Land of the Woods: Reflecting on the "Self-Sustainable Community"

After two weeks of what felt like hell in Lima, Mere and I were ready for our first volunteer experience in Peru, which was working on a farm/eco-village near Oxapampa, a town only 200 miles away from the capital, but a twelve hour bus ride because the road winds through the Andes. We spent five weeks working there, and it was an altogether both challenging and enriching experience.

The community is named Tierra de Bosques (Land of the Woods) and was founded about seven years ago by an ambitious Peruvian couple in their 30s with a passion for sustainable living. It's right in the middle of a pine forest on a plot of about 100 acres, and their goal is to become self-sustainable by building houses using materials available in the area—they have a whole carpentry on site to bring the lumber all the way from tree to finished product—and growing their own food. Since its founding, they've built five small but really nice homes, with three more under construction now. Three families currently live there, but they've already sold fourteen additional plots of land for others to move into once the houses are built. It's a super inspiring project, and on an absolutely beautiful patch of land.

The arrangement with volunteers was that we'd do 30 hours of work per week—four hours in the mornings, two more in the afternoons after a generous lunch break—in exchange for room and board. The living conditions were basic. We slept in a tent under a shelter. It took some getting used to, some asking around for thicker mattresses, some patching of holes with tape, but within a week it felt nice and cozy, and sometimes I flexed with joy when we returned to our tent and got settled in for the night. The food was also basic. We were provided with fruits, vegetables, beans, rice, lentils, flour, coffee, oil, eggs, a small amount of milk and cheese; other things we would have to buy ourselves. We also had to cook all our meals ourselves, and did so on an outdoor gas stove—except when the gas ran out and we had to cook over a campfire. No wifi, though we did have electricity to charge our phone to use as a dictionary and camera. We showered outside with a solar-powered water tank, so the water was hot if there had been enough sun that day. We did our laundry by hand, which we learned is pretty tiring.

So the living was basic, and we loved that.  Sleeping outside under a sky full of stars—the constellations look totally different in the southern hemisphere, by the way!—listening to sounds of nature, waking up with the sun and going to sleep once it was dark—all of it felt very healing. And disconnecting from the internet for a whole week at a time is something that barely any of us do these days, but it does wonders for the mind and soul. We got to a point where the thought of connecting to wifi on the weekends gave us anxiety, because there's always the possibility of encountering some kind of bad news.

As if the living conditions weren't enough of a challenge, the work we did every day was grueling, especially at the beginning before we were used to it. We spent most of our time helping to build the roof of a house. That meant working in the carpentry milling, planing, sanding, treating, and otherwise preparing lumber. Then we'd carry it down and nail planks into the rafters to serve as the roof. When we finally had the wooden roof completed, which took a while because there were always unforeseen issues emerging that had to be worked through, we terraced it so that it could be a “living roof,” meaning they'll put soil on it and grow grass and other things on top. 

It was rainy season in Oxapampa, so all that was weather dependent. If it was raining we couldn't work on the roof, so they'd find other tasks for us to do, like using a pickax to dig trenches for the water to drain properly from the dirt road, or rebuild a bridge over a creek so that it could support a several-ton tractor, or digging a giant ditch to create a water filtration system for one of the houses on site. Neither of us had ever done straight manual labor like that for a living, and it was TOUGH. 

There were some minor injuries along the way. One day I stepped on a floorboard that wasn't nailed in properly (Mere was responsible for that one!) and it flung up cartoon-style and smacked me in the face, the nail clapping me in the jaw, just barely missing a spot on my face that could have been more lethal. We still don't understand the physics of what happened, but hey. I learned through the experience that the membrane from a chicken egg is nature's best band-aid; someone popped that on the hole in my cheek and it sealed it right up!

Even though we arrived on a Monday evening, making our first work week only four days, I'll never forget the feeling of exhaustion that Friday afternoon as we trekked one hour and fifteen minutes to the nearest mini-bus that would take us back into Oxapampa, where we spoiled ourselves with the luxury of a real bed for two nights. That ended up being our routine: return to the town for the weekend and stay at the same airbnb, where the host had been so friendly and generous with us, and eat at the same delicious Italian restaurant, connect to wifi, and enjoy other comforts not available out in the sticks.

After the first week, though, we got used to it. Humans are incredibly adaptable; it was only a matter of time before the novel challenges turned into routine, and we settled into our new little life there. Of course the people we were living with were key. The residents and workers were super welcoming and friendly and we got to know and become close with a half dozen volunteers from various countries: Peru, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium. Some of them we hope to keep in touch with long term. We spent both Christmas and New Years among our new friends there, sharing delicious meals for both, and dancing our hearts out until the ball dropped for the latter. It was a great five weeks, and while we were ready to go when the time came, we were definitely sad to say goodbye.

Any wooden structure pictured here, they build. Amazing.

One of the houses under construction, Casa Luna

Building the roof of another house, Casa Cedro

Fiddlehead fern

Turning compost

Making pipes for the water filtration system

After the nail to the jaw

Granadilla (passion fruit) farm

Open-fire cookin

Our tent

Haircut

One of the completed houses, with living roof

Composting toilet

Took some getting used to for this city kid

Friends

                                      

But of course, knowing me, my mind is always busy analyzing and evaluating, and while I loved the philosophy and the people behind the project, there was something about it that I had to question. It started in our first meeting with one of the founders as he was explaining the idea behind it all. He talked about wanting to be self-sufficient, about how the world is horribly off track in where it's headed in terms of our relationship with the environment, about the importance of aligning our behavior patterns more with our belief systems by, for example, eating according to the season instead of importing whatever food we want whenever we want it. All of which I'm on board with. 

Then he mentioned the vaccine, and made it clear that he was opposed. The coronavirus didn't just emerge out of nowhere, he argued, but as a result of all the blunders humans have been making throughout the past centuries. It could have given us a chance to slow down, reevaluate, and correct our habits to become healthier and happier. We eat like shit and don't take care of ourselves, and that's why the virus is so deadly. But instead, they're pushing on us “Just take the vaccine, take the vaccine, and you can go back to normal!” 

It was nice to hear an argument against vaccines from the mouth of a thoughtful individual, as opposed to the dualistic, sensationalist, reductionist filter of the mass media. I couldn't deny the man had a point. I share his wish that the space to slow down opened up by the pandemic would have inspired more profound shifts in our culture than it has (although I don't want to minimize the ones that have occurred). And I agree that the vaccine is NOT a silver bullet, and recognize that neither the government nor drug companies have a real interest in promoting longer-term health. 

But while I admire the idealism, I tried to temper it with the present reality we're in. Of course, humans need to shift their habits and eat healthier, for example, and that will do more for long term health than anything. But while a dedicated and conscious individual might be able to change their consumption habits at the drop of a hat, as a culture, as a collective, it will literally take generations. In the meantime, covid is killing millions, and the vaccine can prevent that. Period. His response was that he's more scared of the vaccine than covid, that there's already a 3rd shot and that there will surely be a 4th and 5th and so on forever, that it's going to make us dependent on a drug and not be able to rely on our own bodies anymore. It's a point worth considering, but he avoided responding to mine: that millions of people are dying, right now, and the vaccine, which as of yet has not been shown to have any long-term negative effects, could prevent many of the deaths.

We slowly discovered that essentially everyone in the community was anti-vax and indignant about vaccine requirements. Granted, Peru has been stricter than the U.S. A new law was just about to take effect that would require people to show proof of vaccination when entering banks, grocery stores, pretty much all public establishments, and this had stirred up quite a bit of anxiety, resentment, and the feeling of being a part of an “oppressed” minority amongst community members. One person likened the situation to Nazi Germany, a comparison I found offensive for many reasons, e.g. that refusing to vaccinate is a choice, and not one based on a religious tradition that stretches back thousands of years. Clearly, the anti-vaccine stance had become a conflict point to bond and rally around for community members, and I wonder how many of the folks who have bought land there are motivated by the idea of escaping the mainstream world and its pesky virus-related restrictions. There was a whole family who had already moved down from a different country because one of them lost their job for refusing to get the vaccine.

All of this sparked a lot of contemplation in me, particularly about the sociological motivations and implications of starting a community like Tierra de Bosques. I've had the privilege to live in and observe a few different isolated communities—the colony of nudist, polyamorous, kungfu warrior monks in Italy being the most notable—and I see some common threads in all of them. On the positive side, they're idealistic. Recognizing that the mainstream world has some serious defects, they want to establish a new and more meaningful way for humans to live. They put high priority on the health of mind, body, and soul, and also on building healthy communities. They value self-reliance and eschew consumerism and other toxic aspects of mass culture. All of that is highly admirable, and I've been inspired to make alterations to my life from my experience in such communities, including Tierra de Bosques.

But I want to point out some blind spots, not about this community in particular, but these types of communities in general. First of all, their way of life simply is not accessible to everyone. Not everyone can just move out to the woods. There are over seven billion people on the planet. Even if the average person could get past the cultural barriers of moving out to the land—when your family has lived in the city for generations, it's usually not even on your radar— it requires money, which the majority of people don't have, not to mention knowledge and skills that unfortunately our culture doesn't teach anymore. It's no surprise that the folks that do this kind of thing often come from considerable privilege. Which doesn't in-and of itself mean they shouldn't do it; it can just get dangerous when a group of people starts seeing their philosophy as the key to leading humanity out of our current dark age.

When folks try to create a “new community” they often isolate themselves from the vast majority of humanity as it exists.. And from what I've observed, once they isolate from the rest of humanity, it's easy to lose touch with it, and eventually abandon it. I don't think that's their intention, just a necessary consequence of living apart from something for long enough. One person from the community expressed his gratitude that his kids haven't really had to deal with covid at all, specifically mentioning that they can run around without masks, and haven't had to be cooped up with screens. That's fantastic for his kids, it really is. They will, indeed, be healthier in an important way than a lot of kids who've suffered tremendously from pandemic-related restrictions. But won't they lose something, too? Like a connection with those who haven't been as lucky as them? And then, out of touch with the less fortunate masses, it will be harder for them to understand the importance of a vaccine, or whatever the next thing ends up being, for the collective well-being of our species.

I've noticed a superiority complex that often develops in these communities. “We are the ones with the true knowledge about the best way to live; the “normal” people on the inside world are lost, deluded, and destructive. If everyone would live like us, the world would be free of its problems.” Of course they wouldn't outwardly articulate it like that, but that's what I understand to be the unconscious attitude holding it up. Interesting, because it's also not too much different from countless communities throughout history who have opted out of the “ways of the world” to found something radically different, but that we don't necessarily think too highly of today. Take the Puritan pilgrims, for example, who fled what they viewed as a morally decaying Europe in order to found a “city on a hill” and become a beacon light of hope for humanity. Four hundred years later, the society they planted the seeds of, i.e. the U.S., looks very different from what they thought they were creating, and one would be hard-pressed to argue it's morally superior to modern Europe. Mormons may be another example. Religion was the foundation of a lot of these radical autonomous communities in past ages; these days, it's often a focus on ecology, environmentalism, and sustainability. (There are more of them than you may think, and they're all over the world; just check out WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and you'll be amazed by the amount and variety of them.)

The idea of a “self-sustainable community” has a real lure to it these days, for me as well. It makes sense not to want to rely on the state or profit-driven corporations for your survival. But it also builds community when you have to rely on people who can do things you can't do, like fix a motor or weave a sweater. I'm not sure how realistic it is to produce EVERYTHING you need within one community. If you can't rely on people with more skills than you in certain areas—mechanics, doctors, carpenters, cooks, the list goes on—and try to do everything yourself, you end up super busy just making your basic needs met, leaving little room to pursue passions outside of basic survival. Indeed, the work the folks at Tierra de Bosques had done, especially when it came to construction, was absolutely phenomenal. But they have to work so, so hard to keep advancing, and also are pretty reliant on volunteer labor. I suppose the goal is to eventually have all the necessary skills within the community itself as it grows. But then of course the dynamics of the community will slowly change and move away from its original, idealistic purpose. Maybe that's how human society evolves, and that's okay too. But my point is that you can't isolate from the rest of humanity; it's just not possible. Since we're celebrating Dr. King this week I'll bring in a quote of his: 

    "No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world. . . .It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality."

 All of this observation and reflection inspired in me an idea for a speculative fiction story that follows a character from an autonomous community in around the year 2050. Believe it or not, I actually started writing the story, which is now looking more like a novella or even novel, and have a draft of the first 30-40% of it! (Side note: I'm looking for folks to read it and give me feedback, so if you're interested, please let me know!)

None of this takes away from how highly I think of all the people at Tierra de Bosques and the ambitious project they're undertaking. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to friends and family as a good place to visit or even move to for those headed down that path. I'd also be remiss if I left out the fact that I wasn't always the best community member myself. For a good part of our stay, I found myself griping to myself or Mere about things not being “fair.” It would bug me that one volunteer got invited to dinner with a nearby family and we didn't, or I'd feel some type of way when someone outside of the core of volunteers sat down to dinner with us when I felt like we barely had enough food to get by for the week. Or I'd be upset when our food for the week came Tuesday morning instead of Monday evening, and I had to go without a banana for breakfast. I realized that I was being petty, but it was really, really hard for me not to fixate on that kind of thing. And yet, when I went down to the stream to meditate, which I did often, it was so obvious that the universe was being supremely fair with me, and that in a greater, more holistic sense, all my needs were more than provided for, and I'm incredibly blessed. What business did I have whining, really?

I learned a lot about myself through the whole ordeal. The full story will have to be left for a later telling, but suffice it to say that I was able to let it go, at least a little bit, through a New Year's ritual that the whole community did together—I so appreciated the rituals they made it a point to do—where we sent something we were letting go from the past year down the stream. What I wanted to let go was my “small" sense of justice, where I get worked up about not getting treated exactly equally for every little thing, in favor of a bigger picture version of justice. To see myself as ONE with my environment and those around me, instead of as separate from it. This is a lifelong battle—especially as a white person, I think—but I think I moved a little closer during my time at Tierra de Bosques, which I will forever be grateful for.