edges.
Lauren Young climbs into the loft of an old barn, perched with one foot on a rickety ladder and the other on a small tractor resting nearby. She gets to the loft, stops to look out the same window she looked out as a girl, sits at a small dusty desk in the center of the room, and starts rolling a cigarette. She calls the loft her office.
Lauren says the front window of the office has served as a kind of metaphor for her as she was growing up. “It’s a perspective thing, it’s like a window to the sky but also this window through which I could observe all activity around me that affected me, without being perceived by anyone, which is like my ideal situation. I loved hiding,” she says.
Lauren has lived at Edges on and off since she was 12-years-old. Edges is an intentional community in Glouster, Ohio and is centered primarily around sustainability, spirituality, and acceptance. “To me, it really is a special, unique sanctuary that was defined and protected by the dream of the people who started it,” says Lauren.
(Left to Right) Avery Snider, Jeremiah Caudile, Paul Wood, and Pat Fisher work to remove invasive species from the community on a community work day.
When Lauren’s parents, Susan Young and Evan Young, were first starting their family in Bloomington, Indiana, one of their priorities was finding affordable childcare as they both had busy professional careers at Indiana State University. They discovered a network of childcare co-ops in the area and found one that fit. “That was really our first experience of community and of the enhanced intentional sense of a group of people that have gathered around a task or a mission that they felt was really important. And they were committed to doing the hard work of collaborating to accomplish that task,” Evan says.
Boba plays with Moon (right) after escaping from her pen near the Youngs' house.
The experience with their childcare co-op led them to explore other ways they could live in cooperation with others. “In Bloomington at the time, there were also a couple of different intentional communities and we knew some people involved with those groups, and we were interested.” After moving around periodically following career paths, the Youngs ended up working at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. “When we moved up here, we were surprised and intrigued to find out that there were a number of intentional communities in the Athens area. We started exploring and edges was actively seeking new members at the time, so we started the process with edges.”
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“You know, there was a commitment to sustainable living here, a commitment to alternative energy. Those were both really interesting to us, but I think the most interesting thing to us was a commitment to build and to maintain right relationships among the members and do the hard work of being, you know, not just neighbors or acquaintances,” Evan says.
Plants growing in the community garden.
Plastic bags dry in preparation for reuse in the Youngs' kitchen.
A compost pile outside the community house. The compost goes towards fertilizing their garden and serves as a waste disposal for the food that Boba the pig won't eat.
A visitor pets Boba the pig. Lauren and Avery found Boba in the bathtub at their friends' house and brought her home. "She just loves cuddling and snuggling and she didn't get aggressive at all like pigs do. I think people just have that prejudice against pig because they didn't do attachment parenting," Lauren says.
When Lauren got older, she decided to travel on her own. She had $900 and flew out to California with just what fit in her backpack. To Lauren, security means being ultimately resourceful and educated about all different walks of life, and when she traveled that’s what she set out to do. She worked on a pot farm in Berkeley, hitchhiked, and hopped a train. “I did all of that to learn about people and learn how to move,” she says
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After Lauren traveled around the west for a while, she found a partner, and she got pregnant. She lived in a van for a part of her pregnancy, up until she was 7 months pregnant. A while into her pregnancy, her partner relapsed into his battle with heroin. William’s father was sober for a period of time and was present for the birth, but eventually continued abusing drugs. At the time she felt like “everything was terrifying and deeply wrong,” but when she revisits that period of her life, she says that her pregnancy was amazing and just how she wanted it, and she was also very educated about birth.
William plays with Lauren's earlobes while singing a blessing before dinner.
William keeps Evan company while he rests after sustaining a foot injury.
She had her son, William, in her friend’s bathtub with a midwife in Portland, Oregon. After William’s birth they tried to find a way on their own, but eventually they moved back to Edges when William was six months old. After having problems with the members related to his drug use, her partner left the community. Lauren and William continued to live there with Susan and Evan, the nature of the community and it’s support made it an excellent place for Lauren to heal and raise William.
“The most rewarding part about my relationship with William is that it makes me care. I was really depressed and really lost. Traveling was really exciting and fun, but I wasn’t really living my life with a purpose or a goal, he grounded me. He made me stand still because I had to, and then I started thinking about those things and making plans better and really having a deep perspective about priorities and what’s important in the world.” Lauren found her reason to live with deeper intent in her son William, and she has been able to raise him in a community of people who share her commitment to deeper perspectives and priorities.
A butterfly lands on a blade of grass near the garden at Edges.