Muddy Creek Satyagraha

Mission: Muddy Creek Satyagraha is a network of people dedicated to living the ethical life free from the global economy, in an atmosphere optimal for natural living and nonviolent thinking.

From www.ic.org/directory/muddy-creek-satyagraha/:

"You cannot build nonviolence on a factory civilization, but it can be built on self-contained villages. Rural economy as I have conceived it eschews exploitation altogether, and exploitation is the essence of violence. You have therefore to be rural-minded before you can be nonviolent, and to be rural-minded you have to have faith in the spinning wheel."
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Muddy Creek Satyagraha is a founding nomadic community living and travel along a foot path, interconnecting nature, food sources and intentional communities. The path, known as the peace trail, avoids roads and development traversing the Luckiamute, Muddy Creek, Alsea and Siualaw watersheds in the Central Willamatte Valley and Coast Range Mountains of Western Oregon with possibilities of spanning from the cascades to the coast and much further.

Satyagraha was a Sanskrit word created by Gandhi to engender his movement with one of the least understood yet most active forces in the universe, ahimsa, or nonviolence. "Satya" can mean truth and "graha" incites firmness or grasping. So satyagraha is the energy of nonviolence and can be translated as truth force or soul force.

Life on the peace trail is supported by what can be termed the "true gift economy," or "moment by moment true giving and receiving." This means we relinquish the privilege of payment, trade, barter, and expense, and instead enjoy giving in a voluntary way, giving without expectation of payback and with no relationship to previous receiving. Conversely through our Muddy Creek Satyagraha Nomadic Souperfood Soup Kitchen and through our own receiving of it's palio and phytonutrient rich superfoods, everyone's needs are addressed without correlation to past or future giving, living as our ancestors did before the loss of the tribal and extended family systems, and the communal cooking pot, and the cradle to grave social security that came with it, in exchange for a system that puts food under lock and key. Our practice of the gift economy directly reverses this historic trend.

The ecovillages along the peace trail are diverse and unique to each other but have in common three traits traditionally considered requisites for a nonviolent society. First that people are on the land together, second that they turn to nature, or ethnobotany, to some degree, as opposed to strictly purchasing and costs of life, and third that there is a desire that everybody's needs be met.

Traversing the peace trail can be described as a meditation or prayer-walk or pilgrimage. The trail is designed to support barefoot walking and living without a pack, so with silent, steady, weightless striding the upper body is effortlessly suspended and as the sacred landscape goes by at ancient foot speed the journey enters into a kind of extended meditation. The trail connects places of spiritual interest as we walk between two small zen temples, two inipis (sweat lodges), a Kalapuya earth mound and many traditional and beautiful natural places.

A service of the Data Commons Co-op. The project has been supported by Equal Exchange, the Cooperative Charitable Trust, the USDA, and many others - thank you! Tech volunteers over the years include: Benjamin Bradley with support from GAIA Host. Ben Mauer with support from Quilted. Paul Fitzpatrick. Ronin Tech Collective, Brattleboro Tech Collective, Sligo Computer Services. Jason Lemieux. Default map tiles courtesy of MapQuest. Default map data (c) OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA.