Episode 4: Turning Waste into Walls

As we have seen, the Watershed Way is about seeking right relationship to place and people. That process adds a level of significance to everyday practices that we otherwise might consider mundane or insignificant, like throwing away single use plastics. The reality, of course, is that such things are not actually insignificant. In the case of plastics, the simple act of throwing it away will have lasting consequences for the ourselves, our land, and our descendants. Already, scientists are finding trace amounts of plastics in our body, presumably brought to us through the things we eat and drink.

When Taos decided it would no longer recycle plastic, and that it would instead throw it into the landfill. Residents were stunned. Those who followed the Watershed Way sought a different solution. When they learned that plastic could be compressed and used as insulation in stucco buildings, TiLT, somewhat happily somewhat reluctantly offered to give the effort a try.

On today’s podcast, we hear what Todd and Ryno have been able to do with plastic waste and how a new micro business was incubated and sponsored by TiLT in the nearby town of Questa. And we consider how the Watershed Way might inform what we do with our waste.

Episode 3: Growing a Robust Local Food Web

In Episodes 1 and 2, Todd and Ryno offered meaningful reflection on what they call “The Watershed Way.” They explained that the Watershed Way was both an individual vow and a shared life way that seeks right relationship to place and people. For the next few weeks, Zach will be inviting Todd and Ryno to move from the realm of theory and philosophy to actual practices.

In this week’s Episode, Zach, Todd, and Ryno discuss the possibility of eating locally and within the limits of a particular place. As we will see, the vow of the Watershed Way requires that we ask difficult questions about our relationship to food and to each other.

Episode 2: The Watershed Way

In the second episode of the Path to Restoration Podcast, Todd and Ryno introduce us to the Watershed Way, a shared life way that brings together diverse people around common causes. Todd, Zach, and Ryno reflect on the importance of small individual vows and how something seemingly so innocuous as words muttered in a cave can grow into a politico-spiritual movement that calls everyday people and elected leaders alike to restored ways of living together.

This is the second of 5 episodes in which Zach, Todd, and Ryno meditate on the meaning of restoration and how we might live in ways the honor the original inhabitants of the land and the land itself.

Episode 1: Becoming a People of Place

In this introductory Episode of the Path to Restoration podcast, three friends, Todd Wynward, Zach Martinez and Daniel “Ryno” Herrera, come together to confess the broken and dis-placed nature of their ancestral colonial, settler ways of understanding the world and imagine ways they might live as re-placed people in the places they call come. Drawing from the wisdom of local Pueblo people in the Taos Valley and indigenous writers and activists like Lydia Jennings and Robin Wall Kimmerer, this episode outlines the first few steps we might take on a path that leads to restoration.

This Episode is the first of 5 episodes in which Todd, Zach, and Ryno will explore the ways we live into restored relationships with our the land and the neighbors we share it with.