One of the things about living somewhere that we have purposely chosen is that the choice always feels open to make again and again.  

I spent most of my life living a few thousand miles from here, with big cities, mountains, and the ocean all nearby, not to mention every big box store I could ever desire. When we moved to Dancing Rabbit seven years ago, it was a very deliberate choice. We quit our jobs, sold our house, and left behind family and friends because we knew that we were leaving behind something good to find something better.

So now, I know that we are capable of making that kind of big leap again in life. The fact that we chose to live here, rather than sort of just ending up here, means that we are constantly re-choosing to stay.

Christina here, writing about DR’s annual retreat this year and why I choose to stay at DR.

This weekend we started our annual retreat (which has not really been so annual in the past few years). One of the first events of retreat is often an activity we call Deep Check-ins. With 22 people in the room, we each spent about five minutes talking about how we have been since the last time we checked in the previous year. Sometimes people use the acronym of PIES in order to try to cover all the areas of their lives (PIES stands for physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual). You might imagine that five minutes to talk about all of those areas of your life for the past year isn’t really enough, and yet how often do you actually spend five minutes talking about yourself with others just listening, without any interruptions or comments?

I find the process so helpful. For myself, it helps me to reflect on my own life.  How am I doing? It is also so, so helpful in understanding other people.  Knowing what’s going on with them goes a long way toward understanding why they act the way they do.

A big theme that I take from my own and others’ check-ins is why they choose to stay here. It’s the nature of the beast that someone in the village is usually getting ready to leave because this life doesn’t work for them for whatever reason, while someone else is getting ready to move here to give this life a shot.  

It’s pretty easy to see all of the reasons to leave—we humans are good at finding the negative and taking the positive for granted. So it’s nice to have reminders of why we stay. The visitor programs between April and October often scratch that itch for me—answering questions about our lives here helps me to stop taking things for granted and really notice all the wonderful aspects of living here. And Retreat does the same thing in many ways.  

Even just focusing on the Deep Check-ins. How often in everyday life do you get the chance to talk about how you’re really doing and have 20 other people just listen, without giving advice or telling their own story over you or just avoiding listening because they’re afraid that it will get too painful? How often do you hear what’s really going on for your neighbors or get a glimpse into their emotional state? I also get chances to connect this way every week in Women’s Circle and the new NVC (non-violent communication) group that just started up—both of which would be unthinkable when I was working a full-time job with a daily commute.

Some of my other big why’s are the cost of living, the access to land, a rural life, not having a daily commute, having a house that is paid off, outdoor work, more and deeper friendships, enough free time to continue to deepen those friendships, having neighbors with shared values, cooperative work, consensus culture, some really great celebrations, all my regular fun and nourishing events like potluck and song circle and strategy games—and of course, a system for composting human waste!

Retreat in general is also a nice way to remember how much we all have in common here and how we mostly want the same things in our lives. Some of the meeting topics scheduled for the coming days include discussions on accessibility, how we relate to rules and agreements, how to get more barter and trade in the community, and how to implement a time bank in the community. 

I know we won’t fix all our problems in the next few days, but a little inspiration and connection can go a long way toward making things happen.  

When I did my Deep Check-in the other day, I was convinced that we had only been here for six years, not seven. In fact, this is the longest that I’ve been living in one place since I graduated from high school!

I still get antsy from time to time, and day-dreaming about alternative lives is a habit of mine. But we’re here because we decide to stay over and over.

Christina Lovdal-Gil is DR’s unofficial cruise director. And after seven years, we rely on her to plan and organize many fun events and activities for the community, like coordinating ongoing rideshares for Rabbits to go to a local gym.