Auroville

I am currently in Auroville on the southeast coast of India.  A cyclone came through on 28^th of December and caused extensive damage to the jungle. The story of Auroville is an interesting one and ongoing. You can go to one of their web sites to get more of this story if you wish. (http://www.auroville.org/) Part of what they have done, and are doing, is the restoration of the native jungle, known as the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest (TDEF). It is a very restricted ecosystem much like the redwoods are in North America, occupying only a few hundred kilometers along the southwest coast of India. I am currently staying and working at Pitchandikulam Forest (www.pitchandikulamforest.org ), an amazing place created and run by Joss Brooks and Anita. They are dong great work all over south India with restoring bio-diversity and educating children to become aware of and engaged stewards of their natural world. Pitchandikulam Forest is their home and base in Auroville for doing their work. It is both a nursery for the many species of this ecosystem, as well as an education center for all who are interested. This cyclone did excessive damage to this site, causing many large and small trees to fall over. In the accompanying photos you’ll see that while a decent part of the jungle survived a lot of the upper canopy trees did not. There are a lot of these large trees leaning on other smaller trees that need to be dropped. These are referred to as widow makers for a good reason. The work now is to clean up all this fallen timber and to start the replanting of native species. I’ll be here for another week before traveling to Vrindhavan. In Vrindhavan, a couple of my Indian students and I will be doing a garden design for an ashram.