Life at Lost Valley By Wes Ozier Photo by Wes Ozier Students Lucas, Jillian and Melanie prepare earthen construction material called “cob.”
“I live in a small quaint little two-room cabin with a loft. Most of the buildings here look like your typical old summer camp wooden buildings, and they are all clustered together so everything is a short walk away.”
M
y name is Wes Ozier. I am 37-years-old, a LEED accredited professional, and I want to see our society evolve into a sustainable future. Why? I grew up in Detroit, a major urban area where I always felt that there was something wrong with the way we lived. The effect that the city had on people and the lack of nature around us always bothered me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. When I was in college at Michigan State University, I happened upon the book “Arcology: City in the Image of Man” by Dr. Paolo Soleri. Honestly, it took me over a year of reading that book to understand what Soleri was talking about. Finally, when I understood it I was more than excited! In this book Dr. Soleri explained his hypothesis that many of the social ills of the modern city were consequences of architectural design and planning, and that to solve those ills we had to re-conceptualize how we built our cities. The book then went on to show dozens of drawings of a new type of city called “Arcology” that would, by design, better connect people with each other and with nature, at least in theory. Finally, someone had articulated, not just the
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problems of modern society but a possible solution and they were building it and living in it! So, with my family thinking I had gone nuts and joined a cult, I packed up and moved from Michigan to the middle of the desert to live and work at the Arcosanti Project in Cordes Junction, Ariz. Since then, I have devoted my personal and professional life to trying to help us move from the “modern” way of doing things, with its alienation, hyper-consumption, and mental/physical degradation, to an ecological way of doing things. I lived at Arcosanti for four years, where I administrated the educational programs. After leaving Arcosanti I was fortunate enough to work for the Ecosa Institute, located in Prescott, which teaches a semester-long course in sustainable design. I now work and live at the Lost Valley Educational Center, an aspiring ecovillage and educational center in Oregon, where I administrate the educational programs. You may have read my previous articles about sustainability and ecological design and learned a lot from them. With this article, I want to give you a glimpse “behind the curtain” so to speak, as to what life at an ecovillage is like for me. Earth Odyssey • www.EarthOdysseyOnline.com