Welcome

We are an emerging collaborative project rooted in 62 acres of beautiful mountain land in Pisgah Forest, NC which was most recently privately-owned by a family of German, Scottish, and English ancestry who were settlers in these mountains seven generations ago. They were then, and we are now, on Cherokee land.

A descendent of that family, Alan, and his wife, Aden, are currently stewarding this patch of Earth. Along with many collaborators, we are slowly exploring new visions and new ways for this land to serve unmet community needs in Southern Appalachia and Western North Carolina, whether by offering radical hospitality for rest and recovery, growing food as medicine, tending the forest according to traditional Cherokee ecological and cultural practices, or being a gathering place where we can do the work to help each other heal from and repair the history and present conditions that keep us and our society unequal and unwell.

By saying that we are focused on repair and healing, we mean that we are aiming to doing the work needed to get into right relationship with the land and the forest, with the water, and between the many different communities of people, Black, Brown, Immigrant, Indigenous, and white, who call these mountains home.

The land itself is a refuge of life bursting with flowers, mushrooms, water, salamanders, frogs, fireflies, bear, elderberries, ferns, and so many more beings, all nestled in a womb-like holler at the end of a rural road.

In the lower meadow, three streams converge from a forest community of Rhododendron and Mountain Laurel, Oak, Pine, Tulip Poplar, Maple, Beech, Sassafras, Sourwood, and other trees that go all the way up to the ridge line behind.

There are currently two tiny homes which the land stewards and guests live in, plus an old cabin (being restored), and plenty of room for other structures yet to be imagined.

We are 10 minutes outside Brevard, North Carolina, as well as a main entrance to Pisgah National Forest, and 45 minutes south west of Asheville.

Hidden Histories

The land is currently stewarded by Alan and Aden, a couple who are white, Jewish, and soon-to-be parents. For at least five generations before this project, this land was a private family homestead owned by Alan’s family and ancestors.

For thousands of years before Alan’s family ever knew it, this land was loved, tended, and cultivated as gathering and hunting grounds by the Cherokee, their ancestors, and other tribes in the area like the Catawba, Creek, and Choctaw, until waves of white settlers including our ancestors brought death, despair, and displacement to these civilizations.*

Most of the story about how this land came to “belong” to Alan’s family has been lost to us. So we are working hard to uncover more of this history in our own families and for other white settler** families like ours.

For example, what we have only begun to learn starting in 2022 through deep genealogical and historical research Alan has undertaken is that he descends from some of the original settler families of this area, Transylvania County. Many of them were able to access the system of land grants and know where the best land was because of their “service” in Revolutionary War militias on the “western frontier.”

We know less about the direct ways our families also participated in the ownership and theft of freedom, life, and labor from enslaved Black people which the southern economy and white families like ours depended on. We are slowly connecting these dots within our family histories though. For example, we know that one of Alan’s ancestors was one of the many well-off Davidson’s who settled North Carolina, and that one prominent Davidson, Samuel Davidson, was the first person recorded by historians to have brought an enslaved person with him to Western North Carolina.

We feel accountable to continuing to uncover, talk about, and share more about these hidden histories, especially with other white folks who want to participate in changing and intervening in that history.

* For more details, here are a few accounts of these histories as recorded by the Eeastern Band of Cherokee Indian’s Cherokee Preservation Foundation, Cherokee Nation, and Buncombe County.

** “white” and “settler” are broad terms. Our ancestors came from a wide range of places and cultures in Europe including Scots-Irish, English, Welsh, Dutch, Swiss, German, Moravian, Huguenot, Quaker, and Jewish from Romania and what is now Ukraine.

Abolitionist Inspiration

We are also learning more about our direct ancestors who worked for justice and abolition in ways that can offer us inspiration and a greater sense of responsibility to our goals for this project.

We know, for example, that Alan’s Great-Great-Grandfather led the meeting of the Transylvania county Republicans at the end of the Civil War when they voted in favor of Reconstruction, that Alan’s Great Uncle pitched in to the building of the Brevard Rosenwald School, and that Aden’s Great, Great Grandfather in Greensboro, NC was meanwhile printing and passing out pamphlets to rally fellow citizens against the growing power of the “Walk-All-Over-Ya Bank” (Wachovia).

We also know that one of the reasons our ancestors ended up here in North America in the first place was the violence and oppression they were escaping in the Old World—from Aden’s Great Grandmother who would not have made it out of Ukraine before the pogroms came for her family, if not for being tipped off by the milkman just in time, to Alan’s distant Welsh Grandmother who was tied to a stone, thrown into a lake, and drowned to determine whether she was a witch.

This history also guides us, and reminds us that the work of justice and repair is long, generational, and complex.

Ownership Story

At some point, likely at least five generations ago, Alan’s ancestors became owners of this land as part of the earliest waves of protestant settlers who first got land grants in Western North Carolina in the late 18th century.

In late 2020, the rest of Alan’s family wanted to put the land on the market. In our view, this would only have benefited us, which did not feel right to us, especially given the history above.

Unfortunately, our family’s politics and perspectives on what was right did not align. In early 2021, we were able to get the go ahead from the family to at least put out the call for a “non-traditional sale” with a focus on beneficiaries or future owners being Black, Brown, and/or Indigenous.

We received help from many friends to get the word out, and there was an incredible wave of interest, the majority of which was from women and people of color. Painfully, we could not make a sale to any of these folks work in the end because of a strict timeline and the mental model of a “real estate sale” imposed by our family.

At the end of 2021, having failed to make a “non-traditional sale” work within our family system, and not being able to buy the land ourselves, we again faced the possibility of it being sold on the open market. Miraculously, we avoided this at the 11th hour through crowdfunded donations and loans from friends, family, and the bank, enabling us to secure ownership of the land for the current project, and allowing us to step into a timeline of our own making—as long as we are able to keep paying the bills.

We are now, thanks to that miraculous series of events and support from many folks in our community, able to do the slow work of relationship building with potential partners and future owners who are interested in building a different, liberatory future on this land.

In 2022, we have been able to engage in more spacious listening to the land, the history, the needs of the community, and visions of potential partners or future owners. Here is how we’re moving forward in 2023:

Relationships First

We are particularly focused in 2023 on relationship building with healers, land stewards, herbalists, and community organizers, especially those who are Black, Brown, Indigenous, immigrant, women, or queer.

In 2023, we will be hosting small experiments with partners like these—like learning festivals, rituals, retreats, and gatherings—to experiment with what kinds of things can and want to happen here in the future.

We hope some of these folks who come and collaborate with us on the land this year or have other ideas to propose will be interested in exploring longer term relationships and/or becoming stewards or owners of part or all of the land over the next several years.

Seeds of Visions

We personally have been seeing how much this land could be suited for being:

1. A refuge for radical hospitality, rest, and healing for people who most need spaces for this, such as for Black women, burned out community organizers, and other people in transition.

2. A working forest farm based on traditional Cherokee principles, plants, and cultural knowledge that meets food, craft, medicine, cultural, and other needs of Cherokee folks.

3. A home for hosting programs, experiences, and rituals related to healing lineages and land* with a handful of partners and ourselves.

* by which we mean: working within and across lineages, and with the land, to honor what needs to be remembered and passed on, repair and heal from harm, and release what is ready to be let go, especially for those most harmed by the history above.

Ownership Intentions

In the long term, our personal dream is for the land to eventually be owned and stewarded in a commons—meaning by a group of owners with a long-term view and a well-run system for sharing the benefits and responsibilities of caretaking and ownership.

Our future participation is still a question, both because we are young and have generational connections to this land and still want to be involved with what happens here.

Either way, we know that just helping establish ownership structures like this can help us heal from dominant society’s toxic culture of individualism and private ownership, and that doing so as part of a multi-cultural organizing team is some of the deepest work we could sign up to do.

And, in the best case, could help the land serve as a foothold for broader systems change and long-term, resilient wealth and power building in the region.

Inspiring Other White Landowners

We hope our process, however inspiring or flawed (or both), can also offer another possible path for other white families to consider, and can inspire more learning, reconciliation, and reparations from white families.

We are actively building community with and offering support to other white families, especially in the South, that are inspired by what we are doing and have the opportunity to work towards justice and liberation through land together.

In 2023, we will be organizing events and learnings offering, as well as consulting directly with other white families, so please reach out if you are interested in talking about any of this or collaborating.

Expecting Surprises

This project has already surprised us many times. We remain open to many possibilities, including ideas we cannot imagine yet.

We’re curious to hear what others could envision in collaboration with this very special place that fate and a whole lot of privilege gave us the opportunity to help steward into a future that supports healing and repair.