Susan Wright's Bio

I was born in California in 1957 and lived in suburbia there for most of my first four decades longing for...something. Something I couldn't quite define. The short version: as it turns out I was apparently yearning for life at Dancing Rabbit. Rural, pioneering (read: challenging-for-ex-suburbanites), goals of sustainability, great folks, communication, tolerance, diversity. The rest of the story:

During what seemed like several lifetimes, I unsuccessfully tried to convince myself to wear makeup, accept commuting as normal, and own a television. After these and other futile attempts to mold myself to the popular CULTure (not everyone has a worm bin in their second floor apartment) Erik [who mysteriously enters our story at this point] threw caution to the winds and bought a Communities Directory ($34.00 postpaid from www.ic.org). We started our search for a life that made sense, and moved to a 60-year-old community in Colorado with tons of infrastructure (read: luxury and comfort). This was a good transitional experience for us but not quite what were looking for in the long run. After some anguished heart-searching and much "lively debate," we decided to let go of all that comfort and try to find a life more in alignment with our values of living lightly on the earth and practicing people skills.

So, to make a long story longer, we left Colorado in October of 2000 to travel around the country looking for "The Right Community" (not to mention one we could afford). At the beginning of our adventure we visited Dancing Rabbit for a week but weren't ready to make a big decision without more thought and looking. So after lots more looking (Florida, Texas, California, Colorado) in our truck and camper we decided to quit comparing everything we saw to Dancing Rabbit and just live there. We arrived to stay on May 4, 2001 and became members in October of that year.

Luckily, I find the other rabbits very tolerant of my alternative relationship (I've been married to Erik since 1994).

I love living in an ecovillage in a county so sparsely populated it doesn't have a stoplight, and being where nature's activities are more apparent and humankind's less so than any other place I've lived. I'm also enjoying earning money by working for the FIC (hence the advertisement above) and doing things at DR that I swore I would (could) never do.

P.S. In my past lives I traveled in New Zealand and Mexico; did clerical work; owned a home; taught fractions in Spanish; was married to a librarian; and worked summers at the Grand Canyon and Sequoia National Parks.

Susan- 1/02