Earthaven Ecovillage in North Carolina

We want to "co-create with Spirit a wise, just, and sustainable culture, in balance with the natural world; and to be a living example, manifesting a spiritual ecology — a vision of our new reality — in our daily lives."

Right around the time of the Spring Equinox, about four months after returning from Solheimar Ecovillage in Iceland, and slowly letting modernity seep back into my life, I began to feel disillusioned by America/academia/unsustainability. So on my last Easter break of college, my girlfriend Emily and I took a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina in search for nature and people who respect it and coexist with it. We found just that after winding up and down misty mountain roads until the pavement ended and a sign that read “Earthaven Ecovillage”. Earthaven, located in Black Mountain, NC just outside of Asheville, is an aspiring

intentional community that was founded in 1994. At this point in its growth it only has about 60 community members, but is aiming for 150.

The further Emily and I drove down the dirt road, the more excited I got to experience my first American Ecovillage. Once we parked the car and turned it off, the peaceful silence settled in. We met up with some others, and were shown around by River Otter, a woman with a floppy red hat and a genuine permasmile. Our first stop was the community counsel hall, a circular cob & strawbale building framed with trees felled from the area.

Unlike Solheimar, where trees and natural building materials were nowhere to be found, Earthaven was in the middle of dense mountain hardwood forest, which significantly opens up the possibilities of ecological building. Most of the structures in Earthaven were cob/strawbale, made from clay sourced from the river that ran through the village and hay from neighboring farmers. “It’s an ongoing experiment,” River Otter said referring to both cob-house-building and the ecovillage as a whole, “and we keep getting better at it.”

Earthaven is divided into 14 ‘neighborhoods’ within the 320 acre forested land. Earthaven is self-governed through small committees that use consensus to make decisions. There is a fee to live in Earthaven and once you move in, everyone’s resources are pooled. Other than physical distance separating the neighborhoods of Earthaven, there are a few things that make each one unique. Some neighborhoods have communal kitchens and eating situations, while others are more private. The types of houses range from simple tents, to trailers, to geodesic domes, to ‘earthship’ homes made of recycled tires, to cob houses of all different shapes and sizes. The community strives to be as self-sufficient as possible in terms of energy, food and economy.

Earthaven is 100% off the grid, with the central village area operating on hydroelectric power, using gravity to run pipes of water from the river down through turbines, and the rest of the electricity coming from sun, evidenced by the dozens of large solar panels scattered about. Although they are not quite there yet, Earthaven is on their way to to food security and self-sufficiency. They certainly do harvest lots of organic fruits and veggies and raise some livestock, but they still make trips to the town of Black Mountain for food, which reminded me of the members of Solheimar driving to the nearby town of Selfoss to go to the giant grocery store to bring back to their ecovillage. Some members of Earthaven work outside the community, but a strong urge exists for people to make a living within the community. Some of the on-site businesses include ArtiSun Construction & Forestry, Red Moon Herbs, Useful Plants Nursery, and Yellowroot Farm, a biodynamic CSA farm.

Within the village live several progressive people who teach others how to create ecovillages, train people to employ permaculture, people who teach how to make buildings and plasters out of natural materials, those who facilitate the consensus process, how to make herbal medicines and tinctures, explorers of alternative energies, carpenters, chiropractors, hypnotherapists, artists, massage therapists, reiki practitioners, and many more.

The age range of residents varies much more than that of Solheimar, whose population was mainly adults and seniors. There are a handful of young children that live in Earthaven, who we saw running around and playing with kids from other ‘neighborhoods’. Beyond humans, many pigs, cows, chickens and goats call Earthaven home. Water is precious in these mountains, and they have several methods of water reclamation and conservancy.

The village uses waterless composting toilets and stores rainwater and spring-fed water in giant tanks for irrigation and for drinking. None of the homes have heating or air conditioning despite the snowy winters and steamy summers of the Appalacian mountains. Instead, they thought ahead with mother nature in mind by using passive solar heating in addition to natural building materials that trap heat when it’s cold.

While strolling around the pristine grounds of Earthaven, everyone looked busy, either finishing a cob wall, stirring compost piles, painting and plastering insides and outsides of houses, cooking healthy meals, or meeting up with fellow community members to discuss future growth and ways to become more self-sustainable.

My visit to Earthaven reminded me of the magic of intentional communal living and refreshed my desire to visit morep laces within the United States that are trekking down the same bravely humble path toward a healthier, happier, simpler future.

For more information, visit Earthaven's website: http://www.earthaven.org/ or their blog: http://www.earthaven.org/blog/ and I would highly suggest watching these nice videos about two of Earthaven's residents: http://vimeo.com/21393792 & http://vimeo.com/22182724

Photographs from Iceland

I've been back in America for two months now and I feel re-adjusted to the faster-pace of the US of A. I miss Iceland and all of my dear friends I met in Solheimar. Going through all of the photographs I took while living in the unique village has made me miss it even more, but the challenge remains to not live in the past but to instead manifest the positive things I learned over there and use my energy to move forward into the unknown with an all-accepting attitude.

One way I have been investing my energy is in sharing my photography. I have uploaded my first batch of Iceland photos onto flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/nateoxenfeld) and will be continually adding more. There are plenty to sift through while waiting for the next batch though.

I am also gradually adding more videos onto youtube (http://www.youtube.com/destroythisday) so you should check the new ones out.

I have begun my final semester at UNC Wilmington before I graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology in May and enter a new realm of my life. May the Ecovillager adventures continue. Namaste.

End of Chapter One

"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterward, when you've worked on your own corner." -Aldous Huxley

"We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future." -John F. Kennedy

"Look! Look! Look deep into nature and you will understand everything." -Albert Einstein

On November 26th, the day after a super-American holiday, I returned to the good ol' United States to conclude the first chapter of my eco-village visiting story. Its been nine days since leaving Iceland and I still feel the transition happening within. Traveling on buses and airplanes was uncomfortable and unpleasant, but the trip was made more comfortable by our visit to the Blue Lagoon just hours before our departure. This place was the Disneyworld of spas. It is the largest hot tub I've ever been in by far. What many of the tourists who pour into this pool every year don't know is that the Blue Lagoon is simply the wastewater of the nearby geothermal power plant, which sounds worse than it actually is. The CELL group learned this when we toured the plant prior to the swim. Although it is not a natural hot spring, the water is still healthy to swim and and contains several beneficial minerals and silica mud. Needless to say, we were all fairly relaxed for the strange experiences of saying goodbye and flying back to our respective homes.

The two largest differences I have seen between Iceland and America are the sun and the trees. There are trees EVERYWHERE. And they are all thick, tall, and covered with leaves. The first thing I did upon arriving home was run to the nearest long leaf pine tree and hug it, gazing in awe at its sheer height! Shortly after, I realized the intensity of the sun and laid in a t-shirt on a bed of dried pine needles in the hot rays of southern North Carolina.

Mornings seem odd to me since they are not the pitch black mornings of Iceland, but full of light and birds.

Reconnecting with my family, friends and cats has been pleasant but I miss my family in Iceland. I am so thankful for the connections that were made in Solheimar these past three months and for all that I have learned and absorbed.

So I will be using this time before my final semester at UNCW to process my Icelandic journey, read lots, meditate & do yoga, conduct some wrap-up research and edit all my photographs from Iceland. You will soon be able to glimpse my artistic photography since I now have the time to sort through and edit them. I did not use my free time in Iceland to upload photographs onto my flickr page since I was in Iceland and would have rather frolicked outside, spent time with my friends and roomies, or actually take more photos. So I will put up another post with a link to take you to my photography when I upload my first batches. I also have a few more videos I'd like to put on youtube, which I will inform you of when they are up. Watching the videos I took in Iceland may be the best way to summarize my trip & experience, so I urge you to take a trip over to http://www.youtube.com/destroythisday

Thanks for reading, Bless bless!

Poems in Iceland

My facet of expression here has seemed to be a form of spoken word poetry. For our mid term assessment, I chose to read a long poem describing my feelings and experiences from the summer before Iceland and my first month and a half here. Now, for my final project I have again taken it in the direction of poetry. I would like to share these writings with you in an attempt to synthesize what I have absorbed for three months living in an intentional community. The videos are too large to upload here, but I have posted them on YouTube and I ask you to watch them there. I will share the words with you here, but these are more spoken word than poetry so I encourage you to listen to the delivery.

"My Personal Vision of Sustainability"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIQbh8Czu_8

What does sustainability mean to me?

Living exactly oppositely of how I used to be for the first eighteen years in this body.

It means to strip away the veil we see, that society tends to feed.

It means the ability to sustain not only me, but thee, and we, and trees, please don’t refuse responsibility for those we cannot see.

Sustainability is not invisibility; it is accountability, nothing behind the scenes, honesty, truly opening.

See, the problem with my personal vision of sustainability is its very personality, its internality.

Sustainability does not work individually. It’s got to be spread widely, not hiding inside me as a cut & clean clarity, child of the intellect mind game, but a blatant, visible, evolving, raw, exposed, breathing being outside of me, beside me, that I carry for all to see how I turn arbitrary into epiphany, “holy shit, it works.”

Holy shit, it’s so simple, but so foreign, totally out of the ordinary to parents and old folks and nuclear baby boomers who have left their mark and we frail fallout fragments must clean up in their wake. We now know how not to go down the dirty path forged by the last ringmasters, the bastards that raped this poor planet; private property produces poverty!

Growth has grown on us as a group, but it’s a loop we can’t pull ourselves out of.

Shall we shrink instead? Shrink our stuff? Shrink our scope of awareness to hone our awareness onto smaller chunks so solutions surface so we don’t drown in our global problem pool?

Super fast mass media fills the pool faster than we can drain it; remember, the people you trust to give you “news” are just working nine to five for cotton cash just like you.

Sustainability equals only looking around you.

Your immediate environment is the environment too, not just the rainforests and wetlands and glaciers.

By all means if you live near one of those, aim to save, but if you don’t then don’t.

If everyone in the world focused solely on saving his or her immediate environment, that problem pool would be empty!

Epiphany: true balance does not exist, only a striving for true balance. Chaos and imbalance is ever-present in this world, this solar system.

Epiphany: learn to live with contradictions in your world.

Epiphany: concentrate on questions, not answers.

Epiphany: moderate, don’t eliminate; money, minutes, medicine, machines, most everything actually…

Epiphany: efficiency eradicates bio-mimicry; efficiency is nowhere to be seen in nature, but rather fractals and spirally and vortexes.

Epiphany: connecting with nature includes reconnecting with the cosmos, don’t fret, it could come naturally. Heart, Mind and Body. Lose thyself in cosmic thoughts, feel thyself through cosmic forces, create thyself through beings of will.

Epiphany: eco-rebirth just might work to rework your wiring, I invite you to be reborn into a world of sustainability.

Everyone seems to struggle with sustainability, so lets throw away that word, one word cannot encapsulate the complexities contained in a “sustainable” existence… but let’s stick with it till this poem ends simply for the sake of its overwhelmingly prevalent rhyming properties.

Steps to sustainability? Seems silly to easily package a twelve-step program to save the world.

The world is too big to expect one word to fix its ailments! Hone hone hone it down, take a step down homo sapiens sapiens, can’t you see most of the steps toward sustainability and conservatory actually spiral us further down to where we don’t want to be?

Spiral up is only feasible by letting go of the paradigm we grip so so tightly to for no no reason other than pleasing the senses and once that one’s pleased the next one needs more attention, did I mention that it never ends?

Endless dwell in material hell means constant thirst for the black blood of Earth, our worst surfaces when value is lost, when meaning is lost, when energy is lost, when love is lost, when fear and doubt and drought and children without hope take the reigns and insane becomes not only acceptable but desirable.

I know that change is unavoidable.

I know that brains are pliable.

I know that spiritual amalgamation is inevitable.

I know that sense-free perception is possible.

I know that bodies and minds are deceitful.

I know you and I are indivisible.

I know that love is always successful.

I know that no animal is truly sustainable.

Writing about sustainability is somewhat hypocrisy because it can’t be summed up intellectually, enforced bureaucratically, understood theoretically, explained systematically, investigated linearly or discussed hypothetically.

It only works practically, daily, hourly, minutely, secondly.

Nay nay nay! Cast away this foolish play you’re wasting time every day by waiting for someone else to say, “Okay, the old paradigm was yesterday and the new paradigm is today.”

Sustainability is not an answer, it is a question posed to every earthling constantly, presently; will you destroy or maintain, respect the flow or drain the very vein that feeds you, for surely you know when you kill the earth you kill yourself.

Sustainability comes more easily when I accept the divinity that surrounds me, I walk more lightly, see more vividly, speak more quietly, conserve more frequently, consume less energy.

Sustainability is viewing our earth more heavenly, viewing our life as eternity, re-entering the dance of community.

You get the point, I can already see the shift in your eyes compassionately understanding that love is understanding and that I need you and you need me to make this dreamy vision of sustainability manifest in reality.

"Prana"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4z-Ww3cFbE

Flying fast away from familiar faces and the ultimate comfort
Rows of gray, leaving dirty trails in the sky, hug the coast make the most out of this once in a lifetime experience
Unprepared lost and scared
Have faith in the unknown
Unsecured baggage last minute scourge
Forgetful morning, strange male energy
Hazy air still allows my vision to pass through its layers to see our concrete veins below pulsing with more machinery
The people, all the people below, who will control?
Why have we taken control of something that already worked?
I will miss the forests here, the thick untouched splendor of tree cities. The secrets and answers are already in front of us, we are just too afraid to go into the woods to find them.
I will miss the people here, the small army of peaceful warriors I have strung together.
I will miss the food here, the growing emphasis on local and organic items, the 7.69 a pound plates at Tidal Creek co-op after hot yoga classes.
I will not miss the cell phones, automobiles, televisions, alcohol, gasoline, coal, guns, trains, planes, fast food and drama.
I’m in for a shock, inversion indeed, with an open mind much can be achieved.
Liminality.
Tracing the roots of live oak trees.
Mechanical minds cannot compute nature.
Industrial brains have a different definition of progress.
Where are we going?
I already see the irony in polluting our skies to fly to an ecologically minded community.
Travel partners are necessary – while traveling and while motionless.

Not hard to stay on track, some of us lose sight of the right wrong morning song take turns writing lines on folded sheets of trees or bees in boxes for pollination in a nation of ice cubes and flicker flames big wicks homemade candle flicks.
Have you considered the end?
You have to be 2 dimensional for all of your body to be touching the ground, you just can’t. You just have to be the ground, try to make the same sound again and you will be surprised about what comes out, the cameras follow you and watch you wait in line.
Line up the stones perfectly so they stand atop one another.
Rock garden stop gardening outside, try it in between panes of glass opposing the sun and touching one another.
Let the tunes flow, kundalini know the whole path up the spine.

Four days raw, not a flaw, doesn’t matter if you miss a stitch you can always knit backwards, right girl?
Sun your eyes, make em dry wash em wet don’t regret or forget this exercise, walking wise through the thin forest of a dry land. Tap it in let’s begin and try to make sense of things with your eyes closed, let it flow forget the dough, chant it over under the fur, tire scent mixed with incense nonsense cleanse the past tense hope for the best, just try the test!
Olafur Oh laugh at my fur! You’re the first settler! Scaley scales of the neck grasp the woody bamboo stick there’s two now, behind, around, under, pop it off!
Permafrost now we’re lost, toss aside your concern the only worry is worry itself.
Seven ducks on a wall, notes left behind hidden for all to find in search of the cardboard church display even when you press play the sound don’t come out of this damn piece of plastic, give it a second give it some love, treat it like your own creation. Everyone around you is you.

Crossroads hot loads of H two Oh that’s how you pronounce that
Build a house get some help make the shelter dig dig dig down into the ground
Rediscovered roots manifest in creation
Greenhouse on your house bring in the life
breathe it in work it out
Put in your hours, you are the only one

I know we’ve all met before, like cells that have died and come back alive on the same body, surprised to see each other again in a different time.
Don’t eat that mushroom its gills will fill your stomach like poisonous pills, maybe kill or at least berserk will it work? Edible landscapes leave room for mistakes no need to hit the brakes cause you’re already going slow slow slow your roll mister and misses volunteer simpleton transition town
Having trouble squeezing this into sentences,
Everybody asking me the same questions,
Giggle hard giggle we squiggle free from community
just to see what happens on the outside, hitchhike along
highway one the thumb’s got a different meaning here, different for everyone the numbness of oneness melts in the sun if you confront that ugly lonliness, son
struggle food attitude sudden shift of mood from innocent innocuous to biased uneasiness
Confidence roots deep and tries to break through to the daylight, is your skin concrete or soil?
Digging dirt staircases is the best way to find out if they’ll work
Liesaboutlentils.com doesn’t exist, if anyone wants to help me trick other CELL students into it sign this list
No matter how far you fly you can’t escape this midterm stress press against the glass to test the chill & determine dress to make the best impression on the rest surrounding your guesthouse nest, magic booties won’t impress the sheep infested hills or attendees of wool-obsessed knit fests.

Flower of life represents everything I have to say here, it’s finest strength is its lack of words to communicate, this is the language of love, the intertwined circles relate to every branch, require each other make up each other take up each others space, overlap intersect come together to create magnificence since, what else is there to make? Why take up time doing anything else but nurturing the self, plenty of chances before your shelf life expires whyareyas waiting whyarentyas exercising power cast away laziness like the exorcist take a trip outside your skull to higher vibrational kingdoms, this world’s not dull you’re already in heaven meditate your monkey mind sitting still doesn’t trap you it is your soul’s vacation time, don’t make it work overtime now you’re prime, we’re ripe in this galactic season heathens knew this, jesus knew this, please just don’t miss the point of life: to use your body while you’re in it, you’ll have plenty of time to be lazy once you leave it so treat it like a vessel with a wide opening, open to all the prana pouring in.

They do things differently over here kids,
Mellow your criticisms until you live here for a while
You’ll be surprised to find that sustainability will make a fool of the one-meaning school of thought, widen your mind and forget what you’ve been taught, you are the teacher that must balance what comes from within versus comes from without

Under armor underwear flown by air much faster than a snail, doesn’t have to go all the way to space, redefine the space between two individuals recognize what can’t be seen, why is invisibility so hard to believe when we know our eyes can only see a sliver of the spectrum?
The silver lining is everywhere once you realize it’s just a rock. Cross the bridge to another being and look back at yourself, you’re just a mirror anyway.
Deflect the hate reflect the love for fellow frightened folks let’s test the ropes at this new way of life, I’ve got your back hammer away plant to stay diversify your fields claim some dirt while there’s still some and make it home, make a stand grow your own, use your reflective mirror magic to make others want to join in your complex web of simplicity. This city will be like one you’ve never seen, couldn’t dream of something so serene, no cars to gleam, no exhausts will scream, no shoes with seams, no clocks to make time seem linear

Wait what am I saying? I’ve got to say yes!
Yes this is a place you’ve seen in a dream, yes you can imagine something so serene, yes we begin to see each other as we are, yes we begin to accept mother nature back, yes we treat water like a living being, yes to less! Yes to the undomestication of all of us!

Two Weeks Left

I fly away from Iceland in fourteen days. CELL classes have concluded, our final Icelandic tests have been taken and the semester wrap-ups have begun. These include finishing our Solheimar projects and presenting them to the community, planning and preparing a Thanksgiving feast for over one hundred people, putting together a piece of work with each other that captures the essence of what we've learned here, and some final community activities.

I have uploaded over a dozen videos from my travels through Iceland on my YouTube page. A few are posted here for a taste, but you should really head over there for the full effect. The videos give a better description and feel for what I've been seeing and doing as well as the people I've been sharing this experience with.