Creating a Life Together:
Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities

Appreciation.

That is the word that best describes my reaction to Diana Leafe Christian's Creating a Life Together. I had anticipated this book eagerly, especially since I knew that Diana had interviewed two Lost Valley community members extensively while writing it. A communitarian herself, and editor of Communities magazine for the past ten years, Diana seemed the perfect person to put together this guidebook, which is intended to help anyone who is thinking about pursuing the dream of starting an intentional community or ecovillage.

Hibernate: vb.
1. to pass the winter. 2. to pass the winter in a torpid or dormant state

I have always envied bears, bats, and gophers for their natural instinct to hibernate during the winter. For years, I have been jealous of their ability to say good-bye to family and friends, give up all responsibilities, and leave their problems unresolved come time for their annual retreat. When they disappear for months no one questions their motives, no one wonders how long they will be gone, no one asks when they will return. That is so unfair.

Today is the day I will write my big essay about agriculture--the one that will explain everything. It will tie together the micro scale and the macro scale, our personal relationship with every bite we eat and humanity's relationship with the planet and the cosmos. It will give a global perspective, and also be full of personal stories. Taking as grist my own experiences working in farming, gardening, and gardening education, it will make the odd behavior of gardeners and farmers understandable to everyone. Never again will I or any other soil-worker feel under-appreciated or un-supported. Our national and global culture will undergo a transformation in which entering into a co-creative relationship with the land in order to sustain the life of people and the planet will be a laudable, rather than lowly, occupation. My essay will spark a revival of interest in small-scale, community-based agriculture--and not only interest, but an intense desire to participate. After reading it, everyone will want to get their hands in the soil. Gardeners and farmers will no longer be the lonely shepherds of a widely forgotten art as we pass through the "dark ages" of the industrial food system, but will be joined by everyone in creating a much more hopeful future. We will all be gardeners and farmers, and we'll all be applied ecologists, because by engaging with the earth directly we will learn the lessons that no amount of abstract information about the environment can give us. In short, it will be heaven on earth...if only I can write that big essay.

Along with being a member of one of the longest running '60s rock hippie bands, The Grateful Dead (recently renamed simply, "The Dead"), Drummer Mickey Hart has had a 30-year passion for in-the-field recording using the latest in portable high-tech audio equipment. From his early work as a part-time music ethnologist, Hart has evolved into a leader in the effort to preserve endangered world music. The Northern California-based Hart is on the leadership committee of Save Our Sounds and is integrally involved with America's Recorded Sound Project at the Smithsonian Institute and the Library of Congress, which is in the process of digitizing the Folklife Center's publicly owned, deteriorating music collection. Hart took a break from rehearsing with the other members of the Dead for their Summer 2003 tour to speak with me.