I started this sojourn almost two years ago: to live with full heart in 2 vastly different communities that span this continent and my own primary family, and to create a patchwork of livelihood at the same time that supports both myself and my calling. Simply put- to integrate all that I carry into how I am living-- and for that to be in service to all the children - human and wild.
I generally travel by train because I find it more human-scale and more community-oriented, and because I like voting with my actions. I vote for good public transportation across the country that does not dump jet fuel into the upper atmosphere. Where are the affordable high-speed highly-energy-efficient trains we need????
I generally travel by train because I find it more human-scale and more community-oriented, and because I like voting with my actions. I vote for good public transportation across the country that does not dump jet fuel into the upper atmosphere. Where are the affordable high-speed highly-energy-efficient trains we need????
Along the way, I make new friends and visit old ones. I travel with a backpack and my laptop. An 8' x 10' storage unit in North Carolina currently houses those other possessions that await the tiny house I intend to build: precious books and tools, the four harness loom my dad built, a few special pieces of furniture, most of the oak and douglas fir timbers whose joints are ready to piece together into that 8' x 12' home-on-wheels.
It's the 6th or so timber frame I've designed and built, the smallest, the best-traveled, and the oldest- I started it nearly 21 years ago and it has at least 4000 road miles on it already.
It's the 6th or so timber frame I've designed and built, the smallest, the best-traveled, and the oldest- I started it nearly 21 years ago and it has at least 4000 road miles on it already.
An old but serviceable Kia Rio and a bicycle are in Idaho, "mothballed" when I am not there. I orbit from one Coast to the other as major events inspire me, about every 8 months or so.
This time, I’ve been back in North Carolina nearly 4 months. I am renting a room with good friends who live in a co-housing community here that feels like home— the same place I lived last winter. I feel like a juggler with many balls in the air. A couple of the balls are my sister and my mom and a variety of legal, financial and emotional considerations. Good news: my sister is settling slowly into an assisted living facility that gives her rich emotional community and excellent support, our 90 year old mom continues to heal and strengthen from her bad fall this summer and the full shoulder replacement linked to that, and I am discovering good boundaries and new possibilities to relax with this present adventure with these 2 “original people” of mine that have been in my life for a full and wild 60 years now. Truly— I have had the urge to turn quickly and run from the scene, but I feel like I’m making my way slowly towards a good way of being connected with them, and collaborating, while granting that their lives are their own to live, whether it looks “pretty” to me or not. And that it is helpful for me to trust my own core guidance of the broad picture of my life and the ways I want to be. This is how it seems when I am clear-headed and encouraged. (: A very tricky dance step, most of the time. I have hopes that all that I am setting in place and learning for myself now will ease the future months.
I also committed to helping with some engineering work for a long-time employer here— and am glad to be nearly done with the tedious parts of it, and pleased that it has gone more positively than I thought it could (some challenging review aspects). Yahoo! AND the significant project I’ve partnered in for months in re-configuring an organization into a public non-profit is coming along quite well, too.
I also committed to helping with some engineering work for a long-time employer here— and am glad to be nearly done with the tedious parts of it, and pleased that it has gone more positively than I thought it could (some challenging review aspects). Yahoo! AND the significant project I’ve partnered in for months in re-configuring an organization into a public non-profit is coming along quite well, too.
There is a gift, too, in living in these two very different communities: the way I get to savor good people and interesting things here that I don’t have out West. I think of long walks along a nearby favorite creek and its oak/hickory/beech forest here, of friendships that span most of my son’s growing-up years, of playing the dastardly fracking utility executive in a neighborhood production of a play that my friend Lee has written, of easy options to learn bike maintenance at a local non-profit. It leavens and balances what I am missing of mountains and wild land, of biking almost everywhere, of all the exploring and camaraderie of living in my beloved "other" backyard, of new and interesting possibilities out there that for now are temporarily on hold.
Just this past weekend here at Camp New Hope, I co-led a Conscious Eldering retreat Friday evening through Sunday that I’ve been working towards for most of 3 years with my colleague Ron Pevny. We had 24 people attending, Ron and I found that we worked easily and synergistically together, and we were as inspired as our participants. I know there will be spin-off in multiple directions, and I’m fully immersing myself this year in all the ways I can dream of to go after this Phoenixes Rising cross-generational work. Here and out West. Legacy work with both elders and “youngers”. Stand-alone 2 hour classes, a 4 week series, the weekend workshop format we just did, a week long retreat with a threshold/solo time as a rite of passage and a training component for other emerging leaders in this kind of work.
I expect to stay here through April 19, and then to head West very soon afterwards. I want to spend the December holidays there this year, so I’ll settle into the Pacific time zone for a good while. A series of questions and events has me considering packing up my storage unit here, including the tiny house timbers I've mentioned, and driving out with a rental truck. More to discover there, and soon, now that March is close. I’d rent a small storage unit there for sure. Depends on how serious I might be about building the tiny house on wheels out in Idaho this year on a yet-to-be-determined friendly landing spot, and other intangibles that are beyond articulating. YIKES!! But I’ll figure it out in the next weeks---
I expect to stay here through April 19, and then to head West very soon afterwards. I want to spend the December holidays there this year, so I’ll settle into the Pacific time zone for a good while. A series of questions and events has me considering packing up my storage unit here, including the tiny house timbers I've mentioned, and driving out with a rental truck. More to discover there, and soon, now that March is close. I’d rent a small storage unit there for sure. Depends on how serious I might be about building the tiny house on wheels out in Idaho this year on a yet-to-be-determined friendly landing spot, and other intangibles that are beyond articulating. YIKES!! But I’ll figure it out in the next weeks---
The spring wildflowers of Idaho's mountain land await me, along with the dear friends I've made out there and missed all this time, and most especially to my heart- the incredible delight of backpacking to favorite nooks on the land while engaged in conversations and explorations, silent and out-loud, with my son, one of the future's many bright-star young people and the one who happens to call me Mom.
(this particular photo is at 6000' along the Idaho/Montana border with the two of us on a reconnaissance trip for a Whitebark Pine survey, looking for non-existent cell service to our in-town colleague)
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