While it’s hard to be encouraged by the way humans are utilizing planetary resources and influences, to some extent it just makes us hunker down even more, to mine those inner resources that will help us go the distance—get another project done, another plan designed, even explore another conflict…and keep creating what means most to us, including collaborating on celebrations and community traditions.

One way to share some of these developments with us is by staying subscribed to this newsletter and becoming a Supporting Member.

I hear visitors sometimes wonder how such a cool place could be so…messy! It’s understandable that the vision we have of where we’ll be in another decade might be the same one visitors are looking for now. But Earthaven is not a Planned Community! We’re a community in various stages of planning, still dreaming ourselves into existence, in many ways more a process than an accomplishment—one that needs more time and capital to unfold in the organic way we’ve learned to trust.

So we invite you to visit with an eye for what stands out as beautiful to you, whether in the landscape, the built environment, or the lives of the people and animals you meet. Please feel welcome to join us (as Supporting Members, students, work exchangers, and for a community tour), and to feel the possibilities. Come grow with us!

Earthaven, by the way, is growing! As our new structure takes shape, eight people have lined up so far to take the jump into Full Membership as soon as we’re ready to make that official. Here’s what one wrote in a recent membership interview:

Question: What are your deepest dreams and aspirations for living in community?

I see a thriving community where people know the land intimately, they know the food and medicine all around them, they know how to make fibers and tools from the land, and they do this in a sacred way. We create so much food, the wildlife begin to thrive and populations surge. Ceremony is weaved throughout: honoring the land and its inhabitants, individuals going through rites of passage, and important annual events. There are tools that address conflict, bringing peace to people’s hearts. …. I see a deepening in spirituality as different backgrounds come together. I see dancing and singing weaved into everyday events, [with] children heavily honored and actions looked at with an eye for future generations…. I see a place that people get excited to visit and feel sad to leave. This is the place I want to call home. (It is interesting, as I write this, to see how some of this is present already, and so maybe what I’m imagining is a deepening of it all.)

The post Stepping into 2018! appeared first on Earthaven Ecovillage.

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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Horse-pulled Theater, Bicycle-powered Cinema, & Live Orchestra at Earthaven!

In horse-pulled wagons stocked with a bicycle-powered silent cinema, an Appalachian-balkan-brass-klezmer-dixieland-string ensemble, kinetic sculpture and their signature low-tech theater appliances, the Rural Academy Theater stages their innovative performances in the town greens, theaters, college campuses, and pastures of Western North Carolina.

“By not relying on gasoline powered propulsion or being dependent upon electricity and the typical expensive gadgetry associated with professional theater, we will be traveling and performing at a much more human pace, one that will allow for a more thorough integration into the communities and lives we visit,” said Gabriel Harrell, the theater’s co-founder.

Central to the theater’s mission is to celebrate and call attention to the rural, in opposition to the global urbanization of our culture, economy, food, media, education and art. 

The 2013 tour officially began on September 19 on the campus of Appalachian State University in Boone, NC and made many stops before and after the trip by horses, wagons, and bicycles to Earthaven on October 15.

The eager and supportive Earthaven crowd spread out on blankets under the stars for a chilly evening performance following our weekly Tuesday-night potluck. The wagon theater is small and required the crowd to huddle in close for a view of the stage. It brought to mind rural villages receiving traveling bards and wandering minstrels in days (maybe not so) long-gone.

Thank you Rural Academy Theater for honoring rural life, horse-drawn travel, and good-old-fashioned entertainment. We loved having you at Earthaven!

All photos courtesy of the Rural Academy Theater.

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• How do we deal with our inner and interpersonal realities so we can live in proximity and interdependence when many of our instincts evolved strongly against that?
• How can we move forward in creating a shared cosmological and spiritual foundation so our life together can have more creativity, unity and fulfillment of purpose?

“It was great having my long-time dear friend Ecozoic co-conspirator with us for two lively presentations,” said Earthaven Firekeeper Steve Torma.

For more information about Michael Dowd, see his website: http://thankgodforevolution.com/.

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