At the intersection of ecological restoration, resilient systems, regenerative agriculture, and land-based trauma healing,
Beloved
has
Landed
On 700 acres in Southwest Washington, Beloved Emergence is devoted to place-sourced interdisciplinary learning + events to heal the Land, and all those who care for the Land.
Another world is necessary. Another world is possible. Another world is happening. ~ Grace Lee Boggs
. . .
Another world is necessary. Another world is possible. Another world is happening. ~ Grace Lee Boggs . . .
Guided by a deep sense of kinship with the more-than-human, with the elements, the gifts of death and compost, and the wisdom of those whose tracks were here long before ours, we take our place as a small but resilient village-making refuge in the larger ecosystem.
We offer this emergent project as a kind of prayer for how it might come to be that we live, learn and die leaving only a more well-worn path towards wholeness, towards repair, towards a world that has been more healed than harmed by our presence in it.
Current Projects & Future Visions
We have collaborated with state, federal, and local agencies to fund and implement three restoration projects, including over 30 acres of invasive species removal, planting of nearly 20,000 trees, and 6 acres of pollinator habitat expansion. We have also established a 7-acre garden and orchard, created collection and memorial sites for the human composting soil amendments, built platforms for camping, improved our water infrastructure, and developed an outdoor kitchen with cob cooking structures.
We are currently working on developing our event hosting capacity (full kitchen, lighting, signage, flagging, tent and tent cabin sites, composting toilets, hand-washing and grooming stations, showers, a covered outdoor gathering space, a teahouse, and a banya). We are also working to control tansy ragwort, build temples, and plant more trees.
Beloved still offers events in Portland!
Land Listening
We put the land first.
We honor the land.
We listen to the land.
If we can’t hear, we wait until we can.
To restore and protect land while village-making, listening to nature is our starting point. We begin with a careful and thorough site analysis to identify natural and cultural constraints and opportunities. Employing a context-sensitive approach to site planning and development, we design and build with nature. The look, feel, and construction of any structures, the paths through which people circulate through a site, and even the project objectives, or the project program, itself is defined by the natural and cultural conditions identified through our site analysis.
Recompose
Death, the kind where living beings return to ground, makes life on earth possible.
Endless growth works for cancer and capitalism, but it doesn’t work for a finite planet. In fact, limits and endings are necessary, perhaps sacred. On the land is soil created from composted human bodies, made through a process called “natural organic reduction [NOR]” which is delivered, indistinguishable from regular compost, by our partner Recompose. We use this NOR as soil amendments for ecological restoration as well as for grief-tending and memorial sites, to situate Death in its proper place as the foundation for all life.
Who We Are
Our small community of natural builders, gardeners, visionaries, educators, grief workers, designers, and advocates for Indigenous rights and the more-than-human world is based largely in Cascadia. We joyfully share a commitment to steward the Bells Mountain property, in partnership with the Land, to become a refuge for regenerative culture.
We are a growing organization offering immersive, educational, and connective experiences both on and off-site to people who can hold the intentions of remembering, reconnecting, and regenerating.
We invite you to participate in the emerging vision and join us in this sacred work.
Our Beloved Partners
