You can find below a message I sent to the participants after the tour to express how I felt.

• “Hi Heterotopians,

I was not able to accept that heteropia was over, I had the chance to keep some connection for a few more days by joining the heteropians Saùl and Gio to help Barbara with the foundations of an ecobuilt house (with earthbags technique) in Monchique.

It's already been a week since we left the camp. When it was time to say goodbyes, I lacked of words, and I still do, I don't think that I can express my feelings through words but I will try to share.

I experienced strong mixed feelings : really sad that it was over, and also so happy to have been part of this this great human adventure, it is the first time that I experienced such powerful and contradictory feelings, I still feel that way.

I really want to thank everyone of you, special thanks to new loops, all the coordinators, cinergies, Caro and Céci. ALL of you made that wonderful experience possible. I experienced very intense and moving moments, you gave me strength, hope, serenity, clarity, joy, energy, fun, dreams, happiness, inspiration, and much more… this is the starting point of a new adventure for me, it really gave me the extra boost to move forward, I am deeply grateful for everything.

I miss each one of you, I miss the shell, the camp, the “shamanic” place, the announcements, the tasks, the jokes, the campfire, the dogs, the meals, the activities, the breaks, your smiles, your presence, the “it's okay it's okay bum bum ”, “thank you cooking team” and even the cold showers, the hangovers, the lack of sleep and the mosquitos 😀😉 !

I love you all and wish you all the best, have a great life ! I really hope our paths will meet again, you are welcome wherever I may be, and who knows ? dreams can come true, I now have a new dream : be together again some day.

Thank you, obrigado, grazie, efcharistó, merci Saudade, Miss you

Bisous

Laurent”

• This reminded me of a beautiful text read to us by Joanna from New Loops (Obrigado !) :

Utopia- Eduardo Galeano Spanish Version

Utopia […] ella está en el horizonte. Me acerco dos pasos, ella se aleja dos pasos. Camino diez pasos y el horizonte se corre diez pasos más allá. Por mucho que yo camine, nunca la alcanzaré. Para que sirve la utopia? Para eso sirve: para caminar.

Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I'll never reach it. So what's the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.

- Fernando Birri citado por Eduardo Galeano in Las palabras andantes - Página 310, de Eduardo Galeano, José Borges - Publicado por Siglo XXI, 1994, ISBN 9682319013, 9789682319013 - 328 páginas

• As mentioned in the above message, this tour was also a starting point for me, this really helped me in my thinking process about collective projects and what I wanted to do the following months. Thanks to everybody and particularly Cecilia who offered me to practice a creativity exercise called "The dreamer, the realistic, and the criticist in each one of us" (Robert B. Dilts in “Strategies of Genius”, you can read the contribution on this topic), I gained clarity and I was able to make some decisions to move forward. I decided to do a tour to visit different collective projects so as to learn and prepare to settle or initiate in a collective living project ; I also decided to start creating a cooperative around low tech in the renewable energy field.

• I would also have loved the trip to last longer so we could go deeper in the collective experience, maybe overcome other challenges that would appear later in the process. For example, a challenge for me during the trip was to find a balance between the collective needs and my “individual” needs, it has been very interesting to feel that difficulty and start working on that.

• I now dream to meet again with the heteropians after 1 year or 2 to spend more time together and discuss about what happened since the tour in Portugal, I would love that !