New Standard of Living Blossoms at 'EcoVillage'

Loudoun Subdivision's Residents Bond Through Social, Environmental Pact

Not far from the newly sprouted subdivisions of Loudoun County, a gravel path winds through tall grasses toward a cluster of homes where life is lived differently than in most places.

Follow the path to the end and find the home of Grady O'Rear and his wife, Tena Meadows O'Rear. Go around their organic garden and step inside and onto their floor, made of recycled fence post. Then check out the natural linoleum floor in their bathroom (so natural, it's an "almost edible product," Grady O'Rear says), and don't miss the toilet ("low flush, but one flush," he adds proudly).

And after that, go meet their neighbors. The O'Rears know them all.

At EcoVillage, which the O'Rears helped found, the idea is to live in harmony with Earth, and with one another. Residents have forged an uncommonly tight-knit neighborhood, with covenants designed to foster a sense of community, and promoted an equally remarkable devotion to protecting the environment, with homes and land-use rules that take nature into consideration.

"It's important for us to grow our sense of larger self," said Grady O'Rear, 53. "How can we be more aware and mindful of one another as human beings, and how can we be more aware and mindful of the environment?"

EcoVillage is a good place to start, residents say. Three years after the first family moved in, residents profess an adoration for their community, one that they say rejects the smothering isolation that is all too common in modern suburbia while also embracing an environmentally sensitive way of living.

Located near Lovettsville in northern Loudoun, EcoVillage is among the first of several nearby "co-housing" communities -- small-scale neighborhoods that operate on the basis of active resident participation and typically make decisions by consensus. In the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia, at least four such communities now operate, and at least three more are planned, according to Mid-Atlantic Cohousing. The idea behind them is a neighborliness and togetherness not known in the cardboard cutouts of the rest of suburbia.

But EcoVillage has gotten off to a relatively slow start. The O'Rears acknowledge that the community remains small, with only eight households. Thirteen more lots have been sold or are under contract, and the couple visualizes a total of 50 homes before the community is complete.

"We are still in the very early stages of this development. It's probably premature to draw humongous conclusions," said Tena Meadows O'Rear, 55. "But in terms of village life, it's a rich social experience. In terms of the environmental goals, we're definitely making progress. I would not say we've arrived at some Utopian point. I personally feel a sense, and I think the community feels a sense, of pride in the efforts we've made."

Don't Call Them Hippies

To many, the marriage of community and ecological principles brings to mind the 1960s -- an association that makes the residents of EcoVillage cringe. They say it's important to note they are not hippy freaks; they do have private lives.

Among others, they are a part-time teacher, a retired psychologist, a software developer, a Japanese tutor, a health care consultant. What they have all coalesced around is the idea that the environment should be treasured.

"Part of the way for me to be fulfilled in life is to develop networks around me that support things I believe in," said Phill Thomas, a computer consultant who moved to EcoVillage with his wife, Lily, and their son, Henry.

He has developed those networks with ease at EcoVillage, where residents have agreed to live by certain rules for what they consider the greater good.

If residents want to plant something in their garden, for instance, the plant cannot be of any variety. It must be of a type native to the land, and it must be grown organically. No pesticides, no herbicides.