Kodiak Island
My brother Danny and I were born and raised on Kodiak Island, just off the coast of Alaska. As the oldest (and before Danny three years later), I learned to swim (by toddling off the end of the Island Lake dock), fish (the lake was chock full of rainbow trout) and climb trees (with Mom’s help). We lived in a small log cabin on the southern end of the lake.
When Danny came along, I had a friend. Between the two of us, we lived the Tom and Huck lifestyle other kids just dream about.
At six and three our parents moved us to a large beach-front property where there were no other houses in sight. It was still in the same contiguous forest as the lake. Our beach was rocky and had enormous tide pools full of biological treasures. With our small group of friends, we explored our forested ocean domain relentlessly and on our own.
Mom worked in the king crab plant in town (oh gee, mom, do we hafta have crab again?) and our dad worked with heavy equipment all over the state and was rarely home. We lived in a paradise where brothers, sisters and friends spent all day exploring, climbing trees, swimming, and playing in the summer and fall. In the winter, our game plan switched to lots of reading.
Washington State
Moving to Duvall, Washington, our family life was one hunting and gathering event after another. We’d go to the ocean to dig clams and preserve them for many meals. Dad always bagged a deer or elk and Mom cooked the best steaks ever.
In junior high school I started to hunt with the adult groups, mostly on the west slope of the northern and central Cascades. There we would spend a week or two every season.
It was a hands-on relationship with the forest environments, a reverence for nature and her bounty.
Vietnam
My time in nature stayed with me during two Marine tours in Vietnam, where I formed close connections with the jungle. I was with 1 st Recon Battalion (an LRRP unit) and went on 13 Long Range Recon Patrols with four to five members for five days or more. The patrols were inserted and extracted by Chinook helicopters. No tents. No ponchos. Possible rain day and night for the entire time. Intense times. Yet, seeing and being in the jungle I felt like a biologist getting to know the fauna and flora – even leaches.
My experiences playing in the wild, hunting, gathering and surviving war have shown me that forested and jungled environments are spiritually tuned habitats. These places have a natural inclination to provide a sensate cloud of living energy that includes all the life forms that inhabit these spaces.
Building Homes
Earning a livelihood in construction and seeing land cleared to put up houses without benefit of nature, I imagined, talked about and researched for repurposing a forest into a forest garden with a home and outbuildings that are part of the forest environment rather than separated from it.
The imagined project is Moondance. Moondance is a lady with a job. Her duties are simple yet profound. She makes it easy for the dwellers curating her operations and proclivities. She gives context to a dyadic (built and non-built) environment, representing the various discrete ecosystems in her service. She is a reason behind a purpose, with a purpose beyond a reason.
I am grateful for all the forest and jungle related excursions into the wild and how they got me into building green. If you, too, love nature as much as I do, I encourage you to check out Moondance to see how she can make your dreams come true.
Michael O’Reilly, CEO Moonshadow Ventures