About.

Earthaven Ecovillage Visitor Weekend is a service-learning program that introduces participants in the community life of Earthaven Ecovillage. The Experience Week gives participants an inside look at the radical social and ecological experimentation that has taken place in this land-based community over the past 25 years.


This program is a shorter version of the Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Week (June 19-25). While the Experience Week offers an opportunity for deeper connection with participants, more community integration and additional classes and activities (simply because it’s longer), the Visitor Weekend offers exposure to more neighborhoods and homesteads with its additional themed tours. Both programs promise richness, depth, insight, and learning – you can’t go wrong with either.

Today we are collectively faced with an ecological crisis of rising sea levels, polluted air, toxic oceans, and mass extinction of species, in addition to a social crisis of disconnection, isolation, and loss of meaning and purpose. Although Earthaven Ecovillage doesn’t have ready-made solutions for healing all these problems, however this collection of individuals are leveraging their privilege and engaging in thoughtful, practical strategies that are attempting to merge the best of ancestral wisdom and technological innovation with ethics. As a community they are grounding their visions in authentic connection to spirit and the land, in an effort to bring some order and beauty into this fragmented world.

For these reasons this ecovillage provides the ideal living laboratory for a whole-life skills curriculum—a place to see regenerative systems in practice, food production in action, and community living on a personal level. Come engage in an empowering, inspiring, skill-building experience with the people, businesses, and farms of the Taylor Creek Watershed community.

Program.

Curriculum

The Visitor Weekend curriculum encourages participants to examine sustainability through social, ecological, economic, and eco-spiritual lenses. The learning journey weaves large-group discussions and classes together with intimate hands-on experiences in the village and farms. SOIL instructors, together with the community at large, support participants to build important skills, foster awareness for global issues, empower the self, increase connection, and develop the resources required for an embodied life.

Organic Food Production, Natural Buildings, and Off-Grid Utilities

    • See inside eco-friendly and consciously-built homes (tiny houses, stud-frame, cob, straw-bale, earthship, earthen plaster)
    • Learn where our food comes from. See permaculture and agricultural experimentation in action on small-scale farms and homesteads
    • Connect with and give back to the land through service learning projects and work parties
    • Be nourished by local, sustainably-grown, organic, and wild food
    • Learn about off-grid renewable systems in practice (photovoltaic, micro-hydro, radiant-floor heating, hot water diversions)
    • Identify, harvest, and eat Wild Edible plants

Resilient Community and Regenerative Culture

    • Learn about successful ecovillages and land-based endeavors (both rural and urban)
    • Get an introductory understanding of Earthaven legal structure and governance
    • Learn how conflict and loss build intimacy and are essential to community survival
    • Hear about the realities of Community Living straight from the mouths of Earthaven’s members and residents

Personal Growth and Empowerment

    • Identify personal goals & resources through The Work that Reconnects of Joanna Macy
    • Connect to yourself, others, and the natural world
    • Explore what it means to be a responsible human living an authentic & meaningful life
    • Be supported in moving from inspiration and motivation into embodied and awakened action

Highlights.

  • "Nothing in advanced-level education has prepared you for this experience! Get ready to leave what you know and step into a firestorm of techno-, anthro-, bio-, socio-, politico-consciousness." Robert J. Merritt Jr., 2017 Participant
  • "This experience has made me realize that although I have reduced my worldview to accommodate what I thought were the limits it had to offer, magic is real and it is cultivated by a community (of people & the land) who value gratitude and the expression of that gratitude. ~ Dashiell, 2019 Participant
  • "This experience provided me with a new way to look at energy, food production, and the cycle of life including the consumption patterns of these basic building blocks of life." ~ Mary Rock, 2015 Participant

Living Conditions.

Sleeping

  • tent camping
  • shared rooms
  • private room
  • hammocks

Omnivore Food

  • communal kitchen access
  • communally cooked meals
  • over 80% locally sourced

Internet

  • fast: streaming video

Earthaven's School of Integrated Living

Getting here.

Earthaven is nestled in the heart of the rural Southern Appalachian Mountains, 30 miles outside of Asheville, NC on curvy mountain roads and within two hours of three airports. Visit our website for more Travel information: http://www.schoolofintegratedliving.org/location/travel/

Contact

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