Chapter 7: Another World

Eric was right. Now that I know what they're doing up on Altos, I know why they’re being so secretive and a brief diversion before the meeting gave me a perverse glimpse of what they're facing.

There was a new moon that night so it was dark and there was nary a light visible on the cul de sac. The gate was up, absorbed by the night, but I could see the stone wall on each side in my headlights. They probably still don't suspect that I know about the gate.

When I knocked on Julie's heavy wooden door, Eric opened it slowly and asked in whisper if I would wait in the hall for a minute. As I stepped in I immediately heard the loud, angry voice of a young girl. "Ian and Ariana's daughter Becca is throwing one of her fits," Eric explained apologetically.

Actually I could see into the living room from the hall and I thought of how often we used to gather there for potluck suppers. The Williams’ home resembles a rustic mountain lodge. It's large and rambling with big log-beamed ceilings. Though more worn and far darker now than I remember, it looks basically the same. Native American blankets hanging from the second story balcony above the living room. Plump oversized leather chairs and couches clustered around an open stone fireplace that serves both the living room and dining room it divides. As always there were carpets on the wood plank floors and bright colored pillows of bold Native American designs tossed about on the furniture and around the hearth.

Except for Ariana, all the adults from the cul de sac were gathered there around the fire that along with a few candles was providing the only light in the room. Julie's daughter Wren was sitting by her mother, looking obviously upset. Becca was standing in the middle of the group yelling, tears running down her face.

"I hate it here! I hate it!" she cried.

Pulling off the bulky sweater she was wearing she threw it to the floor with all the force she could muster. It slapped loudly against the coffee table as it fell.

"It's always cold here and these ugly clothes!" she spouted. “Just look at you! You look like a bunch of field hands! Well, I won't do it. I'd rather freeze!"

The group was dressed, as folks in Katani Falls customarily were, in faded blue jeans or dusty chinos or corduroys with varying layers of sweaters, turtlenecks, sweatshirts and flannel jackets. Except for Kali who wore a heavy ankle-length cotton skirt and had a natural wool shawl draped over her shoulders. Her long black hair created a dramatic backdrop for startling teal blue eyes. Also, as is the custom here, all were wearing some form of heavy outdoor shoes or boots.

Sans sweater Becca looked decidedly out of place wearing a tight, light-weight low-cut tee that showed off the contours of her small but budding breasts and her tall, slender, almost waif-like body. Her sandy hair had been cut in a stylist short wedge that had grown out so it fell awkwardly across her face. Her skinny jeans were tucked into a pair of black suede Ed Hardy Love Kills Snowblazer boots that came over her calves and folded into a thick fleece cuff. The Love Kills design featured a scarlet skull surrounded by floral swirls.

"What's wrong with you people? All you care about is returning to the Dark Ages! And you've killed Muffy!” she continued, turning to her father. “You wouldn't have done that is she were bigger. If she were Sentry or Coon you would have spent the money. I know you would. Or are we paupers now?"

Her voice was growing ragged and hoarse from the yelling. Her razor sharp eyes zeroed in on her father, who was sitting in stunned silence along with everyone else. "You're mean! Cruel! Evil! " she muttered between clenched teeth before folding over onto her knees in wrenching tears.

Julie got up and went to put her arms around Becca. I looked over to Eric who was still standing in the hallway with me. "Ian had their Maltese put down this afternoon," he explained quietly. "The dog was 14 years old and had a heart problem. Their vet in LA offered to do open-heart surgery for an estimated $7,000, but Ian decided against it."

Open-heart surgery for a pet? My mind was spinning at the incongruity of it all and wondering who Sentry and Coon were. By then Ian had gotten up too and reached out to comfort his daughter. She stood and collapsed against his chest in tears.

"I'll buy you a pair of those grey UGGs you've been wanting," he said soothingly. "We're not paupers. Not yet. We're going to be fine." He looked lost and desperate, almost like a young boy, his sandy hair falling willy nilly across his forehead not unlike his daughter's.

After a few minutes, Wren got up and went to hug her friend. A good foot taller, Becca turned and looked down at her. "Oh, Wren, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean I hate you. Or that you dress ugly." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Wren picked up the discarded sweater from the floor and draped it over Becca’s shoulders.

"It's not that cold in my room, Becca, let's go upstairs and talk," she said taking Becca by the hand.

As the two girls left the room Eric cleared his throat to let everyone know I was there. Julie turned to me smiling. "Please come in, Rose," she said. "I'm sorry for all this upset."

"Yes, do come in," Ian reiterated, composing himself. "Becca hasn't been well. The asthma, you know."

"Would you like some tea or some hot mulled wine?" Julie interjected. I declined and they made room for me on couch in front of the fireplace.

It was immediately clear that Ian would be leading the “meeting.” His demeanor had shifted and he began to speak in the soft, measured voice of someone who is used to people hanging on his every word.

"I think you know all of us," he began. "I'm Ian. I've seen you at the Clinic. My wife isn't with us tonight. Not feeling up to it. Julie and Rachel, Lori and Eric, you know, of course. And this is Boo and Nessa, Raine and Kali."

As I said hello I could feel the tension in the room was building, not ebbing.

"As I guess you know from Eric we're engaging in some activities up here to address the fact that our community is pretty much going under," he paused, "along with the whole country." After assuring himself that I had indeed committed to keep everything they told me in the strictest of confidence, he paused again, took a breath and blew it out slowly.

"We're creating a homestead," he explained, "an eco-village in essence that can be a model for the rest of our community to show how we can be self-reliant here in Katani Falls and make it through the coming collapse of the US economy.”

No one except me seemed startled by his use of the term "collapse." To hear that spoken and received so matter-of-factly sent a chill down my spine. Is that really what lies ahead? Collapse?

Ian then proceeded to describe their goals and projects. No one else said much and once he finished they took me on a tour of the "homestead."

I didn't follow all of the technical details of what was laid out for me, but I will try as best I can to provide an overview. The "homestead" idea started after Eric got an old diesel truck and started distilling cooking oil, or what they call biodiesel, to fuel it. He gets cooking oil from our only remaining eatery - Burger, Fries, and Pizza – and makes fuel from it in his garage.

Soon after telling his neighbors about this, it was decided that Eric would do the in-town shopping for the households on the cul de sac. It was like a buying co-op and it meant they had to get together to coordinate orders and arrange for pick up times. One thing led to another and they began doing more things collectively ... sharing tools ... exchanging things they didn't need with one another, etc., until one night Ian suggested they should see just how self-reliant they could become on their cul de sac.

That was before Boo and Nessa moved here. Ian knew the Irish couple from an event he put on for his company where Boo's band was playing. It turns out both Boo and Nessa spent part of their childhood's living in what's called an intentional "eco-village." Nessa in Findhorn, Scotland, one of the oldest and most well-known of such communities. Neither liked the experience at the time and had moved to London by the time they met. But, Ian explained, during the event that night the couple mentioned how in today's economy a self-sustaining community like that might be our only hope for a decent future. The couple mentioned they were looking for somewhere in proximity of LA to create such a living arrangement.

Ian brought the idea back to the cul de sac and Boo and Nessa were invited to move into the vacant house on the east side of Altos to help create an eco-village. But they're not renting it. They’re squatting!! The house was empty, in foreclosure but not selling, and no one from the bank had been up to check the house in the two year’s they've lived here.

Their goal is to produce as much food, water, energy, and other needs as possible themselves and whenever possible purchase everything else here in Katani Falls. With Boo and Nessa's expertise they're on the way to becoming ecologically self-sustaining and have the intention of getting entirely "off the "grid" some time this year. The more Ian talked the less tension I felt in the room, particularly when he said showing me was going to be a lot clearer than telling. So we all bundled up in our coats for a "tour of the premises."

One by one from a central switch, Ian flicked on low lighting across the back of the four houses. Behind three of them was a wide meadow beyond which was the forest. There they had planted an outdoor garden in raised beds or cold frames and built two greenhouses. One is a heated feeder greenhouse where plants can be started and the other is a larger hoop greenhouse that's not heated where greens can be produced all winter long. And greens there are aplenty. But I didn't recognize most of the vegetables. They’re growing primarily cool season Asian vegetables, I learned because they grow faster and are much heartier, more abundant, disease and wilt resistant, use less water and have a higher caloric value than the vegetables we Americans are more familiar with.

Located in the shadier forested area behind Julie's house is a small barn and a chicken coop. Yes, a coop for chickens that lay eggs! (Did you know hens can produce eggs without a rooster?) There are also two goats for milk and cheese, and a pond stocked with fish. Two llamas protect the property from predators like bears, coyotes, wolves and mountain lions, which they will stomp to death if need be! The llamas, being grazers, are tethered to 30' foot ropes. They also come in handy I discovered for hauling and carting and their hair can be woven into yarn for knitting or rope, as well as for felt. Even their manure is a godsend because the soil on our mountain is not good for growing.

Off the barn on the north is a wood pellet mill they purchased and built from a kit to manufacture their own pellets for heating three of the homes in the winter, using wood the Forest Service makes available to the public when thinning the forest.

All this, of course, is why they have six-foot fences between their houses – none of these things are allowed under our zoning or building codes. Because Raine is the ranger for our forest he’s the only one from Forest Service who sees what’s going on from the back of their homes. He winked at me when Ian mentioned this and commented, “You didn’t hear him say that.”

They already grow most of their produce I was told and they hunt for rabbit, squirrel (yuck!), quail, and once a year during hunting season, one deer, which they share. Hence, Coon - Raine's hunting dog.

Sentry it turns out is a Border Collie. She protects the two barn cats that keep rodents away and constantly patrols the perimeter of the properties to ward off deer, etc. and prevent Heron from eating the fish.

Despite the fact the dogs were following at our heals, I could see at once that they were not "pets." These are working animals. Poor Muffy, was my only thought. She was indeed a luxury here.

A small orchard has been cut out of the forest for two rows of fruit trees, none of which he said are bearing yet. Water from the stream that runs along the back of the south end of the cul de sac is being diverted to create the pond and to provide water for the growing the food, which includes using what they call grey water. The grey water is only for the garden, greenhouses and orchard.

Such water diversion, of course, violates mandates of probably a half dozen federal, state, and local agencies.

Electricity for their “village” is being generated by solar panels on the two smaller cabins that have wide south-facing roofs and some other source they didn't explain that's related to a boggy-looking catchment area off the pond. Evidently they reserve the electricity they’re generating primarily for running equipment and of course for Ian's Internet connection. So they’re not totally off grid. I guess that’s not actually legal either. But there are no TV's and they use as few household appliances as they can, Ian said.

Apparently that accounts for the sheets to my surpise there were sheets drying on clotheslines in Julie’s dining room. I'm going to have to find out more about that later. Does this something to do with why Becca is always so cold?

After the tour, on the way back to house, there was one more stop. A storage room off the back of Julie's house is stacked with what looks like money. They're planning to establish a local currency just for use here in Katani Falls. It's all printed and, I was assured, completely legal. Though I’ve read about this online, seeing "printed money" stacked up in rows left me feeling even more stunned by what I was seeing than I already was. And Ian was about to make matters worse.

"This is why we decided to have you here tonight," Ian commented as we headed back into Julie's living room. "The time is near that we must let the rest of the community in on what we're doing. We can't keep doing this by ourselves. It has to become a community-wide effort. We're proof it can be done and now we have to share it."

Eric interrupted at this point. It was the first time anyone other than Ian had made a substantive comment since the "meeting" began and I had to wonder, was this more of their secretiveness, assuring I would hear only one vetted version of the story, or was Ian intimidating to everyone else in some way?

"You're probably wondering how we've financed all this?" Erik interjected while I pondered why no one else was talking. True, I had been wondering about that too, as well as how long it had taken them to create all this. Eric glanced over at Ian before continuing. Ian dipped his chin in approval, reinforcing my concern about just what his role was.

"Ian and Adriana were going to move the family back to LA once Adriana got better, but instead they had sold their house there for far less than it was once worth to fund the activities we've been carrying out over the past two years. Just this fall he also sold the stock he owned in the company where he works so we'll have funds in reserve for the other plans on the drawing board."

"You have other plans?" I asked, amazed that there could be more.

"Yes," Ian stepped back in. "In addition to the community currency, which is essential if we're going to have a reasonably self-reliant economy here, we're purchasing a table-top manufacturing unit so we can fabricate parts for our equipment. I know how to use the software and can adapt it to our needs. Eventually it and the wood pellet mill can serve the entire community and ultimately grow into an industry for the region.

"We're also recruiting key people to move here - a homeopathic pharmacist, a holistic vet, various types of technicians and security experts. As an incentive we plan to house them rent free like Boo and Nessa in some of the many vacant homes here. Hopefully we’ll be able to provide them and everyone else here in Katani Falls with a minimal amount of self-generated energy too."

Eric picked up. "We've been able to do all this over the past two years because Boo, Nessa, Julie and I have been working at this pretty much full time, while the others are bringing in income from their work for our personal needs.”

"But now," Ian took over again, "we need you. Or so Eric tells us."

"Me?" I asked wanting to disappear into the couch cushions.

"Yes, Eric tells us, and Julie has confirmed, that you are an expert communicator who can get past controversy and bring diverse elements of a community together around common goals."

I began ringing my hands and quickly stopped by tucking them under my hips. I knew he was referring to the community meeting years ago when I, and a lot of others, helped prevent an attempt to turn Katani Falls into a regional tourist center.

Julie was sitting on her hands too and looked at me as if to signal she understood how I must be feeling. Then she abruptly jumped to her feet and cut in.

"Why don't we let Rose absorb all this over the holidays and then we can get together again and she can tell us what she thinks we need to do to bring the community on board?"

That sounded just GREAT to me! "Yes!" I blurted out probably far too enthusiastically. I quickly reigned myself in and told them how very impressed, actually astonished, I was at what they had accomplished and thanked them for entrusting me with what I knew was highly sensitive information.

At that point Julie reached over and gave me a big hug, which the group took as agreement that would be how we'd proceed. Everyone rose and there were hugs and many holiday wishes all around. Though it felt somewhat forced, the mood in the front hall as we donned our coats again was upbeat and celebratory.

I haven’t digested the implications of all this yet. The holidays are here and I have to just set it all a side for now. Ned is back from the city for the week and Mark, Chelsea, and I will be having Christmas dinner over at Gloria's. If only I could talk to them about all this.

What do you think? Should I get involved in this? Is it too good to be true? Have they gone about this in the wrong way by being so secretive and violating to many codes without permits or variances? Can their good intentions for the community be salvaged somehow? It seems to be an overwhelming task. They’ve literally created another world that holds nearly breath-taking promise.

Please le me know your thoughts and comments. Sarah also said she would set up a poll.

I hope you will all have a joyous yuletide season.
Rose

© Sarah Anne Edwards, 2009

Chapter 6: Sleuthing

You're probably wondering what happened at the meeting? Well, I didn't go. I was uninvited!

A couple days after I wrote you, Eric called me at the Clinic to say the group "was not ready" for "someone like me" to come to one of their meetings. Seems the others involved in what ever is going on up there on Altos weren’t too pleased with Eric for inviting me without talking to them first.

He told me they would "hash it out" at their next meeting and he was sure I'd be invited again later. "It's inevitable," he said. "Sooner or later we'll have to let others know."

I couldn't resists asking "Why so secretive, Eric?"

"You'll understand," he said, "as soon as I can tell me more." Then he apologized profusely his jumping the gun and promised to get back to me.

Meanwhile, Rachel, Mark’s head nurse who lives up with Julie up on Altos, seems to be avoiding me at the Clinic. I’m probably just imagining that. I don't know. This whole thing is making me paranoid. I think Gloria is giving me knowing looks, like she wants me to fill her in on whether I followed up on her suggestion to call Eric, but I'm probably imagining that too.

Mark and I had Gloria and Ned and their daughter Carly over for Thanksgiving dinner. We had a lovely time, laughing and joking. It felt like the old days. Even though the lights went out for an hour in the morning, I almost forgot about how bad the economy is and how our community seems to be disintegrating.

When Eric didn't call the day after the meeting my curiosity got the better of me. On my way home that day I saw Julie's daughter Wren walking up the hill toward home, so I stopped to ask if I could give her a ride. There was a stiff chilly wind that day, but she looked at me like deer in the headlights and then blinked. "Aah, no, that's OK," she called out. "I like to walk. Exercise, you know." She gave me one of those shy kid smiles and turned to walk on.

So that night I asked my daughter Chelsea if she and Carly had been up to Julie’s house on Altos to visit with their friend Wren lately. They hadn't. "We don't see Wren much after school any more," she explained. “Wren is always with Brie these days – unless Bacca’s sick again. And no one ever goes to Becca’s house. Her mother’s always too sick to have visitors."

Becca is Ariana and Ian Avery's daughter. The Avery's moved into the tiny log cabin next to Julie’s on Altos about a year ago, right as housing prices started tumbling. Their daughter is one of four tweens who are around the same age: my daughter Chelsea, Gloria's daughter Carly, Julie's youngest daughter Wren, and Becca. Before the Avery's moved here the other three girls were together a lot, often at Julie’s because their house is so large.

Talking with my daughter only piqued my curiosity all the more, so over lunch yesterday I decided to drive up to Altos. It's pretty far up, around the mountain and above the Falls. The road is so windy I thought I could get near enough to the Altos cul de sac to take a peak without anyone seeing me.

Ian Avery works from home and is pretty much a recluse. No one sees him unless it’s to bring his wife or daughter to the clinic. His wife Ariana has lupus. That’s why they moved here. So she could get away from the hubbub of the city and rest. Then last year Becca developed asthma, like so many of the kids have. It’s bad case, too. So I’m sure Ian’s at the clinic more than he’d like.

Given Ian would probably be home, I knew had to be careful not to get too close to the houses on the cul de sac. But it turned out I couldn't get close at all. There was a big black iron gate over the entrance to the cul de sac!!

It looks like it had a solar panel code entry keypad on the right side. There's a natural stone wall running off either side of the gate into the forest. A few yards down from the north end of the wall there's a little path through the forest that the kids probably use as a shortcut around the gate.

But a gate of any kind on a public street is strictly against code here. You can't even have fences or walls around your property without a permit. Is this the big secret they're keeping? But why a gate? Why a wall?

Altos is really more like a long deep U-shaped drive than a typical round cul de sac. There are four houses set back around the very end of the U. They all sit among old growth pines and willows so you can't see much of them from the gate. I could see portions of what looks like six-foot high wooden fences between the houses, though, that go around the to back on the north and south sides of the two end houses.

This is strictly forbidden too without a permit. What in the heck are they doing? I wanted to park the car, get out, and walk around on that little path, but NO! I made a quick U-turn and headed back down the mountain. It was silly, but I felt a kid scared of getting my hand caught in the cookie jar. I held my breath the whole the way down to the nearest cross streets. Blessedly no one was coming or going to Altos.

I tried to think of who lives in the four houses. Julie and her youngest daughter Wren live in the big house on the right with their three housemates - Rachel, Eric, and Lori. Along the bottom of the U are two small log cabins. Ariana and Ian Avery and their daughter Becca live in the smallest one. Raine Harrison and his partner Kali live in the other one next door. Boo and Nessa Bristol live on the left side of the U in a somewhat larger log house with their two little boys, both under school age. Raine and Kali have brought them into the Clinic for the kids' inoculations.

My mind was swimming with questions. Have these families created some kind of compound up there? Is this their answer to the problems we're facing? Walling themselves off from everyone? I tried remembering what I could about the families I didn’t know very well.

Ian's a sandy-haired, nerdy guy, mid-thirties, looks like everybody's best friend. But I know he's not a happy camper. In a small town like this everyone's story tends to get around and it's known that Ian used to be a hot-shot software designer in Santa Monica. He developed the most advanced AI software marketing system in the world. With his program a marketing department could adjust their advertising and promotional campaigns to consumer responses on an hourly basis. His team can provide a continuous live data feed to update their client’s software.

And he made big bucks, too, as did his wife Ariana before her illness. She was an advertising executive. They lived in an architecturally designed house on the Venice canals in LA and Becca attended to a nearby private school. Probably thought they had the perfect life.

But that all changed when Ariana was diagnosed with lupus. At one point she nearly died. The doctor ordered her to get away from the city and to do absolutely nothing but rest.

Fortunately the company let Ian continue working on his project, but only as a contract worker. He works remotely and still gets his health benefits. But instead of overseeing the operation, now he’s a hacker, or code jock as they're called, meeting grueling deadlines instead of setting them and cow towing to a project manager who doesn’t know half as much as Ian does.

Their cabin on Altos is so tiny it looks like an over-sized birdhouse perched up on a rise among the trees. They paid cash for it I think, because getting a loan as a contract worker hasn't been easy for quite awhile. And, of course, Ian has to live with Ariana’s lupus: the unending pain, the emotional ups and downs, the continuing life-threatening nature of the illness, and the lifelong specter of a relapse hanging over their heads. Not to mention Becca's newly acquired asthma.

Also I guess Ariana doesn't even look the same now. It's said she was strikingly beautiful, tall and lithe with long, curly, black hair and chiseled facial features. But the meds she has to take have a lot of side effects that keep her body swollen and puffy and her hair is cut short now and mostly grey with just a few wisps of black remaining.

I’ve met Raine and Kali at Wilderness Society meetings, but I don’t know much about them. Raine is a naturalist and evolutionary biologist, fortyish, with gunmetal gray hair and steel gray eyes. He used to have his own company as a wilderness guide up in Yosemite. But when tourism started drying up a few years ago, he applied for a job with the Forest Service and ended up in the position Julie’s husband Cody had before he died.

Kali's a good ten years younger than Raine. She’s an environmental biologist. They met while she was working for the Forest Service as a consultant, back before the federal cutbacks. Now she volunteers at the charter school.

I know even less about Boo and Nessa. Only that they're from Ireland, both in their late 20's probably, and that Boo (a nickname I'm sure) plays keyboard for a band in LA. But with concert sales plummeting, the band hasn't been touring much. So, I don't know what they do for income. I think they’re renting their house on Altos from a bank because it was in foreclosure and never sold.

There's nothing I can think of about any of these people that explains what I saw today.

Even though the temperature dipped into the low thirties this afternoon, instead of going right back to the office I drove down to the pond below our house. Pulling my muffler and parka tight and tugging my knit cap down over my ears, I sat on a stone bench for awhile and tried to clear my head. The ducks were swimming lazily in circles on the satin grey water, making their little calling sounds.

When I worked from home, before Mark had to lay off staff and needed me at the Clinic, I used to go down to the pond a lot. I should do it more often. It's so peaceful. There don't seem to be any problems at the pond. All is well there with all the living creatures that make it their home.

Why can't we humans live like the creatures at the pond? We're both here in Katani Falls, but there doesn't seem to be any parallel between their lives and ours. Being there I forget about all the worries and confusion rolling around in my head. Is that what I should do? Just forget about the mountain of problems we’re facing? Forget about whatever is going on up on Altos?

No, I don't think so. The ducks don't forget about the coyotes at night. I hear them out there sometimes, crashing into the water, splashing about with yips of marauding coyotes ringing the shores. They don't ignore the danger. We’re like those the ducks, but the coyotes circling our homes are economic. Our community, our families, we’re are all in danger. As real as coyotes in the night. Our food, shelter, heat, medicine ... it's all in jeopardy.

Somehow I felt better when I got back to the Clinic, though. The wonders of Vitamin N, as Gloria's husband Ned used to say about the effects of nature.

When I got home from work Eric called. They'd had a tension-filled meeting Monday night but decided to invite me to meet with the group next week at Julie's. Not at one of their regular meetings, but for a special get-together just with me. I said that would be fine.

Of course, Mark wanted to know who called, so told him I was invited over to spend an evening with Julie and Rachel. He said that was nice. Didn’t think anything of it, but still I find this secretive stuff awkward.

I'll let you know how the meeting goes and what I find out. Meanwhile, hold a good thought for us. I still don't know if this month's medication order arrived at the Clinic and I don't want to ask Mark. It's too stressful.

Until later, Rose.

Chapter 5: Something's Up

Remember when Gloria whispered something to me as I was leaving her house the night we had dinner after she'd gotten so upset? Well, I've been wanting to tell you what she said and where it has led me.

Something big is going on here. It's all very mysterious and secretive, but it appears I'm going to be part of the "inner circle" of what' ever it is.

What Gloria whispered to me that night what if I wanted to talk to someone about the problems here I should call Eric Ventura but not to mention her name. Eric is a master woodworker. His wife Lori is the owner of the Katani Falls Day Spa and Beauty Salon. I knew that like everyone else their business has been off for them, but what I didn't know was that not long ago they decided to let their house go and move into Julie Williams's house with her, her children, Rachael Kline and her children.

I know some of you don't now all these people, so let me provide a brief introduction. Julie has always been our nurturing Earth Mother. Her husband Cody was the head ranger with the Forest Service until he was stricken with prostrate cancer. Julie started a cleaning service, which she still runs, to help pay off Cody's medical bills. When Cody lost his battle with cancer last year Julie and Rachael combined households.

Rachael was the wife of one of my husband Mark's buddies at his golf club in LA before we moved up here. She was an artist with a promising career she had to abandon after an unfortunate divorce. When we moved here I invited her to bring her three kids up for a visit. At the time were living in a tiny two-bedroom apartment in Studio City. She had returned to her pre-marriage field working the swing shift as a nurse at an ER in Glendale while the kids slept over at her mother’s twenty miles away in Canoga Park.

Just like Mark, she fell in love with Katani Falls the moment she arrived. When the Clinic opened, she took the position as Mark's head nurse. She'd been renting a house, but when the owner went into foreclosure, Julie gladly opened her home to Rachael and the children. It was a perfect solution for them all, because the Williams have a huge home way up on Altos Lane. That's about as far up the mountain as our community goes, at around 6000 feet.

I'd known all that. I also knew Julie's two oldest kids and Rachael's oldest boy, along our son Jason, had left Katani Falls this past summer to join the US Forestry Youth Service at the Mojave National Preserve. They're all working for room and board. It's a cool program the Forest Service set up after their funds were cut to the bone and they had to lay off most of their professional personnel. lt's sort of a forestry boarding-school, job experience, and professional training program all rolled into one.

I didn't know Eric and Lori had moved in with Julie too. I guess with the kids gone there was extra room in the house, but why do that? When Eric first mentioned it on the phone I thought he and Lori must have lost their house. But I don't think that's what happened.

Eric was most friendly when I first called. We chatted about his move, how cold it's getting, how beautiful the early mornings are when the fog creeps down the valley, how the Clinic is going. But when I mentioned I was worried about the state of things here and thought we should organize to be more self-sustaining, his demeanor changed.

"Well, yeah," he said in flat matter-of-fact tone. "That would be good. What do you have in mind?"

I told him about the Transition Handbook and your blog. He wasn't familiar with either of them, but then he didn't say anything else. So I kept talking. Reminding him of how involved we had all been before, but that the others from our old group didn't seem interested now. I mentioned all the great plans we'd once. Lori's idea for a Commerce Development Committee. The Forest Youth Corps for teenagers Codi spear-headed that was adopted statewide last year. The volunteer Meals for Neighbors program Suzanne and Gloria started for meal-delivery to the homes of people who are ill. The Mountain Arts Gallery he and Megan had opened.

"Now, all that great energy has dissipated," I said, "and we're in more trouble now than we were then."

"Right!" he said emphatically. "Everyone's pretty much gone their own way, haven't they?" There was a touch of anger creeping into his voice and he didn't wait for a reply. "Suzanne and Ned are never here. The Gallery closed after the city folks stopped coming up here for weekend getaways. Now Megan wants to move to greener pastures so Ryan didn't run again for the council. And Ned didn't either since the law firm needs him in town so much.

"But what difference does it make anyway? The Council doesn't want to address anything serious. That's why I resigned. I've got more important things to do than debate how we're going to raise funds to buy more golf carts."

There was plenty of irritation in his voice by then and all I could think of to say "I know, that's what I mean." An uncomfortably long silence followed and I thought maybe the conversation was over. Then he started to talk in that slow, calm voice he always used to when he addressed our group in the past.

"Do you remember once when we talked among ourselves about how when the fabric of a community starts to unravel, we lose our connection to the common bond and fear we'll lose out, so individual agendas take over and community suffers?"

I had forgotten that, but, "Yes," I said, I remember."

"Well, it's happened here again too, despite our sincere commitment to preserving our community. We live close to nature, remote from the city and all the traffic and malls and discount stores. but we're still part of the broader national culture. We're still tied to a culture where everything is based on making and spending money in order to sustain ourselves at even a basic. But, Rose, that culture is crumbling and everyone is being affected.

"Right now there's no new way of being to replace the way we've all come to depend on. Yes, even us. Where do we do all our shopping? Where does most of our business come from? How do most of us earn a living? Not here. We're parasites trying to live off a dying carcass. That's what we have to change, Rose. We have to create a new way of living. That's what we're trying to do."

I was repulsed by his metaphor but excited that evidently something was happening here. "That's what The Transition Handbook is all about doing," I blurted out. Astonished by his statement That's what we're trying to do, I quickly added "That's what who's trying to do? Here?"

He was quiet again. I felt awkward. Finally he said. "Just several of us."

"Oh," I said. I really wanted to know more but it felt like I was prying the top off a congealed paint can. "So what in particular are you all doing?" I asked him, certain it has something to do with his and Lori's decision to move in with Julie. But again he wasn't responding so I added, "Is there some way I could help?"

"Well," he paused, "we're doing this on our own, quietly, a few of us." Another irritatingly long silence. Then, "We're having a little meeting next Monday night, up at our house. Maybe you could come and bring that book you mentioned, but, only if you'd be willing to keep this all quiet until the time is right?"

I asked it there was anyone else I know coming. "Oh, yeah," he replied. Lori and Julie and Rachael would be there and I probably had met everyone else who'd be there but he doubted I knew the rest of them very well. "They're not your usual group."

So, I have a usual group? I knew he meant our old group from before, but the way he said it felt off-putting. Nonetheless I told him I was fine with coming and wouldn't mention it to anyone. But I'm wondering why all the hush-hush, especially when before hanging up he emphasized, "Not a word to anyone in the village."

I haven't mentioned it to a soul here and I won't. Not even to Mark, though I'd love to tell him, and Gloria too, especially since she's the one who suggested I call Eric. She must know something. But both she and Mark had made it clear they didn't want to hear anything on this topic anyway and I've given my word. There must be an important reason.

None of your readers could possibly know anyone in Katani Falls, or even where Katani Fall is, for that matter, but given the solemnity of Eric's tone, could we please keep this just between us on this site until I know more? Thank you.

Until then,
Rose.

To see Sarah's reply, LEAVE A COMMENT FOR ROSE, or read the comments of others, click on the word Comments below. If you're just joining Rose's story, you can catch up by reading Chapter 1 under Labels in the right hand column.

(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008

Chapter 4: Whip Lash

At last, a chance to get online and tell you about my conversation with Gloria.

As I pulled up to Gloria's house after work that day for some reason, though I'd been there countless times suddenly I was flooded with memories of our first visit there. How we'd gotten off the freeway, driven a ways, and been astonished to find ourselves in a verdant valley stretched before them to the horizon, cupped between rolling pine-covered hills. I flashed on how the road ahead had looked like a ribbon someone had laid across a field of waist-high grass that rippled in waves of green that seemed to chase the wind. How there hadn't been another car in site or any sign of human life.

Then how the trees along the road grew larger moment to moment until we rounded a curve and suddenly were swallowed up into a tunnel of towering pines that opened onto cascades of curving mountain vistas that leapt into view from all angles, above and below us. How long we wound down hairpin-curves until at last we saw the roof tops of a tiny village in a narrow meandering valley ringed by steep mountainsides.

I remembered our first glimpse of Gloria's log cabin that day, sitting just as it was now in a grove of tall pines alongside the meadow. The summer sun was hot on my skin and the forest was buzzing with sounds of life. Gloria was coming down the driveway to greet us.

“Welcome to Katani Falls!" she'd called out, smiling, vibrant, her wavy, long blond hair blowing wild and free in a slight breeze.

A chill ran up my spine remembering that moment and how I'd had the strangest sensation that Mark and Chelsea and Jason and I had fallen through a trap door into some other entirely different world.

I had that same feeling as I drove up the other day. Like I was about to fall into another entirely different world. I brushed off the feeling. How silly. This is my world now. But Gloria was not coming out to greet me in the driveway. Why would she? There was no sun bathing my face as I got out of the car. Why would there be? It's a fall and dusk is coming earlier every day.

But when I knocked and heard her call out, "Come on in," I knew why. The house was large, dark and cool as it had ways had been. It's a log cabin, after all, like ours. They're notoriously drafty. But there had always been a warmth in her home that you felt as soon as you entered, something quite separate from the actual temperature of the house. A warmth that came from the life inside the house and that warmth was gone.

I wanted to turn around and run back to the car. What had happened? How could I have failed to notice this change. How long had it been since I was there? I was always going over to visit, wasn't I? No, it had been too long since I'd dropped by. I felt sick at my stomach. It was like before. When months had passed without my even calling Gloria after she'd had surgery for the breast cancer. But that was in LA. I was different then. What had become of me? I had felt so ashamed then and that shame came creeping over me again. What had I been too self-absorbed to notice here?

But then there she was coming to the kitchen as I'd stepped through the door. Gloria, smiling that warm smile of hers, her small delicate frame greeting me with a hug. Inviting me in that lilting soft voice of hers into the living room where she'd set out a tea service for us by the fire.

The weird feelings I'd had melted away in the glow of the fire. Carly and Chelsea were over at our house, doing a school project. Gloria and I had her house to ourselves and could chat away like in the old days, she said. I let the "old days" comment slide past me, really wanting it to be then and not now. And maybe nothing was different anyway.

And so it seemed at first. I sat back into one of the cozy hearth chairs and relaxed, breathed in the soothing fragrance of the wood stove, chatted awhile about this and that. But then I remembered I needed to talk to Gloria about my idea of getting some of our friends together to talk about what we could do to be sure Katani Falls remains a viable place to live given the tumultuous economic downturn.

So I ventured in, mentioning I was sure she'd been noticing ... so on. I was just about to bring up Transition Towns and Rob Hopkins' book, which I had brought in my purse to lend her, when she smiled and said "Oh, let's don't talk about all that doom and gloom stuff." I told her I agreed I didn't want to talk about doom and gloom, either but the exciting things we could do to avoid the doom and gloom if we worked together now like we did before. She twisted in her chair catty-corner from me. I could see her body grow tense. "Let's just have a nice chat," she said, through a tight jaw, struggling to keep a pleasant tone in her voice and a little half smile on her lips.

I didn't say anything more then. There was a moment of silence. But she began to slowly wring her hands. She looked pale. I reached over to put my hand on hers, thinking of how often she had calmed me during my LA meltdown. She started to pull back, but then she just broke into tears.

Looking down at her lap she kept saying, "I can't get all stressed out! I can't get stressed out." I knew she was referring to the fear that stress had contributed to her getting breast cancer. Ever since she has worked hard to keep healthy, happy, and cancer-free ever. So I said, "Right, right, Gloria. You mustn't get stressed. Your health is what's most important." That's when her tears stopped and out poured a breathless tsunami of concerns I'd known nothing about.

"Ned is in LA most all the time now. The law firm has cut back ... revenues are down, they're talking merger ... everyone who's still there is putting in more hours ... if they merge, heads will roll ... they're not letting anyone work from home like Ned has been since we moved here ... I'm alone here ... having to do everything ... the teacher at the charter school is leaving! Did you now that?" She inhaled shallowly but didn't wait for me to reply, ran on before it could even fully sink in. "Yes, she's leaving ... going to go live with her mother in Iowa ... I overheard Mark on the phone saying we probably won't be be able to order meds from Canada any more ... that means Carly's asthma meds and Chelsea's meds ...."

I could feel her panic and I was picking it up myself. No teacher, no meds! Ned gone. Gloria alone. I noticed I was holding my breath as the tsunami continued.

"So you're going to suggest that we organize for some simpler way of life where I have to grow my own food and make my own clothes and forage for herbs to use for medicine!"

She was angry now. Her coloring had changed from ashen to pink to red, her eyes narrowed and hard. I'd never seen Gloria angry. I took me aback. I leaned back from her and expelled the breath I'd been holding as she continued venting.

"Simple is what we had when we all moved here. Why do you think all our modern conveniences were created in the first place? Why do you think they were adopted so eagerly? They make life easier! Do you want to go back to wringer washers or washing your clothes in the lake?" Again, no pause.

"When I read this stuff you send me about how we're going to have this idyllic simpler, less consumptive lifestyle, all I hear more difficult, harder, and labor-intensive!" She bit down on those last five words. "I don't want to organize for that. I can't live like that!"

Just then we both heard Chelsea and Carly walking up the road. Gloria immediately shook her head, brushed back strands hair that had fallen over her face and were sticking to the wet tears on cheeks. She sat up straight and composed herself.

"I'm sorry, Rose." she said, suddenly calm. "I don't know what came over me. You know I can't allow myself to get all stressed out. Let's not talk about this any more. Please. I'm sure everything is going to be fine. It's just a hard time right now. We'll all be OK."

She got up, took my hands, pulled me up and gave me a big hug. Softly she apologized again, her hair damp against my neck. I hugged her back and said no apology necessary, that's what are friends for. But I felt like I'd been whip lashed, hit from behind by a semi-truck.

By then the girls had crossed the porch and were coming through the kitchen door. I could hear them tossing their book bags on the table. "Hey," Gloria said all brightly, "let's the four of us have dinner. Just us girls. Or, wait, call Mark and see if he wants to come by and join us! I'm going to go freshen up and I'll meet you all in the kitchen."

Being a little worried about her state of mind and feeling unsettled myself, I seized on the idea and that's exactly what we did. On his last trip home, Ned had brought some organic baby carrots and some applepears. So the four of us girls made some turkey vegetable stew and one of Gloria's signature fruit compotes with Torani pumpkin-spice syrup. Mark did come by, and we had this jolly dinner. The girls chattering away. Gloria her usual cheerful self.

After supper we all chipped in to clean the kitchen. No one said anything about the teacher leaving or the meds being unavailable, or Ned not being there. It felt surreal. But I didn't dare break the everything-is-just-great-as-always spell that enveloped us. Nor have I dared to since. Like I said, I didn't know what to make of it.

As we were leaving Gloria gave me another big hug and reassured me again that everything would be OK. Then she said something that made me think maybe everything would be OK.

Gotta save that 'til next time though.
Your Rose.

See Sarah's reply, LEAVE A COMMENT FOR ROSE, and read other's comment below. If you're just joining Rose's story, you can catch up by reading Chapter 1 under Labels in the right hand column.

(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008

Chapter 3: A Quandary

It's really early. There's just a pale silver hint of light peaking through the pines. The Fall sun is rising later and farther to the south now. A morning dove is calling in the distance, but otherwise all is still. Even the ducks on the pond below us haven't awakened and the pond below our house looks like a flat, unmoving expanse of slate.

Blessedly Mark's still sleeping. He was out late, patching up a boy who crashed his ATV into a tree riding out on the trails in the dark. But I couldn't sleep, so I'm sitting here by the fire with my notebook computer and a cup of cocoa to warm my hands, looking out the window. I thought being here might calm me, but I'm in a quandary and I'm trying not to panic.

I talked to Mark night before last about the idea of pulling our friends together to start planning how we can be more self-reliant here. He wasn't opposed. He was just distant."Fine," he said. "That sounds fine."

I know he's tired from overwork at the clinic, but it's like our roles have reversed these days. I used to be the one who didn't want to face my feelings. I was the one who refused to talk about my feelings and what was happening to our lives. After his father died Mark experienced a profound sense of loneliness. I was never home, always off speaking somewhere in the country. We were making a lot of money. I thought we were happy. I didn't want to hear about his loneliness or that our life together was anything but the picture-perfect happily-ever-after-two-career-couple-success-story I thought it was. It wasn't until we got away from the city for a visit with friend Gloria Raynor here in Katani Falls that I finally came to see how barren and insane our lives had become.

Now, though, it seems he's the one who doesn't want to hear about what's happening, like he's cutting me off the way I did in the past.

I told him about the comment one of your reader made that maybe Katani Falls is too small and remote to survive in today's economy. He looked at me and just shook his head. "Not much we can do about that is there?" he said.

He was clearly irritated. Like I was a bothering him with the obvious. A shard of fear shot up my spine. Does he agree with her? Is it that obvious to everyone but me that we're all doomed? I asked him right out if that's what he thought. "Who knows," he said. "You don't want to leave here do you?"

"Well, of course, I don't," I told him. "I love it here. “But what if she's right? Shouldn't we be doing something?"

He shook his head again and said there is no way he'd walk away from the clinic even if we could leave, which we can’t, but "Go ahead, get our friends together if you want." Then he stalked off into the other room.

I think he'd reached the same conclusion as your reader, but he seems resigned to it. Like he knows something he's not telling me because he doesn't want to upset me, or maybe because he doesn’t want to upset himself by saying out loud what he's thinking. Like that would make it more real.

My stomach felt queasy ever since, but I did start calling our friends about the idea of having a get-together potluck where we might mobilize the community like we did before. But now, please tell me, Sarah, how does one respond to the reactions I got?

I called Megan Kelly first. She's an artist. She and her husband Ryan lived in San Francisco until they move here after their son graduated from college. Ryan had a high-powered executive search company there, but he closed it and opened a one-man firm here in his home where Megan also has her art studio. Ryan is semi-retired now, but Megan is still very involved with her artwork.

She's the one who mobilized us before when she saw our way of life threatened by a development company that wanted to come in and turn Katani Falls place into an Aspen West. Make it into a wealthy, elite tourist destination. Oh, what a different time it was then, and not all that long ago really. There was plenty of big money to invest and all over the country the motto was growth, growth, growth!

Megan foresaw everything that drew them here eroding as the sprawl of LA suburbs crept ever closer. The predominance of nature untouched by mankind; all the wildlife; the old-growth trees; the quiet; the clean air; the homey, small-town feeling; the camaraderie ... were all about to change forever. So she enticed the Reverend Suzanne Reid to come here during her sabbatical from the Interfaith Community Church in Lucadia, CA. Suzanne had been studying the research of the noted political scientist Robert Putnam of Harvard University showing how and why America had become an increasingly isolated and independent society since the 1960, filled with lonely, disconnected people.

Megan got her friends together in her home to meet Suzanne and to hear what Putnam's research suggested we needed to do to preserve our way of life. There was resistance at first to the idea that we needed to take action, but before the evening ended Suzanne and Megan convinced us we that’s what we had to do if we wanted to preserve what we loved about Katani Falls. Well, of course, that's all history. We did take action and we did preserve our way of life, but it’s under an even greater threat now.

So Megan seemed like the person to begin with, even though I knew she and Ryan had been trying to sell their house for over a year and I knew they want to move to the coast. As Megan reminded me once again on the phone yesterday, "The economy is a lot better over there and there's lots of shops and galleries there where I can sell my artwork." Personally I doubt that. I also doubt they'll be able to sell their house, at least not for the foreseeable future. No one is buying houses here now. I thought surely they'd accepted that by now. Especially because the Interfaith Community Church services she and Suzanne started after Suzanne decided to settle here in their home on Sundays again.

At one time the church had grown to the point we rented a house with lots of space to hold classes and activities throughout the week. But with so many people selling or just walking away from their homes, attendance has been way down and we're back where we started on Sunday's … in Megan and Ryan's living room.

Guess I was wrong, though. Megan told me in a tone that said I should know better than to bring up this topic, "We're trying to stay positive. We can't get involved in any new activities here. That would be like saying we're giving up on our goal of re-starting our lives over on the coast."

I wanted to talk with her more, find out why she'd given up on Katani Falls, but it didn't feel like the thing to do. I wasn't even sure where to begin. After all, they had been planning to leave for a year! Why hadn't I talked to her about it before now? Why had I just accepted their decision without even trying to find out how they felt and why they didn't think they could stay?

So then I called Suzanne, but got a recorded message saying she 's out of town. I know she's been traveling a lot, as I mentioned before, doing workshops in other communities on community-building. There's something ironic about that, isn't there. I'm afraid the real reason is financial. She retired when she moved here. It seemed she had the funds to do that: Social Security, a pension from the diocese, some income from the cancer-recovery groups she led twice a week at a hospital in the city.

But I know Social Security payments have been cut and I remember hearing the hospital had stopped offering the recovering groups. Certainly our church was never large enough to provide her with a salary and she'd never asked for one.

For some time now she’s been giving presentations on Putnam's work and how to re-build a sense of community spirit. Someone brings her in for a workshop; she stays with them while she's there; they pay her a small fee; and she moves on to the next community. Every so often she comes back to lead our Sunday services.

OK. I thought I'd call Lorraine Mather, but she’s not here now either. Her mother is living in Lorraine's house and told me that since Lorraine’s husband, Lee, is spending now all his time up in Sacramento lobbying for green builders, Lorraine has moved in with a friend in Santa Monica for the time being. Lorraine’s an actress.

in her 20's Lorraine had a very successful working actress. She had a staring in a popular TV series, but with the stress and the long hours that involved, she developed chronic fatigue syndrome. It got so bad she had to leave the series, give up her apartment, and move in with her mother up here. She was gradually recovering when she met Lee Mather.

Lee was representing the development company that wanted to transform our community into Aspen West. He was young, ambitious, and new in the business. But Lorraine, and Katani Falls, swept him off his feet. The more time he spent here the clearer it became that the development project he was promoting would be harmful. He left the company and married Lorraine. They bought a home here and he started his own development company, Community First.

Well, there's not much development anywhere in California any more, so Lee morphed into a lobbyist for green builders, but that meant being in Sacramento. Lorraine wasn’t going to give up her goal to return to acting and for some time she's been getting episodic parts on web flicks. But her mother explained Lorraine wasn't able to keep driving back and forth to LA. The gas is too expensive and the drive is just too long and stressful. She doesn’t want to do anything that might cause a flare-up of the chronic fatigue. I certainly understand, but I just miss her!

After these three disappointing phone calls, I needed to talk to Gloria. I'd been saving her for last because I was sure she'd be interested in my idea and that we could brain storm what to do. We were on the professional speaker's circuit together when we both lived in LA. We didn't see each other very often then, of course, because we were both always crisscrossing the country speaking to various companies and organizations. But then she got breast cancer and we lost touch. When we reconnected I learned she’d met Suzanne at a recovery group and, to my great surprise at the time, after visiting here she and Ryan and her daughter, Carly moved to, as I saw it, the "boonies." But she invited Mark and I and kids up to visit and, well, that's how, after a rather tumultuous emotional journey, we moved here too.

Gloria and I see each other almost everyday at the Clinic, but we don't get much opportunity to talk about personal things. There's too much going on to chit-chat and we're too tired after work to socialize. But our daughters go to school together and are almost inseparable. So I suggested that the two of us get together for tea after work like we used to do so often before the clinic opened. I told her I had some news to share.

She was enthusiastic. "I’d love that!" she said. "We need to do that! Why don't you come by after work tomorrow?"

Well, that was yesterday. I don't know what to think about what happened. I need to tell you about it, but I've got to get over to the Clinic. Mark just got a call that Lorraine's mother, Margaret Brookfield, fell this morning while trying to get in some wood. A neighbor called; he's sure her leg's broken. Mark's on his way over to her house now. Drat it! Margaret is too frail to be getting in her own wood! Anyway, she'll need to be stabilized and probably sent to a hospital in the city.

So until next time,
Fall Blessings, Rose.
PS - Hope this catches your readers up on some of the other people in this saga and provides a little background about them.

To read Sarah's replies, TO LEAVE A COMMENT FOR ROSE, or to read other's comment, click on the word comments, below.
If you're just now joining Rose's story, you can catch up by reading previous Chapters under Labels on the right margin.

(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008.

Chapter 2: What Happened to Us?

Thanks for sharing my post, Sarah. It's good to be back in touch and hear from you and many others. I've ordered The Transition Handbook your recommended. I don't know how long it will take to get here so I've been exploring it online. Hopkin's has such a upbeat approach, inviting us to positively and passionately paint a mental picture, a clear vision, of what a powered-down future would look like. I love the snapshots of what he presents:

- The return of nature to our lives, lots of wild countryside, ecovillages and small cities with lots of arts, educational, and artistic activities
- A simpler life with more time with family and loved ones
- Life where people and nature blend into and are attuned to one another
- A world without pollution and waste
- Communities working for the same values and vision where you can have truthful conversations and people instead of retreating if we don't automatically agree
- A quieter, sweeter smelling world, filled with bird songs and laughter, lit with soft sunshine through lush leaves, starlight nights, moon shadows on the lawn.

But, Sarah, there's a problem with these inviting visions.

That describes the world we've had here in Katani Falls. That's the world we saved and rebuilt., the world I moved to ... the world we're losing.

This weekend was a reminder. We enjoyed two beautiful Indian Summer days. The air was crystal clear and crisp. We've been hoping to make it to October before turning on the pellet stove at night, so we threw open all the windows both days and let the forest in to warm the house. The vanilla fragrance of the Jeffrey pines filled rooms with a fresh vibrancy. Gentle mountain breezes stirred the curtains along the window frames. We could hear the ducks calling on the pond and the red wing black birds singing their evensons before the crickets began their serenade and we closed up the house to keep it warm through the night.

But being able to savor such blessings is growing rare these days.

The food supply in the nation is so challenged that agribusiness in the central valley is using every more powerful chemicals to produce higher yields. So we have pollution here now, in this remote forest. Most days, especially in the summer, a brown haze seeps down the canyon between the giant east-west mountain ranges that cradle our village. Lately there's been an epidemic of allergies and asthma too. Our daughter, Chelsea, has developed asthma. I thought I was protecting my kids from things like by leaving the city. But no, she carrying an inhaler to school, as do half her friends, and, of course, we have to close up the house and keep her indoors as much as possible.

Also... the state and federal government is so strapped for cash that they're leasing out the forest land to industries. Though there's nothing in the immediate area yet, from 7 AM to 7 PM logging and excavation trucks go roaring through the main road through town en route to sites deeper in the forest. There's talk afoot of leasing land nearby for a lumber mill.

I'm sorry. I said I was going to share the good things! I will, I promise. Everyone who's read Sitting with the Enemy must be wondering what on earth happened to the bold and daring mavericks we were then. Well, like Hopkins, who was only 37 when he wrote Transition Towns, we were young and idealistic then. The community we reclaimed and rebuilt together was truly magical. It's hard to look back now and realize just how much we've let slip away.

It started around 2008 after the economy began contracting. Gradually our lives have gotten more complicated again, like when we were in the city. Isn't that ironic?

Not just for Mark and I, but for all of us - Gloria and Ned, Megan and Ryan, Suzanne, Lee and Lorraine. (I hope to provide a little Then and Now summary of everyone soon, so everyone will know who I'm talking about and can catch up on who's who up here.) We're become got too busy coping individually to look at what we could and should still be doing collectively.

For example, you may remember, Mark and I used the money we made from selling our home in LA and the money we were spending on private schools for Jason and Chelsea, to buy our home here and to start a Health Clinic. The clinic started out in a rented house while Mark established himself as a Family Physician. Then, with Lee Mather's help, he bought a house near the village and got the variances and permits to remodel it into a fully functioning clinic with a telemedicine wing! All that time, as planned, I was busy doing teleseminars for sales organizations via the Internet.

That's a good part of our story. It's been wonderful to have medical care right here in our village. No more driving an hour to see a doctor. Even in emergencies patients can be stabilized at the clinic while waiting to be airlifted out by helicopter. Thank goodness we've got this local resource now.

But as you can imagine, establishing the clinic took a lot of time and energy ... and all our money. With the economy contracting, we've been really pinched financially. Fewer companies wanted to pay for my teleseminars. They can get a facsimile of what I was offering for free on YouTube. Believe it or not, someone actually put up an entire video of my most popular seminar! I got it taken down, but another one was up again in no time. Second, insurance payments for medical care kept going down. Doctors in cities and at HMO's can make up for these losses by seeing more patients in a day, but with less than 3,000 people up here, volume isn't an option for Mark. That would conflict with his standards of care anyway. He makes do with whatever payment people have and sometimes that's in trade or barter. So a couple years ago I started helping out full-time at the clinic sans salary of course.

Yes, you're right. My mother - the ex-super mom-extraordinaire - just hates that. She was so pleased I was finally at home full-time with my kids like a "good mom." But now not only am I not at home, she says, I'm wasting my education. That's part of the problem, isn't it? Thinking nothing has value that you don't pay money for. That you don't have value if you're not paid for what you do. But I find I prefer volunteering to charging people, because you don't have to do anything you don't want to do and people seem to sense that and are more appreciative. There is still so much we need money for, though: the utilities, the medications, and all the other products and services our household and the clinic get from other people who charge us.

Gloria volunteers at the clinic now too. Even though she's hasn't had a recurrence of the breast cancer that drove her to a retreat here from the stress of the city, she never regained the stamina, or frankly the desire, to travel long-distances for speaking gigs like she did when we were buddies out on the speaking circuit. Working with her everyday has been great too, because we really needed her help.

In its own way, every one's story is similar to ours. We haven't really grown apart. We've just drifted off into a kind of treading-water-to-stay-afloat-stupor. We've all been scrambling. (You'll see what I mean in the Then and Now Updates I hope to do soon.) Also I have to admit, we've grown complacent, taking what we had for granted. Assuming we could have the best of both worlds, enjoying our paradise up here while living off the bounty of a huge city only an hour away.

In many ways, you could say we have an advantage though. You know that line from Sitting with the Enemy, "you can't miss what you don't remember." Well, we remember how life can be. And at least no one here is siphoning off gas from each others' cars or stealing solar panels off roofs to sell on E-Bay like is happening in the city. But we need to wake up ... quickly. Or is it too late? I hope not.

I'm going have our friends over for one of those once ubiquitous, but now rare, potluck nights and invite everyone to do one of Hopkin's envisioning activities. I need to talk to Mark first, of course, but I'll let you know how it goes.

With hope,
Rose

To read Sarah's reply, TO LEAVE A COMMENT FOR ROSE, or to read other's comment, click on comments.
If you're just joining Rose's story, you can catch up by reading Chapter 1 under Labels.

(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008

Chaper 1: From the Not Too Distant Future

Hi, Sarah, it's Rose, from your novel. I just found your blog. I'm sure you remember me. I moved from LA to a small mountain village called Katani Falls where I stumbled into the healing power of nature and having true community in our lives. It was a paradise lost re-found.

But, Sarah, things have changed here dramatically. Our village is facing problems other cities and towns everywhere may be encountering all too soon, circumstances Mark and I never dreamed would befall us.

I can't begin to tell you everything that's happened in just one message, but from what I found on your blog, I think you may have an inking of what we're dealing with. I hope we can discuss the ramifications of these events as we're struggling to get a handle on our future, wondering if being able to influence our future is something we'll alll be losing.

It all started slowly here. When Mark and I moved from LA with our two children this was the best of all worlds. We had the blessings of nature and a simple way of life, all within easy reach of a major metropolitan area with every modern convenience. We had 6-day-a-week mail delivery, high-speed Internet, home delivery of the LA Times, and gasoline was cheap enough people here thought nothing of running into the city whenever they wanted or needed to for food, supplies, entertainment, and top notch specialty medical care. Lots of folks lived in the city during the week and drove up here for weekends in their cabin to relax and recharge.

Well, all that has changed. As you remember, though we're not really far from LA, we're quite remote, deep in a forest accessible only by one windy and treacherous road. So, first we lost our home delivery of the newspaper. Instead we picked up the paper at the Country Store in the village each morning. Then we lost daily delivery to the store too. So we subscribed by mail and read the news the next morning.

But the postal service was next. Whereas we had six day delivery for years, it was cut to five days, then to two hours in the afternoon three days a week, then to the sporadic service we have now. There are weeks when no mail is delivered at all. The private mail services used to come in everyday, too. but now who knows when or if they'll deliver here. Some things we order are sent back as undeliverable.

The company that supplied our high speed Internet and cable has stopped serving this area. Like the post office they're dropping certain service areas. We have dial-up now through a server set up by a local resident in his home. That's why, fortunately, I can still get e-mail and surf the web. The monthly fee is a lot higher though and many people can't afford to subscribe, so the fees keep going up for those who can still pay.

You may remember there was a gas station here. Well, it's closed now. It was running over $200,000 to fill their tanks and not enough people could afford to buy gas at a price that would cover their costs. Now we're having trouble with the electricity too. We're at the end of the grid, so whenever there is a overload in LA due to heavy usage during the scorching heat they've had this summer, the power is cut to outlying areas to avoid a mass blackouts in the city. Mark and I have a propane generator that keeps the lights, the frig, Mark's clinic, and the computers running, but last month it cost us $2000 to fill the propane tank. Many people don't have generators or can't afford to fill them, in which case the propane company has removed their tanks. Now, winter is coming.

The worst part, Sarah, is that a lot of people have left and more are leaving. The big exodus began after gasoline passed $5.00 a gallon awhile back. Some people were able to sell their homes when they decided they needed to be closer to the city, or didn't want the cost of driving to a second home any more. But for a lot of folks the value of their homes fell below their mortgage, so there have been a lot of short sales and foreclosures. Some people are just walking away from their homes. The banks can't sell or rent these houses either, because there just aren't many people who want to live so far from everything. A lot of houses are vacant and deteriorating.

The embattled hotel property you may remember so well is vacant now too. The town council tried to buy it for community activities or rental units, but with so many fewer people living here there weren't the funds to acquire it, even at a rock-bottom price. Rumors are flying that the mortgage company will be tearing it down to sell for scrap. I just can't believe that! After all the battles we had to reach agreement about developing it!

Those of us who are still here, well, we are back to two waring camps again now. Generally those who own the homes and have a lot of money still think everything that's happening is just temporary and that "the market" will recover. They are doing everything they can to keep the water allocations to residents low so they can preserve the golf course and keep the clubhouse open to "protect property values." Everyone else is petrified that they'll be next to lose their homes and they're just trying to figure out what to do. "We're trapped in paradise," one of my neighbors told me the other day. Her husband just lost his job in town and they're trying to live off the proceeds from what she's selling on e-bay. In fact she's selling on commission for other folks here who are cashing in on whatever they have of value that they don't need.

Of course those who are feeling desperate don't have the time or emotional energy to get involved in the local government, so the council is run by those who think things will get better soon, mostly real estate agents who bought up as much distressed property as they could afford and are just sitting on it. The council has imposed a steep "water tax" to cover community services, but lately they're having a hard time collecting. If they foreclose on those who can't pay, then thing will be even worse, so they're just ignoring delinquencies now.

I hate to be the barer of such disturbing news, but I feel compelled to tell you about it and I hope you'll post it on your blog. From everything I've been reading there I have a much better understand what's going on in our country. Mark and I downloaded End of Suburbia and What a Way to Go from the web (it took all night) and I can see there's nothing temporary about what's happening. It will only get worse for us here, but I hope others in their larger, less-remote communities will heed the early warning signs we overlooked and have time to make better preparations than we have. I think their challenges will different but equally difficult.

Not everything is bad here, though. There are hopeful things to share too. I will post again soon and catch you up on the effect all this is having on our lives and our friends, many of whom you will remember.

So glad to have found you. As you say ...
Blessings of Nature. It remains a daily salvation.
Rose

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(c) Sarah Anne Edwards, 2008