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IN THE FALL OF 1998, I RODE UP TO THE middle of northern California in one of two cars of elves from Lothlorien,* a student coop house in the USCA (University Students Cooperative Association) co-op system in Berkeley, California. We elves were journeying to the Fellowship for Intentional Community's Art of Community conference held at Christ Church of the Golden Rule, an intentional community in Willits.
My three years at Lothlorien had convinced me without any doubt that I wanted to live in community for the rest of my life, and that my ideal community would look and feel a lot like Lothlorien. The house is an oasis in Berkeley's otherwise vast and impersonal student setting, where high turnover is endemic.
The Art of Community conference inspired faith in me that community is indeed possible, that thousands of people all over North America and abroad actively work at it every day. Even more than that, though, I returned with a profound appreciation for my home. Lothlorien, after 25 years, still attracts those committed to cooperative living and envelops all who pass through it in the nurturing field of its unique traditions. Where many student co-ops struggle to create a lasting identity, Lothlorien succeeds, persisting as an entity unto itself, where the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts.
It may be the way each newcomer gains introduction to Lothlorien: most elves eagerly show visitors around the house, pausing before each mural as though remembering a magical moment spent in its presence. We can't help betraying the common feeling that the physical space is far more than a shell for the students within. There's the haunted staircase, where it is said one may encounter the ghost of a young woman on quiet afternoons when the light is just right. At the end of the hall on one of the top floors, a side passage leads to a drawbridge, across which sits a treehouse perched halfway up our redwood tree overlooking San Francisco Baydreamed of and built by an elf of years past. Every other part of the house seems to possess its own story, too, and almost every elf could tell you that story, or a variation on it. We seem to preserve...