Pleasant says he isn't surprised that there aren't more so-called intentional communities in East Tennessee. Because it's always been so rural, the people who live out in the country are already in line with nature, in many respects. Carefully planning communities around basic human needs and utilizing land to the maximum is nothing new. Until World War II, it was the way most communities were built, he says. After the past 40 years of this rampant charge of development, a lot of people are starting to go back to the old way of planning communities because of necessity.
People say, 'The population's growing.
His parents were '60s idealists. Though they never experimented with drugs, they were politically and socially aware, working in the Peace Corps and doing things differently. With their two sons, they lived here in the '70s and taught themselves to live off the land. The home feels like an old hunting lodge. Patrick Kimmons studied at UT in Knoxville, but after graduating in '89, he came back home disillusioned.