Xylem Larla Dey was born in 1980 and raised in Highland Park, New Jersey: a small 1.8 square mile town with 13,000 people in it at the confluence of 5 major highways.  Her parents named her Larla Dey Maloney, and she had great childhood loves of ballet, painting, biking, reading, and climbing trees. She created a perch for reading in the maple tree in her front yard in which she spent many hours- precursor to later life choices, stay tuned- and she was often seen walking with her large white fluffy dog to her favorite spots at the local park and coffee shop to do her homeschooling homework.  Larla’s dad brought her on many adventures kayaking and bicycling on and along the river and canal path, and she spent summers largely as a fish in the Atlantic Ocean.  She went to camp for three weeks with other homeschoolers at Hulbert Outdoor Center in Vermont when she was 10, 11, and 12, where her favorite activities included whistling through acorn caps, jumping for the high ropes trapeze, investigating pond scum, barn dances, and hiking on White Mountain. 

At age 12, as a self-taught science aficionado, two of her many experiments accidentally caught on fire and she sought the guidance of experts and enrolled part-time at her local high school in order to continue her experiments in laboratories with sprinkler systems. The wide world of extracurricular activities opened its doors to young Larla Dey, and she danced and sang her way through many a musical (ask her to sing your favorite show tunes!), learned to build sets and to work with lighting and sound, sang in the choir, ran cross country and track, and illustrated poems for the literary magazine. She continued to excel in math and other subjects at home, and traded calculus lessons for guitar lessons from another homeschooling friend- a worthwhile trade, for she still plays guitar though parabolas are now mysterious. At age 17, she journeyed off to Sarah Lawrence College, just north of New York City.
Larla was often seen running barefoot across the fields between classes and rehearsals at SLC, where she continued studies in Theater Arts and began a fascination with Educational Reform. She was also spotted hanging from the rafters in lighting design, taking tabla lessons in Coney Island, tutoring children in the South Bronx, and teaching theater on her spring breaks in rural Maine.  Ask her about one of her senior theater projects, Nest: which involved creating a human-size bird nest perched on the edge of a cliff.  Junior year had brought her on exchange to Reed College in Oregon, where she fell in love with the forests of the West Coast, to which she promptly returned after graduation.  Perching is a recurring theme… the lass found her way home to the most elaborate perch  she could find in Oregon: in the Mt. Hood National Forest, at a tree-village called Eagle Creek.  Our heroine learned to conquer her fear of heights and lived for up to a week at a time on a platform 150 feet in the air in the old growth forest- which feels similar to living on a boat at sea. Volunteers hiked 6 miles each way on snowpacked forest roads to bring food & supplies each week to their fellow ewok village dwellers through the winter… and this is how she earned her new name: Xylem are the tubes in a tree that send food up from the roots to the leaves.

Xylem Larla Dey spent 3 years total in Oregon, and then sojourned for 2 years in Southern California, where she learned how to grow food in the year-long growing season.  She also endeavored as a homeschool preschool teacher, completed a yoga teacher training, and taught childrens’ yoga and dance classes. In 2003 Xylem began volunteering in creative curriculum design for the non-profit earth education organization Common Vision, and she helped to create their program which plants fruit trees at schools: Fruit Tree Tour.  From 2005-2008 she got on board the veggie-fueled 3-bus caravan each spring to help guide the 25 volunteers in performance, and to develop ecogames and expression sessions to teach environmental concepts utilizing movement, music, writing, song, and visual art. Oh, and she helped Fruit Tree Tour plant about 1,000 fruit trees each spring at public schools in California. Xylem loves fruit trees!

Xylem’s love of dance brought her on her first world travel: to Puerto Rico in 2003 for the country’s first Butoh dance ensemble (which involves painting one’s self in white from head to toe and moving very, very slowly).  Xylem’s love of children brought her to Peru in 2006 to volunteer at an orphanage called Casa de Milagros, where 30 children live as one family in a beautiful permaculture home.  Her highlights from that trip included hiking from Macchu Piccu to the Temple of the Moon, and visiting the floating Islands in Lake Titikaka. Xylem’s love of music- she plays classical Indian drums, called tabla- brought her to study Sufi Qawwali music in Pakistan, where she and her group of musician friends were warmly welcomed into their teacher’s home.  Having now been to three countries that begin with the letter ‘P’ she has dreams of continuing the trend in years to come.  Xylem also travelled in 2009 to study Yoga & Sound in Rishikesh, India, where she lived for 6 weeks in one ashram: studying tabla, Sanskit and philosophy alongside the river Ganges. 

In 2005 Xylem moved to the Nevada City area, where she has been caretaking homes, gardens, and many children: to whom she is known as Aunty Xyxy.  She’s been a frequent volunteer with local teen girls at the Ridge Womens’ Gathering, and has been spotted at such local dance classes as West African, Congolese, and Tribal Bellydance, or teaching such classes as Yoga & Sound.  She’s also spotted wildcrafting in fields of flowers and digging medicinal roots from the undergrowth of forests, or cultivating beds of perennial herbs…  Having completed Kathi Keville’s Herbalism Apprenticeship, Xylem is excited to share her love of plants with campers, and to join Kerry O in the outdoor kitchen making healing potions.  In 2009 Xylem created a small Arts & Farming Summer Camp in association with Earthroots Field School and the Living Lands Agrarian Network.  She loved developing the camp’s curriculum so much that she’s now pursuing a path of environmental education in curriculum design.  Xylem is founding a new nonprofit, Earth Arts, with the goal of creating new service learning workshops, sustainability camps, and an environmental high school…  She’s super excited for the role of Oak Village Leader this year, to learn from campers and staff and everything that Camp Augusta has to teach!