My one-man hut was made of poo. “Well, at least it’s horse poo,” I sighed as
the fire roared, the temperature rose and the walls began to hum. I have to
confess I sighed a lot during my stay in a field on the lower climbs of the
Preseli Mountains, in west Wales, visiting a tearaway gang of middle-class
eco-separatists.
I sighed when I learnt that there was no electricity and I wasn’t allowed to
use my mobile phone. I sighed when the running water turned out to be
running in a stream down a muddy ditch. I sighed when Emma Orbach, my host,
picked up a harp and sang reedily of peace and love as the autumn sun beat
down on her hut, causing her crystals to glint dully and me nearly to die of
embarrassment. Perhaps I sighed hardest when I was shown the open-air
loo/compost collector – or what Emma cheerfully dubbed “your ensuite”.
Orbach, 52, an Oxford graduate and mother of three, has lived like this for
more than a decade – if you don’t count her past lives as a Navajo Indian
and rural peasant in ancient China (which I don’t). She and her exhusband,
Julian, an architectural historian, bought five dozen acres outside
New-port, in Pembrokeshire, in the early 1990s to set up Brithdir Mawr
(Great Speckled Land), a commune for “like-minded hippies” who wanted to
“tread softly” on the land. They began restoring a cluster of farm
buildings, fitting them with solar panels and mini-turbines, and soon the
community grew to 10 adults and several children.
After her marriage ended, about 10 years ago, Orbach felt her life of low-watt
light bulbs and no hot water was altogether too cushy. So she moved from the
main house to the bottom of a field and – like some deranged sparrow – built
a one-woman, 10ft-wide roundhouse using twigs and excreta. The children,
teenagers at the time, stayed in the main community with their father, but
she continued to see them every day. Aside from the occasional whinge when
they had to wash their hair with cold water, the children coped surprisingly
well with their happy-clappy upbringing and have grown into staunchly green
adults.
Unfortunately for Orbach, a few months later the local planning inspectors
turned up. They were alerted when aerial surveillance in 1998 caught the
glint of a solar panel on the roof of a hut built illegally by two of her
friends, Tony Wrench and Jane Faith, on the other side of the settlement.
The battle over the huts raged for years, with government bulldozers revving
up at the gates more than once. Uncowed, Orbach built two more huts for
visitors (without power, unlike Wrench and Faith’s), and this autumn was
finally given permission by the National Park Authority not only to keep
them, but to build seven more. Her commune within a commune was deemed
integral to her career as a high-powered hedge-fund manager. (Just kidding –
she’s a crystal healer, of course.)
There was a sadistic tinge to the Home editor’s voice when he dispatched me to
the Welsh wilds. Worried he’d got the idea that I was some townie priss, I
cried “That sounds brilliant”, while inwardly panicking that I would never
survive without wireless internet, and wondering which coat – last season’s
Balenciaga? – I could sacrifice to the mud and filth. Honestly, it was like
Sophie’s Choice. Not that I have anything against hippies per se. I’m told
some of them don’t even smell that bad. That they aren’t all deathly-dull,
self-obsessed, overly judgmental, backward-thinking self-flagellators who
pretend cottage cheese is nicer than roquefort. Of course, I’ve only ever
met the smelly, boring, stupid variety, but, hey, who knows?
Actually, it doesn’t begin badly. Orbach is sweet enough to meet me at
Fishguard station in a car. She wears a roguish feather on her head, gives
me a hug and chats merrily about land rights as we hurtle through the
gorgeous countryside. Nice woman, I think. Then she casually asks if I’d
mind giving her some money towards the petrol for our 15-minute journey.
“Happy to,” I say, at which she swerves into a petrol station. Before I know
it I’m standing at the till handing over my credit card for £40 to fill the
tank. This is exactly what incenses me about this tree-hugging lot: so
dismissive of money, yet always looking to fleece you the second you let
your guard down.
Sadly, it’s only the beginning of the stay, so I’m compelled to keep shtoom.
At the compound, we hop out of the car and weave past the farm buildings –
home to the other, less hardcore members of the community she left behind –
then down to her patch. As far as Arcadia goes, it’s beyond stunning. The
antique hills roll and spike and there is only the faintest tint of autumn’s
gold. Orbach, as house-proud as a Surrey banker’s wife, explains that Tir
Ysbrydol (Spirit Land), as she has named it, is also home to Rook (a
22-year-old horticulture student), Deirdre (a middle-aged woman from High
Wycombe), chickens, goats, a cat and lots of fairies.
“Er, did you just say fairies?” “Yes,” Emma says. “Lovely,” I say, while my
brain screams: “Get out, get out now!”
Her roundhouses are hidden in a narrow bank of trees, set apart from one
another and linked by narrow paths of deep mud. We stop off at Orbach’s for
tea. You can see why they call them hobbit huts, as it is quite merry
inside: crackling fire, Middle Eastern rugs, roughhewn shelves groaning with
strange fruits and slim volumes on crop-circling. Bilbo Baggins, however,
had the luxury of magic. Orbach must make do with hard graft. She slugs her
water daily from the stream, plods to the muddy fields to milk her goats and
spends most of her days chopping wood in a nervous frenzy. If the fire dims
for a second, the damp is upon you.
So, what’s a nice woman like you doing living like a serf? “I’ve always known
the modern world wasn’t for me,” she says. “I spent my entire childhood up
trees.” Orbach was born in Devizes, Wiltshire, and was raised in a
tumbledown castle with her alternative parents. “My father was a violinist
and I had a round bedroom in the tower, so I think that’s why I feel happy
here.” She studied Chinese at Oxford, and – what with it being the 1970s –
became staunchly political, campaigning for all those predictable causes
(nuclear disarmament, the rights of Native Americans).
She married Julian and spent her twenties and thirties living in
Bradford-on-Avon, west Wiltshire. When London’s commuter belt crept too
close, though, she upped sticks to Wales to set up the commune. She
home-schooled her children, refused to visit doctors (crystals cure most
ailments, apparently) and opted out of society as we know it. She grew what
food she could, exchanging her produce with local shops for what she
couldn’t. Then, with her marriage breaking down and her children in their
teens, she headed even deeper into the wilderness.
I have two suspicions about Orbach’s hut-dwelling. One is that her top-notch
education has left her feeling guilty about the opportunities she’s had in
life. The other, that she was driven to silence and solitude by an inability
to cope with the unhappiness of her recent past. “But I’m finally happy
now,” she protests. “I sleep well, I’m calm, I’m relaxed, I have no stress.
I never even get ill.” With the earth dying and markets crashing, Orbach
believes everyone will have to live like her.
You can’t fault her home design for economy.
Just glass for windows, a waterproof sheet for the roof, a wood burner,
branches, hay and manure – as little as £100, all in. The other bonus is
that you can throw one up in a day.
After treating me to a quick song (why must hippies always sing? Do they have
no sense of their own clichés?), Orbach escorts me to a guest hut. With its
grass roof and wobbly walls, it’s charmingly Tolkienian. The lavatory, in a
nearby glade, is not. It’s an impossibly high tongue-and-groove box that you
sit on top of and toss leaves in after. Let’s just say I make do without.
Anyway, after a pleasant hour reading the latest Nureyev biography – his
impoverished Tatar upbringing in a single-roomed hovel begins to take on new
meaning – I pop outside for a forbidden ciggie.
I’m nearly busted by a visit from Deirdre, a frightfully well-spoken former
actress who is staying for the winter. What tempted her here? She says she’s
on the run from the “gossipy wives and lecherous husbands” of
Buckinghamshire. The traffic, the commercialism, the loneliness – it made
her feel sick. “This is just what I need,” she giggles.
She seems like a laugh, but then we accidentally stray to the subject of crop
circles. Deirdre is a big believer, and has lost friends over the issue.
This, unfortunately, sets the hokey tone for the evening.
Over dinner, back at Orbach’s, Rook, a sweet-natured young student, seems to
be having a fit as he handles various crystals. Their power is causing his
breath to come in short, aggressive bursts. Rook went to boarding school and
had a difficult relationship with his father, who works in the City. Like
the others, he doesn’t cope well with outside society – and his crystal talk
is endless.
Sensing my boredom, Deirdre gamely tries to change the subject to the American
election. As environmentalists, they must be excited by the prospect of a
Democrat in the White House? Orbach pooh-poohs this, saying that all
political systems will soon come crashing down. Actually, I think her real
message is that the Kyoto agreement is small fry compared with her
willingness to live without a flushing loo. She is utterly dogged. After
three minutes of noncrystal talk, she silences us with her harp. “Sorry,”
she simpers, after an interminable solo. “I just express myself better this
way.”
“How’s your cold?” Deirdre asks. “I don’t have one,” she snaps. The cluster of
tissues by her side tells a different story.
It’s clear that Orbach has had as much company as she can stand for one day,
and is getting rude, so – at 9pm – I head off to bed. Under the cover of
night, my hut looks less Bilbo Baggins than Blair Witch Project. There is a
constant cacophony of owl hoots and rustling rats. After three hours of
shakily relighting my candle every five minutes, I’m exhausted, lonely and
desperate for the loo. It’s just not a place you would come to if you were
happy in your outside life.
In the morning, I pop in for breakfast with Orbach. She seems more relaxed and
makes a few quips about how tricky she finds intrusion. She even concedes
that she has a cold, that her mother worries about her and that she stresses
making sure there’s enough to eat. “But, honestly, I am happy.”
“One woman’s happiness is another man’s squalor,” I joke, and she is kind
enough to laugh.
Yet I can’t conceive of how bad this credit crunch would have to get (open
looting? the return of fascism?) for you, me or 99.9% of the population to
want to live like this. Yes, we’ve conserved too little and wasted too much,
but is this a reason to forgo science, socialising and loo paper? It’s
exasperating. Though I will at least say this for you, Emma Orbach. You
hardly smelt at all.
