drop the map

"During life transitions, the obscuring stories break down and what's missing in life becomes clearer."

"To exit [the old story], we are going to have to drop the map and look around."

"Returning to essence, we regain the ability to act from essence.  Returning to the space between stories, we can choose from freedom and not from habit."

-- Charles Eisenstein, The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible


Can we start any journey without a mental map of it drawn out, already held tight in the hand?  Not just where, but when and what and how, all presupposed?  I keep thinking about my friend Ted, years ago in Santa Fe, a fearless Sagittarian idealist and explorer.  He told me about a road trip he and his brother took where, at the beginning, they made this agreement:  we'll take three left turns, two rights, and another left, and the place where we end up is where we'll camp.  He said they found some pretty amazing campsites that way.  I thought it was a great idea.  But at the same time, I had to ask, what if the road that went left at that second-to-last right turn was the one that called out to you with something more?

It's happened.  I could write volumes on the worlds that opened up because of those last-minute route changes.  As well as entire parallel lives that flew over and were gone in a glimpse, in the moment of not making them.  Surely all of us who have travelled could.

I just spent two weeks in a town that had never been a so much as a mark on mind's or imagination's maps.  It was an unexpectedly useful experience.  Imagination would have steered me a bit further south or east, homing in on the Rockies' deep music of rain, wind through pines, and whitewater rivers.  Mind endorsed the northeasterly drive, where a greater concentration of farms offered work-trades, and one in particular held out the kind of offer that has long entailed a bold typeface on the map.  But an actual look at that place showed it empty of the elements of place and potential I needed to find there. Montrose, Colorado turned out to be where the story was taking me in this chapter. Once I let the story disentangle itself from all the lovely tales of other lives that, at least for now, are not part of this trip.

Those obscuring stories, as it turns out, can be quite beautiful.  A few of them have kept me moving most of my life.  Literally.  Going in circles, maybe.  Like the one that has me living out life in a sweet Colorado mountain town, one of those tiny places with one main street that closes up at sundown, and locals who all drive muddy Toyota 4x4s, and no tourists except those who honor the wild country like it deserves.  Montrose is not that town.   It sits on a flat plain, surrounded by farms, the mountains just visible on a hazy horizon to the south. Two weeks' closer look gives it a spot more toward the middle of the spectrum of places lived:  not the traditional extreme of Carlsbad, where I went to high school, though its one-street brick downtown brings that sad place to mind.  And not the sensory-overload nonstop party of Portland or Boulder, either.  Which -- the surprising part -- is a very good thing.  There's room to listen to the moment here.  To honor the needs of body and spirit, when they're not pulled in so many simultaneous directions by need and want and distraction.  To just spend the afternoon on a long bike ride along the river, and maybe helping a neighbor clean their yard or build a chicken coop.  To catch up on a few good books, and get acquainted with the small but inspiring efforts of local nonprofits, and trade work on a farm for food and some excellent stories. To consider choices made out of deep listening to the soul, rather than coerced by outward and momentary necessity. These two weeks have been a right turn in the road worth taking.

Worth, it most of all, for the space that unmet expectations turn out to leave.  The kind of space in which essential things speak in the only, quiet voice which they have, and are finally heard.  Through unstructured time.  Through sleep and dreams.  Through hands in the soil.  Through three deer at twilight, just off the bike path, gifting me with a long look and a slow, fearless walk in the other direction.

Drop the map.  Maybe a gesture of exasperation.  Perhaps of surrender.  Maybe a gust of wind picks it up and carries it a few yards to the west, and when you run to grab it, you look up, and finally see the bend in the road that you want to be following.  Or even this:  the wind vaults it up and away from you, off over a mesa, and sensation returns to the feet that stand, still, on earth's surface. Connected with guidance enough.

transition2

“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” --  Leo Tolstoy

Here's one way (of many I could mention) that Transition Lab is already a success story in my book, though the program -- and my acquaintance with it -- are still young.  Six days ago, I arrived in a town where I'd never spent more than the few minutes it took to drive through on the way to someplace else.  I didn't know anybody.  I had no job, very little money, and no local information other than the address of the best local coffee shop I'd looked up online, which turned out to have gone out of business.  If I'd had nothing more than first impressions to go on (see previous post), I'd probably have kept right on driving.  But I did have two points of contact, thanks to an email a few weeks earlier to the founder of the TL program.  Today, after less than a week here, I have a peaceful place to live, meaningful work, food and basic needs met with very simple effort.  Two people I'd cautiously (since that's how us introverts are) call friends, who offer daily stimulating conversations and a fast track to the well-connected local's perspective.  The acquaintance of a dozen people engaged in creating community together, and more chances to be social and share fun projects than I can fit on my calendar. In other places, an introvert like me took a year or two to connect with all of that.  Here, these pieces were already in place, and the door was standing open.

When Transition Lab links with the participation of Time Bank of the Rockies, a whole new set of possibilities opens up.  "Extras" often out of reach to a struggling worker -- natural healthcare, massages, yoga classes, lessons in various new skills -- become simply a matter of deciding where to spend a little time offering something that helps another person out.  And the freedom from chasing rent, provided by Transition's "skilled resident" exchange,  makes that time another form of abundance within reach.  In the space of a few days, then, I've moved from being a worker in survival mode, with barely the energy for self-preservation, to an available and empowered member of a community full of choices regarding "quality of life".  And this power comes not only from such tangible benefits as mentioned above, but from a rapid integration into a larger circle of acquaintance, and a point of connection with their goals and projects within a context of mutual support. When I think of the time, energy, and emotion I and many others have spent just reaching the basics, while our talents, ideas, enthusiasm, and desire to share go to waste, I grieve that loss.  Which is the community's loss as well as ours.  But of course, I have to also celebrate its potential recovery, in such a network as is being created here.  When I imagine what could be done, for givers like me and our chosen communities, if our first meeting occurred on such terms of ease and empowerment...it becomes a life entirely different than the one of separate struggle which I've lived for the last twenty years.  When I relive the too-familiar story of the stranger arriving in town, but find that stranger not only welcomed but immediately engaged in the valuable work at hand, her particular hopes and strengths connected with met needs...well, that's a story with an entirely new plot.

And on the subject of empowerment, I can't recommend enough the experience of thinking, planning, and feeling in terms of time and barter instead of money.  Everyone should get a chance at this.  And could, with the simple actions that would put these structures in place in more communities.  Timebanking is definitely not a one-for-one transaction.   My previous understanding was that an hour of a service I could essentially live without was probably not worth an hour of "my" (meaning my earning potential's) precious time.  But the possibility set quickly gets bigger than that -- and a lot more fun.  A participant is quickly reminded of the more subtle wealth of connection and support, elsewhere termed "social capital", found in an active network of neighbors and friends.  The positive feedback loop that meaningful work, mutual support and fun create is an exponential, rather than a linear, formula for satisfaction.  And the disruption of society's regular story of competition, scarcity and separateness creates a space in which entire new stories can be written.  The kind we mostly just dream about, so far. 

Some of these concepts will take a little longer for people to grasp.  Some, when seen and enacted in the tangible, are immediately within reach.  And those of us for whom journey, community, and dream are already part of one and the same long narrative...we understand, at once.  This is a story we're more than ready to help write.

transition

I arrived here two days ago, bringing little knowledge of what to expect, to participate in a fairly unique human experiment. 'Here' is Montrose, Colorado. A new place on my travel log: I'd passed through once, on some other roadtrip, but without stopping. This town isn't a place I'd normally consider stopping. Coming in from the south, the mountain-loving traveller (already mourning the San Juans receding in the rearview) is met with trophy vacation homes waving American flags, large conventional fields of alfalfa and corn, and a gauntlet of big-box stores giving way to a traditional brick downtown district. An hour's scouting shows none of the signs of life that normally open this heart to a new city: a co-op, a lively central plaza, an active art or music or poetry scene, coffee shops with scuffed furniture and a free-book shelf. A white SUV pulls up next to me at a red light with a bumper sticker that reads "I don't trust the liberal media!" I'm not due to meet my hosts until 4 p.m., and am starting to wonder what I'm doing here.

Transition Lab found its way onto my computer screen a couple years ago, a definite sign of life. The project's founder, Russell Evans, offers an original and welcome premise: how much more fully could we be community and be ourselves, if we significantly reduced the pressures with which our normal social and economic paradigm weights us down? What if, instead of the ruthless individual struggle that leaves many of us shearing off dreams one by one in the desperate effort just to feed and house ourselves, we suddenly had a place to live, and could focus on more important goals? What if, rather than sacrifice all thoughts of meaningful projects or community involvement in order to have a career and make the mortgage, we found the extra space in our homes shared by an energetic co-conspirator, ready to help us fill in those neglected efforts? What if, having removed these very tangible blocks to creativity and vitality, we found whole new rooms of ourselves available to inhabit? How might we all breathe deep, stretch cramped muscles, and advance our gifts, skills, and hearts' desires to the next level?

These are the questions that Transition Lab attempts to answer, in ways that are refreshingly immediate, practical, and essential (as in, they get to the heart of the matter). It does so first by removing economic obstacles, as described above, and then by speeding up the process of learning, connection, and mutual support -- the avenues to those goals and gifts -- through a solid network of creative barter and educational opportunity. It's a surprisingly simple model, in essence. One that almost any city could follow -- since, as Russell points out, almost any city has homeowners with a spare room and too little spare time, and workers whose time and work would be vastly better spent outside of pure survival concerns. At the same time, it's really kind of a wonder that it's happening, of all places, here. Other, more overtly progressive communities might make more obvious the pleasant, shared escape routes from the capitalist-individualist paradigm. Portland's City Repair, or the vibrant farmer and artisan markets there and in Eugene, Boulder, Santa Fe. The lovely cohousing developments in those and other towns, available to those who can afford them.  Even Albuquerque, in the last year, has gifted its citizens with the Railyards and a Free Market downtown. Across this country, towns seem to divide pretty cleanly between forward-thinking and right-brained expressions, and, well, the opposite. Between those willing to try new (even risky) ideas in the hope of improving the quality of life for all present, and those that seem content, collectively, to tough it out in the same old, separate struggle. And, often, as well, in the same old divides of income and "quality of life" which prevent real community -- a diversity of people with room to breathe and move into self-expression and mutual support -- from ever having a chance.


But as Russell told me yesterday, "I'm doing it here, because if it can work here, it can work anywhere". And it does seem to be working. I arrived to a most pleasant welcome from people I'd never met, in a town where I didn't know anyone. That in itself is a departure from the regular script, when one thinks of energies spent just getting situated in a new place, around finding a home and meeting people. I was shown my room in the home of the president of the local Time Bank, for which I'll trade 10 hours a week on projects she wants help with. Some of my hours may even be transferable to the timebank back home. I'll spend another 20 helping out with what Russell's doing, and being introduced to more faces of the community and of this effort. Yesterday, this involved working all morning at a 40-year-old organic farm, and taking home a half share of beautiful produce. This afternoon my host and I will help an older woman build a chicken coop. From the look of things so far, in stimulating conversations with both my hosts, I'll also get to help voice the useful questions, valid frustrations, and little insights that will continue to give shape and direction to the program.


Transition Lab is only a few years old, and is still taking shape and, hopefully, growing into its potential. There's an extended program every summer that offers an even more engaging foray into the ideas mentioned above, and looks like it could really get interesting in the shifts and openings that it might invite its participants into. I hope to hear of these worthy ideas sprouting up in other communities, from the seeds planted in this unlikely place. See more at http://transition-lab.com.