To grow a forest on bare rock one cannot just scatter the seeds of trees. A few may find purchase in the cracks and grow. But most will simply die and never find the life they could have known.

To grow a forest on bare rocks requires patience and a friendship with the laws of nature;

Start first with the lichen. This will trap a layer of minerals and nutrients on the surface of the rock as it dies. Just the thing for moss to grow.

In time the moss too will die, it's decaying matter trapped among the roots of its children. This matter is soil.

Wait some years and this soil will be deep enough for the smallest of flowers to ground their roots and grow, adding their weight to the earth when they too wither and fall.

You will see the small flowers give way to larger flowers, grasses and all manner of plants.

Stay yet longer and you will see the soil thicken and deepen, inviting the roots of shrubs.

Long after the lichen, moss and flowers have withdrawn to the gaps and cracks of the now verdant, taller land — where there was once bare rock you will see a single tree grow.

This tree will spread its seeds and so its children and your patience will be rewarded: a forest will grow.

TransitionSeed is about planting the promise of a better future in our world today. These seeds are real people, with names and faces, friends and families, fears and dreams. These seeds are not governments, policies and technologies or even philosophies or ideas. People. Just ordinary people.

TransitionSeed is about us — you and I — individually and together finding and exploring the values which may allow us to cope with the realities of human existence in our time.

Sadly, in the world we live in it is often easier to see the vision than the path. And I do have a vision for our world. It's a simple vision. It is made up of the faces of children, of parents, of young adults and the old. It is a vision of smiles and of tears, it is a vision of generations. It is vision of a living people.

I have some ideas about how to get there, but many of us are bruised and broken and in sore need of healing. I believe there will come a time when we are no longer as deeply hurt by the shapes of our lives as we are today. To get there will require great courage and compassion. It is a difficult path for the individual let alone a whole people. It is in this path that you will find the work of TransitionSeed.

Today though, I am as bruised and as any other and I carry my wounds into the things I do.

When I can openly offer you what I have to give, this page will change.

In the meantime I am working on a blog at RoaringBear.org. Or you can email me at al@transitionseed.com.

Alastair