It’s April in the Ecovillage. Today we are not in the Ecovillage. Today we are in the city. Soon we will be in the Ecovillage again.

We are in the liminal space between Winter Solstice and Summer Solstice — the half-orbit of our Earth that seems to be carrying us into a new world at a pace all of its own. This April has, for me, all the chaos and excitement, weariness and disorientation of any liminal space, any threshold of Reality — be it the birth of a child or the birth of a village. Sometimes we live on the Land, and sometimes we live in the City. Apparently this is what it feels like to temporarily inhabit a portal between worlds.

On the Land, we live in a pop-up camper beside the Pond, canvas walls useless to keep out the freezing air of April nights. A propane heater and a solar panel hooked up to a car battery keep us warm enough to sleep. On the Land, our kitchen is two plastic folding tables and a camp stove. With these humble elements, my sister Rebecca alchemizes great vats of vegetables and rice, garlic and onion and spice, and we sit in a circle around the fire and dine like gods. On the Land, we have a bathtub. It is a cast-iron thing, acquired for free via Facebook Marketplace and a long roadtrip to Wyoming, Minnesota on a rainy Saturday in March. Dylan helped me set the bath tub on a mound of dirt and in Garbage World we found a rusty stovepipe with which he fashioned a rudimentary chimney and the fire under the cast iron bathtub burns hot and clean. We fill the tub with pond water using a green Menards bucket. It stays hot for hours. Baby Wonder sits in the bath mid-day with 30-degree winds whipping around and comes out feeling cozy and clean. After dark we take turns tending the fire for each other and sitting in the warm pond/bath-water while Orion appears on the other side of the river, past the sunset, and the Big Dipper rises above us in the north.

The bathtub is our favorite amenity, but it is not our only amenity. We also have a scenic toilet. Three tires stacked on top of each other provide gentle cushioning for your ass while a bucket collects your valuable organic material. With a 360 view, you can sit any way you want and take in the beauty of the Tamarack Bog whilst giving back to Nature. Don’t forget toilet paper, like I did.

In our dreams, we would have an outdoor kitchen by now. We have a great idea for an outdoor kitchen. We have a crowdfunding page. We have a design. We have a spot picked out on the Land, right by the Pond and the firepit, facing the sunset and Orion. But where the rubber hits the proverbial road, the road is literally mud, and we are stuck in the mud (both proverbially and literally). We pushed on Nature, and Nature pushed back. We made a plan that would work with the mild, dry Winter we were having and Nature gave us a snowy, soggy April. I for one am neither mad nor surprised by this.

On the first day of April we set up camp in the Ecovillage. The next day a lumber truck arrived with all the wood to build an outdoor kitchen for a village. Ten inches of snow sat on the ground from the week before and conspired with the Sun to turn everything to mud. The lumber truck got stuck before a single stick of wood was unloaded. By the time it got unstuck, it was obvious that no delivery would be happening this month. Lars showed up the next day with a front loader and six dumptrucks full of gravel. After two days battling the mud, it was decided to come back next month and try again.

As the snow continued to melt, our campsite temporarily became a large puddle. With shovels we did some small-scale engineering and dug drainage ditches from the puddles to the ponds, and activity we have trained for ever since we were small children playing in the mud in Aprils past. Over the next week various vehicles of ours became marooned in the sog but eventually we all got out — once with the help of our neighbor Terry, who seemed stoked to have an opportunity to hook a chain to his old Ford Ranger and pull some unsuspecting city folk out of the mud.

With our construction plans paused until drier days, we turned our attention to making paths through the woods and along the river. Paths are an essential part of the ecovillage for several important reasons: 1.) so all humans are able get around the land without getting lost. 2.) so that we can be in relationship with the Land — close enough to witness and experience — while minimizing the impact of our footsteps on the ecosystems, especially the fragile mosses in the Tamarack Bogs. 3.) so that we can get close enough to the River to be in relationship with it (currently overgrown with thick branches) — while being conscious about erosion on the banks. 4.) so that we reduce opportunities for tick encounters. Making paths is a lot of fun and hard work. Whenever possible, we follow paths that seem to already exist thanks to our mammal kin. Along the River we have carved out several scenic clearings — where rocks jut far out into the frigid stream and we warm ourselves in the Sun and sometimes dare to plunge in the rush of snowmelt.

On the Land, I kept saying outloud, “Damn, we really are out here in this Ecovillage.”

Rebecca made fun of me for saying it, but I couldn’t get over the sheer marvel of this embodiment of dreaming and working and intention and hope. We really were out there in the Ecovillage. Not just Ellen and me and the kids and the dog — there was a whole stream of Villagers and friends, playing in the mud and the River all together. My sister Rebecca and her husband Dan, moving up from Kentucky to build a Village with us. Our gardening friend Paul, who helped us dream this into reality. Dylan the explorer, who found the Land for us when we had no idea where to look. And several of the friends who have become a Village in our living room since we all found each other last Fall: Lisa, Diana, and James. We began cobbling together a base camp of fish houses and campers, shelter enough until we have a common house. Together we shared the snow and the mud, the beans and rice and salmon, the River and the stars, the pond-water bathtub and the three-tire toilet. Undeniably an Ecovillage, by any objective measure.

After a week on the Land, we came back to the city, the day before the Eclipse. We had dreams of an Eclipse party on the land, of rituals in the River and parties by the Pond but again Nature said “No, unless you want to be rained on the whole time.” And because we did not want to be rained on the whole time, we packed up and came back to the city.

We have been back in the city for two weeks, almost three now. These weeks are a blur of planning and appointments, meetings and decisions, trying to stay connected and rested all the while. I talk to people on Zoom about electricity and barns and water and roads.

In the city, we live in this big house that doesn’t feel like home anymore, now that there’s another home calling us North. This house has become a launch-pad for an Ecovillage, and it is bustling most days with Villagers coming and going, food preparation and tool collection, planning meetings and potlucks.

Tomorrow we are going back to the Land again. Again, Nature is promising to rain on us. Maybe everything will turn to mud again, and we’ll be back in the City by Saturday. Or maybe we’ll sit in the camper in the Rain and see what the Land looks like in a thunderstorm. Maybe the dump trucks full of gravel will show up again next week and fix our driveway, or maybe we’ll keep waiting for the Sun to dry the Land.

Only Nature knows. I can’t wait to find out!