Ella
While growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey, Ella felt she was born into the wrong time. Career orientation in a world that felt fake and superficial was a difficult concept to get behind. She didn’t want to grow up because she felt there was nothing to grow up to. She did love sitting on the beach, or at the top of a mountain looking down at the ocean, or in a kayak on a still lake with only the loons for company, or behind the great tulip poplar tree in her yard planting one lone flower, but this all seemed to be reserved for vacations, or childhood wonder, not for a livelihood.
So when Ella met others who were not trying to become public school teachers or bankers or drug dealers or academics, whose daily life was entwined with the earth and not in a cubicle or behind a desk, the depression of being born into the wrong time (really culture) began to fade. She met people who knew how to harvest wild food from the land, how to chop firewood and build their own shelters, how to grow food and herbs and medicine. All of a sudden, life felt real, like waking up from a dream you’ve been dreaming your whole life.
Community came next. As an answer for the loneliness of the nuclear family. As an answer for how to undertake more self sufficiency. As an answer for not just reducing our environmental footprint but for making a positive impact. But mostly, what felt natural, right. What felt like the way human beings were meant to live.
Always searching for deeper meaning, Ella began three months of residential training in Great Vow Zen Monastery in 2010. Within this community of monks and lay people, all with a formal intention to maintain their vows, she learned to drop previous conceptions of herself and move into an open sense of self, with self-discipline, a commitment to creating good, right livelihood, and following intentions. She maintains a spiritual practice of zazen with varying degrees of practice.
After leaving the monastery, Ella then moved to CRICHouse community in California, hoping to learn what it means to be human. She lived here for a year and a half, learning building, forestry, butchering, goat milking, cooking, food preservation, and how to manage (or not manage) group dynamics, until she and her partner Gil decided to begin a new project. This was a human scale, off grid, natural built village in the forest, Woodrat Community. In 2012, while building the village they also gave birth to a child, Avni. He was born at home in their house with redwood bark roof and raw wool in the walls, and with four midwives to welcome him. She lived here for three years, expanding her skills in homesteading and community living, and becoming a woodworker by trade.
Ella moved with Gil and Avni to Virginia in early 2015 to form connections with the Louisa egalitarian communities of Twin Oaks, Acorn, Sapling, and Living Energy Farm. At Cambia, she is able to maintain a small, close knit community, learning a lot about how to make relationships work, how to form trust, share income, and support each other. She is here to grow emotionally and spiritually, to begin to have a deep connection with the land, to increase homesteading and self sufficiency skills, to learn more about permaculture, and to continue her woodworking and crafting livelihood with others in the context of community.
While growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey, Ella felt she was born into the wrong time. Career orientation in a world that felt fake and superficial was a difficult concept to get behind. She didn’t want to grow up because she felt there was nothing to grow up to. She did love sitting on the beach, or at the top of a mountain looking down at the ocean, or in a kayak on a still lake with only the loons for company, or behind the great tulip poplar tree in her yard planting one lone flower, but this all seemed to be reserved for vacations, or childhood wonder, not for a livelihood.
So when Ella met others who were not trying to become public school teachers or bankers or drug dealers or academics, whose daily life was entwined with the earth and not in a cubicle or behind a desk, the depression of being born into the wrong time (really culture) began to fade. She met people who knew how to harvest wild food from the land, how to chop firewood and build their own shelters, how to grow food and herbs and medicine. All of a sudden, life felt real, like waking up from a dream you’ve been dreaming your whole life.
Community came next. As an answer for the loneliness of the nuclear family. As an answer for how to undertake more self sufficiency. As an answer for not just reducing our environmental footprint but for making a positive impact. But mostly, what felt natural, right. What felt like the way human beings were meant to live.
Always searching for deeper meaning, Ella began three months of residential training in Great Vow Zen Monastery in 2010. Within this community of monks and lay people, all with a formal intention to maintain their vows, she learned to drop previous conceptions of herself and move into an open sense of self, with self-discipline, a commitment to creating good, right livelihood, and following intentions. She maintains a spiritual practice of zazen with varying degrees of practice.
After leaving the monastery, Ella then moved to CRICHouse community in California, hoping to learn what it means to be human. She lived here for a year and a half, learning building, forestry, butchering, goat milking, cooking, food preservation, and how to manage (or not manage) group dynamics, until she and her partner Gil decided to begin a new project. This was a human scale, off grid, natural built village in the forest, Woodrat Community. In 2012, while building the village they also gave birth to a child, Avni. He was born at home in their house with redwood bark roof and raw wool in the walls, and with four midwives to welcome him. She lived here for three years, expanding her skills in homesteading and community living, and becoming a woodworker by trade.
Ella moved with Gil and Avni to Virginia in early 2015 to form connections with the Louisa egalitarian communities of Twin Oaks, Acorn, Sapling, and Living Energy Farm. At Cambia, she is able to maintain a small, close knit community, learning a lot about how to make relationships work, how to form trust, share income, and support each other. She is here to grow emotionally and spiritually, to begin to have a deep connection with the land, to increase homesteading and self sufficiency skills, to learn more about permaculture, and to continue her woodworking and crafting livelihood with others in the context of community.
Gil
sometimes I wonder if a mere perceptual deficit of mine had led me to construct elaborate theories of what’s wrong with this world and how to fix it. like a man who needs glasses, but instead keeps trying to create find a place with greater clarity and focus. I’ve met lots of people who don’t doubt the world is full of injustice and misery and might end soon, but they feel about as upset by it as I do when I hear about how the red sox might not be in the NFL this year or something complicated like that. and why don’t I? obviously the red sox are featured in the news more than the desertification in northern india. and obviously there are a lot of deep emotions wrapped up in it.
well I have a better question than that: if I’m so concerned about misery why am I not interested in supporting research on brain stimulation or genetic enhancement that could free humans of their condition? that’s a really good question. I have an answer for it but the answer is rarely as good as the question so I’m not going to answer it yet.
ok, I was going to write about myself. I think I have a perceptual deficit and I can’t perceive meaning and significance out of mere conformity. which believe it or not, has made me interested in collectivism rather than individualism. I’ve always felt a strange degree of identification with the one dude in “Life of Brian” who refused to yell with everyone: “we are all different!” instead said “I’m not” and got shushed by the crowd.
Oh no, I’m being told I’m not doing a good job writing about myself. so I’ll try again:
I like to cook, I don’t like to build things, I’m really bad at it, but I’ve always done a lot of construction because I like planning structures and have a lot of ideas so I’m compelled to put my poor skills into work.
let’s see what else do I not like to do: reading. I’m sooooo bad at reading and writing, but I do quite a bit of it, someday google would do a sufficiently good job reading everything to me and writing what I say.
I’m avoiding the question! I have a passionate aesthetic vision for community. which is very different than what is modernly adored or at least done in modern houses, but somehow is not very different in essence from what’s in the romantic-nostalgic-realist oil painting that hang inside these sheet-rock monsters. is the contrast part of the aesthetic? don’t know. so I spend a lot of time envisioning creating cuteness in the landscape. I have in the past been awarded very honorary compliments from a big-shot architect who came to see my work. the architect happened to be my mom, but I’m sure she was at least partly honest.
yes, right, I’m here at cambia to build an awesome playground in the forest! it will take a couple of years but I’m excited. also to create seasonal solar-thermal water storage experiment that would be fun to play in.
I’m also working on starting a research institute to study intentional communities, why they succeed and why they fail. mostly why they fail I suppose… there’s much more data about that.
sometimes I wonder if a mere perceptual deficit of mine had led me to construct elaborate theories of what’s wrong with this world and how to fix it. like a man who needs glasses, but instead keeps trying to create find a place with greater clarity and focus. I’ve met lots of people who don’t doubt the world is full of injustice and misery and might end soon, but they feel about as upset by it as I do when I hear about how the red sox might not be in the NFL this year or something complicated like that. and why don’t I? obviously the red sox are featured in the news more than the desertification in northern india. and obviously there are a lot of deep emotions wrapped up in it.
well I have a better question than that: if I’m so concerned about misery why am I not interested in supporting research on brain stimulation or genetic enhancement that could free humans of their condition? that’s a really good question. I have an answer for it but the answer is rarely as good as the question so I’m not going to answer it yet.
ok, I was going to write about myself. I think I have a perceptual deficit and I can’t perceive meaning and significance out of mere conformity. which believe it or not, has made me interested in collectivism rather than individualism. I’ve always felt a strange degree of identification with the one dude in “Life of Brian” who refused to yell with everyone: “we are all different!” instead said “I’m not” and got shushed by the crowd.
Oh no, I’m being told I’m not doing a good job writing about myself. so I’ll try again:
I like to cook, I don’t like to build things, I’m really bad at it, but I’ve always done a lot of construction because I like planning structures and have a lot of ideas so I’m compelled to put my poor skills into work.
let’s see what else do I not like to do: reading. I’m sooooo bad at reading and writing, but I do quite a bit of it, someday google would do a sufficiently good job reading everything to me and writing what I say.
I’m avoiding the question! I have a passionate aesthetic vision for community. which is very different than what is modernly adored or at least done in modern houses, but somehow is not very different in essence from what’s in the romantic-nostalgic-realist oil painting that hang inside these sheet-rock monsters. is the contrast part of the aesthetic? don’t know. so I spend a lot of time envisioning creating cuteness in the landscape. I have in the past been awarded very honorary compliments from a big-shot architect who came to see my work. the architect happened to be my mom, but I’m sure she was at least partly honest.
yes, right, I’m here at cambia to build an awesome playground in the forest! it will take a couple of years but I’m excited. also to create seasonal solar-thermal water storage experiment that would be fun to play in.
I’m also working on starting a research institute to study intentional communities, why they succeed and why they fail. mostly why they fail I suppose… there’s much more data about that.
Thumbs
I’m carrying on the tradition of the peripatetic communitarian! I’m a neo-nomadic builder who travels between intentional communities creating artistic, collapsible shelters out of the abundance of materials found locally. Intentional communities, whether co-ops, cohousing, communes, or ecovillages, are my life passion.
Within communities I find a wealth of experience that is infinitely more valuable to me than USD, so I’m using this opportunity to explore a new paradigm of exchange for my labor. Coming from a background in construction I know the work that I do could earn me at least $20 an hour, and the structures I build may have a market value of at least a few thousand, but instead of earning a penny of blood-stained USD I receive food, housing, a place to live annually, and the unparalleled liberation to immerse in my creative passion. I like to say this lifestyle has extraordinarily high returns on “social” investment!
My work here at Cambia is so surreal and exciting that I feel that I’m living in a lucid dream. In alignment with our community’s ideal to connect people with nature and experiential education I’m creating a mentor program in American Yurt construction (it’s important to differentiate them from traditional gers because I’m not otherwise living within the culture norms of Siberian nomads, nor is my work directly benefiting them). The art of these collapsible and transportable structures weaves together the craft of knotwork, sewing, and wood work into a seemingly magical shelter of engineering genius. Among a myriad of benefits, teaching the next generation of communards this art will usurp the ubiquitous challenge of housing infrastructure stemming the growth of an intentional community.
If any of this excites you, please give me a phone call to talk more!
I’m carrying on the tradition of the peripatetic communitarian! I’m a neo-nomadic builder who travels between intentional communities creating artistic, collapsible shelters out of the abundance of materials found locally. Intentional communities, whether co-ops, cohousing, communes, or ecovillages, are my life passion.
Within communities I find a wealth of experience that is infinitely more valuable to me than USD, so I’m using this opportunity to explore a new paradigm of exchange for my labor. Coming from a background in construction I know the work that I do could earn me at least $20 an hour, and the structures I build may have a market value of at least a few thousand, but instead of earning a penny of blood-stained USD I receive food, housing, a place to live annually, and the unparalleled liberation to immerse in my creative passion. I like to say this lifestyle has extraordinarily high returns on “social” investment!
My work here at Cambia is so surreal and exciting that I feel that I’m living in a lucid dream. In alignment with our community’s ideal to connect people with nature and experiential education I’m creating a mentor program in American Yurt construction (it’s important to differentiate them from traditional gers because I’m not otherwise living within the culture norms of Siberian nomads, nor is my work directly benefiting them). The art of these collapsible and transportable structures weaves together the craft of knotwork, sewing, and wood work into a seemingly magical shelter of engineering genius. Among a myriad of benefits, teaching the next generation of communards this art will usurp the ubiquitous challenge of housing infrastructure stemming the growth of an intentional community.
If any of this excites you, please give me a phone call to talk more!
Shua
I lived a sheltered childhood. I was blessed to be born on 10 acres of Missouri woodland and prairie to two nature-loving hermits -- a strong, creative, conservationist mother and a gentle, curious, affectionate, scientist father. At 19, I married my high school band sweetheart. We became quite codependent. After three years, when she suddenly divorced me, I, with no friends within 800 miles, was forced to begin facing the parts of myself I had rejected. Motivated to suffer less, I started down a path of cultivating personal growth. My path was totally governed by my mind. I spent a lot of time reading books but not much time actually practicing, being in my body, in this moment. Over the years, it became obvious that the bottleneck for my growth was how much I was in my head. I dove into meditation and mindfulness practice, yoga, improvisational dance, music-making, and other practices that could help me out of my head and into my body. In 2010, inspired to seek a more meaningful setting in which to live, I decided to visit a few well-established rural egalitarian income-sharing intentional communities in Missouri and Virginia.
Now, it's Winter 2015-2016. For most of the last five years, I've been living in those income-sharing communities. Here at Cambia, the first forming community I've called home, I'm enjoying cutting and chopping firewood, making fires, spending time playing with three-year-old Avni, scratching the surface of woodworking, planning our home-scale permaculture gardens, washing dishes, sweeping, taking out the trash and recyclables being a liaison between the neighboring FEC communities, processing dumpstered food, sprouting, making some meals, helping out with construction, fixing things, nurturing relationships with the neighbors, walking and being still in the forest, meditating, doing yoga, singing, playing ukulele, writing, taking time to connect and play with each of the other members here. My practices continue to integrate and simplify as I let go of control and surrender to a more enjoyable, easeful, intuitive, embodied way of living. Now, I find myself thoroughly enjoying this unfolding journey of playing and healing with movement, breath, touch, eye gazing, feeling, presence, and voice in evermore moments and life territory.
My Mission:
1). I'm exploring how to co-create healthy culture; live a simple, ecstatically integrated, deeply ecological, harmonious way of life; and freely share all of it with others.
2). Freely sharing a process for deep emotional healing work and positive life change called Inner Relationship Focusing. In Focusing, I've learned how slowing down and pausing our urgent need to figure things out and/or feel better can actually help us to move forward more easily. I love Rumi's Guest House poem. I believe I have something to learn from every passing emotion.
I'm still cultivating evermore continuous practices of: Disidentifying from and turning (with interested curiosity) toward frustration and sadness when they arise and I mistake them as something I am. Breathing more deeply (enjoying as much as possible, being present in my body - however it feels). Relaxing my compulsive left-brained tendency to always focus my gaze. Noticing the alignment of my body and moving freely in ways that feel good. Playing and laughing. Accessing flow states. Noticing changes in the subtle flow of energy within and around. Facilitating. Envisioning and manifesting. Eating slowly and lightly (increasing enjoyment by slowing down and savoring, deriving sustenance from oxygen-enriched deeper breaths). Daily intention setting and gratitude sharing...
I lived a sheltered childhood. I was blessed to be born on 10 acres of Missouri woodland and prairie to two nature-loving hermits -- a strong, creative, conservationist mother and a gentle, curious, affectionate, scientist father. At 19, I married my high school band sweetheart. We became quite codependent. After three years, when she suddenly divorced me, I, with no friends within 800 miles, was forced to begin facing the parts of myself I had rejected. Motivated to suffer less, I started down a path of cultivating personal growth. My path was totally governed by my mind. I spent a lot of time reading books but not much time actually practicing, being in my body, in this moment. Over the years, it became obvious that the bottleneck for my growth was how much I was in my head. I dove into meditation and mindfulness practice, yoga, improvisational dance, music-making, and other practices that could help me out of my head and into my body. In 2010, inspired to seek a more meaningful setting in which to live, I decided to visit a few well-established rural egalitarian income-sharing intentional communities in Missouri and Virginia.
Now, it's Winter 2015-2016. For most of the last five years, I've been living in those income-sharing communities. Here at Cambia, the first forming community I've called home, I'm enjoying cutting and chopping firewood, making fires, spending time playing with three-year-old Avni, scratching the surface of woodworking, planning our home-scale permaculture gardens, washing dishes, sweeping, taking out the trash and recyclables being a liaison between the neighboring FEC communities, processing dumpstered food, sprouting, making some meals, helping out with construction, fixing things, nurturing relationships with the neighbors, walking and being still in the forest, meditating, doing yoga, singing, playing ukulele, writing, taking time to connect and play with each of the other members here. My practices continue to integrate and simplify as I let go of control and surrender to a more enjoyable, easeful, intuitive, embodied way of living. Now, I find myself thoroughly enjoying this unfolding journey of playing and healing with movement, breath, touch, eye gazing, feeling, presence, and voice in evermore moments and life territory.
My Mission:
1). I'm exploring how to co-create healthy culture; live a simple, ecstatically integrated, deeply ecological, harmonious way of life; and freely share all of it with others.
2). Freely sharing a process for deep emotional healing work and positive life change called Inner Relationship Focusing. In Focusing, I've learned how slowing down and pausing our urgent need to figure things out and/or feel better can actually help us to move forward more easily. I love Rumi's Guest House poem. I believe I have something to learn from every passing emotion.
I'm still cultivating evermore continuous practices of: Disidentifying from and turning (with interested curiosity) toward frustration and sadness when they arise and I mistake them as something I am. Breathing more deeply (enjoying as much as possible, being present in my body - however it feels). Relaxing my compulsive left-brained tendency to always focus my gaze. Noticing the alignment of my body and moving freely in ways that feel good. Playing and laughing. Accessing flow states. Noticing changes in the subtle flow of energy within and around. Facilitating. Envisioning and manifesting. Eating slowly and lightly (increasing enjoyment by slowing down and savoring, deriving sustenance from oxygen-enriched deeper breaths). Daily intention setting and gratitude sharing...
Avni
Muggy
