Butterfly Lodge: A Place of Connection and Community Building

Homesteading and living off-grid in the woods is a way of life that is not for everyone. People often ask why we chose this way of life because it certainly comes with challenges. Making a living from the land is an incredibly hard process that requires time, energy, money, a little bit of crazy and a whole lot of grit.

However, our motivation at the core is about land protection and learning from the Wild community (nature). We truly believe that if we are to begin addressing the issues that we face as a human community, we must ignite our relationship with the Wild community.

Those with wealth and power believe in a future driven by unstoppable growth, that our salvation will be found in unlimited economic growth and advanced technology. They continually want more and are spending obscene amounts of money to promote a philosophy that will only accelerate ecological collapse. There is no Mars utopia, there is no promised immortality of downloading our consciousness into bits and bites and artificial intelligence will not give us what we need to be happy humans on this planet.

It can feel impossible to compete with this philosophy with our meagre resources. We are but a grain of sand in the whole of what is unfolding in the world these days. However we do what we can to offer an alternative to such insanity.

Creating a place that others can gather in a nature setting is the next step we are actively building here at Twisted Roots Farm. Last April, we started building a structure that could host folks in the forest. It has been a labour of love to say the least.

The experience of building this brook-side platform in the woods has felt like a long road, however as we reflect on the many months of work, we feel truly privileged to have had such an opportunity. Our home is essentially in the forest, and this platform is tucked in the woods along the beautiful brook that runs through this land. When we started this project, there was snow on the ground, and we had to fell some large trees at the site. This alone took weeks of work, as each tree had to be carefully directed to fall in a specific direction. Logs were then hauled up to the mill site for milling to be used in the build. By April we were ready to start building, which took us until September of 2025 to complete.

The platform is 28 feet by 30 feet, built with a mix of conventional lumber and milled lumber from trees felled from the build site, as well as other locations on our land and from our neighbours who had been clearing some trees. This brook-side platform is a covered deck that will serve as a seasonal space with the sides mostly screened to allow for a feeling of being in the forest with protection from the elements and little biting critters.

Having spent months at the site almost daily during construction, we have watched the seasons change. Birds arrived, built their nests, and raised their young, followed by the full blossoming of summer with the slow beautiful decay of fall settling into the stillness of winter.

We feel excited about how this space will offer others what she has so graciously shown us. It is an exchange, and those who will grace this space with their presence, offer their gifts back to the trees, the brook, the song birds, and all those who live and visit this forest. There is a healing quality to this nature-based dialogue, an ecological re-membering that all of our ancestors would have known. It is something we need now more than ever in a world of technological advancement.

As for her name, as any good space should have one, what has been shown to us is Butterfly Lodge, in honour of Judy Cryer, Terry’s Momma Bear who passed away a few years ago. Judy absolutely loved what we were doing here and her many years of service to her own community back in B.C. will be carried on in this space as we get ready to welcome others to Butterfly Lodge this season.

We have been dreaming about what is possible this year at Butterfly Lodge as we continue to build the programs, workshops, and experiences that will be hosted here at our little project in the woods. There is still much to do, much to plan, and much to organize in the coming months, however, we are feeling inspired by the support of others, giving wind to what is possible as we dream into the impossible dream.

The poem, A Vision by Wendell Berry is what continues to give us hope as the dream continues to evolve here at Twisted Roots Farm, Centre for Ecological Re-membering:

If we will have the wisdom to survive,

to stand like slow-growing trees

on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,

if we will make our seasons welcome here,

asking not too much of earth or heaven,

then a long time after we are dead

the lives our lives prepare will live

here, their houses strongly placed

upon the valley sides, fields and gardens

rich in the windows. The river will run

clear, as we never know it,

and over it, birdsong like a canopy.

On the levels of the hills will be

green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.

On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down

the old forest, an old forest will stand,

its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.

The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.

Families will be singing in the fields.

In their voices they will hear a music

risen out of the ground. They will take

nothing from the ground they will not return,

whatever the grief at parting. Memory,

native to this valley, will spread over it

like a grove, and memory will grow

into legend, legend into song, song

into sacrament. The abundance of this place,

the songs of its people and its birds,

will be health and wisdom and indwelling

light. This is no paradisal dream.

Its hardship is its possibility.