Natural Living Vision

You awake to the sound of chirping birds as the sun streams through the windows of your bedroom. Sitting up in the soft wholesome smelling organic cotton sheets you peer out through the triple paned “smart” windows sculpted into the straw bale  walls. The natural undulations of the earth surround you like a nest. The sun peeks over the tree covered panorama filling the sky with pink, orange and yellow splashes of color on the fluffy layer of clouds on the horizon. The sun appears, a bright fire ball pouring warm rays of golden light deep into the cozy room. Your face is warmed. The sunlight re-energizes you for a new day. The smell of fresh pine forest wafts through the air as a breeze rushes by the small window  opening. The chirp of birds, the buzz of crickets, the soft rustling of the leaves softly sing natures symphony.

You catch a glimpse of a wild deer wandering through your back yard, into your neighbors clover patch for breakfast. The warm shower you take is refreshingly soft – chlorine-free water, efficiently sprayed through a low flow shower head, from the rain water collection system. The water is heated each day by the solar  heater on your home’s roof and stored in an insulated tank. The sun  penetrates into the shower stall through the rice paper blinds. The smell of natural biodegradable ingredients used in the shampoo and soap waft up through the vent into the main areas of the home creating a natural level of moisture. The excess water vapor is naturally transferred slowly to the outside through the straw bale  walls which “breathe” while providing superior insulation values. In the summer a vent high up in the central portion of the home sucks cool air from the basement through the main part of the home creating a natural cooling system a trick learned from homes in the Sahara.

For breakfast you join your family for fresh berries from your own garden on top of a bowl of organic  grain cereal filled with fresh local organic milk. The natural flavors seem more powerful than the sweet cereals you remember when you were young, even though the heavy coatings of sugar are gone. The fresh small berries are extremely sweet and full of flavor. Your kids bubble with excitement as they describe the activities planned for school. They will plant some vegetables, build a straw bale  green house, and share their nature  studies projects in an open air “Nature  Festival”.

The kids ride their bikes to school with you. You ride your bike to the commuter train service that takes you to your office in the city. Your spouse stays at home some days with the consulting business that services the local business community  requirements for employee training on “eco-design ” processes and principles . Your company builds integrated solar  systems for the condominium development business which is booming as older buildings are retrofitted with your products. The local organic  farmers have teamed up with your technology company to provide a prefabricated straw bale  building system. These prefabricated straw bale parts replace the antiquated fiberglass stick frame insulation in new and old buildings. With your company’s integrated solar cell roofing replacement system and the straw bale walls new houses can be constructed in just a few weeks with community participation. The new roofing system is often complemented with a recycled plastic compound, derived from the local recycling plant that provides a “green-roof” replacement to the large flat industrial buildings that are being renovated on a large scale for both industrial and creative co-housing communities.

At the local commuter train station a bustle of activity exists as community  members, coworkers, friends and family enjoy an organic  coffee, freshly squeezed fruit juice and organic grain pastries as they wait for the train. The train station provides an open green-house style courtyard that replaced most of the parking lot now that people are walking, running, roller-blading, riding their bikes, or taking the fuel cell powered community bus to the train station. The cafes are open all year round using movable green house glazing in the walls. New local businesses have opened including an organic farmers’ market, organic grocery stores, book exchanges, natural clothing wares, and an electronic paperless news agency.

The train station has become central to much more than just transportation . The entire terminal is powered by a large photo voltaic  power  array and four large wind turbines along the perimeter of the old parking lot. The parking lot has been transformed into a small naturalized park complete with biking and walking paths surrounded by native trees, shrubs, bushes, and naturalized grass and wildflower meadows. The sounds of birds and running water can be heard at the far end of the station where the previously concrete encased creek has been returned to its natural state. The people in the station all seem to know each other. They all live in the surrounding community  and frequent the markets and transportation offered at this central location.

The office building of your company is located just two stations away in what was the industrial sector of the major metropolis that was sprawling into your community  ten years before. Now the large industrial warehouse has been renovated with your company’s solar  roofing cells that provide all of the power  requirements for the production facilities and offices. The building was expanded upwards with two additional floors that have window  systems built into the flooring throughout to provide natural lighting during the working day. The walls of the structure have been re-insulated with a manufactured straw bale  wall replacement system that has eliminated the need for any heating system other than in-floor solar water  heating and passive solar design  innovations that went into the renovation.

Most of the parking lot was transformed into a naturalized park, with condominiums added for the employees who wanted to live near their office. An organic  coffee house and organic food  store provides the local business and residential community  with a common gathering area for events, discussions and street exhibitions, in addition to the organic vegetable, fruit, pasta and grain-based gourmet menu items. The improved air quality, lighting and fresh food has reduced employee sick days by ten percent. Productivity has increased by ten percent even though the average employee only works thirty two hours a week with at least six weeks of vacation a year.

Taking the train home lets you see all of the newly invigorated community  villages that have reforested many of the parking lots and roadways that are no longer used by cars. The streets are a beehive of activity as people mostly walk to the central squares or train stations for their fresh food  essentials each day. Bike and walking trails snake through all the communities. The train is quiet due to the recent innovations in efficient electric motor design  that uses ultra-efficient low cost fuel cells to produce electricity with water vapor as the only exhaust.

The bike ride home in early afternoon allows you to stop off at the village perimeter and enjoy thirty minutes of quiet contemplation and reading next to the restored marshes that attract all kinds of native birds that had disappeared from the area just twenty years earlier. The small pond at the center of the marsh reminds you of the pond that Thoreau describes so lovingly in Walden which you are reading for the third time.

As you arrive home, your children ride up on their bicycles buzzing with the thrill of having created a new straw bale  greenhouse  for their school. It was hard for them to believe that where there had been the outline of a small structure, their now stood a straw bale walled greenhouse complete with solar  roofing cells that provided all of the required electricity for the building. They got to stack the bales of straw and sew them tight together. Next week they would be setting up their indoor eco-biology experiments to see how fast the tomatoes would grow in this northern climate.

For the remainder of the late afternoon, the family plays badminton at the local community  center which was built by members of the community during several weekends last spring. The community center construction created great bonds between all members, both old and young, as they could all contribute to the process of laying bales, sewing them stiffly together to form the walls, and then plastering the organic  contours of the large multi-story building. Everyone had a corner, wall section, or edge that was uniquely their own for as long as the building would stand. One creative young lad had placed three bales in a row and then plastered them with the middle bale decorated with a chess board. Today a teenager and his grandfather were enjoying a game of chess in the open air of the third floor while others played sports all around them.

Back at home the sun  provides the required energy  for the electrical systems throughout the home, and enough solar  heated water to keeping everyone warm during the night. The family sits down to enjoy a salad from their own vegetable garden, a delicious veggie burger cooked on the super efficient wood burning barbeque, that also provides additional heat to the warm water storage system used for heating the home. The local managed woodlot provides a sustainable supply of wood for the eco-barbeque and new efficient triple-burn wood stoves that are used by some residents for supplemental heat in the winter.

After dinner the children work quietly on their ultra-efficient notebook computers that are connected through the Internet to the schools computer system. The new screen technology provides all the reading reference material, text books and assignments they need in electronic paper form which is larger than conventional paper books with crisper text and plenty of colorful illustrations. Finally, everyone settles down in their cozy organically grown hemp  fiber beds for a paperless read before going to sleep. The poetry of Shakespeare inspires yet another generation as the night is illuminated by the florescent reading lights that produce warm tones inspired by the suns own rays which power  them. Sleep comes easily as images of butterflies flutter through the kids dreams while crickets, running stream water, and critters provide a comforting natural background soundscape through open windows.

Natural Living has spread by word of mouth to communities all over the world. Everywhere the inspiration of your actions according to this new vision has transformed the way people think of living. The result is a world in which poverty  has been eliminated, starvation is unheard of, population  growth  has stabilized, peace has reigned without a single war for more than five years, artistic creativity has reached new levels of inspiration, science has integrated the purposes of nature  and humanity, business and finance are thriving for those companies that embraced this vision, government  has returned to servicing the needs of the people, the world community  has joined together as one and peoples’ mental health  has measurably improved including overall indexes of humanity’s quality of life.

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Yes, this is just a dream. This vision comes from a guy with a typical job, and a relatively normal family just like yours. We’ve been near bankruptcy, failed at some projects, succeeded at others, had joyful periods, made tragic mistakes, overcome great difficulties, been lucky at times, and frittered away the fruits of our luck. However, we have made the shift to Natural Living that inspired this vision. We have made the changes in order to make this vision a reality as much as we are able. Now it is your turn.

Tell others to join us. That is all it takes for this vision to become reality. Let the journey begin now. Seize this moment!