Jasper Baton Lydon (they/them) is an award-winning researcher, writer, and creator focusing on America’s alternative communities. You can follow their work, including a weekly newsletter and a forthcoming narrative nonfiction book, on most social media platforms @jasperbatonlydon.
On a muggy summer afternoon in 2023, I was standing beside a pond with five near-strangers in their 40s and 50s. Before I knew what was happening, they all gave each other a nod of agreement, stripped nude and cannonballed into the stagnant water.
At that moment, I remembered the warning I’d been given when I arrived: “The pond is a clothing-optional area — only go there if you’re comfortable seeing naked people.” As my new friends splashed around, I argued with myself about the potential pros and cons of joining them. Pro: We’d just finished playing a game of ultimate frisbee and the cool water was tempting. Con: I wasn’t exactly feeling ready to get naked in front of all of these people. Another con: I’d heard a rumor that there was a rotting animal carcass at the bottom of the pond.literally. I stood awkwardly on the shore, water up to my ankles, before scurrying back to the mini-RV I’d been living in for several months for a cold shower. I had just finished another day of interviews. Most of the 50-or-so residents in this village had just ended their workday. Their professions ranged from life-coaching to firefighting to finance, while others forwent paid work, and instead subsisted off the land by selling dairy or produce to their neighbors.This was one stop on my three-month trip visiting alternative communities across the United States for my senior thesis at Princeton University. I wanted to learn how these radical groups are promoting sustainable lifestyles, so I conducted 50 hourslong interviews with a wide variety of folks, from off-grid anarchists in New Mexico to urban farmers in Detroit. Some of these collectives refer to themselves as “intentional communities” or “ecovillages”; all of them are focused on living more communally and sustainably than most people in America currently do.Before the trip, people kept asking me, “Are you worried about your safety?” Their question wasn’t out of line. I was a young, feminine-looking trans person traveling alone in an RV, but I was excited about my adventure. Friends and family warned me about being drugged. “Don’t drink any tea they offer you,” one family member said. “They might slip something in it.”Despite the risks, I had to see whether these experiments in alternative lifestyles might offer answers to some of the most pressing issues of our time, from climate change to the housing crisis to the loneliness epidemic. Finding communities to visit was easy enough. While some keep their presence hidden, many have active social media presences to recruit visitors. However, even the groups who welcome outsiders usually first require some back-and-forth over email and the phone to ensure your intentions are good. Many of the groups I visited appear quite mainstream from the outside. LA Ecovillage, for example, looks like an unassuming apartment complex in downtown Los Angeles. You’d only see their communal kitchen, clucking chickens and water catchment system if you were invited into the sunny courtyard nestled between the units.Other communities were … less typical. Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Missouri, where I encountered the skinny dipping pond, looks more like a collection of Hobbit Houses from “Lord of the Rings,” with low-lying, hand-built dwellings made of reclaimed wood and cob . Some people there jokingly called themselves “dirty hippies.” Others referred to themselves as communitarians, environmentalists, radicals and dreamers. During my week at Dancing Rabbit, people welcomed me into their homes, sharing “family dinners” and even a birthday party. I chatted with community members amid cheeping baby chickens and shared a homemade chocolate cake. Most nights, a 70-something trans man named Squirrel invited me over to his home to join his I saw a handful of children of varying ages in the ecovillage. I learned they attended the Quaker school nearby and some of the teens went to boarding school.No one in this community seemed pressed for money. The land had been bought decades ago by a group of friends who pooled their resources together. The group produces a significant proportion of their own food and rarely ever purchases consumer goods, which means many residents’ only expense is taxes.Everything in Dancing Rabbit was modified to maximize sustainability, which left me feeling both awe and intense culture shock. We’re not talking the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” kind of sustainable, we’re talking the “poop in buckets” kind.Their “humanure” system encourages going No. 2 into buckets filled with sawdust. The buckets are then processed by some poor sap so the waste can be used as fertilizer in the gardens. No. 1 is a different story: Human pee can be used as fertilizer, so everyone is expected to pee outside. “You can just find a bush — they’re all around,” my tour guide told me when I first arrived at the ecovillage. Dropping a squat in a neighborhood of dozens of strangers was one of the biggest adjustments for me. Fortunately, they had a lush, curving plant archway neatly labeled “Pee Tunnel” that offered privacy in a pinch. Less fortunately, I realized a few days later that any time I walked around barefoot, I might be treading on human pee.At meal times, I was welcomed to join various kitchen co-ops, groups of a dozen or so people who shared hand-cooked meals of lentils and beans around rough-hewn wooden tables, no doubt made from reclaimed wood. At the end of each meal, they picked their ceramic bowls up in unison, raised them to their faces, and started licking. In order to guarantee not a speck of food is wasted, you are expected to literally lick your bowl clean. As unusual as some of the practices are in intentional communities like Dancing Rabbit, there is something about the simplicity they offer that is deeply appealing — and not just to me. As Americans feel the pains of exorbitant housing costs, environmental instability and social isolation, interest in alternative lifestyles has. From co-housing in Colorado to cooperative farms in New York, residents saw a huge spike in interest during the first Trump presidency andEach year, hundreds of thousands of people attend webinars hosted by the Foundation for Intentional Community to get some insight into what their lives might be like in one of these places. There are already thousands of these communities across the U.S., and you might be surprised to learn how close one is to you. Some people are drawn in by the promise of collective parenting. Others are interested in disaster preparedness or exploring polyamory and “swinger” lifestyles. Some want to pursue a “cottagecore” fantasy. Everyone has their own reason to disconnect from mainstream culture and connect with like-minded individuals in a community that feels more intentional. A row of mailboxes for the residents at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Rutledge, Missouri ."They’re lined up outside the community, since cars are not allowed within it," the author writes.I felt that pull, too. While I never fully acclimated to Dancing Rabbit’s norms, I did see the beauty in them. For the first time in years, I was free from the constant tug of guilt I feel partaking in modern consumer society, where each time I eat a meal or drive my car, I know my choices are contributing to the climate crisis. In this tiny community in Missouri, my daily existence was actually having a neutral-to-positive impact on the world around me. The food I ate was healthy and nutritious, and my waste products were recycled back into the land. The more time I spent there, the more I couldn’t help but wonder if I would be happier living out my life in the countryside, away from the harms of social media and the existential anxieties of our time. Could I really achieve a romanticized ideal of the “simple” life and escape all of the complications of our modern society? After just a week at Dancing Rabbit, I recognized most of the people I passed, and they always greeted me warmly. There were genuine smiles, long days outside, and a fulfilling sense of nutritiousness.Despite the warnings I’d been given, I felt safe. Intentional communities tend to have incredibly low rates of crime — theft isn’t common when you know all your neighbors. Drugs were surprisingly absent from each community I visited. I saw far less cannabis use in these “hippie communes” than I did strolling down the streets of Boulder, Colorado. These groups are also careful to avoid any behaviors that could cause them to be labeled as “cults.” Their leaders are elected and have term limits, and people can leave these communities whenever they’d like. Still, after my months of immersive research on intentional communities was done, I didn’t end up joining any of them. While some people appeared to thrive in the small community environments I visited, others seemed quite lonely. One man at Dancing Rabbit asked me to sleep with him while I was there. He was in his 40s, and I was 22. His offer was polite, as was his acceptance of my rejection, but I could see a tint of desperation in his eyes — the kind that might come from living in the middle of rural Missouri, single and alone, for decades, with limited access to outsiders.My interviewees were the first to admit to me that it’s a tough lifestyle that requires a lot of hard work — and that it isn’t a fit for everyone.I eventually found what was, for me, a happy medium between the intensities of these modern “communes” and the intensities of mainstream, hyper-individualized life. I now share a co-op style house in San Francisco with six people and three pets. Maybe one day I’ll try living in an intentional community again. If I do, I’ll take my time finding somewhere that feels right for me.During my last meal at Dancing Rabbit, it was 75 degrees outside, and a dozen people, ages 14 to 60, sat in the shade chatting. Ducks, baby chickens, a fluffy white dog, and a tiny white cat, both quite scruffy, wandered around our legs. Cows grazed in the distance. Despite the many flies, it was overwhelmingly peaceful. I may not have found a home in this particular community, but my time with these kind, hopeful people taught me the importance of building my own community of friends and family, making sustainable changes where I feel comfortable, and embracing unconventional approaches to address what’s happening in this country — and around the world — right now.Note: Some names and details have been changed to protect the identity of individuals in this essay. Jasper Baton Lydon is an award-winning researcher, writer, and creator focusing on America’s alternative communities. You can follow their work, including a weekly newsletter and a forthcoming narrative nonfiction book, on most social media platforms @jasperbatonlydon.Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? 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