Another Way

"It's a little too late to do major salvation of the planet," Arjuna, who is 60, said. "We're screwed."

Will we face a worldwide economic depression?

"That may be the best-case scenario," Greg said.

"Worldwide depression is what many of us have been hoping for for the last 30 or 40 years," Arjuna said.

Wipe the slate clean. Start over. It's an appealing concept when you're already in the community-invention business.

One night in the Hut Hamlet, a 37-year-old Earthaven member named Robert Carran talked about the coming collapse.

"Something will come to a head in the next five years. Definitely in 10 years. It could happen tomorrow. There's a term bandied about called Roving Cannibal Hordes."

He didn't explain it fully, but the gist seemed to be that, someday, when the mainstream collapses, people will roam the countryside in search of food and energy supplies and, who knows, any source of meat. If the food supply collapses, Robert said, "I'm ready to eat some bugs. Run up in the hills and eat some bugs."

I questioned that. He backed off.

"I'm not ready to eat bugs," he admitted.

It's all a work in progress. There's no script. They're making up a lot of it as they go, and there are basic questions they're still trying to answer. How many people can be supported by 320 acres of land? What is the right number of people for a village? What does it actually mean, to be "sustaining"?

And finally, how do you create -- out here in the sticks, with only a tiny labor pool and very little energy -- a functioning economy?