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
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First, congratulations to you and Mark for having established a Health Clinic!!! That is wonderful news.
ReplyDeleteYou don't need to apologize for not focusing enough on the positive, Rose. I think it's important for us to talk about how our lives are changing and how we feel about this. We need to do that so we can get out of the kind of coping stupor you mentioned and come to a place of accepting of what is and prepare for what can be.
It must be especially hard, though, for you and your friends to accept that what others have to gain eventually are things you are losing right now.
Richard Heinberg, author of Peak Everything (see Resources to the right), warned us that we would see a lot of crazy things and go through considerable difficulty before we get to the pleasant visions we may be able to enjoy ultimately.
Of course, the nature of the particular difficulties ahead will differ from community to community.
I'm saddened to think noise and pollution are invading the natural beauty of Katani Falls, though, and especially to hear that your daughter has developed asthma.
I see your insights about money as good news, Rose, and agree that too often we mistake money for wealth. We need another means of exchange and from what you say about volunteering and barter, one is already evolving there in Katani Falls.
When you get The Transition Handbook you can read about how a few communities are beginning to set up their own currency (see Ithaca Hours in Resources). Doing this there in Katani Falls could take a lot of financial pressure off of all of you. It enables us to get what we need by contributing what we can offer that others need, without having to earn it elsewhere somehow from a financial system that's no longer sustaining us.
Many people I know and who write to Paul and I are experiencing signs of the things you've mentioned. If we take note, hopefully we can act sooner so we won't have to scramble quite as much. But fortunately, Rose, while it might be too late to undo what's happening there, it's never to do what you can to make the most of the situation as it is.
I am excited that you will be reaching out to your friends and eager to hear how it goes.
Fall Blessings to you and your family,
Sarah
I received the following comment for Rose.
ReplyDelete"I'm enjoying reading the sequel. I found myself wondering whether Rose and Mark considered Katani Falls too vulnerable, too far at the end of the one road in. Will future contractions--as other services, and even gasoline supplies begin to experience shortages--eventually turn into the lifeline being cut off? Might it be just too far beyond the remaining transportation corridors? Sometimes I wonder that for where I live in twenty or thirty years.
I encourage Rose to also read John Michael Greer's The Long Descent. I am comforted at the possibility of the unraveling taking longer than I'd imagined. It's happening quickly now for sure, especially in the economy. He suggests civilizations take 150 or more years to decline. Even if it were only 50 for the American empire, it gives us a little breathing room...for the stair-stepping decline."
Rose's reply:
ReplyDeleteI very much appreciate comments from readers. Your comment is both scarey and encouraging. Yes, yes, I've considered that we're too far away. That's a huge concern. That's THE question. Do we just all walk away from our home, our friends, our community, the clinic? It seems that's what too many are already doing now, leaving us with abandoned homes no one wants to buy. But to where? And how? Having invested everything we have here ... That's why I've got to see if it's possible for us to draw a line.
The idea that civilizations collapse over a long haul would be encouraing, giving everyone lots of time, but things are already collapsing, not just here but in the city. Shelves are empty, gas isn't always available, jobs are disappearing, crime is up. Disintegration seems to be happening faster then The Long Descent would suggest. But I appreciate your referring me to the book. I will check it out.
Thank you,
Rose
Rose and dear reader. From what I understand it takes many years, even a century or more, for a civilization to collapse, but an economy can collapse almost over night. I think what you're experiencing there, Rose, is a collapsing national economy, and that's what we too could be experiencing soon.
ReplyDeleteAs Dmitry Orlov points out in his book Reinventing Collapse, in a collapsing economy some people may be stranded in difficult locales and have few options for leaving. So I encourage you to proceed with exploring the options there in Katani Falls with your friends.
It may be that you are too far from other communities and too small to make it there. Or there may still be ways to bring the community together and become more self-reliant.
What's most important is to avoid feeling hopeless and discouraged. As my husband and partner always says, "Problems are solvable.”