By: Delia Stephens
Dear Mom and Dad,
I’m writing from an anarchist, egalitarian living community in central Virginia. Tomorrow, we are going to pack up our things and head to go teach kids about the physics of light in Mineral, Virginia. Full disclosure: my teaching philosophy is “just wing it.” So we’ll see how that goes, I guess.
Over the past week, I’ve become a hyperfit professional cyclist. Just kidding. I have a sunburn and my butt hurts. But the people we’ve met along the way have made the minor discomforts totally worth it. Already, I’ve learned so much about people from all over the country — their life stories, why their paths intersect with mine, what makes them happy — and I’ve genuinely never felt more fulfilled. But my butt really does hurt.
So far on this trip, I have:
Bullied Budget rental into giving us a van
Lost the keys to said van (sorry Annie)
Jettisoned half of my belongings into a poorly packed USPS box that will hopefully get somewhere eventually (fingers crossed)
Biked ~70 miles, which is much greater than my previous grand total of 8 once when I was 12
Today, we biked about 40 miles from Fredericksburg, VA to Somewhere Else, VA. The hills were casual, and my legs are feeling pretty good (fingers crossed for tomrrow morning). We ended the day with an afternoon thundershower and got fairly drenched just in time to roll up to our next home. We were greeted by an incredibly kind soul who goes by Jay who warmly showed us the facilities — the chickens, the construction projects (including a beautiful art space/warehouse/living room), the business that they run out of the commune. We shared a delicious dinner of beef, bread, and salad, and then went back to run through workshops and clean up before bed.
I haven’t been taking as many pictures as I meant to, but here are some of my favorites from the trip so far. Expect more documentation as I figure out what does and doesn’t work in terms of pictures and memories.
TL;DR: Still alive. Not surviving, but thriving! Meeting incredible people with incredible stories from all over the country.