One thing about living at Dancing Rabbit ecovillage is that change is constant here. Sometimes there is change from people moving here, sometimes change comes from people moving away from here. There are activities most days of the week, like dungeons and dragons game night, song circle, poker night, ultimate frisbee games, coffee group, happy hour every day, VC meetings on Sunday, potlucks, committee meetings. And that doesn’t include working and doing life tasks like grocery shopping or banking, or, for me, procurement tasks associated with a construction project.

Liz here, describing the changes at DR from the last two weeks, an update on the Hub, and a philosophical bit about how to step into the unknown.

The biggest event in the last two weeks was the DR winter retreat that we hold every February. This year there were several lengthy and detailed presentations, as well as the spontaneous smaller gatherings about a wide range of topics. And, as always, the six-day event started with deep checkins from those that wanted to share how their past year went.

The DR Land Trust (DRLT) gave a presentation about how to move into managing properties at DR that have been donated to the community, as well as managing the Milkweed Mercantile, still privately owned but leased by the DR nonprofit, CSCC. Lots of possibilities for maintaining these properties and adding to the housing stock of the village.

Katie Ibes returned to DR to facilitate a series of sessions on our identity as a village and envisioning our future, which is always fertile ground. Although I can safely say that I am not fond of small group activities, I do value examining and re-examining our purpose and our vision of the future to make sure they align with whoever is currently living here and to help us to remain relevant in our mission.

The Integrity and Agreements Ad Hoc committee, or IAAHC, a new committee tasked with coming up with processes for evaluating our community’s relationship with our ecological covenants, gave a presentation, teaching community members how to use their new covenant evaluation rubric.

Every DR retreat has time for smaller topics that are brought spontaneously to the retreat by attendees. This year, there were gatherings to discuss mouldering toilets, ideas for social events, on-site recycling, email organization, the expanded work exchange program, and non-permanent art projects.

There were shared meals, and a pizza party at the end. Many thanks to the retreat committee that put the whole event together!

The Hub straw bale building project is humming along nicely these last few weeks, assisted by warmer weather and the energy we get from sunny days. The bathroom has been the focus this winter and we have completed a level-within-acceptable-limits finish plaster floor, which will be tiled in the next few weeks. We covered two walls with pallet boards and I tackled making my own ceiling trim, something I’ve never done before. The crew tells me it looks nice. The effect I’m going for in the bathroom is a Finnish sauna look, with lots of wood and tile, and there’s almost nothing more nerve wracking than envisioning something for years and then getting down to the final result. And then, within days, I let go of holding that piece, and I move on to the next challenge.

Ciaran put together the shower plumbing pieces, and installed the final drain pieces before the shower pan gets mortared down and the pan gets tiled with some pebble tile. Attaching foam backer board is almost done, forming the shower surround, which will be tiled with mosaic tile. The infrastructure of something takes longer than the detailing work, so I’m looking forward to having the tiling go quickly, even as I have small twinges of sadness with things coming to an end with this part of the build.

We enjoyed having a visit from Prairie, who was on the Hub crew for three years, who stayed in one of the lofts as a guest.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how I handle stepping into doing things I’ve never done before. People ask me all the time how I can do this project at all, since I started with very little experience. There are some very challenging things that need to be figured out and accomplished this coming spring and summer with this build, and I thought it would be helpful for me to give more thought to how to get my mind around it.

How do you step into something that is unknown to you? Something you don’t know how to do, have never done before, something that worries you or scares you? Crew member Ciaran smiled when I asked him this question, as if he had considered this question before, and said, “You just have to do it. It sucks, but you just have to just do it.”

My life has been dominated by the impulse to break free of bonds, to break free of limitations in my life. I don’t know why I was born with this impulse, but it has defined my life to a great degree. So it’s no surprise that I find myself facing the unknown every day as part of my building project. It is the same character quality that brings me to live in an ecovillage, to break free from the constraints of living within a system that isn’t moving quickly enough toward sustainability and a compassionate, reasonable lifestyle for humans.

“Any skill must be nourished, over and over again, and this is why the real skill, the kung fu, is a skill attained by investing a lot of effort. And the only way to express this, is by repetitive structure, repetitive movements.” Shi Heng Yi, Shaolin monk.

I think about how great it feels to accomplish something, to have it done. I think about how much confidence, perseverance and problem solving skills I have been able to cultivate in these last four years from the repetitive motions of this experience.

I faced a time at the beginning of the winter, after most of the crew left to pursue other things, of working in silence, mostly by myself, for a winter season. And, as has happened many times during this project, people arrived to help. And things turned fun and interesting again. Even as I try to get my mind and emotions geared up to do the hard things coming down the pike on the project in just a few months, I also try to expand into accepting help and the power of many hands to help.

As the Hub crew moves into spring activities, we move into getting ready for the Hub’s first workshop in September. This will be the first time the Hub crew and Danielle Williams will be hosting a workshop where attendees will be spending most of their time focused on natural building and personal work at the Hub. This workshop is for people who identify as women and will run from September 26-29. To read more about this unique workshop and to register, and to browse all the workshops being offered in 2024, see our website: www.dancingrabbit.org.

Liz Hackney is the mastermind of the Hub straw bale building project. She is also the editor of this newsletter for the last four years and sits on the Long Term Planning committee. She lives in a 280 square foot straw bale cottage, which is very snug, and just right for her needs.