You’ve come for The Tour. Alone, with your family or friends, or packaged (with your permission) into a group tour. You partake of the guided two-to-three-hour meander around the Village Center and several close-lying neighborhoods. For many of you, it’s a new world. Can it really be done this way? So much to see, wonder about and ask!

By the end of your tour, if you’re full of questions, you can usually get your guide to answer a few more, and later, once you’ve had a chance to digest what you’ve seen and imagined about our neo-tribal village, you can stay in touch and learn more. Become a Supporting Member and come back and camp for free. Make friends and plans.

Chalk art by Kimchi Rylander

What makes Earthaven “neo-tribal?” Well, first of all we recognize our need to be together. We are required to give time and creativity to building a culture that knits us together in seasonal, economic, familial and spiritual ways. This is a felt requirement more than a legislated one, and some people need to let others do what they can’t do themselves.

We ask each other to take more responsibility for our individual and collective relationships with nature than modern Western culture offers, or even allows. What’s neo about it is that we want to infuse our somewhat tribal life with the most beneficial sciences and technologies—the ones that help us live in our chosen world without losing our grip on the one that surrounds us, such as the photovoltaic microgrid in the Hut Hamlet neighborhood (below).

The roster of tour guides includes elders and youngers, founders and even “Exploring Members.”

Right now you can sign up for a (2nd or 4th) Saturday tour or a privately scheduled tour. We request all overnight visitors and campers have a tour so they know where they are and how to get where they want to go!

If you have a particular interest, tell us what it is and there might be a tour guide you’d particularly like to meet.

Recently our guides were asked to share special moments from their tour histories. Long-time member and permaculture teacher Patricia Allison offered these:

Most memorable tour…

The one I gave to Thomas Berry, in 1998 or so. He wanted to be here, but his health prevented it. Seeing the satisfied approval on his face was a gift I’ll carry always.

Strangest question…

Consistently people ask, “Who’s the leader here?” What’s weird is that some refuse to believe we truly don’t have one. They will rephrase it a dozen ways to try to find out who’s in charge!

What’s best about guiding tours…?

I’m proud of what Earthaven has accomplished, and I like to show it off! Since the tour is often prospective members’ first impression, I want to make it a positive experience for them. I’m also a compulsive teacher, and I love presenting a different way of perceiving place and people. It’s a joy to see someone I’ve toured return to live with us. I always feel some pride that my tour may have helped convince them to come back.

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Transcription for What is Earthaven Video

Debbie: OK so what’s Earthaven to you?

Steve Torma:

Well when I think about Earthaven and what is the role of Earthaven in the world today, I think of a famous quote from Thomas Berry who was famous for saying “The historical mission of our time is to reinvent the human at the species level.”

That the depth of the changes that we need to make in order to become a viable species and create sustainable culture is very very deep and Earthaven is one of these places on the planet that is most grappling with this question of what’s the range and depth of things that we need to do differently in order to evolve as a species.

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