At the Ecorestoration Camp on the North West side of Mount Shasta at Hotlum we are hosting a three day unconfernece September 11-13th. [registration link] You can arrive as early as Thursday afternoon and leave as late as Tuesday morning.
- Friday — Hands on the Land. We begin with workshops to steward and care for the land. This is how we arrive — not by sitting in chairs, but by putting our hands in the work together.
- Saturday — Open Space Unconference. A full day of participant-driven dialogue about water, watersheds, and our relationship to this place.
- Sunday — Back to the Land. We close the way we opened — with hands-on stewardship.
The location is special because it is at the confluence between two bioregions Northern Califas / Southern Cascadia, where Six major mountain ranges & ecological areas converge, Klamath Mountains, Coast Range, Southern Cascades, Sierra Nevada, Modoc Plateau, and Sacramento Valley receive their water from. Several members of the team shared why the conference matters to us and this synthesis was written.
Saturday runs on Open Space Technology. We gather in a circle, anyone who cares about a question can propose a session, and within an hour we have a full day’s agenda made by the people who actually showed up. No keynotes. No panel of talking heads. If you find yourself in a session where you’re neither learning nor contributing, use your feet.
Water doesn’t respect agendas. How watersheds heal, how we relate to water cycles, how land stewardship and policy and science and indigenous knowledge weave together — these are living questions. No single expert can set the right agenda for that conversation. A circle of people who care deeply about this land and this water can. You can learn about how to prepare for an unconfernece on my unconfernece.net site.
A Tech Substrate to Anchor our collective relationship to Land
The team of 4 that began the conversation about this event was myself, Nik Bertulis, Jonathan Kabat and Frank Sanborn. I first met Frank at the Cascadia BioFi conference in Seattle in May 2025. He caught my attention because he was using verifiable credentials out in the wild – helping to manage connections between people in vehicular residency camps. Now with vibe coding he is leveraging the technology to have a substrate of connection where land is the starting point of identity. We are experimenting with his platform and a mesh network for the event.
Who this is for
If you’re already in the bioregional world — this is a working gathering in a watershed that sits at a real bioregional seam. Cascadia meets California here. If you’re organizing in a watershed anywhere on this continent, the questions you’re wrestling with will find company in this circle. Bring them.
If you’re a technologist practicing deceleration — this event is for you. I spend most of my year in rooms full of people building protocols and infrastructure at a speed that is getting harder to metabolize. A number of you have been talking about slowing down deliberately. This is a place to actually do it: three days in wilderness, limited cell service, hands in dirt, and one day of the same Open Space format you know from IIW and AIW — pointed at water instead of identity. The method travels. The subject matter is a different order of problem, and I think that’s the point.
If you’re coming off Burning Man — the timing is deliberate. This is right after, and it is genuinely independent camping in a high desert wilderness setting. You bring what you need. There’s limited parking on the property and dispersed camping below it, walk-in sites, a volunteer kitchen, work-trade opportunities, and real conditions to plan for — fire restrictions, lava terrain, weather. If self-reliant camping is a skill you already have and you’re looking for somewhere to land that isn’t straight back to a screen, come north.
Extreme independent camping, or staying in town
You can stay in the town of Weed (15 min way). If you stay on site we are in wilderness. You need to bring your own camping gear, drinking water and layers for high desert temperature swings. We will have a wilderness kitchen and will be using composting toilets and there are no showers. We’re planning for roughly 50+ people with a maximum of 100. I will be staying in my mini-van camper.
On the Way the Turtle Island (North American) Bioregional Congress
Tuesday September 15th the 11th Turtle Island Bioregional Congress, begins near Portland. They are reconvening after seventeen years. I’m participating with other folks from the San Francisco Bay Delta.
Join us
Registration Link to the Hotlum Water Unconference, September 11-13, Mount Shasta, California.
Please pass this to anyone working on watershed restoration, water policy, or bioregional organizing — and to anyone you know who needs three days off the accelerator with their hands in the ground.
Questions: kaliya@identitywoman.net
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