Intentional Community Tour Days Eight and Nine
We woke up at Water Birch Co-Op (https://www.ic.org/directory/marion-street/) and had breakfast, a tour, and some conversation about their history. Their home has a single owner, with plans to reorganize with co-ownership once all the legal entities are in place. We got to see what could be multiple discrete units with kitchens in the house, and some construction in progress.
In the middle of the day we visited Meow Wolf Denver, Convergence Station (https://meowwolf.com/visit/denver), which is a huge interactive art installation project.
Later we visited Nyland Cohousing (https://www.nylandcohousing.org/) who kindly rescheduled their community potluck dinner to coincide with our visit. We got to walk around and see their houses, garden spaces, communal areas, and their common house. Dinner with over a dozen residents involved a lot of great conversation about them and about us and intentional communities in general.
We spent the night at a hotel between Nyland and our next stop.
Our planned stop in Fort Collins CO ended up not working out, so we pivoted to visiting Polestar Village (https://www.polestarvillage.com/). Their community was displaced from Hawaii by lava damage to their common house and gardens there a few years ago. They have purchased land and prepared a design for a cohousing community, with more than a few of their prior residents and newcomers already on board. I look forward to seeing what they accomplish in the coming years.
After that we visited Nyland again for a longer conversation with a few residents. We got more insight into the long term communication and decision making processes there, and some community approaches to conflict and concern resolution.
Through both of these days, we discovered the bus would be out of commission indefinitely thanks to UPS losing a relatively unique replacement part. To keep the trip alive, we decided to adjust our travel plans. We’re skipping a few scheduled stops in Montana and Washington in order to cut down on long drives with no stops. As I write this, we have just flown from Denver to Portland and checked into a hotel east of the city. We will pick the trip itinerary back up in Carson Washington on Sunday or Monday, with a dozen stops still ahead of us before we reach San Francisco in about a week.