Not the greatest picture of me, I know - I'm just trying to get a bit more visual with my blog every once in a while. If it looks like I'm trying to take a picture of myself while squinting into the sun at the highest point east of the Mississippi (6650-ish feet, in the Blue Ridge Mountains in western N. Carolina) after just running two miles up the steep trail to get there, well, there's a reason for that.
It's beautiful there, full of lush, green forests with lots of moisture in the air and on the ground in the form of countless springs and creeks running every which way. To the east the Blue Ridge mountains roll down into the piedmont area of N. Carlina, and to the west is the Tennessee border, with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park stradding both sides of that border. Life is old here, older than the trees...
I came to North Carolina to visit Earthaven - an ecovillage with about 50 members situated perhaps 40 miles east of Asheville (Asheville being the westernmost center of civilization in the state -Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, and all the others are central and eastern). I spent a three day weekend there, talking with the good folks who are tending the earth and their lives on the 325 acre sight. That site is arranged into small neighborhoods with names like the Hut Hamlet and Village Terrace, where clusters of houses share things such as composting toilets, electrical infrastructure, and water sources.
They focus their lives and work on the principle that they and many others refer to as sustainability - living with an aim to keep our demands on the ecosystems low in terms of energy and resource. Their manifestations of this work include keeping the whole ecovillage off the grid for power. They produce their own electricity from photovoltaic solar panels and a small hydrolectric turbine that is spring fed and produces about 1 kilowatt consistently, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. They are just beginning to clear some small areas for farmland so that they can grow more of their food and be more self-reliant than they are now.
So that's the physical description of the place. What is the feel of it? Really bright, technologically capable hippies tinkering with everything from experimental building to wood gas engines. When I first arrived I was greeted by two naked children heading to the sauna and then the bath, who politely informed of the location where I could find someone to help me register as a guest. The houses are stuck right in amongst trees and gardens. I bathed all three days sans soap in the creek there (so cold, butt pastoral nonetheless...). On a given evening some folks might gather to watch movies about the Dalai Llama or media coverage of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They require that all new houses built there are very energy efficient with passive solar situating. There is a natural medicine/herb business that is just beginning to flourish on site. They have composting toilets. I think you get the picture. It's a great place, worth a visit and certainly some thought. If you're nearby, call ahead and then check it out. www.earthaven.org
I took the train home from North Carolina up to Philadelhia on Tuesday. I spent that evening at my friend Sam's house, recovering from the long trip up from Durham where I sat next to the skinniest woman I have seen in a long time, from Long Island (don't forget to pronounce the 'g'), who was a very nice grandmother complete with a large ziploc full of sugar-free candies left over from her visit with the grandkids. She was peddling them like a pusher in the ghetto, forcing them on me as I glanced peripherally a the Indian gentleman in a suit who was visibly tense, apparently from being seated amongst mostly black folks headed north on the train. In case you're missing it in life, Amtrak always keeps it real... anyhow, back to the journey.
I decided to bike up from Philly to my hometown of Bethlehem, and it was a fine day for it. I cruised along through a mix of farm country, tract homes, and giant corporate parks housing drug companies and defense contractors. The weather was sweet - after a hot, humid time in Durham, the high was less than 80 degrees with overcast skies. A cool mist would fall from the sky every twenty minutes for so, keeping me just damp enough that I swear I felt an autumn chill in the air. Next thing I know, I've landed in meat-packing land somehow. It's not gritty urban industrial, but rather large slaughterhouses and packing mills placed right along the rural roads among the green fields. On one stretch of road, I'm suddenly right next to a beef packing plant. I mean I can reach out and touch the hedges which abut the pens where the animals are kept while they're still pets, not yet patties. There are juniper bushes to block drivers from being able to see in, but you can see the top of the screens above them and hear the cows mooing and shuffling around. And the smell - I can't tell you exactly what it was like, but it was bizarre and thick in the morning air. It was something probably like a paving crew working next to a McDonalds while someone fixed a gas leak across the street. To boot, there are these three Mexican guys trimming the hedge to keep it neat and boxed, working slowly down the building. The look at me like I just stepped off the train or something, as I'm decked out in spandex, all wet with the misty rain, and straining my neck a bit out of morbid curiosity to look into the animal pens for a glimpse of the action. I smiled, they gaped, the juniper bushes gave off a delightful scent that battled with the mystery meat, and I rode off into the gathering clouds. I felt like a stranger in a strange land, full of factory farmed meat, people making weapons of mass destruction, little bottles of soma, migrants thousands of miles from their home, and lots of other crazy things. But it faded in the back of my mind as I headed onwards, thinking of lunch and friends and getting the wet spandex off me as soon as possible.
Take some time this week, especially on the east coast, and take a walk in the rain, help out a local recently arrived immigrant, and consider vegetarianism. Share all these with a loved one, live a little more lightly on the earth together. I could hear the cows telling me across the hedge that these were their last requests...
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