Guest Author: Virginia Carabelli

Hello everyone, I am delighted to be invited by RAXA Collective to participate in such a wonderful community! My name is Virginia Carabelli. I was born in Italy and raised both there and in France. I moved to the US in my late teens to attend college and fell in love with this beautiful country. I have always been more comfortable in nature and silence and have never been very interested in the rat race and busi-ness. I would much rather be than do.

I’ve always found our human ways mostly destructive and superficial, and had a plan since childhood to live life on my own terms as much as possible. In 1989 I achieved one of my childhood dreams: I bought a beautiful piece of property in a verdant valley in New Mexico, where I could live at least partially off the land. The community was mixed Spanish/Pueblo Indian, and many families lived in trailers (by that I do not mean a nice double-wide, but rather a large shipping container on cement blocks). Ecologically speaking, the valley was a fragile environment. With those two things in mind I said a simple prayer asking for guidance to build a home that would be in harmony with nature and also provide some good affordable housing for those in need. I had no idea how to do this, but I had only to wait a couple of weeks for Matts Myhrman to coincidentally walk into my life. Continue reading →