Мы строим деревню / we are building ecovillage – блог

вот еще правки от англичанки

Roots Down or A Little History
A good friend of mine once said: «You know I think our Earth is the best place in the universe. And there is nowhere more wonderful... At any price we have to settle down here, on Earth. We must not fly off anywhere, we won't find a better place, but we can lose this one. Amongst my friends there's a lot wishing to fly away, out of here. This is like trees, starting to grow their roots upwards in the wrong direction. . We have to turn over, and start to grow roots downwards, in the earth. “The best in the Universe». I liked her words very much. The metaphor about the tree roots expressed the feelings I have been having these past few years – I want to grow roots downwards, like trees.
The realisation of my willingness to move to the eco settlement appeared to me about five years ago. And, since then, it has been slowly developing: I visited several settlements, read a lot on this subject, and was looking for like-minded people and land... And the geography of eco settlements was examined – the place for living drifted from Europe to the Far East, then shrunk down to Siberia, and after that – localized to Altay. It's been three years since I knew I would live in Altay. In spring of 2011, I heard rumours, that the people I knew (some of them I knew personally, some only «virtually») started to organize a settlement and gathered people who wanted to participate. I felt – this was what I needed, I checked out some photographs, looked at the maps and read the description. I called one of the co-ordinators and asked only a single question: are there any mosquitos in that area? (The memories about a place in the Tyumen Region were still fresh in my head, where, after we got out of the car, we'd been almost eaten alive by mosquitos; we left alive, but the desire for ecological life went down). After getting the answer, that there is just a few, I told them I was participating. I did believe myself and my feelings and the people who started this «adventure».
So, at the beginning of May 2011 our delegation of the to-be-settlers, along with the representatives of several cities came to the Regional Centre to legalize the land ownership. It was a long process. We, again, were reassured that bureaucracy is the greatest science on Earth. But everything resolved in our favour. About 1200 acres of land, the first part of our lot, was registered to our shared collective ownership. That was the beginning of our eco-experiment. Now official.
While looking for a place to live, a lot has changed in my private life. I had different relationships, visits to civilian Registrars' for different, sometimes opposite purposes. Whatsoever, the moment I'm writing about, having arrived in the settlement, the first building, more or less suitable for living, appeared, I was together with Natalia, and we were already thinking in what part of the valley were we going to start building our own house?
I think it's a very important factor that the family should be unanimous in the issue of moving to the virgin lands. Anyway, I will write about it a bit later, and now another important question: «Why?»

Вот отправил англичанке на коррекцию перевод введения, вот что она ответила:
сравнил тексты в http://text.num2word.ru/ разница есть. мне трудно оценить эти правки, но думаю англичанка в курсе английского... )
вот отправляю всем на почитать...

Hello Ok this is my first attempt at corrections,, it;s difficult because there is your style of commnication and tnen there is perfect English so I don;t want to obliertate your personality but see what you think

Introduction
I'm going to the village to get closer to the earth...
Boris Grebenshikov
I tried different ways to write about the eco-village. And everything I managed to write was featureless, in the third person. With a pretention to be wise, mentoring. But this is a type of text I can't produce, probably because I am not a professional in any area; the only area I'm more or less competent is my own life. So I decided to write about that. It will be more honest and sincere.
Right now I'm sitting in front of the furnace, through the open door I see trembling flames. On the stove, the kettle with tea in it is boiling. Sitting next to me is my lovely wife Natasha, holding in her hands our quietly grunting daughter, who is just over a month old. White covers everywhere outside, it's February; snow. Grey outlines of birches on the mountain slope. Grey, lead sky. So, whatever. On a day like this I started writing about the process in which we participate of developing the ecological settlement in Altay. And participate actively, with full immersion. Because as of today, we're the only family that continuously resides here, far from civilization.
Why am I writing?
First of all, it's our story, which, perhaps, will be able to help us understand what's happening.
Second, this text can appear useful for somebody, hence I know, that a lot of people are thinking about moving to an eco-village, but don’t dare to do it. This can be not so easy – leaving the more or less customary regular life in a flat, for an absolutely vague outlook of country life, about which you have no clue. So, the experience, described here for many may become an answer to questions that can arise regarding this subject.
Third, this text is for the future. In case our daughter will wonder about how did it come about, that her parents, the city dwellers, go to live in the Mountains, with no electricity and no warm toilet. She'll be able to read the book, and find all the answers, which by that time we'll have probably forgotten ourselves.
Forth, this is an unofficial history of our settlement, which sooner or later will become living and real.
This book is dedicated to the very first stage of organizing and setting up the ecological settlement. Thus, don't try to find any practical advice about how to build a house properly, how to lay out a kitchen garden, because we don't know all that ourselves yet. But, as of today we can share whatever we have: The experience of moving to virgin lands. An account of the real experience of how we began the settlement, including all the difficulties and mistakes that occurred. But to start I'm going to focus on our «philosophy», the way of thinking, which led us to this, possibly strange, experiment, as a result of which we, the city dwellers, found ourselves in the mountains of Altay.
So, how did it all begin?