Smoke Trails #5 Earthaven Hear ye, hear ye! I have good news to report! After extensive travels, I come from afar bearing good tidings! There *is* such a thing as an eco-village! Such an animal does, in fact, exist, and not only in the minds and hearts of 21st century hippies. It may be hard to believe for aspiring eco-warriors who have been burned in the past by claims of ecological living, traversing continents to reach their ShanGreen-La, only to find that in actual fact, reality falls far short of the hype. It's true, Earthaven is the real deal! I don't mean to suggest that Dancing Rabbit doesn't cut it. DR is certainly an ecological community-in-the-making, by my high standards. But it hasn't quite reached critical mass yet. One can't quite call it a village, there are too many unfinished projects to justify that title. I have full faith that it'll get there one day, and now is a great time to get in on the ground floor and have more of a say in what shape it will take. But Earthaven has gotten over that hump, there are dozens of completed eco-structures, and they're inhabited by tens of members. The first thing that must be mentioned about Earthaven, and the surrounding state of North Carolina in general, is that the topography is absolutely stunning! The land is mountainous and heavily wooded, the earth is rich and red, the contours of the earth have gorgeous proportions, and the complimentary colour palette of the landscape is filled with beautiful hues. I don't mean to suggest that the earth is virginal and fecund -- generations of Scotch-Irish grain farmers have depleted the soil of many nutrients and the woodlots of much of its diversity. But it is in the process of being reclaimed by permaculture practices, and in the meantime, it's not too hard on the eyes, either. Another thing I quickly came to realize about Earthaven is that it is simply bursting at the seams with bright minds. One of the fears that comes up for many city-dwellers when contemplating moving out to the country is the dearth of intellectually stimulating activities and actors and actresses. I can confirm that in short order, I was bowled over by the sheer numbers of people that perform labourious earth-work by day and wax poetic on a whole host of interesting topics by night. There's no shortage of cerebral heavyweights with mad eco-skills in this village. The independent-income economic arrangements and five-digit buy-in fees at Earthaven mean that a large chunk of the population is working on their second half-centuries. There are interns and work-traders in their twenties, but you may miss the youthful energy that only a second-generation scene can provide. Thankfully, Asheville, the Eugene of the East, is only about an hour away by car, and it's got all the ingredients of an eco-activist paradise. I've heard it called the polyamory capital of the USA, and in the short period of time that I stayed there, I certainly saw enough evidence for that! I'm sure that my sample size was skewed, but Asheville is definitely the Austin of the less West. Their anarchist infoshop, the Firestorm Cafe, must be the most successful of any I've been to. They've got a number of dedicated do-gooders that have plunked down their parents' cash to take possession of old delapidated crackhouses and refurbish them with ecological infrastructure, a la Scott Kellogg's Toolbox for Sustainable City Living. Out of these anti-squats, they're running workshops and free schools, in the hope that this rhisome will go colonial. Big thanks to Diana, River Otter, Alexei, Clover, & Janell for showing me a great time and making me feel about as at home as I have in a long time. North Carolina, come on and Raise Up!