Intentional Community is an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing communities, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, intentional living, alternative communities, cooperative living, and other projects where people strive together with a common vision.
Photo courtesy of the Ecovillage Training Center,
Summertown, Tennessee USA.
Intentional communities can have hundreds of residents and decades of longevity (such as the Farm), or they can be a group of idealists looking for others of the same ilk, or they can be family and friends looking for a few more to share their scene, or they can be only a gleam in a dreamer’s eye. Some are religious, most have a common vision, often ecological. Some cost a ton of money to get into, such as most cohousing; some are free or work-trade, and there’s a wide range in between. Some pool income or require work; others leave personal finances completely independent. Some are hippitats in the woods; others are young professional families in high-tech homes in a city.
The Intentional Communities online directory helps you find a suitable intentional community by letting you select your preferences among a number of criteria.
If you can support yourself, have money to build a good solid cabin, and are interested in good energy and natural wisdom as applied to “the great transitions of birth and death,” you might fit in at Rocinante, a small and growing intentional community in Tennessee. Started by the Farm’s founding leader, Stephen Gaskin, and famed midwife Ina May Gaskin, Rocinante is a nonprofit with half a dozen cabins on 100 wooded Tennessee acres. Its mandate is to build a model community where low-cost, high-quality alternative health is integrated into birthings, dyings, and everyday living. Many of its residents are/have been of retirement age or “fragile”; Rocinante says the community is “all crew, no passengers.” It does not charge an entrance or “buy-in” fee, just $100 month for dues, plus you must be able to build (or have built) a house acceptable to the community. Building codes in the area are extremely flexible, and costs are lower than in most parts of the US.
Yes, those are my happy feet enjoying the beach at the Sunset Bay State Park near Coos Bay, Oregon. I just got back from touring some of Oregon’s unbelievable cheap-to-free campsites, and I want to share what I’ve learned.
Even if you can’t make it to Oregon, the resources I’ll tell you about can help you make ends meet, gracefully, in any state in the United States. And even if you need “free,” not “cheap” campsites, and even if it’s winter, read on; there are lots of options.
Oregon State Parks
You may not know that Oregon has the most beautiful coastline in the world (an opinion shared by a lot of people!). You also probably don’t know that an Oregon governor and hero, Tom McCall, declared that the Oregon beaches are public: all the beaches belong to all the people of Oregon. That means there are a lot of state parks along Oregon’s almost 300 miles of gorgeous coastline (plus many more state parks all over this spectacular state).
Here’s the main Oregon State Parks web page. Click here to see a list of all Oregon State Park campgrounds (including yurts, teepees, and cabins). To see a summary of fees for the campgrounds, click on “Rates and Fees” in the page’s left column.
About half of Oregon’s 50 state park campgrounds are open year-round. Reservations are accepted at some campgrounds, but many are first-come, first-served.
Finding an available campsite should not be a problem at most sites, except during tourist season (May through Labor Day, more or less), when you should make reservations, especially for popular spots, if you want to be sure of finding a place to stay.
There’s a link to the reservation system on the campground list page. If you make reservations, be sure to check cancellation policy; for instance, usually you can’t get a refund if the weather is bad. On the other hand, what a relief after a long day of vacationing, to find a pretty spot waiting just for you.
Here’s what the Oregon State Parks site told me about Sunset Bay State Park (where my happy feet were).
Situated in one of the most scenic areas on the Oregon coast, Sunset Bay State Park features beautiful sandy beaches protected by towering sea cliffs. Only a short walk from the beach, the campground has sites for tent camping and RV’s, as well as cozy and comfortable yurts. Day-use and picnic facilities are located along the bay to allow easy access for beachcombing, fishing, swimming, and boating.
A network of hiking trails connects Sunset Bay with nearby Shore Acres and Cape Arago State Parks. Hiking these trails will give you a chance to experience pristine coastal forests, seasonal wildflowers and spectacular ocean vistas from atop the rugged cliffs and headlands. From points along the trail, you’ll be treated to views of Gregory Point and the Cape Arago lighthouse….
Oregon Camping on Federal and National Lands You’ll find big opportunities for low-cost, gorgeous, soul-restoring camping in national parks, national forests, national monuments, federal recreation areas, BLM land, etc., in Oregon and across the United States. You’ll especially love these federal campgrounds if state parks (which we looked at a few days ago) don’t fit your definition of “cheap camping,” and you’d like more opportunities in the “cheaper” or “free” categories.
A good place to start your camping search is at the U.S. Forest Service site. In the page’s left column, click on “Recreational Activities” and then click “Find a Forest or Grassland.” Then choose “Select a Forest by State from a list” at the bottom of the screen (or you can use the map to select). I made my way to the page about campsites in Oregon’s lovely Umpqua National Forest:
… nestled on the westside of the Cascade Mountains….Visitors discover a diverse place of thundering waters, high mountain lakes, heart-stopping rapids, and peaceful ponds. The Forest is characterized by its many waterfalls, including the 272-foot Watson Falls on the North Umpqua Highway. The Boulder Creek Wilderness, 19,100 acres, is entirely within the Forest boundaries. Two other wilderness are shared with other Forests: Rogue-Umpqua Divide Wilderness, 26,350 acres, and Mt. Thielsen Wilderness, 26,593 acres.
Oregon is just full of these kinds of glorious places. They seem to be around every turn. You can find a national forest you’re interested in by going to the USDA Forest Service Recreational Activities page. Once you’ve brought up your forest’s “home page,” you can get information on all the campgrounds in that national forest by choosing “Recreational Activities/Campgrounds” in the left column. For instance, click here to see what the Umpqua National Forest has to offer in the way of camping.
Somewhere on each national forest page will be camping info or links to camping info. Depending on the forest, its web page may show you a list of the campgrounds that says whether or not a fee is charged (yes or no), and when you click on the individual campgrounds, it’ll show what the fees actually are. Or you may get a link to download a pdf with campground info. In some cases, you can see a list of rates for all of a particular national forest’s campgrounds, all at once, by choosing “Campground Fees” at the top of the list of campgrounds.
Lund Creek, Oregon
I spent a wonderful and relaxing week camping at Lund Park Campground in the Umpqua National Forest, at a beautiful campsite along the clear, cold creek. The fee is $6 (per “family”) per night. I had to get water at a nearby campground, or bring my own. Most of Lund Park’s campsites close mid-November, but three sites are left open year-round with reduced services. Activities include picnicking, fishing and hiking on Brice Creek Trail and the nearby Adams Mountain Way Trail. The Adams Mountain Way Trail is located across #2470 from Lund Park. The Brice Creek Trail is accessed by a trail bridge located at Lund Park.
Recreational mineral collection is permitted. And just down the road from Lund Creek campground, there’s a free five-site campground (one of three in the Umpqua National Forest). Its name, Hobo Camp, is a leftover from mining days; the campground is open year round (with limited services in the off-season), and it’s free. Oh, and it’s beautiful.
Hobo Camp, 1,800 Feet, free, 5 campsites. Hobo Camp is a small, road-side camp located along road #2470, on a terrace above Brice Creek. A short trail leads to a beautiful cascading pool in Brice Creek. Hobo is primarily used by day use swimmers and picnickers although people frequently stay the night. The site offers flat ground for 2-4 trailers and/or RV’s. Activities include picnicking, swimming, fishing, and hiking on the nearby Adams Mountain Way Trail (1/2 mile west of Hobo on the south side of Road #2470). The Hobo Camp area is withdrawn from mineral location although recreational gold panning is allowed.
You never know; you might strike gold. Another excellent website, recreation.gov, covers some of the same territory as the Forest Service site, and much more besides, but it seems to focus more on the popular and developed campgrounds that people would want to, or need to, make reservations for, and it’s easy to make reservations on the site. Using the recreation.gov search is a great way to find low-cost camping gems throughout the US; just click on “camping” at the top of the page, and follow the simple instructions to “find your perfect camping site.” I asked for federal-government-run campgrounds near Cottage Grove, Oregon, and got 120 exciting results.
Everywhere in Oregon is gorgeous in the summer, and not too too cold even in the high mountains at night (depending on your taste for cold), and it doesn’t generally rain a whole lot. That’s in the summer. Some more good news is that at Oregon State Parks:
State campground rates drop $4 a night across the state between October 1 and April 30 every year. Beautiful weather, relaxing atmosphere, solitude, lower fees … no wonder people look to fall and spring for their vacations!
You may notice they didn’t say “winter” when talking about off-season camping! That’s when it rains, or snows.
Taken at Lakeside, Oregon, near the Coast. I saturated it to bring out the double rainbow, which was invisible in the unsaturated photo.
Of course, it can also rain or snow in other seasons — the rainy season in Oregon is defined as October through May! — but Oregon rains can be charming (provided you’re snug and warm), as you listen to the pitter-patter on leaves and tent, and the rushing creeks and waterfalls.
And the snows in pristine forests are beyond magical.
But Oregon has real weather: the winter storms at the (relatively warm) Coast are truly fierce — but why not snag a yurt or bring your RV, and enjoy nature’s show? Continue reading Oregon Weather for Camping
According to blogger cheeseslave, who runs the site cheeseslave.com “for the love of cheese. And bacon. And butter. And raw milk. And all those other things we’re not supposed to eat” (no wonder cheeseslave wants to avoid doctors!):
Back in 1973, Israeli doctors went on strike for 4 weeks and deaths fell by 50% in that month.
The same happened in Los Angeles in 1976, which saw an 18% decline in deaths during industrial action by doctors. When the strike ended and the medical machine started grinding back into action, the death rate returned to usual levels.
The same thing in Bogota in 1972. Doctors withdrew all treatments apart from emergency care. And guess what?
The mortality rate went down by 35%.
It would therefore appear that the more we can avoid medical intervention in our lives, the more chance we have of living longer and healthier.
As Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, the renowned Chicago MD put it, as far back as 1979: “If doctors reduced their involvement with people and only attended emergencies, there’s no doubt in my mind that we’d be better off.” Source: http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article981.html
Typical medical confusion: Alexander hands his doctor the note warning that his doctor is poisoning him whilst proceeding to take the medicine, by Andre Castaigne (1898-1899).
You can take a quiz at benefits.gov to see if you qualify for government benefits.
GovBenefits.gov (or benefits.gov) is “the official benefits website of the U.S. government, with information on over 1,000 benefit and assistance programs.” There’s a questionnaire on the site to help them match you up with funds and programs you might qualify for.
The questionnaire is completely anonymous. It has 72 questions; all you have to do is click the little boxes. Sample questions include:
Are you a parent or primary caregiver?
Do you need financial assistance for food costs?
Are you the victim of a crime that occurred during a disaster?
What is your current employment status?
Instead of, or in addition to, doing the questionnaire, you can also browse the benefits tab to find the benefit programs your state offers, and also benefit programs offered by federal agencies.
In my case, taking the questionnaire matched me up with several pages of possibilities, providing follow-up contact information for each one. After sifting through them, I found some solid help: My house may qualify for up to $6,000 worth of weatherization assistance—storm windows, insulation, maybe even a furnace!
You might find that you qualify for government benefits that would make even a seemingly impossible situation work. It’s a quick painless questionnaire, so check it out.
My bug excitement du jour: I was getting ready to wash dishes, clearing out the sink drainplug, when I felt something weird against my hand. Ah, it’s a centipede. A blue one! (We have blue crawdads here, too.) Here’s a video of the little guy/girl. I eventually got him/her to crawl onto a towel and took him/her outside.
Relief of the goddess Kububa, holding a pomegranate in her right hand and a mirror in her left hand; orthostat relief from Herald's wall, Carchemish ; 850-750 BC; Late Hittite style under Aramaean influence. Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara, Turkey
The Sumerian King List purports to list all the rulers of Sumer—the “Cradle of Civilization”—going back 400,000 years. That’s a really really long time. In fact, scientists generally agree that humans are maybe 160,000 years old.
And yet there’s also general agreement that the King List is historically accurate—except for the parts that predate what we know of history. Those are classified as myth. For instance, the King List begins thus:
“After the kingship descended from heaven … Alulim became king; he ruled for 28,800 years.”
Scientists have two problems with that statement:
1. Unlike the Sumerians, they don’t believe that kings came down from “heaven.”
2. They’re skeptical that Alulim ruled for 28,800 years.
And then it doesn’t help that Alulim’s successor, Alalngar, ruled for 36,000 years. Anyway, this kind of thing went on for a long time, if you can believe the King List. You can see the list here if you like.
And in all that time, in 400,000 years of Sumerian history, there is only one known female ruler—so you know she had to kick ass. Her name was Kubaba, or Kug-Bau, “the woman tavern-keeper, who made firm the foundations of Kiš.” Yes, she was a tavern-keeper, and she overthrew a nasty tyrant to bring peace and prosperity to the land. This was back around 2500 BC. The King List says she ruled for 100 years.
Her son Puzur-Suen ruled for 25 years, and his son Ur-Zababa (great name!) ruled for 400 years. Supposedly, Ur-Zababa lived to regret choosing as his cupbearer the guy destined to become Sargon the Mighty, but that’s another story. (A cupbearer, by the way, is a high-ranking, highly trusted official in a royal court, whose duty was to serve the drinks.)
I’ll raise my glass to Kubaba, the only queen in 400,000 years of kings.
A Hippitat at the Farm Ecovillage Training Center in Summertown, Tennessee USA
Is this cute or what? Its builders call it a “hippitat” (as in “hippy habitat”). It’s only one of the cool things I discovered a couple of days ago when I dropped by the Farm Ecovillage Training Center near Summertown, Tennessee. I took a quick half hour to look around the grounds and was super-inspired by what I saw. There was way more cool stuff than I have room to put here, so you can click to see more photos if you like.
According to director Albert Bates, the Ecovillage Training Center (ETC) is a “whole-systems immersion experience of ecovillage living, together with classes of instruction, access to information, tools and resources, and on-site and off-site consulting and outreach experiences.”
Not sure what an ecovillage is? The ETC website explains: “An ecovillage is only different from a traditional village in its ability to be sustained indefinitely into the future. In all other respects, it may have all of the features people in the industrial world have come to expect, like electric appliances, refrigeration, and videogames.” And indeed, the ETC is a pretty comfortable place.
I especially enjoyed seeing the Green Dragon, a gigantic cob meeting hall reminiscent of Tolkien.
The Green Dragon Gathering Hall at the Farm Ecovillage Training Center
Yes, it’s made out of cob, but no, not corn cobs. “Cob” is clay and sand and straw mixed together with water and kneaded into “loaves” that are piled up to make a house or bench or oven or whatever. The super-cool thing is that you can basically sculpt your house, making rounded walls, built-in shelves and benches, arched doorways, etc. Some years ago I edited a great book on cob construction, called The Hand-Sculpted House: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage. The book was written by thegranddaddy of cob construction, Ianto Evans, and his partners at the Cob Cottage Company.
Building the Great Green Dragon is a learning project for students, so progress is deliberately slow. But I look forward to the day the place opens its doors and the dragon comes alive—the ETC’s diverse international group of students mingling, making music, and dancing inside this magical place they’ve built together.
