A friend from Alaska told me once “People think nature is so charming and they are deluding themselves…nature is fucking horrifying”.
I think both can be true, but I won’t argue that with him. He’s been within meters of a wild bear multiple times and he’s seen multiple tourists go off into the woods to find the bus that Chris McCandless (from Into the Wild) and never return. He’s seen frostbite and he can name half a dozen insects that can kill you.
Our conversations were on my mind on the way home from the eco village this weekend, a place two hours walk and an hour train ride from where I live.
This time I went with a friend and we took a bus 1/3 of the way, as far as public transportation would take us.
I suggested we try hitchhiking and the very first car picked us up. The driver happened to be going to the very same place, and we were lucky he picked us up because to walk the full 2/3s of the way there would have been brutal. Very steep roads and we would have been an hour late for the event.
We got there and both communities in the village gave us a kind of explanation of how the communities formed. A van life community and an eco village made of 99% recycled materials. It was interesting but way too long, I had already seen explanations online.
Good thing we understand Japanese though, my friend and I were the only foreigners there and while we may have been able to ask questions in english, I doubt they wanted their explanation to be any longer. Imagine an 8 hour intro 😆 3 hours was already too much.
At the end of the explanations we went out and walked around the farm and got a tour of the living spaces. I ate some blueberries straight from the tree, and imagined myself living there for two weeks as I’ve been thinking of doing.
It was starting to feel like paradise…. Then I got my first taste of Country Shock.
First one, then two, then finally three. Three people bitten by leeches. I thought they lived in the water! Tree leeches!?! Wtf is that.
They put salt on them and they came right out, then they squeezed out some blood just to be safe.
My sheltered suburban mind worried about potential diseases but I did some research when I got home (no inrernet there) and basicaly they are only dangerous if they throw up inside of you, which they do sometimes if you pour salt on them. I guess thats why you squeeze out some blood afterward.
Ok
Ok
No big deal.
Except now I am feeling itches all over and checking to make sure there is nothing sucking my blood.
1/200 in a week feels like nice odds to me. 3/25….in one outing….I don’t like those odds. That means I will almost definetly get sucked if I live out there.
The sheltered little suburban boy in me comes out.
It was a fun night. We kind of announced we would need a ride to the station and one woman offered to drive us later. In the meantime we ate curry and talked to a bunch of other people there.
The place has it’s own currency and economy. It’s funny, I could imagine what that might look like so much better thanks to playing around with crypto. A good way to fund group projects within the community, almost like a DAO because some people like holding/using the currency. The value is tied to the japanese yen for now but i am guessing some people are willing to give a discount much more easily if you use the community currency.
It was fascinating how using the currency felt so different from using Yen. I realized its similar at Hive, and that there is so much emotional baggage tied to national currencies. I cant really.
I feel that people are much more giving when it’s in a playful new currency that is more about community than speculative investing. I felt more giving. I also felt as if people spent money more willingly and there was a general sense of abundance when using a currency that is backed by the trust people have in the community. It also felt like we were donating to the development and overall health of the community by using it because buying it puts more money in the shared communtiy fund that functions a bit like a DAO.
I don’t think this kind of thing would work well at all unless there is an immense amount of trust within the community. You can’t build up such a free flowing community wirh its own economy without deep connections and a lot of meaningful interactions occuring in a space like this. I am sure many places have failed with similar concepts.
I wonder if the organizer owns bitcoin. I’ll have to ask him next time.
I had a bunch of good chats with the people there about their passions and reasons for visiting. One woman told me a story that shook the suburban boy in me to the core.
Just a week ago she saw a bear casually walking toward her on a narrow hiking path. She had no where to go and didn’t want the bear following behind her so she just acted like she didn’t see the bear and walked right passed it. She said she could feel it’s fur against her and she could hear it sniffing her but she just kept going as if it wasn’t even there.
!
This is the kind of story that makes me wonder if I am ready for the countryside! I’m not sure I have it in me to stay calm and act rationally in that situation.
I starting thinking that I might belong near the beach, I’ve lived a pretty bare bones life near the beach before. The air can get a little salty and humid but besides that I love it.
In any case, I don’t want to give up on nature so easily so for now I think I’ll just avoid going off too deep in the mountains without either hitching a ride or making arrangements for someone to come pick me up.
It’s good the face my fears. Still don’t want to face a bear in person, but seeing some real dangers and natural discomforts helped me appreciate both society and nature more.
I also noticed that my fear of the dark subsided substantially when met with the idea of realistic physical danger. Perhaps my irrational fear is a result of being too safe and comfortable. I don’t need to put myself in danger but I want to keep facing all my fears. It’s the fastest way to evolve!
A very inspiring weekend!
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