High Cove

WHO ARE THE FOUNDERS?

Building a town.

David Brain

My first encounter with High Cove (then referred to as "the new village") was about ten years ago when I was invited to come to a series of meetings organized by Olga to discuss town building. As I recall there were groups of anywhere from six to thirty that gathered to talk about the possibility of creating a kind of ideal town. I remember that what intrigued me about the conversation was that we weren't discussing building simply an intentional community, where a group of like-minded and basically similar people decide to create a rural commune. I had long since outgrown my fascination with that kind of intentional community. This was to be a town, a physical place that would develop over time as a result of the contributions of a diverse collection of people-- most of whom we did not know yet. We would be setting in motion a process of place-making that would be as much like traditional town founding as possible, allowing the process to create something vastly more interesting than anything we could have simply cooked up on our own.

I remember at one meeting making the comment that it was important that we did not want to build either a commune or a scattering of isolated mountain vacation homes. There were some participating in that early discussion who were envisioning a more communal experience. The idea, I said, would be to build streets and public spaces that would accommodate people who are generally strange. I let the little pun on 'strange' get a laugh, but it was an important point for me. The village had to be a place where strangers would feel welcome and indeed be valued as bringing vitality to the place.

Why High Cove? In an early communication, Olga described that first piece of property for which we developed a proposal as a "high mountain cove." We began to realize that the traditional settlement pattern had been to locate farms up in these coves, and that many of the large parcels we found had been farms of this kind. Modern development often heads right to the ridgelines, looking to use the views to sell real estate. We wanted to have a different relationship to the land, rooted in the history and ecology of the place as much as we could.

After all the years of talk and imagining what could be, it was a special thrill to stand up on the mountain and watch as the track hoe operator carefully carved our first streets into the slope. The thing that is really exciting about it, however, is that we are now in position for the real fun to start. For us, High Cove has already become a place, as a result of the last few years of spending time there, walking the land and talking about how best to inhabit it such that we create a great place for humans but still respect the land as we find it. Still, we are eager to start seeing the energy and ideas that new people bring to a town, to expand the interesting conversations and enjoyment of the land that attracts all of us to the project. Please join us!

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