Homesteading – Page 2 – Light Morning

A Bioregional Seminar: 1

Introduction

Katuah Journal

It’s a warm summer evening at Light Morning. I have just settled down to read the newly-arrived Summer 1986 issue of Katuah, the Bioregional Journal of the Southern Appalachians. It’s a homespun publication run by a volunteer crew of artists and activists, poets and homesteaders. Gary Snyder has called it the best bioregional publication in the U.S. Growing out of the mountains of western North Carolina, Katuah Journal comes out quarterly. This is Issue 12. One of the early issues had laid out its guiding theme.

“Here in the southern-most heartland of the Appalachian mountains, the oldest range on our continent (Turtle Island), a small but growing group has begun to take on a sense of responsibility for the implications of that geographical and cultural heritage. This sense of responsibility centers on the concept of living within the natural scale and balance of universal systems and laws. We begin by invoking the Cherokee name Katuah as the old/new name for this area of the mountains and for its journal as well.”

Early Letters: 3

This is the third of three posts containing brief passages from letters that Joyce wrote to those becoming interested in Light Morning soon after we moved to the land. The first bouquet of vignettes (and a fuller introduction) can be found here.

April 1975

Our neighbor, Dan, was over yesterday to plow. There was a last-minute scurrying around to move sawdust piles, transplant favored weeds, rope off the rhubarb, harvest a little doomed catnip for some addicted cat friends, etc. We will soon be tearing down an old house partway to the mailbox. The owner will get half the lumber, we’ll get the rest — flooring for our new kitchen, and maybe a wall or two. The woodshed is begun. Gone is the peace of winter. In its place is the sense of a lively awakening, a new beginning. The seasons complement one another; a gentle succession of moods.

Early Letters: 2

This is the second of three posts containing brief passages from letters that Joyce wrote to those becoming interested in Light Morning soon after we moved to the land. The first bouquet of vignettes (and a fuller introduction) can be found here.

February 1975

Since picking up my pen here in our small tent, the wind has begun one of its roarings. A strange day, with its own story. An ice storm several days ago left every tree, pine needle, and blade of grass frozen, as though made of glass. Fragile glass mountains. Lovely, yet also a sense of tension: the trees bent down under the weight, the strain on brittle limbs, rigid and vulnerable. But there was no wind to threaten them.

Then earlier today the sun shone for about 20 minutes, just enough to release the branches, to give them back their essential flexibility. Now this raging wind, and those thousands of trees bending and twisting. I can feel their wild, joyful freedom.

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Early Letters: 1

In the spring of 1974, four of us moved to an abandoned farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains to co-found a small visionary community called Light Morning. Letters soon started to arrive from people wanting to know what it was like to live in a place like this. Some wanted to visit. Others wanted to cast off their settled lives and move in.

Joyce became our correspondent. Below (and in the following two posts) are brief passages from the letters she wrote to those asking about Light Morning. Her verbal sketches convey the many changes that we were going through during our first year on the land — transitioning from nuclear family to the complexities of consensus and cooperation; from the comfort and conveniences of modern living to wintering in tents, drawing water by hand, and chopping wood for heat; and from the excitement of the initial vision to the slow realization that a long-term commitment would be needed to manifest that vision.

From ice storms, bobcats, and smoking wood stoves to whip-poor-wills and the return of spring, these vignettes (along with Joyce’s pen and ink drawings) offer glimpses into the pioneering way of life we had to adopt in order to adapt to our new circumstances.

Living Close to the Earth

[When Light Morning was an active community, those wanting to visit or intern here sometimes asked about our core values. In response, we posted three articles to an earlier version of this website: Living Close to the Earth; A New Kind of Family; and A Transformational Journey.]

How do we learn to live close to the Earth? Paying attention to the needs of our body and stretching toward higher octaves of health is a good place to start. Living close to nature and working close to home is another approach. This necessitates making a slow transition from a cash-intensive to a more labor-intensive economy.

While improving our physical health and meeting our outward needs more directly are helpful, being close to someone also implies emotional intimacy. According to the dictionary, an intimate relationship is “a warm friendship developing through long association.” Might it be possible to nurture such a friendship with the planet we call home?