California

A pilgrimage in California called Walking Water will spotlight humanity’s relationship to water and invite people to co-create solutions that are pivotal to the wellbeing of all life on Earth. GEN is a cooperation partner of the pilgrimage. Geoff Dalglish from Findhorn reports.

Walking Water is an invitation, an action, an educational journey, and a prayer intended to foster a healing relationship between people and water, while celebrating the beauty and power of water. The pilgrimage takes place over three years, starting on 1 September 2015, and will bring together the voices of many through the act of walking together on a route that follows the waterways—natural and manmade—between Mono Lake, Owens Valley and LA, with the Greater Los Angeles Area today being home to more than 18 million people.
The intention is to walk a section of the route each year until arriving in LA during 2017, with this year’s section linking Mono Lake and Owens Lake. Separating it into three sections will give participants time to interact with the local communities and environment, and to weave in activities that have the potential to create beneficial long term impacts.
The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and pioneering Findhorn Foundation Ecovillage and Community are among the growing list of cooperation partners and share the goal of contributing to a vision for a healing relationship between people and nature, specifically the waters, that will bring long-term water practices that benefit the people and ecology of the area and beyond (see the website for some more cooperation partners).
Access to clean, healthy water has become a burning global issue and nowhere on Earth is immune to the need to radically re-envision how we act, think and live in relation to water.
A pilgrimage is a journey through inner and outer landscapes that connects to the soul of a place and to our essence as humans. The art of pilgrimage has been used for many centuries by the major religions, belief systems and indigenous people as a way of coming closer to the meaning of life.
Walking Water attempts to connect that sacred path of pilgrimage – our internal relationship to ourselves – with our relationship to our external environment.
“In this sense we walk for the issue of water, we walk with water and the communities along this path that are so affected by this issue, and we walk towards a change in our acting and thinking towards water on both a local and global level”, says coordinator Kate Bunney.
“We also walk toward a vision of a regenerated environment, a healthy valley and a self-sufficient metropolis.
“Our approach is to work in a way that is synergistic, collaborative and future-orientated, revolving around a simple bottom line: for the enhanced protection of all life.”
“We invite you to create an event that is appropriate for your area of the world, maybe a pilgrimage, a music festival, a school project or a tree planting. The most important thing is that it is an event that inspires and empowers each of us to become part of the global solution to water management and usage.”

Events will be featured on the website: www.walking-water.org
For more information on how to support Walking Water and/or organise a parallel event please write to in**@***********er.org