Peter Light

Update: To view seventy-five essays discussing specific plans for the formation of an intentional community, go to:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13642440/2100-or-Bust-A-Proposal-for-an-Intentional-Community-
To view two interactive versions of the proposed design for this community, go to:
http://www.innervisionarts.net/galleries/permaculture.htm

I left Vancouver, where I was born and raised, in November 1967 at the age of twenty-four and moved to an isolated - though not remote - bay up Sechelt Inlet on the Southwest coast of British Columbia. Fifteen miles beyond roads and electricity, I arrived there with my wife and our four week old daughter; basic hand tools; three months worth of food; absolutely no money - last dime flipped into the wake of the boat as we left Porpoise Bay; six dollars a month Family Allowance - later, twelve; skills, knowledge, intelligence and commitment; and total confidence. I do not recall being preoccupied at the time in any way with thoughts of future income sources, yet somehow had no doubt that we were going to live successfully “in the woods”.

We did - for ten years. From 1967 to 1978, we lived in Storm Bay on an average annual income of $4000 - for a family of four - half of it “disposable”. The first few years were lean and even almost mean at times until we weren’t so green and an income evolved out of our lifestyle, as it did for others scattered sparsely around the inlet. I built a 16′ x 24′ simple log cabin for $150 with a double-bit axe and a single-person crosscut saw - borrowed a chain saw for the shake rounds - and had a productive garden in a clearing in the woods, building up the topsoil from nothing. We lived like kings - home with our children, living with nature - our forest and the inlet waters - our garden at the doorstep and the creek rushing by. We lived without want for anything (not even the frozen orange juice I thought I would miss) - without electricity, alternate or not, without television, refrigeration, light bulbs, a blender, a juicer, a toaster, a skill-saw, a power drill, indoor hot running water, a telephone, a daily paper, a school, a bank account, a pension fund or ID. We had a radio and/or a car cassette player half the time.

We even lived without a flashlight. A homemade “candle lamp” of tin can and wire served us well.

Far from experiencing any pain or deprivation, we lived lives surrounded by wealth - the wealth of family and warm shelter; healthy food and nothing but; simple living; work we enjoyed; leisure time and the hushed forest surround; the table-set shore, the inlet waters; the wealth of freedom and the freedom from wealth.

Our children were educated entirely at home, the lifestyle itself and every interaction an opportunity for teaching and learning. I was with my wife and family throughout the day and year. We hugged our kids twenty times a day. We learned, developed, and extended the principles and practices of organic gardening and mulching. In addition, we began inventing and developing an example of a style of agriculture that I later learned to call permaculture, concurrently with its founder, Bill Mollison, who was developing it in Tasmania and Australia.

More than that, we learned, as a family, the power of agreement, love, respect and communication, and furthermore, that the social contract based on those values created an almost utopian harmony. I began to view what we were learning as a family as a model that could then be taken out of that setting and applied to other relationships, just as Stephan Gaskin discovered and taught that the way that it was cool to behave when you were tripping on acid was the same way it was cool to behave with everyone all the time: don’t bum people’s trips; check out the vibe; choose your words carefully; act like we are all One.

We were living a very simple but far from rude lifestyle in a very small space leaving a very small footprint. All waste was recycled, including human urine and manure. Intensive vegetable gardening started at the doorstep of our dwelling. Squash vines sprawled up and over the roof. The main path through the garden led to chickens a short distance away in zone II. They ran in one permanent “straw yard” and were rotated through three other netted runs. Grape vines grew on the chicken fence. Bees were on the chicken house roof. We planted comfrey and other plant species for chicken food in the runs, as well as dwarf fruits and nuts for us. There was clover and other beneficial herbs growing under the trees. Bees came to the clover flowers for honey and pollinated the fruit trees. The chickens did not eat the bees. The chickens ate the leaves of the clover. The clover was fixing nitrogen in the soil. The leaves from the trees provided mulch and more richness. The chickens were fertilizing both the orchard and garden. All garden scraps went to the chickens. We used the chickens for earthmoving, leaf shredding, pest control, and eggs.

Everything was within a few meters of everything else. It was small and it was beautiful! Moreover, it cost hardly anything

Before the move, I had had a romantic vision of what our family lifestyle would look like. It always felt to me as though we were living in the middle of that romantic vision.

There was a simple community sweat-lodge – cedar boughs, plastic, blankets and sleeping bags – down at the mouth of the creek, just in behind the trees. We made a little dam of river rocks to back some water into a little pool. We put an after-sauna bathtub out in the open a few feet onto the estuary above the high tide mark and built a little fire underneath it. I remember a time in the tub, warm and languid, dusk deepening, the line of dark blue hills and higher ridges drawn through a Venus sky, dead calm water showing double, the photo-moment-utter-breath-held peace made movie by sudden silent glide and pterodactyl croak of cousin heron, and… anchored in our bay, across the way, a rich man’s yacht - peaceful too - with wealthy people, feeling privileged, on vacation.

However, here we were, washed hippies, thank you very much, poor as crash-pad mice, existing on next to nothing in this idyllic place all year ‘round. The enormity of it suddenly hit me. It was almost scary, as if I might wake up or be at risk of apprehension for possession of some forbidden magic secret. The moment was a heady realization and a powerful confirmation that we really must have embraced some significant formulas for how to live simply in paradise. We were actually doing it, actually living the dream.

My adult daughter describes those years of her life as “utopian.”

“All and every particular and individual man and woman that ever breathed in the world are by nature…equal and alike in their power, dignity, authority and majesty, none of them having (by nature) any authority, dominion or magisterial power one over or above another.” - John Lilburne, 1645

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness; the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” - Woody Allen

The past is history, the future a mystery. This moment is a gift.
That’s why they call it the present.

“History,” Hegel said, “is a slaughterhouse.”

Here’s where we go off the map
Out past the power lines
Up the little side road without a sign
Hidden from the main stream
The keepers of the ancient future
The keepers of the drum
Not preserving it -
Living it. - from Rattlebone by Robbie Robertson