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able to survive in the woods with nothing more than a knife. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle seemed the most natural way to live, and Eric eyed his uncle’s sixty acres as a near perfect territory for a young buck to roam free. This shifted in college, though. Given that there are 7 billion people on the planet, sustainable settlements, not hunter-gatherer tribes, are the best way to collectively survive. Now his passion is for growing edibles, and he dreams of growing some portion of the many thousands of indigenous varieties. Give him a growing season and some ground and he’ll be testing out crops and methods.
    Britt, a wanderer and explorer, like me, has always had multiple interests, from shamanism to surfing. She met Eric in a class at Western Washington University in Bellingham—Eric was the student facilitator and Britt was the student—and felt a sense of destiny and deep love. Their vision of a sustainability center on Whidbey matched mine—and it was a concrete step we could take immediately.
    I put my restless, creative mind on finding land to fulfill their vision—and include me in it. It was then that Ms. Frugality started saying wildly imprudent things, like “What’s money for anyway?” and “I want to die with a dime in my pocket and not a day later” and (even worse) “I can take out a home equity loan. Why not?” Clearly I was in love with the vision and these passionate young people.
    We almost bought a ten-acre property with another couple, but the deal fell through. I then tried to buy a hundred-year-old church with a parsonage, three acres, a big open sanctuary perfect for Conversation Cafés, classes, film nights, and social events, and a downstairs kitchen where we’d make soups and can vegetables in the fall. Again the deal fell through. My angels were hard at work! But the question remained: if my young friends and I couldn’t relocalize, how could a whole island?
    Transitioning Us All
    Thankfully for my future financial security, I finally found a community-organizing strategy that wouldn’t drain my life’s savings. It was the Transition Town approach to relocalization.
    Britt, a dozen others, and I helped start a Transition initiative on our island, with my silently swearing that I would keep myself in check and not drive myself off the cliff.
    Aaah. I was now swimming in a current that made sense, that merited my energy. Started by the understated but ever-optimistic permaculture educator Rob Hopkins, the simple approach to intentionally powering down communities spread first in the UK and by now around the world. It’s a head, heart, and hands approach.
    Head is understanding—and helping neighbors understand—the climate, resource, financial, and energy challenges bearing down upon us.
    Heart is unleashing the now-pent-up passion of communities to “Do something!”—to discover and get going on a less consumptive, more abundant way of life, one that runs on local sun, local soil, local industry, local love.
    Hands is doing it—growing food, growing local currencies, growing businesses, encouraging pedal power, educating the public, changing ordinances, and hosting potlucks and parties and parades.
    Within mere months we’d attracted a hundred-plus people, ready to act—and then we muddled through trying to organize that energy into a single engine—not easy with my unherdable neighbors. For all the good we were doing, though, we seemed a day late and a dollar short. We’d barely scratched the surface.
    Pam Mitchell’s Food Calculations
    I turned to Pam Mitchell, a market gardener, to help me gauge our capacity here on Whidbey Island to feed ourselves. Her back-of-the-envelope calculations presented a pretty dire picture. Looking at her numbers I thought . . . We’re toast.
    Pam is a rare farmer. She didn’t inherit land. She didn’t buy land. She doesn’t