Biographies

On Monday nights we all sit at the kitchen table for our weekly coworker meeting. Each house has a certain number of villagers, which corresponds to certain number of coworkers (volunteers), and two house leaders. They each have a story, and on these nights, we share them. 

After we say how we are doing, state any events or practical concerns, we usually have about half an hour left before the meeting is over. This time is used to share our biographies, a practice inspired by Rudolph Steiner, by which a person tells their entire life story by word of mouth. 

Through this, people are encouraged to know themselves, and explore different veins of their life story; where they’ve triumphed, fumbled, lost or found themselves. We share in 20 year increments, mine took one meeting while others required two or three.  

M, Aspen’s house leader and homemaker, is a person you meet and immediately find yourself drawn into her enthusiasm. She is not just an acrobatic conversationalist, but is also deliberately wise. In her biography, she told of her modest childhood in China; in her college years, she was given the choice between medical school and learning the art of making leather, and given the choices, she chose leather. She came to the US nine years ago and has since embraced anthroposophy and Christianity, she is in the thick of her spiritual studies and attends most, if not all, of the anthroposophic events in the village. M is kind, level-headed, and extremely perceptive. 

K, Aspen’s other house leader, M’s husband and woodshop aficionado, is an upright, outwardly conservative, personable man. He’s Dutch and grew up in a small part of the Netherlands that made village life come easy to him. He has the mind of an engineer, loves cycling, and was the assistant director of Camphill Copake for many years. He is one of Camphill’s oldest pros, having lived and raised children in a variety of communities. 

A defining moment for me in my view of K was when one of our regular dinner guests, El, said something along the lines of: “but I was the only villager not invited!”, in light of a recent event. K replied, making sure to position himself awkwardly as one does in order to make eye contact with someone who is sitting just next to you: “You’re not a villager, you are a human being.” K has bright eyes for his work. 

J, a fellow coworker who’s 19 like me, has lived in Aspen for 8 months. She’s from Pennsylvania and took time off after high school to experience Camphill. My first time meeting her was during our 2 week quarantine, late at night. She only had to pick something up (or drop something off, I do not recall) but instead spontaneously offered to us a tour. It was dark, so we didn’t really learn anything, but in her pointing and gesturing she wove stories about the characters of the village. She gave us a taste for the community that we had yet to meet. The essence of this interaction has repeated itself over and over during my time living with her: J is given a simple task but decides to go above and beyond, out of her own volition, industriousness, and genuine interest. 

After someone has told their story, we make sure to ask any questions we have. “How were you after experiencing all of that?” “What’s your relationship to religion?” "How's your father doing now?". We don’t go over the half hour, we’re punctual in this house. But we make sure to use our time to really get to know who we are living with, because we're interested, because we can, because we do, and life is short. 

October 10th, 2020