The community's insularity creates a sense that Lost Valley is indeed a kind
of Shangri-La, an enchanted realm untouched by the worries of the outside
world: money, security, terrorism. But in reality, the community exists on
an edge, straddling the boundary between mainstream society and their own
"evolved culture." Or, perhaps more accurately, at the collision-point
between the two worlds.

As a result, people's lives here tend to be fleeting. Eight members have
left the community this winter, nearly a third of Lost Valley's membership,
moving into town or following more secure job offers in the outside world.
Most people live here only a few years at most; many stay a year or less.
Every new group has its own priorities, its own ideas, its own problems to
solve, together. As elder, Dianne holds the community's history, often in
the form of "We've tried that before, and it didn't work." But she also
believes that people must learn their own lessons.

Still, in the fourteen years since Dianne first stepped onto the land, Lost
Valley has evolved from a stopping-place for curious seekers and footloose
wanderers into a vibrant community. Members work side-by-side on the land,
eat communal meals, divvy up chores like laundry and cooking, grow much of
their own food in their three organic gardens, and are restoring to health
the forest that was clearcut before their arrival. Most waste generated on
the land is composted, reused, recycled or donated. Members practice
ecologically-sensitive living, eat an organic vegetarian diet, and develop
technologies for resource conservation and affordable "green" building. The
Lost Valley Educational Center, run by community members, hosts
apprenticeships, conferences, and workshops on subjects from permaculture
design to Naka-Ima, now the community's flagship personal development
workshop, and until recently the source of a third of the community's
income. Many members consider Lost Valley a model for sustainable living.

Except that the community isn't really sustainable. As this year's rainy
winter spills into spring, members are struggling, as they have struggled
since Lost Valley's earliest days, with a thorny mix of community debt and
barely-subsistence income. Full-time work is thirty hours a week at minimum
wage, but living here isn't free, and after paying for food, rent and other
required community expenses, members are left with little extra to cover
their other needs. For families with kids, costs are even higher. Few adults
have retirement accounts, and even fewer have health insurance.

And the nonprofit's finances look even more dire. At the beginning of 2003,
members were looking at a debt of nearly $340,000 in private loans - in
addition to a dispiriting ten thousand dollar gap between the community's
income and what they spent on food, utility bills, building maintenance,
liability insurance and debt repayments. With the economy of the "outside
world" still sour, the conference center has gone empty for much of the last
few years, leaving the void in the community budget to be patched mostly
with still more loans. And for Lost Valley, like so many family businesses,
failure means you lose your home.