In a cohousing community like Treehouse Village Ecohousing, I expect that opportunities to go to the beach will arise naturally. Every sunny weekend, I imagine there will be a friend or neighbour who says, “We’re off to the beach, wanna come?”
I think I've finally found the solution to my rural versus urban quandary in Treehouse Village Ecohousing. Bridgewater offers the amenities which I usually associate with urban living in addition to the benefits of a more rural lifestyle, and when you add cohousing into the mix, it covers all bases!
If you'd told me in 2016, while I was building my Tiny House, that in 2020 I'd have put down my life savings on a deposit for a home in a town I'd only been to twice, that was projected to cost more money than I'd earned in my entire life, I'd have laughed, then asked you what you were smoking. What changed? For starters, Tiny living didn't quite pan out how I'd imagined. More importantly, I discovered cohousing.
One of the attractive aspects of Bridgewater will be being able to use my bike as a means of transportation. There are bike trails in town which link many important residential, recreational, and business areas and provide cycling routes to other communities. Many, if not all of our community members are dedicated cyclists.
My mind was buzzing with possibilities as I walked home from the info session. I was playing out my daily routine in my house and comparing it to life at Treehouse Village. It was clear we could do a lot more with less. The move would involve downsizing to a home with considerably less square footage but grant us more shared space, amenities, and community support than we could ever access on our own. I wondered: what might I be able to share and achieve in an intentional community where my neighbours are also committed to lightening their ecological footprint?
While we all are isolating at home, the pandemic hasn’t stopped Treehouse Villagers from strengthening our community. When Cate emailed with the invitation to take on the colour challenge, I was thrilled to see her family’s pink pose, but reluctant to join in. It was only after the “reply alls” filled my inbox from members stepping up to the challenge that I was nudged to play along.
“I’ve found a cohousing project on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. It looks interesting and they have an information session on YouTube. Do you want to listen to it while we drive?”
In late February, Erin McQueen, sister to Treehouse Village Ecohousing member Caitlin Stonham, joined her family on a weekend in Bridgewater while they attended Treehouse Village meetings. Here, Erin shares some of the highlights of the town, from a visitor’s perspective.
Last Friday, rather than having fun with just the adults at Treehouse Village, we decided to try and have some online fun that involved some of our community kids. Our event planning team put on their thinking caps and came up with a community craft night, where we would all sit together over video conferencing...
Not only have our members found that working on our development is an excellent distraction from the boredom of social isolation, we’ve also been able to draw emotional support from each other in these trying times. But how exactly have we been able to keep the “social” in “social distancing”? Our success rests on the strong foundation that we’ve built together over the past year or more.
