When we met more than 25 years ago, we discovered that we'd both been dreaming about living in community. We also discovered that we'd been reading some of the same books about earth-sheltered houses, passive solar heating and sustainable living. In 1986 we built an earth-sheltered, Santa Fe style home together in Colorado Springs that had many passive solar features. We sold this home in 1992 when we went to live in Bratislava, Slovakia, where we worked on an assignment with the UN's International Year of the Family.
We've lived many places in the years after we sold this house, always seeking sustainability in our lives. Both of us grew up eating homegrown food from our family's garden or the gardens of families nearby, so we appreciate fresh, organic food and have gardened when we could. We also appreciate the sense of community that comes with small-town living and have created the feeling of neighborliness and support in each place that we have lived.
During our 20 years together in Colorado, we twice were members of groups that hoped to form an intentional community. Each time, we discovered ourselves being cast into the "developer" and "financier" roles, and we could also see that the process would be long and consuming. With all our other commitments and responsibilities, we decided not to pursue community living. In fact, we pretty much decided it wouldn't happen in this lifetime.
Our move in 2003 from the mountains of Colorado to the mountains of Western North Carolina opened a new chapter in our lives. The change from the "Papa Mountains" and hectic city life to the small-town rhythms of the "Mama Mountains" allowed us to reclaim some of the pleasures of a slower pace of life, time to pursue personal interests and opportunities to know our neighbors again. We immediately began rebuilding our social and professional networks in the Asheville area, which rekindled our desire for living in an intentional community.
We became very active in the Alpine Mountain development Home Owners Association and got to know our neighbors through a community garden, HOA work projects and social activities. Living somewhat remotely in a beautiful nature setting nurtured our creativity and inspired us to write more than we ever had. In one year, we revised three of our books, completed the manuscript for a new book and expanded our web presence from two websites to ten.
In January 2010 we began thinking about where we would go and what else we might do if we ever left our mountain retreat, and realized that we still yearned to live in an intentional community. So we began searching on the internet for information about communities in North Carolina, and that is when we discovered The Villages at Crest Mountain website. It was so informative that we got excited, as it contained many of the eco-friendly and sustainability features that we valued.
The Villages at Crest Mountain, Asheville's landmark
ecofriendly intentional community, emphasizes sustainability,
interdependence, diversity, self-reliance and affordability. A developer-driven project, this affordable, green-built neighborhood in the mountains of Western North
Carolina has many innovative permaculture features, including rain water catchment, community gardens, vineyards, orchards and berry patches. We were interested!
So the next day we decided to drive into Asheville to look at the place. We also met Clint Lasher and his father, Reese, the developers of The Villages, got a tour of the site and had time to hear about their vision in person. While the physical layout and development seemed well defined, we were even more interested in the social and organizational structure. This part, the Lashers indicated, was still under construction.
We began an ongoing series of discussions on the community-making and social governance components of the project, and eventually they asked us to submit a consulting proposal describing how we would structure them. We eventually agreed on a contract for services between their company, Brookgreen LLC, and our nonprofit tax-exempt organization, the Carolina Institute for Conflict Resolution & Creative Leadership (CICRCL). Our contract outlined our role as Social Governance consultants and the various community-building programs that we would offer to residents on Building Sustainable Relationships and Consensus Decision-Making over a three-year period.
We also decided to sell our mountain home, purchase a lot and build a new home in The Villages, to fulfill our dream of living in intentional community. Before ever moving to North Carolina, we had fallen in love with Deltec's round homes and tried to find one to buy. Our experiences at a conference facility, then known as Three Circles (built of three interlinked Deltec units), set off this love affair.
When we began thinking about building a new home, we returned to our dream of living in a Deltec round house. It's shape fit nicely on our six-sided lot and gave us many glass windows that opened to the expansive views to the southeast. We anticipate that we'll be living in our new home sometime in early 2011. Here's an idea of how it will look:
Click here for more information about The Villages at Crest Mountain.
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