Horizon

By Johnny T., a new resident at Rah Rah

December 11, 2024

There's a fresh coat of powder on the old stone wall that traces the upper slope. New snow on top the old snow from that Thanksgiving storm. Yesterday Dave brought up a big yellow shovel, saying “Eventually you're going to need this.” Winter isn't the best time to move anywhere in the northeast, much less to a place where most of the appeal is being outdoors. Still it only took a couple weeks to settle in. The house where I live isn't finished yet but it's warm and well-lit and has everything you'd need. I've got the rhythm now. Days are easy, pared back and simplified. Nights I sleep like a rock.

Coming to a place like Rah Rah is maybe not as much of a left turn for me as it might be for some. I've moved around a lot over the last decade and lived in a few “unconventional” arrangements. Mostly these were work-exchanges, a couple on farms, one on a homestead of sorts where the accommodation was a yurt with a king-sized bed and coffee maker but no running water. Part of the motivation for these arrangements was to learn. To learn about food production, about building, about that nebulous and now very buzzwordy concept of “alternative lifestyles.”

But it was also about money. I'd spent a lot of my twenties traveling and prioritizing creative projects and so to make up for lost time (by which I mean: time I could have spent saving money) I did things like this in addition to working a full-time job. The goal for a while now has been to get onto a piece of land and I don't think anyone needs me to go into detail about the extortionate cost of housing and real-estate these days. It's become one of the more universally defining aspects of life in this era.

So those were always temporary arrangements, things done with a view of preparation for something else. As I'm rounding out my first month at Rah Rah though, I find myself for the first time in a very long time not wondering about what to do next or where to go after this. For the first time in a long time I can see the plan right where I am. This place has an horizon.

Snow notwithstanding, it's tempting to imagine what spots a greenhouse could best catch the low winter sun, where the chicken coop might go, where a solar kiln, where a small barn, where a shed for a saw mill. I'm trying not to get too far ahead of myself, because obviously, if this place becomes its vision, many others will arrive and have their own ideas. And with that comes all the challenges and improvisation of collaborative development.

That's what makes Rah Rah something else. It's an invitation. The reality of which will take time of course, and a lot of work. What it offers in return is an opportunity to do more than just scrape by and subsist. It offers the possibility of actually living well in spite of the looming nightmare circus that is the current political, environmental, and economic prospects.

We all see the world is changing, becoming more exclusionary and transactional. Cyber capital is moving to close off the last few avenues of working-class security, public institutions are being vandalized and gutted if not outright dismantled, profit-driven AI's have begun to creep up out of their underground water-cooled data centers and into the background of everyday life. Rah Rah in particular, and intentional community in general, poses an argument that the best way to navigate these new currents is not to become a cynical consumer or a lone wolf prepper with a twitchy trigger finger, but to build resiliency through tangible connection and shared values.

It's an experiment to be sure, but it's one with a view.