Memphis Democrat
February 2, 2006

Hello from Dancing Rabbit! This is Molly, one of the newer residents at DR, with my first crack at this column.

After a long visit back with my family in Oregon, I returned to Missouri last Friday and have spent the past week settling back into the groove of ecovillage life. I was very excited to get away from the Oregon winter (which basically consists of gray skies and enough rain to float a small ocean liner) and see a little of the snow that I had heard about from those who had stayed behind. In celebration of my arrival, however, the snow promptly turned into rain, and pretty soon I found myself squelching through the mud to collect soggy wood that seemed more likely to quench a fire than feed it.

Much of the beginning of this week was taken up with the craziness of preparing for the first session of the retreat, but everyone got a break from the madness when we journeyed to Sandhill for the Tuesday potluck. All in all the evening passed very pleasantly (although those of us who were foolish enough to walk there ultimately had to nurse some moderately frozen appendages).

On Thursday it was Laura’s and my turn to collect firewood for the common house boiler. This was the first time that I had ever done a rotation, and Laura proved an excellent teacher – the entire job took far less time than I thought it would, and with a little effort we managed to leave the common house flush with firewood. Later on that night Tim hosted a karaoke party, and while I did not attend, it appears that a good, loud time was had by all.

The biggest event of the week was, of course, the first session of the retreat. Amy, Rachel, Tim and Thomas kicked off the whole thing with a state of the village address that, incredibly, managed to include ping-pong balls, Australian accents, and an uncanny impression of a kung-fu badger. Over the course of the weekend the Rabbits managed to wade through a host of topics and make several important decisions regarding the village, and Sunday night saw many of us celebrating the end of the session in the common house (crazy party animals that we are).

The weather is still fairly gray, but I’m looking forward to a relatively dry week and plenty more exciting happenings here on the farm.

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