Joy, purpose, resistance and living well...

Since we met in 2010 in the Drôme region, Nick and I have been discussing our political ideas and our grief for the world, trying to move forward together toward a way of living that makes sense to us. We want to avoid feeling depressed and to keep moving forward. In the evenings by the fireside in Nyons, ideas abound and merge.

After a few years of activism (especially against the TTIP and CETA, free trade agreements at the time) and the realization that the existence of international commercial courts radically means the end of the rule of law, we read Pablo Servigne's How Everything Can Collapse in 2018. Nicholas reads Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States (a second part of a documentary inspired by this book has just been released), Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America, and the equivalents for France and the (more or less) United Kingdom. Another trigger for our departure from Nyons and arrival in Ardèche was a Work That Reconnects workshop (Joanna Macy) that we attended in Die during the Ecologie au Quotidien days in early 2019. Finally, Manon intuitively decides, even before having a garden, to take a permaculture course.

With the help of books, documentaries, workshops, and conferences, we gradually begin to grasp the issues: Supporting local autonomy (food and more) and cultivating mutual aid, reclaiming freedom (especially from multinational suppliers, but not only...), taking our lives into our own hands—not enduring but acting—and aiming to support a certain resilience for a near future that promises to be anything but rosy.

We seek coherence by living as much as possible in alignment with our convictions, by refusing as much as possible to fuel the current harmful system, by living more in contact with nature, by sharing our experiences and reflections with those around us, our friends, and our guests, and by passing on our project later on.

After several decades for each of us in the southeast of France, we cross the Rhône river to settle in the Boutières region, on the eastern edge of the Massif Central. A house in Echarleyre, a hamlet in the municipality of Gluiras in central Ardèche, allows us to practice permaculture, create two eco-gîtes, and adjust our lifestyle to be more sober and pleasant, with spring water, wood heating, and photovoltaic panels. Incidentally, we instantly fall in love with this wonderful part of Ardèche, which we didn't know before.

We welcome Elly, Manon's mother, who is losing her independence. Her stay also allows for a few years of cohabitation between a Dutch grandmother and her French grandson. Being surrounded by lush greenery, life is better. Global warming has made Nyons a very hot city in summer.

Since our arrival, we have supported the documentary Once You Know... by Emmanuel Cappelin. We took a Work That Reconnects facilitator training course with ecopsychologists Yoan Svejcar and Fanny Boëgeat. Then the Aux Sources project in Saint Sauveur de Montagut, a nearby village, is especially close to our hearts. It's a collective of local producers and an associative grocery store. Recently, they bought the old Auberge de La Poste and added a peasant canteen and an associative café-bar.

Today, after 7 years of work and implementation, we are trying to find a cruising speed at our (advanced) ages. We meet many wonderful people in our new place. Our choices and actions, however limited, do us good.

We wholeheartedly recommend the workshops (1 day to 3 weeks, depending on your time and desire) of the Work That Reconnects, which can be found all over France, helping people to rediscover the taste for life despite the current worrying situation. A recent great initiative is the Réseau des Tempêtes, equally constructive. We recommend the Manifesto for Popular Mutual Aid. In a different vein, there's Rob Hopkins who wrote How to Fall in Love with the Future: A Time Traveller's Guide to Changing the World. Don't hesitate to watch the videos on his website, very funny and poignant!

We make our way, as best we can, inside and out, and share our discoveries with our friends and guests.