Anyone who has been following my blog for some time will know that I have been on a unique journey for two years now, traveling the country as I live in my yurt, an experiment with off grid life and the camping lifestyle which has served as an eye-opening learning experience. When I sold my business where I had been living in Bozeman, Montana for my whole adult life and left the area to begin my nomadic adventure, I had no idea where I would end up, only that I was ready to get out of the rat race and needed a change, and that this was my chance and I took it. So I took a leap of faith into the unknown, hoping and trusting that by letting go and following my heart and listening to my intuition, I would end up where I was meant to be. I felt strongly that building community was a purpose of my life and solution to so many of the world's problems - as I've written about time and time again - but I had no idea to go about finding the right community or opportunity to create my own community, but staying where I was at was clearly not getting me any closer to my dreams, so in October of 2019, the adventure began.
As it turns out, at least for me, life in a yurt was pretty fun, and learning to live a simple, off grid life much closer to nature was just what I needed.
I learned so much about life and myself in a period of just a few months that may have otherwise taken an lifetime to learn, it's definitely felt like a period of unprecedented personal growth and inner development for me. From some amazing desert camping in southern Arizona to a month long stay at a hippie commune in California last winter to a stay at a rural farm in the Ozarks over the spring and so much else, it's been quite an amazing string of experiences that I can now see would never have unfolded had I not taken that first step of letting go and following my heart, even without having a plan for how things would turn out. Amazing how life works like that.
Throughout this journey the feeling that an important life purpose of mine is to somehow help create or grow a sustainable community only became stronger and more clear, but none of the communities or homesteads I stayed out seemed like the right fit, despite all being important learning experiences. Then over the summer I began to feel much more strongly about the need to find what I had for two years been looking for. As the march to tyranny complete with mandates increasingly forcing people out of society fast accelerated, it was becoming apparent that for those of us wishing to live free from the coercion would need to very soon create ways to live outside the emerging technocratic society if we were to survive, which only further reinforced the feelings I was having that it was time for this stage of my life to come to an end and the next to begin.
I could see that others were feeling the same way, but many, just like me, although highly motivated to do what had to be done to create alternatives to the tyrannical system being built around society, did not have the resources to go about getting started creating independent community or off grid homestead of any kind. But I was also seeing how many good souls were finding ways to free themselves from the societal constructs in so many different ways, and was encouraged to hear success stories from so many embarking on journeys to create sustainable community. The work of Derick Broze has no doubt been indispensable in this regard, as he has motivated many to take practical steps to free themselves from the Matrix system and has helped many spiritual seekers and freedom fighters relocate to Mexico, which is currently much more freedom friendly and land is more affordable, so consequently there are a number of independent communities now in the works down there.
Seeing how different situations were working out for different people for those dedicated to creating a better and more sustainable future we all wish to to see helped me keep the faith that things would work out for me as well, because as summer turned to fall, none of the leads I had been following were going anywhere, and I wasn't finding much in the way of work as the money I had made in the early summer helping to set up a tipi camp was beginning to run dry, and then a downvote targeting campaign against my Hive account ensued, and the vast majority of my posts from that day until now were zeroed out, leaving me with literally no income and no way to get to warmer climates as winter began to approach. Ordinarily I would have left Montana sometime in the fall, and I had until then been surviving on crypto rewards from my blogging, but now I was facing a new reality where I did not even have enough money for gas to make the long trip south, whether to continue living in my yurt somewhere like Arizona or New Mexico, or maybe to spend a good chunk of the winter at the commune in California I had discovered last year, as I knew I was welcome back there at any time.
It had been a really good summer, apart from seeing the mandates adversely affect so many people including personal friends and family, but to be honest I was starting to freak out just a little. Following my heart had so far always taken me where I needed to be, most recently bringing me to Montana sooner than planned in the spring for several weeks of work,, but now everything seemed to be falling apart as I needed to leave the amazing campsite I had been at in the Tobacco Roots for most of the summer before I got snowed in, as I was at a high elevation up some steep roads that would become impassible or at the least treacherous as soon as the snows came.
I really wasn't excited about leaving such a beautiful, peaceful spot, but when I saw the first big snowstorm of the season in the forecast, I knew it was time to pack up and get out of the high mountains, although I really had nowhere to go and really didn't want to be living in my car in town, especially considering my car would be jam packed full of all my camping gear :)
I was fortunate to find a really nice accessible campsite in the forest closer to Bozeman and stayed there for a few weeks, during which time I enjoyed a big 16-inch snowstorm, and it was good to see some real snow again after so long...
Much to my surprise, all the snow melted except in the high peaks, and it has since been a relatively warm and dry fall for the region, with more rain than snow it seems. Nice for some late season bike rides and life in a yurt in the rocky mountain northwest, but my days of yurt life were numbered, as accessible public lands in the winter in these parts are few and far between, and more importantly there were forest rangers patrolling the area where I was, so I had to depart after several weeks. And without any leads or sizeable income coming my way, I still had no plan to get to more temperate climate for the winter, so into the city to sleep in my car it would be. It wasn't the first time I had slept in my car, but it would be the first time I was doing so without knowing how long it would last, rather than being just a night in the car on the way to my next destination.
Uncomfortable as it was, it turns out sleeping in the car isn't the end of the world, even when you've only got enough room to sleep across the front seats. I didn't sleep much the first night, but woke up feeling great; I was still alive, and still had my whole life in front of me, so it was time to figure out what I was going to do next, as I had no intention of making this a long-term situation if I had any choice about it. I felt stronger than ever that it was time to be done with the camping lifestyle for a while, at least the traveling aspect of it, and instead be working to build community. In the last few days at my last campsite I had really been resisting the idea of living in my car for any period of time, but finally accepted it, and that acceptance brought a great sense of inner peace and freedom. As soon as I let go of the way of life I had become so accustomed to, the next step of my journey immediately began to unfold before me.
On just the second day of living out of my car, I stumbled across a website with a directory of intentional communities around the world which I'm really not sure why I wasn't yet familiar with, but I do know it was a the desperation of the situation I was in that led me to find it. I've been looking into community as the way forward for humanity for several years now, so why I had never run across this website, IC.org, remains a mystery to me, but still feeling strongly that this is what I should be doing with my life, I was searching for anything that might lead me to a community looking for new members or people seeking help in creating a small community. I know with the state of our society right now that there were a great many who are looking to community as the solution, so it was only a matter of connecting with the right people, finding the right situation for me. After browsing through Facebook for a while and finding several interesting communities with pages there, a quick search engine search led me to the intentional community directory, and then I saw there was also a classifieds on the same website, and one ad really stood out and caught my attention. Not only was it the only one in Montana, a state that didn't seem to have much at all in the way of listed communities despite there being thousands across the country, but this was a newly forming community in search of people to help build it from the ground up - exactly what I had been dreaming of doing myself for quite a few years now. And based on what I was reading in the ad, it also seemed that the goals of those behind this community effort were closely aligned with my own reasons for building community, so I sent a quick email just to see what would come of it.
I also continued browsing through the listings and saw several other communities across the country that were open to visitors and new members and looked like they would at the least be worth visiting, if not joining more permanently. As things worked out, however, conversations with the folks in Montana went well, and before I knew it, I had been invited to visit the western Montana property and get to know those already living there. It was a two week process, emailing back and forth and setting up the visit, but the whole time I had a feeling that something was going to come of it. It just felt right. Sure enough, at least for the time being, it absolutely was. Upon making the 4 hour drive west and arriving at the little cabin in the woods, I was warmly welcomed and enjoyed my weekend visit, which was extended when I was invited to stay another night, and then through Thanksgiving, and then indefinitely.
So here I am, at an amazing property with a place to stay for the winter, likely longer if all goes well, with good people who are at the beginning stages of building community from the ground up. I never would have dreamed this is how I would have found the right community opportunity for me, or that it would be in Montana of all places, but so far it feels right, and the landowners are blessed, as one couldn't ask for a more perfect piece of Montana land for doing what they are trying to do with it. From the creek flowing right through the property to the magic of scattered old growth cedars and the peace and quiet of a rural wooded property, and plenty of open garden space to an abundance of firewood and available lumber for future buildings in the form of dead trees, it really is an ideal property for building a self sustainable community.
In the short week I've been here I've already been able to help with some projects, and get to know those who are here, the couple who own the property and a family who also just moved up to join the venture a few months ago. Dakota may appreciate this latest turn of events more so than I, and has enjoyed befriending the neighbor's dog who comes over and plays with her all the time now.
At the end of the day, it feels good to feel like I'm right where I'm supposed to be right now, and finally part of a community once again, maybe this time for a lot longer than just a month. Crazy how the Universe works to manifest our dreams and purposes in life, almost never in a way would imagine or plan... And in this case, as fate would have it, when the Hive thought police decided to target me for my dissent against the establishment march of tyranny, I'm sure they never imagined it would lead me straight to a place where I would be able to fight the establishment tyranny in the most direct and efficient way - the creation of community independent of the societal power structures responsible for oppressing humanity.
And within this story lies a powerful lesson I've learned time and time again, the power of stepping out in faith, and letting go. When we let go of our need to control and plan every aspect of our life and instead follow our intuition, trust in the divine Power higher than ourselves and allow life to guide us, possibilities we never could have imagined open up before us and the Universe works for us and our highest good to bring us our heart's desire. Accepting the journey when the going gets rough isn't always easy, but it is most often during those times that we learn and grow the quickest, and the sooner we learn the lesson the difficulty is teaching us, the sooner that particular difficulty will pass. And then, at least a pattern I've noticed throughout my life, the periods of greatest darkness are always followed by the brightest days. The night is always darkest before the dawn, but the light always eventually shines on us again, a reminder that whether we are aware of it or not, life is beautiful, and there is beauty even in what seems like the worst of situations, although we often don't see it.