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Meet the Community

At it's core, Windward is a group of people living and working together with shared values, vision and an understanding that by comming together to meet our basic needs we are all better able to pursue our individual passions.

While the collective vision is spelled out throughout the website, we think it's important to give space for the individual members of the community to introduce themselves, offer a bit of their story, and speak to their particular passions within the diverse context of Windward.

The Current Stewards of Windward

Lindsay Hagamen

What is your real-life super power?

What are some of your areas of focus?

What are some of your Hobbies and Interests?

Exploring mountains, rivers, fields and forests. Writing, dancing and singing. Learning from the Earth and all my fellow creatures.

What excites you about Windward?



Walt Patrick

What is your real-life super power?

Tenacity. I'm 67 years old. Some of those have been tough years, and others sparkled. Through it all I was able to retain the ability to just keep going, to do what I could given the options in front of me. Small achievements added up day after day into sometime quite remarkable, and created a foundation for Windward's next new generation to build on.

What are some of your areas of focus?

Now that I'm semi-retired, I'm enjoying the chance to step back some from day to day activities and focus on longer term projects. My major focus is the development of village-scale energy sovereignty.

I believe that sustainable community stands on an interlocking foundation of effective and sustainable energy systems, and I'm working to develop ways that a community can meet its energy needs without having to rely on multi-national energy corporations.

Other current areas if focus involve the Digital Studio Project which involves developing Windward's infrastructure to help college students work towards their academic degrees while participating full time in Windward's hands-on approach to sustainable systems.

What better place to study sustainable systems than a full-time sustainability research laboratory? Another is Project Tubman which involves finding ways to help former students escape from decades of indentured servitude as they work to pay off student loan debt. Instead of having to work to enrich the corporations, I want to help young people become free to do work that enriches the Earth and each other.

What are some of your Hobbies and Interests?

I'm intrigued by the fabric of history and how it can suggest concepts and options that can enhance the future. I strongly believe in Confucius' principle that in order to make the world a better place, we have to learn to call things by their true names, and so I'm endlessly fascinated by the philosophy of language, how words shape our thoughts and how we struggle to put our thoughts into words.

In a similar vein, I'm fascinated by memeology, i.e. the study of the history of ideas and concepts. Of particular interest to me are the memes that have enabled Windward to thrive as I try to sort out what are they and where they came from?

I also find great pleasure in the intersection of thought and feeling that is song, and collect covers of works that I find especially resonate, finding both great and fine variety in how different artists interpret songs that over the years have spoken to the human condition. For example, The Water is Wide was first published in the early eighteen century, and since then it has been interpreted by thousands of artists. My favorite cover is by Karla Bonoff and James Taylor.

What excites you about Windward?

I find myself swept up daily by the opportunity Windward offers to get a look behind the surface of life, to tease out a bit of the mystery of how things work, of where we've come from and where we're going. Living close to the land, and in deep connection with people I love, I believe that I can see more clearly here in the complex tranquility of Windward's woods than I can in the busy repetition of city life.

When I want to reflect, I can go and sit under a three-century-old oak tree; when I head towards town, I can spot an eagle on the wind as she hunts the salmon swimming up the wild Klickitat river; and when the sun goes down, I can see a sky full of starry wonder stretching from horizon to horizon. In a world that seems more fragmented each day, I find Windward's steady reach towards the whole to be a deeply exciting adventure.



Andrew Schreiber

What is your real-life super power?

An uncanny ability to find things that others have lost (but not things that I have lost).

What are some of your areas of focus?

Agro-forestry and animal forage systems, education and outreach, building things, and the development and maintenance of critical infrastructure.

I also help manage the Herland Forest Cemetery, and handle most of the apprentice related conversations.

What are some of your Hobbies and Interests?

Living with and learning from the land is something I greatly enjoy and draw sustenance from. I've also found that teaching is a passion that has grown out of a life-long interest in learning.

What excites you about Windward?

Something which excites me greatly is having the platform here to design and implement landscape level agroecological systems - a network of ecosystems enabling the community to provide for it's primary economic needs. that underlie the diverse village scale industries that others are working to develop.

I envision Windward growing ever more into it's role as an ecostery; a center for the living-practice of how to live in harmony with the natural world as it exists; a place where the wisdom, skill, technology, and biodiversity of a sustainable place-based culture can be embodied, developed, and allowed to flourish.



Opalyn Brenger

What is your real-life super power?

What are some of your areas of focus?

What are some of your Hobbies and Interests?



Yosef Trachtenberg

What is your real-life super power?

Quickly doing calculations in my head.

What are some of your areas of focus?

My primary project at Windward is building a village-scale axial-flux alternator that will generate electricity using the waste heat from our B2M process. In time, I hope to branch out to other sustainable energy systems as well.

Beyond that, I use my scientific background to help provide a more quantitative analysis for some of the projects here. I’m also currently focusing on finding online freelance work to meet my financial needs.

What are some of your Hobbies and Interests?

When not working on my projects or socializing, I can usually be found curled up with a book, writing, or watching TV shows and movies. I also enjoy most anything math related, games, and singing (particularly with other people).

What excites you about Windward?

In the past I have tended to be aimless and have had trouble living up to my beliefs, so I deeply value the social and material structures at Windward that make it easier for me to do meaningful work and live in accordance with my values.



Emily Boyer

What is your real-life super power?

Affecting ripples of energy to inspire physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual awareness through movement; i.e. dancing!

What are some of your areas of focus?

I focus primarily on community, which to me includes people, plants, animals, water, and the sustenance of other projects underway here. Even more broadly, I could say that I’m most focused on nature, as it refers to the broad spectrum of life, including relationships, community, creative expression, and the applications of writing, laughing, shared experiences and opportunities, in spreading a message of love and connection.

I researched student debt to develop Windward’s webpage on Public Service Loan Forgiveness to raise awareness of this option for people saddled with student debt. That was a project and focus of mine during my apprenticeship fellowship in the fall of 2015.

I am enjoying my continued involvement with Windward in several ways, including assisting with events like Surrender and New Culture NW, and spreading the interwoven messages of energy sovereignty and ecosexuality by promoting the Biomass2Methanol energy project and the book Ecosexuality: When Nature Inspires the Arts of Love.

I’m also becoming more interested in land and animal projects, food preservation, and fudge-making :)

What are some of your Hobbies and Interests?

Singing, dancing, music-making and -listening, playing and learning on practically any instrument, including guitar, ukulele, banjo, piano... Writing, conversing, learning languages, speaking Spanish, laughing, and hosting exciting events that encourage personal and communal growth and healing to occur. And generally having fun!

What excites you about Windward?

So much excites me about Windward!