Green Acres

Gail Carson would like you to know something about the EcoVillage at Ithaca (EVI): it is not a commune. "It's the first question people ask when they visit," says Carson, a pleasant, shy woman who runs a bed-and-breakfast at the upstate New York village. But you could be forgiven for not believing her.

At the moment, Carson, 66, is speaking to a circle of about 20 fellow ecovillagers who have gathered in the purple August twilight outside one of the community's common houses, where they've just polished off a group meal of broccoli pasta (regular, as well as wheat-free for the allergic). The 160 members of EVI eat several meals a week together, prepared by rotating teams of volunteer cooks. They share laundry machines, babysitters, organic produce, TVs (for the few who watch), even cars. If all this togetherness doesn't make EVI a commune, that's because it's potentially much more: a clean, green village hoping to show the rest of us how to live a fully modern life while reducing our environmental footprint to little more than a tiptoe.

"We're trying to create an attractive, viable alternative to American life," says Liz Walker, 53, who co-founded EVI in 1991 and still serves as its philosophical engine. "For us this feels like the way people should live on the earth."

Americans have sought out companies of like-minded souls since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, organizing around religion, politics, philosophy and--by the time the 1960s rolled around--long hair, free love and poor hygiene. But today that need for community is paired with a desire to live in harmony with the environment. The result is the ecovillage, and EVI is hardly the only one of its kind. The Global Ecovillage Network lists 379 such groups, from EVI in Ithaca to Findhorn in the wilderness of Scotland, and there are even some in cities like Los Angeles and Cleveland.

more from Time Magazine