William Powers - Dispatches from the Sweet Life: One Family, Five Acres, and a Communitys Quest to Reinvent the World

Praise for Dispatches from the Sweet Life

Bill Powers is a wonder, a brilliant and bighearted writer able to transform the most ordinary moments of daily life into exquisite epiphanies, rich with discovery. Dispatches from the Sweet Life charts the luminous frustrations and giddy pleasures awaiting all those who choose to opt out of the high-speed addiction to progress, allying themselves instead with a real community immersed in the life of the animate earth. Powers is a one-of-a-kind reporter bringing necessary news from that mysterious edge where our gorgeous ideals meet the parched and rock-strewn soil of reality.

DAVID ABRAM, author of The Spell of the Sensuous

An enchanting personal story of a long journey in search of simplicity, home, and the Sweet Life.

DAVID KORTEN, author of When Corporations Rule the World and Change the Story, Change the Future

A compelling tale of leaving Manhattan to embed in a small, rural Bolivian town with all its wonders, differences, and commonalities. Dispatches from the Sweet Life is the vivid personal chronicle of a bold adventure in search of sustainable development and pondering what really matters.

THOMAS E. LOVEJOY, professor of environmental science and policy at George Mason University and former chief biodiversity advisor at the World Bank

William Powers actually does what many of us in the Global North dream about and talk about but ultimately may not have the chutzpah to pull off: become an expat-on-a-budget in a place where life appears to be simpler, happier, and ultimately better. In this age in which the tyranny of time, scale, and efficiency robs us of moments to envision an alternative, Powerss description of homesteading in Bolivia is self-effacing, funny, and strikes at the core of what is missing today: a chance to get off the combine before we get pulverized by the system. Do we need to travel far to learn whats deep inside us all? The short answer is: probably yes.

RICHARD MCCARTHY, executive director of Slow Food USA

While Dispatches from the Sweet Life is full of useful information wrapped in compelling, colorful stories, it carries something unusual for those of us steeped in the American Dream of progress and prosperity: a feeling for a life woven into a specific place on earth. How many of us actually make a place our own by letting its creatures and vegetation and characters root in us as we settle in them? This book is part memoir, part Transition Town case study, part permaculture how-to, but in largest part an invitation to absorb through all the senses physical and spiritual how you might feel outside the angular edifices or your work and your daily life.

VICKI ROBIN, author of Your Money or Your Life and Blessing the Hands That Feed Us

In essence, the Transition movement is a network of storytelling, as people around the globe share their tales of trying to build more resilient, diverse, and connected communities in wildly varying settings. The story told in Dispatches from the Sweet Life is a powerful, fascinating look at trying to do Transition in one particular place. Its pages drip with illumination, insight, and wisdom.

ROB HOPKINS, founder of the Transition movement

William Powerss writing is hopeful, warm, and kind. He makes us question the old American Dream, and at the same time, he offers up a new dream. Dispatches from the Sweet Life points us toward days made richer by spareness, days made meaningful through focus and care.

MICHAEL HARRIS, author of The End of Absence

The multigenerational project of cultural renaissance is the Great Work of our time. In Dispatches from the Sweet Life, Bill Powers gifts us with an engaging and intimate look at the personal challenges, risks, and joys of reinventing human community and of imaginatively loving our interdependent and sacred more-than-human world.

BILL PLOTKIN, author of Soulcraft

The foundation of the Sweet Life, this book makes clear, is a deep connection to community and the natural world. William Powerss description of the search for that life in a small Bolivian town is often inspiring, sometimes tear-jerking, and always thought-provoking.

HELENA NORBERG-HODGE, founder and director of Local Futures

Also by William Powers

Blue Clay People: Seasons on Africas Fragile Edge

Whispering in the Giants Ear: A Frontline Chronicle from Bolivias War on Globalization

Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream

New Slow City: Living Simply in the Worlds Fastest City

Copyright 2018 by William Powers

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Powers, William, [date] author.

Title: Dispatches from the sweet life: one family, five acres, and a communitys quest to reinvent the world / William Powers.

Description: Novato, California : New World Library, [2018].

Identifiers: LCCN 2018020042 (print) | LCCN 2018027595 (ebook) | ISBN 9781608685653 (ebook) | ISBN 9781608685646 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Powers, William, [date] | Urban-rural migrationBolivia. | Sustainable livingBolivia. | Alternative lifestylesBolivia.

Classification: LCC HT381 (ebook) | LCC HT381 .P69 2018 (print) | DDC 304.8/840747dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018020042

First printing, September 2018

ISBN 978-1-60868-564-6

Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-565-3

Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A tree holds up the seven skies. We venerate all trees

because we do not know which one holds up the world.

Chief Gaspar of the Bolivian Chiquitano,

as told to William Powers

Contents

I wrote Dispatches from the Sweet Life for anyone who questions, even slightly, the dominant American lifestyle today. I hope that in the wake of the inner and outer struggles in these pages, the reader will emerge with some knowledge and a good deal of curiosity about how we might live more integrated lives.

This is the third book in the Beyond the American Dream trilogy, which began with Twelve by Twelve (2010), about a guy in an off-grid tiny house in rural North Carolina seeking a minimalist, sustainable existence. It was followed by New Slow City (2014), about a newlywed couple in a Manhattan micro-apartment trying to re-create that same Slow life in the midst of urbanity. It culminates with