“We’re moving to Dancing Rabbit,” my mom said firmly in the spring of 2017. We were in our two-bedroom apartment in Sioux Falls when she informed me about this strange little ecovillage in the same sentence that I learned we were to move there. I was like, “We’re going to live in a mud hut? They poop in what? It’s in Missouri?”

Of the three of us, I was the most resistant to the notion of leaving friends, libraries, and the organization where I was volunteering at the time. Not to mention a sizable dating pool for a blossoming teenager. Nothing about this place screamed I’m going to completely transform your worldview and give you the opportunity to shatter and rebuild everything you think you know about yourself and what you want. I just heard, cult, hippies, red flag, buckets, red flag, red flag. 

And yet, as we pulled onto the lush, rain-rinsed acreage two months later for our visitor program, I felt a spark of curiosity and excitement for what was to come. 

On September 10^th, 2017, a 20-foot U-Haul made the seven-hour trek from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to Northeast Missouri. I still remember how we rolled awkwardly up Woehrle Road toward Dancing Rabbit, three little humans firmly smushed into the stuffy cab. I had unabashedly fallen in love with DR after our two-week visitor program, and I couldn’t wait to move in. 

It’s Prairie again, bringing reflection and gratitude to a final update before my next adventure begins.

I arrived here in a whirlwind of awe and eagerness, hungry for the authenticity required of living closely with the land and humans that genuinely cared about me. I was enamored with the pond, natural building, scything, humanure, and organic gardening. But these were only sprinkles on the ice cream sundae that was the people of Dancing Rabbit. I still remember the conversations I had with Rabbits during my visitor program that helped me rewrite the story of who I thought I was supposed to be. 

I was a misfit before I moved to DR. I grew up unschooled in a sizable city with few peers that experienced anything remotely like my upbringing. My paradigm for learning and living was so radical in contrast to the currents that I was swimming in that I often suffered from anxiety and a sense that I didn’t belong in mainstream culture. 

I dove into new waters when I moved here and suddenly, my skills in self-reliance, self-motivation, and self-awareness became my best friends as I navigated community conflict, participated in three Nonviolent Communication study groups, made an income for the first time, and eventually joined committees, including the Village Council when I was 18. 

Living here has compelled me to look deeply into myself, at my life, and what really matters to me. This community held me when my mom left when I was 17 and welcomed me into the world of adulting with a treasure hunt through the village to find people and places that supported my journey. I performed my spoken word poetry live for the first time on Dancing Rabbit land, and had my first serious romantic partnerships with people who were drawn to DR. Oh yeah, and I went on a speaking tour! My blood family was not present for such rites of passage and yet my chosen family was always there for me, celebrating, empathizing, uplifting, and believing in me. 

Now, here we are, almost exactly six years later. My 14-year-old consciousness did not predict how Dancing Rabbit would crack me open again and again and present me with myriad ways to put myself back together with discernment and deliberation. Had she foreseen the struggle that accompanied my learning along the way, she may not have been as thrilled about my time here; but is there a path devoid of such growing pains? In retrospect, I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

I find myself gathering up my complex, unique childhood and early adulthood as my time here draws to a close. I don’t know how else to say this: I’m leaving Dancing Rabbit. Where am I going? The short answer: Job Corps in Chicago. That is the starting point in my journey beyond Dancing Rabbit. A four-year college is on the horizon after that. Will I return to DR in the future? I certainly plan to. This place is my forever home. 

My departure date is flexible at this point, but I am aiming for late September as of now. In the meantime, I am savoring the summer and all of the pieces of Dancing Rabbit that I moved here for: the pond, natural building, humanure, sunsets, kitchen co-ops, birdsong, crickets, clean air, clear, starlit skies, and most of all, my chosen family. 

This community is not perfect by most standards, and yet as I write this in the warm folds of my bed, the windows and door on my tiny house are open to the nightly symphony in the woods just feet from my porch. The peepers at the duckweed pond have reemerged with the powerful coaxing of the rain over the last week, and my resurrection lilies have begun to bloom. I just jumped into our full, refreshing pond after cooking a meal for my friends. Last week, I picked a bouquet of echinacea, red clover, ironweed, and mint to welcome my friend Josephine home from her trip. These are profound, tangible pieces of raw, delicate, unyielding reality, and what is perfection if not the amalgamation of enjoyment found amidst what is real and beautiful? 

I am so grateful to have lived in such a magical place for much of my life thus far, and for the opportunity to share it with all of the visitors that have come before, as well as the ones we are preparing for now. I will continue to harvest fistfuls of jewels as the summer softens into autumn, and my journey delivers its fruit, like the peach trees do. May yours carry you onward, just as the sunflowers bourgeon in their dance with the sun.

Prairie Johnson leaves behind years of faithful service to our community. We will miss her, and we wish for her a fruitful life in the coming years.