Intentional community lays down roots in historic mansion

“An intentional community is a group of people who live together based on shared values and shared goals,” Ludwig explained, pulling a strand of bobbed brown hair out of her face.

Ludwig’s husband, 51-year-old Matt Stannard, sat next to her nodding. In contrast to his wife’s timid appearance, Stannard wore shorts, a Harvard Sailing ball cap and University of Wyoming slippers. His attention was divided between the laptop resting on his crossed legs and the conversation, but he easily followed the discussion.

“We’re a workshop for cooperation,” Stannard pitched in. “Other places may call themselves that too, but that’s what you need. You need spaces that are collaborative where people can experiment with models of resource sharing.”

Skully Stilgorick, a 27-year-old whose preferred pronouns are they/them, leaned into the conversation, elbows planted on the long earth-hued skirt covering their knees and hands clasped impatiently.

“I’ve lived in Wyoming since I was 4, and it is a very individualistic state,” they said. “We’re experimenting with emphasizing an environment of helping each other.”

Together the trio are the Solidarity Collective. They live in the Holliday Mansion west of Laramie, and they started their intentional community in 2018.

Foundations

On the outside, the Victorian-style mansion is a defiant bastion of Albany County’s early attempts to civilize the frontier set in a sea of untamed wilderness.

Surrounded by golden plains and a smattering of newer homes, the mansion boasts a prominent turret, a deck framed by white lattice and 13 bedrooms.

Inside, stained hardwood floors run throughout the maze of rooms. Patterned wall paper creates a visual time machine, and a liquor bottle cork hides in plain view, blending perfectly with the elegant, albeit archaic, carpentry.

“We play a game with new comers,” Ludwig said, adding with a chuckle, “We tell them about the cork and see how long it takes them to find it.”

The residents also frequently debate which room sports the most horrendous wall paper, she confided.

Like the house, the community is a collection of varied experiences accentuated by different timelines and brought together by chance or design to create something entirely different than the architects — of society or structure — had in mind.

“I was dragged into my first intentional community experience kicking and screaming about 22 years ago,” Ludwig said. “When I got pregnant with my son, his father wanted to give it try. He said if he didn’t do it then, he never would.”

While the idea of communal living originally repulsed her, Ludwig said once she was in, she felt right at home.

“I let go of my reluctance pretty quickly,” Ludwig explained. “Ironically, I’m the one who’s involved in the national movement, still living in a community. My son’s father is now living in a more traditional, nuclear family setting.”

Her son lives in the mansion with the community and attends UW, but Ludwig said he is not a member of Solidarity.

Since her introduction to intentional communities, Ludwig has lived in eight — some she founded, some she discovered — across the states.

“Communities are not utopias, they all have their own problems,” she said, explaining the number of communities she’s lived in. “The best match before this was actually a group called Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, and I was convinced I was going to be a lifer there.”

Ludwig lived at Dancing Rabbit for nearly nine years before meeting Stannard.

“The only reason I left was because I fell in love with a guy in Laramie,” she said.

A longtime Laramie resident, Stannard said he was familiar with intentional communities, but the experience of being a part of one was new. Intentional communities are not a common feature on the Wyoming landscape, and the Fellowship for Intentional Communities website has only one other listing — doomsday preppers in Casper.

“I’ve done a lot of different types of intentional living as an activist,” Stannard said. “But, I’ve never actually lived in a community.”

Stilgorick, too, is a newcomer.

“This is my first time ever doing anything like this,” they said. “Five or six years ago, I would’ve never thought this possible.”

Family

Intentional communities can be as diverse as families, but rather than throwing a person’s lot in with people who don’t always share the same ideals, Stilgorick said communities permit the opportunity to choose your social structure.

“I like these people,” they explained, laughing. “Don’t get me wrong, I love my family very much, but they don’t share my beliefs or concept of needs.”

Dealing with occasional bouts of depression, Stilgorick said they don’t always have a desire to eat or interact with other people. By living in the community, they have a support network of people understanding and sympathetic to their struggles.

For Stannard, the community is an attempt to recreate a familial structure he believes is going extinct in the U.S.

“This society and this economic system has wrecked the idea of families,” he explained. “If a few rich people change their decisions about something, an entire community can be uprooted. That undermines people’s ability to start and stay in a family.”

A capitalistic society’s tendency to displace caretakers with income earners creates social problems, Stannard said.

“Then you hear, ‘Well, you just need stronger families and stronger values,’” he said. “The problem is we have those values, but the system we live under punishes us rather than rewarding us for trying to live with those values.”

Pursing her lips, Ludwig stared intently through a picture window at the frozen valley, letting silence descend upon the library before offering her perspective.

“I like these two — they have become my family,” she said quietly. “But I still like my own family. They’ve gone their way, and I’ve gone mine. We still talk and visit. We’re still family. But this is the family I choose to live with. It’s not an either/or situation.”

Growth

Through websites and networking, a person can find thousands of independent communities throughout the U.S., but communities are not on size fits all.

“When we started Solidarity, we really wanted to create an environment of inclusiveness,” Ludwig said. “Unfortunately, some of our early members were not as onboard with that idea when they saw in it action.”

Specifically, Solidarity lost members because some prospects did not want to be part of a community that included transgender people.

“One of our challenges has been getting the message really clear that this space is trans safe and queer safe,” she said. “If folks aren’t down with that, then this isn’t the right group for them.”

Because of the immediate decline in membership, Ludwig said funding the endeavor has become another challenge.

“Socially, we’re solid,” she said. “But, financially, I don’t know we’re going to make it through the first year.”

At 5,800 square feet, the Holiday Mansion requires significant resources to keep warm. Built in the 1800s, the building needs several renovations to bring it into the 21st century — all of which are a drain on the bank account.

Despite the challenges — financial and otherwise — Ludwig said she remains hopeful.

“Our goal is to one day be up to about 15 members,” she said. “We’re hoping to get up to eight this year. We have some folk in town that are interested, and the (Fellowship for Intentional Communities) website has driven interest from around the globe.”

As the group grows, Stannard said he would like to see it become a hub for progressive ideas.

“We would like to be a collaborative space for art and politics,” he explained. “I think what we really have to offer the community at large is the living systems we’re trying out here. But, really, we’re just human beings trying to do things.”

Stilgorick said the emphasis of the community — in its formation and continuation — is to create an inclusive culture within the Laramie area where debate and new ideas are welcome, rather than separating the members of the collective from society to form an isolated outlier.

“We have more voices and minds on things, which helps us reach solutions more quickly than an individual might,” they said. “I want people to see that in action, but we also want to be a part of the Laramie community.”

Stannard added, “We’re very non-dogmatic. We don’t have one formula for solving the world’s problems. We think people should have the space to explore several possible answers.”

Dialogue is paramount in Solidarity, but Ludwig said the collective would like grow in more aspects than simply the intellectual.

“I want us to have a green house, solar panels and a big chicken flock — really getting our sustainability systems rooted in place,” she said. “I want a lot of art happening, and the socioeconomic stuff is important to me as well. But other than that, I’m looking forward to seeing who shows up. It’s always a little bit of an adventure.”