HISTORY
The “Groundswell Project” began in 2014, founded by queers with a vision of land stewardship and intentional community. The project converted what was once a kids’ camp into an adult facility led by and of service to Queer people. Many humans put their love and labor into the project, and it showed with big improvements to the facility, substantial forestry and ecology work, and the development of a wide community following.
The rolling hills, the oak woodlands, and the redwood groves became a place for Queer love and connection, for new friends and lovers to meet, for elders to impart wisdom, and for all to gather. Many in the community have shared that the friends they met at Groundswell will likely be dear friends for life.
Although the initial project only lasted for a 7 year period, it planted innumerable seeds of inspiration: for the inception of other Queer land projects, for the power of creating playful and meaningful gathering spaces, and for a reminder of how the land is a conduit for Queer spiritual practice and sacred ceremony. It was truly a beautiful era for those who experienced it.
A TRIBUTE TO WILLIAM STEWART
A TRIBUTE TO WILLIAM T. STEWART
A TRIBUTE TO WILLIAM STEWART
A TRIBUTE TO WILLIAM T. STEWART
William participated as both a founding member of the community and the benefactor of the Groundswell project.
Of the many legacies William left behind, Groundswell is one of the most potent. From his initial experience at the “first” Radical Faerie gathering in 1979 in the Red Rock Desert, William had been interested in starting some kind of community land project centering queer spirituality. At the same time, William was skeptical about the feasibility of such a community, and would spend the next decades supporting land projects such as Wolf Creek Sanctuary and Faerie Camp Destiny but was not willing to take the risk of initiating a community himself. In 2013 and 2014 as the Groundswell project was forming, he saw what he viewed as a final opportunity to take a chance on creating an intentional community land project, lest he live out the rest of his life never having tried.
"I believe that we queer folk have an important insight to bring to the table. As mediators between the multiple dimensions of reality, we have a predisposition to see the essential spiritual character of the coming global crisis. Our window reveals how it’s the psyche of the modern world that is fundamentally out of balance; all the other imbalances are tied to this disease of the soul, and nothing short of a revolution of consciousness will be enough to turn the tide.
Our strength lies in our heart-energy. The essential truth we know is this: in a world of endangered resources, the one inexhaustible resource is love. With mineral and bio-wealth exploited and abused to the point of near-terminal depletion, with oceans dying and a suffocating shroud of toxins enveloping the globe, where else to turn but deep inside, to the pure well of our hearts? Compassion, insight, imagination—these are assets which are not depleted by use, and should be squandered lavishly, because they’re actually self-renewing. We’re creators of magic and ritual, and we don’t need tinsel and Christmas lights to do it; the key ingredient is spirit, and we have it in abundance. Sacred keening, ceremonial rites and intercessions with the gods, trance and tenderness, heart circles and wild play and daredevil laughter in the dark night of catastrophe: these are some of the skills we’ve assembled that will allow us to undertake the shaman’s journey on behalf of our imperiled Mother Earth."
