Hey Dreamer,

This week is about Solarpunk, and we’re going to explore what that vision feels like.

Ready to use your imagination and dream with me?

I want to collect my tribe around me and make a village. Literally.

When I picture it, I see a small valley lit by soft evening light. Twenty tiny homes, each with a thin ribbon of smoke curling from the porch chimney, each sitting on its own gentle acre of lavender. Purple rows breathing in the wind like a quiet tide.

Half of every harvest gets woven back into the shared chest — the fund we use to build the things that make life feel like life. A spring-fed hot tub spilling over dark stone, a cedar-lined sauna you can smell before you open the door, a greenhouse that glows through winter, and a wide veranda with deep cushions, blankets, and a long brick fireplace that becomes the village heartbeat at night.

At the far edge of the path, a small tea station waits under a pergola threaded with wisteria. Jars of roasted dandelion root, lavender buds, and dark coffee beans line the shelves. Someone is always heating water, humming while they do it.

We walk the rows together during harvest — slow, relaxed, hands brushing the plants. Someone sings. Someone jokes. Someone teaches you how to can without making you feel like you should’ve known already.

It’s a world where, the power comes from the sun, water flows pure from a deep well, one building option is Hempcrete walls that strengthen year after year, a septic system that feeds the soil instead of ruining it.

Evenings stretch long into the cricket hour with, card games, Jenga towers, a rambling D&D campaign that lasts months as laughter rolls across the veranda and a breeze carrying the smell of lavender and warm earth makes you close your eyes and breathe deep. It was hard work to build all this, but in those moments, you feel heart open, accepted, and know every scrape and bruise was worth it.

Every person has their own small home, their sanctuary, but the village only works if the people inside it know how to be steady with each other. Disagreements happen. They’re part of the ecosystem. What matters is that friction leads to understanding instead of fracture. Emotional maturity becomes the quiet scaffolding that holds everything in place and makes that deep breath possible.

That scaffolding needs to be used by everyone. If you’re the only one speaking the language of emotional intelligence it’s almost impossible to find resolution, and ‘why bother’ is a frame I’m familiar with. Especially as an introvert. I’ve done the lone-wolf life. I know the peace of it, and the ache. Doing everything alone builds strength but not belonging.

In a world set up to exhaust us, where consumption replaces connection, this kind of shared life feels like the only real wealth: hands helping hands, land feeding people, people feeding land, and a future shaped by cooperation instead of depletion.

There’s more than enough when we build it together.

Dreams grow stronger when you feed them.

A scene here.
A sentence there.
A slow-TV loop playing while you make tea.

Each one adds a little root system beneath the vision.

You don’t have to build the whole village tomorrow.
You just keep nudging the dream. One gentle moment at a time.

And when the world feels heavy, come back to this small collection.
Let it remind you what’s still possible.
What’s already stirring.
What’s waiting down the road.

One step, one scroll, one seed at a time,
we’ll build toward it together.

You’re not the only one — this week’s Dreamer Inspiration Award goes to:

🏆 Dreamer Inspiration Awardee: YOU

…the quiet dreamers and builders.

The ones who can envision turning empty lots into shared gardens. The neighbors who organize tool libraries, repair cafés, seed swaps, or community meals without fanfare. The people experimenting with solar panels on sheds, rain barrels in backyards, or cooperative living arrangements that prioritize care over convenience.

Most of this work never makes headlines. It happens slowly, locally, with plenty of trial and error. But it matters. These small, human-scale experiments are how futures get tested before they become movements.

If you’re yearning for more community, actively searching for your people, sketching plans on the backs of napkins, planting, repairing, sharing, teaching, or simply choosing cooperation when it would be easier not to — this one’s for you.

We see you. Keep going.
You’re not the only one. I promise.

If the village vision stirred something in you, maybe a soft tug toward land, community, and a gentler way to live, these stories can help grow that warm ember.

Spend some time in quiet futures, cooperative worlds, and small human moments that feel like steppingstones toward the place your heart already recognizes.

1. A Psalm for the Wild-Built — Becky Chambers
The gentlest future imaginable.
A wandering tea-monk meets a robot, and together they walk through forest monasteries and overgrown roads, asking better questions about being human.

2. A Prayer for the Crown-Shy — Becky Chambers
The companion story.
Warmth, small towns, handmade things, and peaceful wandering. Basically Solarpunk tea.

3. The Solarpunk Anthology (Verso / World Editions)
Short stories from around the globe.
Bright, inventive futures: shared gardens, micro-grids, cultural harmony, cooperative tech.

4. Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk & Eco-Speculation
A softer, more poetic anthology.
Less “plot,” more texture — ideal for imagining tone, atmosphere, and community dynamics.

5. The Ministry for the Future — Kim Stanley Robinson
Not pure Solarpunk, but grounded in realistic solutions and collective action.
For readers who want hope anchored in actual science.

6. The Dispossessed — Ursula K. Le Guin
Written before the term “Solarpunk,” but deeply aligned.
Shared labor, minimalism, mutual care — and the honest complexities of building community.

7. Emergent Strategy — Adrienne Maree brown
Nonfiction, but it reads like a guidebook for collaborative futures.
Small-scale change → community → culture.

8. Braiding Sweetgrass — Robin Wall Kimmerer
A melodic reminder that reciprocity with land isn’t utopian — it’s ancestral.
Gentle enough for bedtime reading. Hopeful enough to shape worldviews.

9. The Biggest Little Farm (Documentary)
A couple restores degraded land into a thriving ecosystem.
Visually stunning, deeply restorative — a real-world Solarpunk blueprint.

10. Kirsten Dirksen — Fair Companies (YouTube)
Hundreds of tiny homes, eco-villages, and off-grid communities.
Not fiction — proof the dream is already unfolding.

Did you know that the library system has an app? Get it here.

Co-written with ChatGPT for structure and clarity — a true collaboration, not a hand-off.

And lastly, a reminder that you’re welcome to hang out for awhile and peruse the rest of the Archive.

As you step back into the rhythm of your week,
may awareness, connection,
and quiet hope grow within you
in the moments of your day.

With warm wishes, from me to you, wherever ye may be,
I’ll be tending the next scroll with care, until we meet again.