life in asheville

bj, asher, karin (who is taking the name phoenix), and i moved from virginia to asheville, north carolina a few weeks ago. it was a pretty whirlwind lead-up, move, and landing marked with lots of excitement, nervousness, sparkliness and serendipity. the entire process of deciding to visit, considering moving, deciding to move, and moving took just under two weeks! so, from the outside i imagine it looked (depending how you look) like quite an abrupt/spontaneous/inspired/courageous/foolhardy/fickle thing to do. i suppose it may be a little of all those things. but from the inside, it feels amazingly right. and also really consistent with the direction of our dreams and of our inspiration.

we arrived just under a month ago. it took us a grand total of about four or five days to find an amazing house to rent in west asheville. the house is very big, with 6 bedrooms and a huge (for city standards) backyard. we chose it because such a big house would allow us to choose other people and families to move in with us and share the house. this has proven to be a really, really good choice. its been so easy and smooth meeting people, and the ability to host others has supported us in creating community in our home.

in the past few days, we've invited four other people- two single dads with 7 and 8 year old daughters to move in with us. such a strange and wonderful coincidence. we certainly weren't looking specifically for that profile, but each of these new families feels like such a good fit to live together with. it all just sort of clicked... and continues to click.

we all just took a relatively impromptu daytrip to a local swimming hole up on the blue ridge parkway, just south of town. the place is called skinnydip falls. we had a great time together and it sort of gelled our connection to each other and contributed to a shared sense of friendship, familiarity, affinity and conviviality. a gallery of photos from the trip is available here.

skinnydip falls

the new crew (minus cedar)

from left to right in above pic:
herve and daughter sienna, beej, ashman, moon, rene (a mutual friend), phoenix, et moi

cedar (moon's daughter)

other super exciting things that i've been up to in the past month... i've been getting involved with a forming worker-owner cooperative called asheville treecyclers. it's a rather ambitious, and very inspiring project. the idea is to produce locally harvested and processed lumber by diverting urban trees that get cut down for a variety of reasons (not for timber) from their otherwise inevitable demise as "green waste" (compost or mulch). then, the treecyclers woodworker co-op will use this wood to produce a variety of furniture, crafts, art, and building products. one of the reasons that i'm so excited about this project, and about getting involved in a big way, is that it brings together so many of my interests, passions and skills- woodworking, trees (protecting, admiring, caring for, working with them), design, co-operative work structures, local economy, and local culture. oh, and web design and development, and photography, as i've just started to build the website, and we have plans to do some photographic storytelling of the cycle from tree to timber through creative process to product.

speaking of photography, our new friend rene is a very talented professional photographer. and we're discovering a lot of excitement for collaborating with one another. next week we're gonna go explore the river arts district, which is the old industrial part of town. and she has invited me to come be a back-up photographer at some of her gigs. i've often toyed with the idea of making photography more of a central part of my creative process. you can check out rene's website here.

um, oh, and we've been having lots of bike adventures. asheville is really bikeable, so we've been able to leave the truck parked and get around, explore and do most of our travel by bike. i forgot how much fun it is! especially when we convene a big group. moon and cedar are big on bikes, and herve is excited to get a bike and use it as his main transportation. so it looks like we'll have a super bike friendly household, complete with two-wheeled outings.

gosh there's a lot to write about, but i'm going to leave it at that for now.

life is wonderful, full, abundant and expanding.