It is finished. My three-month residency at Dancing Rabbit has come to an end. The big blue SUV arrived one windy afternoon and whisked me away to the land of oversized blow-up Santas and 24 hours of non-stop Christmas music, all day every day until December 26th. Oy! I am amazed (and sometimes appalled) by how quickly I become swept up in all the madness. A couple of hours into the car ride home, I find myself making plans to go the mall––Christmas shopping with my aunt. Toto, we’re not in the ecovillage anymore.
Jillian painting the community building
The lights are out. The television is off. Finally, silence, save the laughter of my brother and sister playing a card game in the next room. The bread has been set to its final rise––my last baking of this holiday season. I sit with pen in hand, writing by candlelight, sipping my tea, trying to remember the last three months at Dancing Rabbit, a time that suddenly feels worlds away from where I am now.
I arrive at Dancing Rabbit via bicycle on a dark and chilly night in early October, just in time for the Land Day celebration. So excited I am to return to the beloved ecovillage with stories of the year’s adventures, eager to see all that has changed in this community, anxious to reconnect with dear friends, and happy to stay in one place for a while after a month on the road. I expect that my days will be filled much as they were during my last stay at DR, with hours and hours in the kitchen, canning veggies, stirring tofu, baking bread. But an early frost and the hard work of many folks earlier in the season leaves little work for me in the kitchen. I hear that the common house building crew is recruiting, and I promptly trade my apron for a tool belt.
It is an early morning in October, clear and bright and quite warm. I walk into the common house construction scene, determined (and somewhat frightened and slightly intimidated) to try my hand as a builder. Day one: hours of de-nailing boards, preparing this old wood for its new and higher calling. Relieved to be given a relatively easy (though somewhat boring, I admit) job, to slowly work my way into the world of safety goggles and very tall ladders. But by the end of the first week, I find myself kneeling on scaffolding 8 feet above the ground, hanging with the nail gun the boards that I had de-nailed only days ago. My introduction to the new and exciting world of power tools does not end there. Although the sawz-all and I never quite hit it off, I become well acquainted with its cohorts, the circular saw and the jigsaw. And oh, how I learn to love the wallboard jack! I am amazed at how quickly I become invested in this project, at the opportunity to learn so much in so little time, at the satisfaction I feel as I watch the progress we make each day.
December 17, 2003: my last day of work on the common house. We begin with a sanding party to prepare the walls in the great room for texture and paint. After lunch, we move to the hallway, rollers in hand and paint in pan to finish the final coat on these walls. Is it ridiculous to feel sad, I wonder, that I will not be here to see the house finished? That I will miss out on the cleaning and grouting of the floors, the tiling of the bathrooms, the hanging of the doors? That as the sun sets and I am running out of time (and light), I feel a tear forming at the thought of someone else finishing the paint in this hallway? I chose the length of my time at DR, chose this end in order to move to a new beginning, and suddenly my only wish is for more time. A desire to stay in a place long enough to see a project through to completion, to enjoy the fruit of my labor. And I realize that these tears are not about paint and doors and tiling. They flow from a longing to find home. To stop leaving little pieces of my heart here and there.
Alas, it is time to set out again. The bread is out of the oven, wrapped and tucked snugly in my backpack for sustenance on the next leg of this journey. My bags are packed and I will be on a train again in just a few hours. My mom always says that I sleep with my hat on––never in one place for too long, and always keeping it light enough to travel. It seems that the road will not lead me to Dancing Rabbit again for a while. Soon the common house will be finished, and though part of me might be wishing I were there to help put on the finishing touches, to marvel at the final product, I will find myself elsewhere, building (in a not-so-literal sense) a home of my own, where hopefully my whole heart can stay for a time.
Intentional Community Bookstore