Twin Oaks

100 people live at Twin Oaks. They live in community, sharing everything from their incomes to their meals. Walking through their wooded trails you will find the old and the young, the hippie and the practical, the quiet and the loud, and a lot in between. The community funds itself by selling tofu, hammocks, seeds, and other projects.
I had the pleasure of staying at Twin Oaks for about five days. While there I cut potatoes, weeded, spread ocra (tofu waiste product), and even mucked out trenches for tofu water run off. Twin Oaks is a happening place, everyone else was much busier than I was. There are work hours to fill and some party or get together is always going on, or accommodations for a visitor (like me) have to be worked out. Twin Oaks is far from a dull place.
I was lucky enough to participate in the pagan celebration of the spring equinox:
The group of us all held hands and began casting the circle. We thought of the expanse of earth beneath our feet and the endless air above our heads. We eat from the earth and breath from the sky; we are part of it all. In silence we walked through the woods and reached an open grassy hill. I stepped on the green grass. Passing through the line of trees I could see the deep blue sky and felt the warmth of the sun. As I walked up that hill I was filled with a thrill of life. I felt as if I were flying on a roller coaster, as every sense reeled with excitement. I was merely walking on grass, but in that moment I knew what I lived for. Life without interaction with the earth seems pointless, made up, and arbitrary. Experiencing the real world is a feeling unique in it's wholeness.