Where we are trying to answer the question, What is Earthaven?
And the simple answer is we’re this ecovillage that’s in Southern Appalachia, on 329 acres and at the time of recording about 100 people.
But the answer is so much more complex than that.
It’s harder to just summarize in one sentence, one of the things that we’re doing here is developing a new type of culture, a new way of being, and the ways in which we relate with each other and the ways we relate with the land, the ways we relate with ourselves, the ways we relate with different generations, some of the things that kind of really stand out to me, but I’m sure maybe NikkiAnne has some things to say about that.
Yeah.
Earthaven to me is a living experiment of what it means to be human and to stay in a place, even amidst conflict, to know how to practice doing it better, dissolving conflicts and continuing the relationships in growing healthy way. And I’d also say that we’re attempting to reinhabit rural America in a way that is regenerative versus exploitive extractive.
I would say that what this experiment is about is to form an antidote to toxic civilization in the sense that when civilization reach sticking points, often people return to a more human scale form of life. Basically, you call that village scale, and that’s what this is. It’s a model village.
Yeah, I would say Earthaven is is an experiment in belonging. It’s a group of people who weren’t born in the same culture who came from all different walks and something called them back to this more place based living way. And so here we are trying to figure out what that looks like and how that might develop over the next 500 years in our own lineages and in our own psyches and and how it might be like. So we’re here trying to live in our houses made out of Earth and be humans that are made out of Earth. And remember that we belong to the Earth and, you know, figure out how to stand up straight enough and look good enough and breathe good enough and celebrate good enough to be somebody that somebody might be proud to descend from again.
So if you read the Earthaven website and you’re still curious what it feels like and looks like and is about, please check out the videos here on YouTube.
And Yeah, you’ll get a little snippets into our life, what we’re doing on the daily, what we’re aiming for, how we’re relating to each other and kind of what’s possible and what might be in some of our classes coming up, true blessings on you and your place.
NikiAnne (she/her) was born and raised on a horse and cattle ranch on the ancestral lands of the Salinan people in the Central Coast of California. She currently lives at Earthaven Ecovillage on unceded lands of the Catawba and Cherokee (Tsalagi) people. Her ancestors come from Eastern and Western Europe — France, Germany, and English Isles as well as Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia, from Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.
Throughout the last two decades, NikiAnne has been immersed in community and in service to a wide range of educational endeavors focused on nature connection, personal empowerment, and community resilience. NikiAnne considers herself the grease and glue – that which helps things run smoothly or holds things together. Before co-founding SOIL in 2012, she worked and traveled through much of Asia, the Americas, and Europe, which made her formal education at George Washington University in International Affairs come alive in ways that can only happen through personal experience and relationships. Collectively, these experiences have undeniably shaped her cooperative cultural values and commitment to supporting leaders to think, feel, act and design from a foundation rooted in interrelationship. No matter what she’s teaching, NikiAnne is always on the same mission: to raise awareness of our whole selves – gifts, passions, blind spots, shadows – and help those whole selves find and fill niches in their communities. This is how the web of life is woven, and the fabric of culture repaired. She’s especially eager to support those in transition – between vocations, stages of life, and stories of world and self. Within this context, she is particularly passionate about community grief tending and death care midwifery.
