The other day I was reading something interesting about Asheville, NC, and so I looked into it a little bit more, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to move there. Where to start? Let's see...
It's got a population of about 100,000, less than a third of Pittsburgh's, but still plenty to have some interesting culture. It's in growing climate zone five, two zones warmer than Pittsburgh (about the same as the Willamette Valley in Oregon, another appealing place). It's more or less surrounded by national forrests.
They have the only tribal belly dance troup that can possibly compete with Zafira for my affections, namely Baraka Mundi. They also have a tribal belly dance convention, Triboriginal, that has won awards.
They have a significant unschooling population. The local mailing list has 125 members, which has to say something.
They have burners. Transformus, the Southeastern US burning man regional is right outside the city.
They have anarchists. They have an infoshop and a local currency. They have a state university, a black college, an arts district, a nineteenth century palace, two decent sized communes, two rivers and a rollerderby team. Sounds pretty civilized...
Maybe best of all, they have $100,000 homes that border directly on wilderness areas, within biking distance of downtown. I was gonna link more links, but I'm pretty much out of time.
Needless to say, I'm a little bit smitten.
I should recommend this to my dad. We have been talking about moving to North Carolina as a group, and Dad has become an anarchist in the last few years.
ReplyDelete-connie
Dude, if you all moved to the Asheville area, that would be like the icing on the cake. We're definitely hoping to visit at some point.
ReplyDeleteThey also have a very large herbal community with lots of workshops, plant walks and at least one small herbal festival I believe. If I had to live on the East Coast again, it'd probably be in NC (or northern PA). Beautiful plants in the mountains there....
ReplyDeleteKiva - my favorite parts of the area, geographically speaking, tend to be in Virginia and West Virginia, but I've barely been to NC, so I might love that region too. I kind of figured there was probably a lot of herbal and permacultural stuff going on, it sounds great! I just wonder if it's completely saturated already, with no need for more natural health stuff.
ReplyDeleteSuzanne - well, we should all move there! yay!
The people we caravan-ed out to Pittsburgh with ended up settling in Asheville. You'd probably like them.
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