The year is 2050. The future, uncertain. But as I wrap my scarf tighter and step from my tiny home into the forest, I am hopeful.
Birdsongs greet dawn’s pink glow behind silhouetted cedars. Chimes from the Big House beckon gently, softly. This is our pace now: One breath, one step, one being at a time. No longer rushing. No longer forgetting our being-ness.
At 75, I feel my years but not how I once feared and expected. There’s just more of me now, contained within one. A wide-eyed child and young woman and middle-aged woman and all of my versions. Somehow bound together. Somehow still here.
Moving slowly down our pine-needle path, I see fellow Serenity members emerging from their own tiny homes along the perimeter. Serenaded by birds and the Big House chimes, we come together and we gather. Each morning, a communion. Each morning, a remembrance.
*
Since founding Serenity Village in my sixties—well past when they said such projects were possible—I’ve watched myself grow and our community grow. I’ve watched as others followed suit: returning to the forest, remembering the land, creating similar small-scale, off-grid communities. All hover around 100 members. All are led by elders. All breathe life into what once seemed a fantastical, impossible model.
Funny thing, that.
When what once felt certain falls in on itself. When the world pulls apart at the seams. When all that they warned comes to pass and all that they built gets broken.
Here we are. Here we still are.
And here—in this new version that holds all we’ve been and all we’re becoming—we begin again. Beginning again, we find solace and wisdom in the most unassuming of places. The eyes of a child. The visions of grandmas. In each of us now. Somehow still breathing. Somehow still here.
A reclusive poet with a strong preference for solitude, I was an unlikely leader. And yet, when things fall apart, I suppose an unlikely leader is needed. So, I gathered the lost and the wounded. I took stock of resources and needs. I said, “Let’s go now. It’s okay now. Just us and the forest. Just us and our stories.”
The first years were difficult of course. There was the planning and building and tending. There was the sorting and sharing of things. There was learning to be focused and present again. And unlearning—so much unlearning.
The early days of Serenity were unfamiliar and in most ways lacking in comfort. And yet, we somehow found joy in that. We somehow began to play again and began to breathe easy. The machines had gone silent. Big tech had collapsed. It was just us. It was just a new chance at beginning.
*
Reaching the Big House, I exchange quiet greetings with others. A nod. A whisper. A smile with our eyes. It is enough. No words are needed.
Entering the warm, round room with a stove at its center, we find seats and we wait. We savor our gratitude, connection, and silence.
Then, once everyone present has settled on cushions and chairs, we hold hands and we pray. Not to a single god or goddess, but to everything known and unknown. To all of us and all that holds and loves and connects.
Here, holding hands. Here, seated in silence. There’s room for all gods and goddesses and all of it. There’s room for mystery and magic and miracles.
Later, we will do the things. We will organize and plant and harvest and cook. We will hunt and gather and build. We will play and make and create.
But first—always first—this. A ritual of seeing and surrender. A ritual of reverence and remembrance. A ritual to replace what once felt urgent but then fell away. Into knowing, into unknowing, into us.
I see you, I honor you, I am you, in this place.
One human, one being, to the next. No longer deifying opinion. No longer making idols of urgency. No longer mistaking shouting for solving.
Just needing to remember our origin story. Just needing to sit here a while—here, in this more complete version. Here, in love and Serenity.
“See simplicity in the complicated. Achieve greatness in little things.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (trans. Gia-fu Feng & Jane English)