and looking at the challenges we face as human beings," she said.

Mr. Buell, 64, is a retired professor and director of the Environmental Recreation Program at Greenfield Community College. He dedicates most of his time to Earthlands, an ecological living center of volunteers and staff that exists to promote and support living in harmony with the Earth and all life. Earthlands' 500 acres are owned by the Buell family.

Mr. Buell explained that the Wild Earth 10-day intensive program was created to help answer the question of how to reconstruct a worldview that works for all beings.

"The path to change, it must be radical and profound," he said.

He said four institutions affect the world and form worldviews that need to be restructured in order to do that: politics, religion, economics and education. As a retired professor, Mr. Buell said he is working for change in education.

"The use of higher education is more than preparing someone for a job," he explained. "We are claiming a new way of being in relation to each other and the Earth."

"Global ecological citizens" are taught to have a larger view than just their own, he said, and to ask the question, "How do we live together on the planet?"

Students will be assisted in determining what they want to do with their lives, whether it is in a "green collar job," or as a permaculture gardener.

Patrick M. Draper also co-directs the program. He shared his experience in a "sweat lodge" at Earthlands. An American Indian tradition similar to the concept of a sauna, it is built by hand by those who will use it, and is used as a ceremony for purification and cleansing. Describing it as "the womb of the Earth," Mr. Draper said he and others sat inside in the darkness for two to three hours praying.

"It's one thing to talk and think about living sustainably with the Earth, but it's another thing to come out of the sweat lodge and feel those connections and know that it is true," he said. "We want to bring people to that place."

William J. Pfeiffer, a lead facilitator of the Wild Earth Intensive, said the programs are not competing with what is already happening in the environmental movement.

Mr. Pfeiffer is facilitating the program in collaboration with the Sacred Earth Network and is the former director and founder of that organization in Petersham.

"We are questioning what we see and how to do it differently and taking the best of what the older culture has," he said. "The idea is taken out into the world and these students become `cultural change agents.'"

For more information on the University of the Wild at Earthlands, visit www.UniversityOfTheWild.org or call Dr. Buell at [phone].

ART: PHOTOS

CUTLINE: (1) University of the Wild student Neil Jones talks with other students yesterday in a gathering circle in the main lodge at Earthlands. (2) University of the Wild co-director Patrick J. Draper weaves a rope out of basswood.

PHOTOG: PAULA J. OWEN