Inquiring Minds Want to Know (Life Off the Grid)

May 19, 2013 By 8 Comments

Yes, I will tell my dear friend Amy how living in a yurt affects my sex life. But first, a few things that are not quite that interesting, modeled after the questions my 7yo niece pummeled me with when I arrived at her house this morning.

Yes, we live without power or running water. Here’s what that looks like, so far.

Light Without Electricity. One time I put my hand on the wall near the door, reaching for a light switch that isn’t there. But generally this isn’t a big deal. We have a circular hole in the roof of the yurt, which is covered when precipitation requires it. But when it is open, and it’s daylight, there is plenty of light. At night we put one candle in the middle of the room, which lights our movement, and we just don’t do things that require a lot of light. Reading and washing have to be done before nightfall. After nightfall we talk to each other, play the guitar, eat snacks, and watch the trees sway. Also, we have flashlights, and a battery operated lantern, which is on a very low setting all night over Sadie’s crib. We hang up the lantern at a full setting when it rains and we have to cover the top.

Warmth without Electricity. 55 degrees is the new room temperature. Seriously, it’s the new way. If it goes below 55 the kids start complaining, but up to there we’re good. When we do need to heat the yurt, we start a fire in the pot-bellied stove. When we first moved in, it was freezing at night, and we set an alarm to stoke the fire every three hours at night: 12am, 3am, 6am. We didn’t really need the phone alarm, though, Sadie did a pretty good job of waking everybody up when the fire went out. And on that one cold morning when we didn’t have a stove, the kids and I just got in one bed together until the morning warmed up the air.

Cooking Without Electricity. This is pretty much the post I wrote when we first discovered the wood stove. We eat as well as the time we’re willing to put into it. Sometimes that’s canned soup barely warm. And sometimes that’s a multiple-course meal. But wow that stove does well with pancakes and bacon. Or maybe that’s my husband who does well with pancakes and bacon…

Entertainment without Electricity. My kids have been screen-free before, so it isn’t a total system shock. I wish I could tell you that it turns them into little angels and they’re super intelligent and have great attention spans, but of course that isn’t the case. What is true, though, is that nature and outdoor play occupies them just as fully as the screens did. It’s like a clean swap. They still fight. They still hang around me when I want to be working. But not more of the time than the were before. All that time that they used to watch TV, they are finding other things to do, mostly things involving sticks and frogs and dirt. Yesterday Milo was playing “farm Star Wars” in which all the characters were animals. Luke Skywalker was a chicken. So…that’s good for his IQ, right?

Dishes Without Running Water. I can wash a meal’s worth of dishes with about a gallon of water. About half of it is heated in a kettle, then I mix it with cold until I can put my hands in it. I use a bowl with soapy water to wash. And a tub with clean water to rinse. Then I stack it on a towel. It’s pretty quick, actually. And SO much less water than I was using running water over everything in a sink.

Cleanliness Without Running Water. We ARE going to make ourselves a shower of some kind. And in the meantime, we go into town for showers. But only once a week. For quality of life between the weekly town trips… I use a dry skin brush. I also use the oil cleansing method for my face. I wouldn’t do this much unless I was actually getting dirt on my face. But I am actually getting dirt on my face. And oil is a great way to clean it off without damaging my skin. My hair still gets dirty, even though I only wash it with baking soda, so at the end of the week I put my dirty hair up in a hat or in scarves. And we wash the kids with a rag and a bowl of warm water.

Also, we all live in one room. The baby has adjusted in just three weeks from falling asleep in a dark room by herself to falling asleep in, well, NOT a dark room by herself. She’s a pretty mellow baby, though. The two big kids are sleeping at opposite ends of the top bunk, with their toys where the bottom bunk would be. The middle one actually falls asleep, because she’s tired. But the biggest one watches us, sometimes for hours. Especially if we’re eating snacks that he likes. So we have to watch what we’re talking about.

And, for Amy… For better or for worse, yurt living is NOT natural birth control. Kids sleep. And the dark is really dark, if you don’t light it. And that…is all I have to say about that.

Any other embarrassing or not embarrassing things you want to ask me? 

Filed Under: Homestead Diary Tagged With: , , , ,

Quick Hot List About Slowing Down (Homestead Diary)

May 14, 2013 By 8 Comments

I don’t have time to do a proper Homestead Diary, which is good, because I’ve been a little bored with it lately. I bore easily. But so do you. I’ll write this fast.

We’ve been on the hill three weeks now, give or take. The first week, though, we spent several nights in town. Now we’re acting like we really live here.

So far we’ve done a lot of moving in.

Things we have done:

Hung things, stored things, washed things, sorted things. Cleared brush and brush and more brush. Limbed a couple more trees. Built a sandbox. Moved in the bees, and some red wriggler worms. Built three raised beds and an experimental hugelkultur bed. Filled them with stuff that isn’t soil yet but we hope will become soil. Planted seeds, which mostly didn’t germinate. Remembered to slow down.

Cleared some more brush. Went to our neighbor’s well, once a day, twice a day. Carried pond water by the bucket to water our seeds, that still didn’t germinate. Showed the kids a tadpole growing legs. Split wood. Got stuck on whether to purchase annuals for our garden or perennials for our food forest, or both. Started worrying about money. Remembered to slow down.

Went for afternoon walks. Named a little pond Mouse Pond, and little stand of pines Pine Moon. Watched tall trees sway in the wind at night, which is crazy. Got to know some more neighbors. Replaced our chimney pipe. Made a lot of little fires in the cook stove. Felt the sudden desert change from cold to hot and started thinking about cooling the yurt instead of heating it. Remembered to slow down.

Worked hard enough to get sore, and dehydrated. Remembered to slow down. Let our kids get really dirty. Caught a frog. Took it back to the pond and watched it go, and remembered to slow down. Made chocolate chip cookies in the woodstove. Startled elk sleeping behind the toolshed in the morning. Remembered to slow down.

Things we haven’t done:

Many of the things actually on our list.

We’re living in a time of opportunity. Potential. So much to do, but you can’t do it all at once anyway. The greatest challenge is that first principle of Permaculture, which I’ve said so many times, “Observe and Interact.” Don’t imagine yourself alone, doing this alone.

The constantly revising plan:

I want the animals I’ve talked about. Right now. But there are animals that already live here. Besides the elk and the fox and the turkeys, there is the big water bird over the creek (I don’t know its name), the vultures eating roadkill, the hawk, the rock chuck sunbathing on the concrete highway divider. (Do you think that’s on his bucket list?)

Of course I want a garden. Right now. I want a full producing traditional kitchen garden. And I want a permaculture food forest. Want, want, want. But there is an ecosystem in place, and to interact with it well we have to use our senses. To listen, watch, learn. To YES do all our projects, but do them loose and learning, not like a lego set, but like a living world.

I don’t know, looking at our list, if we’ve accomplished an extraordinary amount in three weeks? Or if we haven’t really done anything at all? Maybe both. What do you think? But I do think this: that the messiness, that confusion, that frustrating but also satisfying feeling of unfinishedness…that’s what we’re in for for a while. Maybe that’s what we came for.

Next week: I’m going to tell about some things people are curious about, like light without light switches, and how we keep clean, and bedtime when you all live in one room? Anything you’d like to hear about? Let me know. And thanks for coming along with us. You make it all more fun.

Filed Under: Homestead Diary Tagged With: , , ,

Happy Mother’s Day (Where There’s a Will There’s a Way)

May 12, 2013 By 15 Comments

It’s a bit of a laugh that I’ve been talking so much about authenticity, because I just had a fall apart to beat the band. Things as they are, I can either tell the truth about it or stop blogging entirely. I tried the latter, for about a week, but I missed you.

So.

Let me be clear. The trouble is not survival. It’s easier than you might think, to live without power or running water. You just decide to live, and then you live. And there’s nothing more beautiful than a wild land in May.

But not all my life is that. I came into town for my day of charging up and gathering supplies, and Nick was working – he does still do that, sometimes — and I had all three of my kids: tired and hot, grumpy from sitting in the car. Fighting.

One stop for groceries. One stop for gardening supplies. And then the Laundromat.

I know you’ve seen this family, if you’ve been out in the world with your ears open. Use your imagination. A crying baby, harried, angry mom, an older child whining that all he wants in the world is another episode of Phineas and Ferb, and oh, that three year old. She discovered that there was a rule against running in the Laundromat, which was delightful news, since she has such good running legs. She cackled at me, admiring my helplessness, elbow deep in very dirty clothes, with a fussy baby on my chest. And then she threatened to take her clothes off.

Imagine me: hot and red. No showers, remember, let alone makeup. Dirt on the cuffs of my jeans. Stella’s bangs are growing out, so we don’t have to pay for haircuts, and she refuses to wear a pin or a clip. Every time I look at her, I am transported, fully, to my own childhood. Wild child. Child of struggling mom. Child of poverty. Child of shame.

Did I do this on purpose? Did I just recreate my childhood — the absolute worst of my own childhood — on purpose?

Nick came in to help, and he saved me, but even my knight in shining armor was dressed in old work clothes. (Remember, we never buy new clothes, because the sweat shops…?) And he’s gray with dust from working outside in the valley in May. His beard is thick. His hands are dirty. I wanted to speak personally to every person who saw us. “Understand, please, I have a college degree. I’m smart. I’m not a failure. And he used to work at Harvard. You have to believe me, we live like this on purpose.”

But tell that to my children. Tell that to my three year old, who fights, and has her hair hanging in her eyes.

Child of poverty. Child of shame.

–

My mother used to have this saying, “Where there’s a will there’s a way.” And this is it, now. This is everything I can say about my mother.

Where there’s a will there’s a way.

This is all of her: the suffering, losing all her money and her land, getting left alone with her seven kids and moving to a tiny apartment in town. Crying at her typewriter, writing out the story of her divorce. Homeschooling her children. Keeping her daughters in ballet classes.

Where there’s a will there’s a way.

And it’s how she did all those stupid things: insisting on calling herself a writer – an encyclopedist — even when her book wasn’t selling, and it was the 80’s, and nobody cared. It was going back on the road, over and over again, and standing behind a table selling her books, speaking about “The Modern Homesteading Movement,” even when she was a middle aged woman with a roll of fat around her middle, and she never had the decency to give up or disappear. She kept standing up. She kept speaking. She kept showing up.

Where there’s a will there’s a way.

And it’s how she died, away from home, in a tiny town in Texas, with her plastic tables and her books in the back of the van. And how that book sold 750,000 copies.

Where there’s a will there’s a way.

–

Nick and I always plant something on Mother’s Day. This year, believe me, it is something more than overwhelming. Just to build the soil. To open up the ground. Start somewhere. Clear the brush and what you’ve got is hard packed and gray. And acid from the pines. Besides, the three year old is still here, too. She’s watering the walls and carrying dirt into the house.

Look at me, here: standing with my seed packets in my hands, and the wild woods around me. Look at me: with three dirty kids and a hillside of bad dirt, and I’m celebrating Mother’s Day, replicating my mother’s life in ways I don’t even want to talk about.

But I know this now, what I didn’t know when I was three years old: I know that every moment of adulthood is a choice between compromises. And it may be worth it, in the end, to sacrifice appearances and social standing in return for integrity and freedom.

It might be worth it, to quit the world, in return for a wild hill in May.

So, thank you, mom, for this. Thank you for a nest with four blue eggs. A wild raspberry cane. And the stars where you can really see them. Thank you for dirt under my fingernails, and on the cuffs of my jeans. Thank you for every act of defiance, for our will to do the impossible. Thank you for our faith in future things. Thank you for my freedom.

And thank you, for your ghost, when I stand in the wild with a garden to plant. Beside me, reaching your hands into the dirt, to plant, to raise up life.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I love you.

Filed Under: Carla Emery Tagged With: , , ,

Homestead Diary #13 (You Learn Something New Every Day)

May 5, 2013 By 5 Comments

On the morning that we couldn’t use our woodstove for heat, I realized that we put up our house backwards. The glass door and kitchen should have been on the East side, to catch the morning sun.

Don’t worry, I didn’t ask Nick to take it down and change it.

But this is what I’m trying to tell you: passive solar building construction is a concept that challenges a brain like mine, working in theory. (Morning sun, afternoon sun..angles?) I’m quick to tune it out. But it all becomes abundantly clear on a cold morning when you can’t use your stove and you see that the sun is beginning to do its awesome warming thing…on the other side of your insulation.

Hmm.

I don’t know if any of your razor sharp eyes caught this, but I mentioned last week that our stove pipe was cobbled together from craigslist finds, like the whole yurt is cobbled together from craigslist finds, (except for the vinyl skin). In the case of many things, this has been awesome. In the case of the stove pipe, this means it only lasted about a week before part of it softened from the heat and fell in the fire.

That wasn’t very fun. It was a little scary. And a little smoky. Mostly it was just a whole day that we couldn’t use our stove, and that was cold.

But it’s fixed now. Nick’s response to this sort of thing is to clear his schedule and work steadily until he has solved the problem, breaking occasionally to scratch his beard and eat peanut M&M’s. My response is to get under the covers with my kids and make up stories about forest animals. This actually worked out pretty well for everybody. And now I understand passive solar.

WHAT WE DID THIS WEEK or “YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY”

1. SHINY NEW STOVE PIPE. It cost several hundred dollars. I wouldn’t say that I necessarily regret our choice to begin with found and/or cheap stove pipe, but only because it has been our choice to go with found and/or cheap everything. I would say that if you were going to make a salvaged home like ours and buy just one thing new, the stove pipe would be an excellent choice.

2. Speaking of fire…we’re working on our OUTDOOR KITCHEN!  Although I haven’t done bread yet, the wood cookstove makes much better dinners than the little camp stove, and we only had to interrupt meal preparation once this week for rain.

3. Also…still speaking of fire…DEFENSIBLE AREA. Turns out Boise County is full of folks who aren’t very into laws.
Nick’s rebel DIY heart is mild stuff by local standards. The only thing about our home that will be inspected is the 30 ft defensible area around our home. This is fire prevention, and we’re not having any trouble being motivated to comply, since we can see fire damage across the canyon. We are clearing brush, moving branches and raking needles in an expanding radius all round the yurt. The local standard is to burn this stuff, in the spring, on wet days. But the environmentalist in me would rather bury carbon than burn it. An in-between option is to truck it to the wood recycler in town, where we pay a few dollars to dispose of a truck load and they grind it up and resell it as mulch. And…maybe the best option of all is to rent a chipper and it turn into mulch ourselves.

MIRACLE OF THE WEEK

Coffee. Is necessary while watching the love of your life educate himself on the fine art of stove pipe joinery. Fortunately, we have a hand crank manual coffee grinder, made for us by Nick’s dad. He engraved it with our names and the date of our anniversary, and it is possible he thought it would be a decorative piece. Nope. Staple of life.

WHIMSY OF THE WEEK

Nick and I both play guitar, sort of. There’s actually a second jurisdiction in Boise County, which is that our guitar playing has to be kept a certain distance from other human habitation. (Just kidding.) But boy do we have a good time doing it. And it’s good for keeping bears away.

OBSTACLE OF THE WEEK

Lots of things. I do feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. We started this week with a lot of things we were going to accomplish, and ended it having gotten a new stove pipe and cleared some brush. But…*see previous post*…there is something to be said for a job that can’t be finished. It keeps me honest.

NEXT

Just yesterday I got my bees. There’s no record of this yet, since I was actually doing the work for a change, and so who takes the pictures? I did most everything wrong, but the bees did their thing anyway. I will post something descriptive and not instructive soon. HINT: I love them. Unexpectedly. I love the sound of them. And I had them in the cab of the truck with me for an hour without taping up the box and it was fine. Little sisters.

As always, thanks for joining us! Be safe and don’t have any chimney fires. Love, Esther
Filed Under: Uncategorized

My Year Without Internet Was Not a Failure

May 3, 2013 By 12 Comments

Three different people have posted this article on my facebook page. This guy went for a year without the Internet. Just like me. I went for a year without the Internet. Except, this guy said it didn’t really change anything. And I keeping saying the opposite.

I keep saying that when I went for a year offline, I became different in like a hundred ways. I stayed married. Even happily married. Even, like, this-guy-is-cool married. I started meditating every day. I became Christian. I quit eating tortured cows. I quit buying sweatshop-made garments. I quit living in debt. I quit not-cooking. I quit politics. I quit pretending that I’m not totally, so much, so, so, so much like my mother.

What’s this all about? What was different?  

I have about five minutes to write this, because I’m actually living all the changes I talked about, and I have just one day in town to bathe my kids and gather supplies and get ready for another week of trying to learn permaculture as-we-go, and I’m getting a colony of bees (a nuc) first thing in the morning. But here it is, quick and real and bullet style: my genuine response to Paul Miller and The Verge.

1. It hurts that somebody else is getting famous for doing a Year Without the Internet, because I was totally going to get famous for doing a Year Without the Internet. I was going to get So. Famous.

2. The fact that it actually transformed my life, for the better, is a direct result of the fact that I didn’t get So. Famous. (Now who’s the lucky one?) I didn’t get paid for doing it. I didn’t send an essay every week to a publication about what was happening to me. Truly, really, when it happened to me, this is the truth: nobody cared.

3. I had to actually, truly, for real, GIVE UP, my self-created, just-for-the-movies, look-at-how-pretty-I-am-on-the-Internet secondary identity.

4. This was the road, for me, to an authenticity that changed my life, my spirituality, my creativity, and my marriage.

5.The timing of this article is amazing.

6. No, really. I’m going to say that again. The timing of this article is AMAZING. I just spent a whole week, up on the hill, with my pine trees, trying to boil my story down to one sentence, one subtitle: What did change so much about me during that year? Was it really that I decided to stay married? Was it really that I decided to learn to cook and garden and become a vegan and go to Nicaragua and eventually move back home to red-state Idaho? Was it really that I decided to meld my dream with my husband’s dream instead of always letting the two compete? Was it really that I decided once and for all to become a better person, which means I have to live all the time in the messy space between who I really am and who I really want to be? Was it really that I decided to become a Christian?

7. Yes.

8. And No.

9. This is what changed my life. When I went off the Internet, and also didn’t get paid for doing it, and also didn’t send articles once a week about what I was doing, and also didn’t get to write the book I meant to write, among other reasons because the junkie from upstairs stole my computer (WHAT ARE THE CHANCES?), and also I had two little kids and writer’s block, and I just didn’t really know what it was that I wanted to say  – This is what completely changed my life: I STOPPED PERFORMING.

10. When I stopped performing, authenticity showed up in my life. And even though I’m back on the Internet now, two years later, writing to you all, authenticity is still my partner, every day. I’m ashamed sometimes, to tell the truth so much. That I’m so hopelessly religious, and so vulnerable, and not really as smart as I used to pretend to be, and not as strong, either. That I spend a lot of time doing nothing, and I love my family really, really, a lot, but also you’re welcome to babysit my kids anytime, they’re kind of driving me crazy, how about next Friday?… Every time I write here, I tell you the truth that I live pretty broken, and that’s the same thing as brave, because at least I’m out there. I’m ashamed of it, sometimes. But authenticity requires that. And it’s worth it.

So.

Thank you, God. And thank you Valerie, Missy, and Noelle for posting that article on my page. I think you just gave me the key to unlock the final draft of this book, which has been hanging over me for TWO YEARS.

I’m okay with that. It was a good two years. I learned a lot.  But if you’ll excuse me, now, I think I have a book to write. It’s about authenticity.

Filed Under: Creativity Tagged With: , , , , , ,

To Rest in the Work

May 2, 2013 By 11 Comments

Pretty much the first thing I did, when I got all set up in my new home, was take a nap.

So many reasons for this: the newly made bed so inviting, the move so tiring, the mountain itself like a giant shoulder, inviting rest.

But there’s more to it than that.

The first thing you notice, when you break out of the business of normal life, is just how tired you’ve been living.

–

That whole first day I was groggy and heavy. I don’t mean the first day I was ever up there, but the first day that I had a home and water and warmth and only holy fear for my survival, and no place else to be. That whole first day I didn’t get much done, crawling like an ant on the hill that dwarfs me, with the quiet of the birds, the gentleness of a round house, weight of gravity, thinner air.

The second day I worked. Unpacking. Cleaning. Sweeping. Clearing brush and branches. Raking needles. Going down to the well for water. Washing up.

The third day I woke up at about 5, maybe 5:30 in the morning. Not unhappy. Not miserable, not dragging myself out of bed, drooling for coffee. Not forcing myself to accomplish one more thing. Just awake.

–

I wrote the other day, here, about this word, AWAKE. My one word resolution for 2013. I hope it doesn’t seem affected that I always write it in all caps. That’s what I feel. I want to SHOUT myself awake. I want to take myself by the shoulders and shake, shout, “SEE the abundance, FEEL the beauty. LIVE now. Don’t miss the best part of your life. It’s happening right this minute. WAKE UP!”

It didn’t occur to me, until the third day on the mountain, when I woke up in the morning, that maybe I’m tired out from all of my own shouting.

But who knows how to rest?

–

Annie Dillard once wrote, as if in the voice of God — which is just the sort of blasphemy great writers occasionally indulge — she wrote, “YOU MUST REST YOURSELF. I CANNOT REST YOU.”

This is it, I think: this is the one thing that cannot be forced upon us. God and fate and man can force many things upon the human soul, but none of them are peace.

You must rest yourself.

I hunt this. I hunt the equilibrium between work and rest. I hunt the work that IS rest. I find it in all sorts of unwanted places. In washing dishes, clearing brush, weeding, digging, sweeping floors.

Vacuuming.

—

One lovely thing about three acres of wilderness: it is a project you will never finish. The man from up the road tells us it took him 30 years to clear the brush off his seven acres. On that second day I cleared brush for a couple hours, and you can hardly see the difference. We’re in this thing for life.

That’s the magic I felt, in the nap that actually rested me, and the work that actually rested me. This is what permaculture means to me, in my beginner’s ignorance. It means to me to take on nature as a job that you aren’t trying to finish. It means you work to sing the song, not end the song. I want this, for myself, and for my children. I want this for everybody. I want us to live lives that we aren’t trying to finish.

I wish this for us: that we would stop trying to get there, wherever there is.

We’re set up right and left to do the opposite: graduations, ceremonies, milestones, accomplishments. All these imaginary endpoints. But I’ve lived through several of them, and every year I live the day after my birthday.

I get it, that we’re supposed to set goals, because that’s how you accomplish things. I don’t want anybody to hide from what they want to do. I don’t want to hide from the passions that call me out of me safety and my quiet. But I want to rest in my passions, not burn up in them. And that means to rest in the work, to know that it isn’t going to get done, to do it anyway. That means to LOVE the work

*Umm…love the vacuuming?*

*Mmm hmm, I think so.*

To emphasize outcomes over process is to emphasize imaginary things over created things. It is to emphasize our own power over the power of reality, environment, Creation, God. It makes us TIRED.

I wish you this, for the weekend, a day like the kind of day I had, with a nap, and some hard work, and a candle. To rest. To live your life now. To be enough.

Filed Under: AWAKE, homesteading Tagged With: , , , , ,

Homestead Diary #12 (The Pop-Up House)

April 28, 2013 By 14 Comments

“I love it when a plan comes together.” — John “Hannibal” Smith

Nick owes a certain portion of his upbringing to the television show, The A-Team. If you know The A-Team, actually, this explains a lot. The man lives by these tenets: absurdly well-orchestrated craziness is good craziness, and creative engineering is good engineering.

This week, the plan came together.

We called it a load-in, because that’s what theater people call this. In order to minimize “dark” days, or days that there is no paying audience in the theater, you build the set in pieces in a shop, and then carry it into the theater at the last minute, in a flurry of stress and long hours and grumpy stage hands.

We kinda did that, except without the stage hands.

I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with an insurance customer service agent. She said, “You’re living with other people, they have to be covered, too.”  I said, “Oh, no, by the time this policy is in effect, we’ll be living on our own, at the new address.” She said, “Oh, is the house almost done?” I said, “No. It isn’t actually there at all, yet, but in two weeks it will be.” She said, “How does that work?” I said, “Well, it’s kind of like a…like a…pop-up house.”

WHAT WE DID THIS WEEK…or…THE POP-UP HOUSE

MOVE IN. The yurt itself went up the week before. On the weekend, we moved our furniture up. And, since we had already worked out the furniture arrangement, in AUTOCAD, it didn’t take much time to lay it out. We cut down a bookcase to turn it into our pantry. We laid out a bunch of rugs. Put quilts on the beds. Books on the shelves. Hung up a couple things. Lit a candle. And that was that. It’s home.

STOVE. It is home. But it is not city living. The mountain is still well below freezing at night, although warm during the day. By far the hardest part of the three nights we spent up there this week were the freezing nights, teaching all our kids, including the baby, to stay inside sleeping bags, and teaching ourselves to wake up to keep the fire going. Our little potbellied stove was one of the first things we bought when we bought the property. It works great, as long as we do the work. The stovepipe was a separate craigslist find; it comes out the side of the yurt, between two pieces of sheet metal (the yurt skins are cut away underneath to keep combustible materials distant from the pipe) and the stack is supported on the outside by a custom wooden structure. On the inside, our stove sits on a tiled hearth made for us by Nick’s brother, Luke. Also, beside that is a fire extinguisher.

DECK. Nick spent some carpenter hours this week laying 2×4 side by side to make a deck. It’s bare now, and beautiful that way, but it will be the location of our outdoor kitchen. The yurt skin is neatly captured between the deck and the yurt frame, which makes it look pretty slick.

MIRACLE OF THE WEEK

Water. We have a spring on our property, but at this point, use of it is pretty theoretical. In the meantime, our closest neighbor has offered us as much water as we need from his well. It is good water, and not far away. Right now we’re using 5 gallons per day, which is luxurious, as long as we aren’t trying to do our own laundry, which, God help me, I am not.

WHIMSY OF THE WEEK

Do you know that my baby always has her tongue out? Pretty much all the time. Check it out.

OBSTACLE OF THE WEEK

Besides the cold nights (which are almost past tense, coming into summer), it is also hard to eat meals, with only a camp stove and no refrigeration. Right now we’re eating a lot of prepared foods, which is sort of exactly NOT what we want to be doing. Hoping that this is not a long phase, because there is a bit of hypocrisy happening here.

NEXT

Animals, finally! We are now committed to being up on the mountain full-time, but just in case, we will start with the animals that require the least care. This turns out to be the pond reclamation team. (Did I tell you, we have a pond?) To clean the water, and make it happy and alive: first trout, then ducks. Trout from a hatchery, ducks from…honestly, I have no idea. But we’re about to figure it out. To find out what we did, check back!

Oh, and friends, I’m experimenting with scheduled posting and the buffer app. There is posts scheduled to go up this week on Thursday. I know that because I’ve already written it. But I won’t actually be here to post or promote it. So, we’ll see how this goes. Feel free to offer feedback on that, as with everything else.

I’m really glad you’re here. You make all this a whole lot more fun for us. Have a great week!

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The Hot Zone (AWAKE)

April 24, 2013 By 13 Comments

I’m taking an online writing class, at the same time that I am moving off the grid. This is odd. But bracing. It keeps me awake.

One major reason for the indulgence was that it would give me reason to be back in town at particular times, along the lines of, “I’m sorry, honey, I have to go into a building with central heating and coffee and wireless Internet right now, because, you see, I have a class.”

Of course it’s all backfiring. Right here, again, is the conflict between things. Here is the pull of community, to do things the way everybody does things. Here is the push to live our own life, freedom, as integrity pioneers. And also I’m remembering another life, of creative community. I remember MOXIE Theatre, and all the way back to the University of Idaho, how we held each other’s hands and marched together into the furnace of art, to be tempered, we hoped, not burned.

This is the assignment, for my class, this week. We are to make a list of ideas. We are to write down thoughts of things to do and things we like. We are to write it all fast and feel no need to act upon it. We are to have an Idea Binge.

I keep remembering this moment, when I was assisting Kirsten Brandt at Sledgehammer Theatre. This is one of my favorite directors ever, fierce feminist, wise woman. But the best thing about Kirsten as a director is that she does what she likes and doesn’t apologize for it, which is rare and wonderful in a woman, for what it costs us. Kirsten told me she liked her coffee the color of cardboard, but she liked my ideas sometimes too. One time, as we were sitting side by side in the plush seats, I wrote in big block letters in my notebook, IDEA. And after that I frantically scribbled some sentences. I don’t remember what the idea was, of course, it was probably a terrible idea, and it was years ago. But I remember how Kirsten looked at me. She looked at the word in my notebook. And her eyes set at the corners, half-threatened, half-surprised, entirely intrigued.

It could be said of me that I am all ideas and very little execution. Fine. I like a life in which I spend 45 mins to an hour each day doing a thing I call meditating, which is a thing that a lot of other people call nothing.

But I will make the case that there is little in this life more fulfilling than making a list of things you like, and things you’d like to do, and letting it just hang there, in the air.

AWAKE.

I have a folder on my desktop, called the HOT ZONE. I drop things into it: post titles, snatches of poetry, anything I can remember from my dreams. These are all the lives I’d like to live: teacher, mother, meditator, goat-milker, friend of wildflowers, Jesus-freak, activist, contemplative.

AWAKE.

And then, when I have time — of course I never have time — but if I DID have time, I would go there, into that place, the HOT ZONE, and I would play.

Everybody has a hot zone. I dare you to find it. It’s whatever you love. It’s the place where you let your guard down and say yes to the world. YES to beauty. YES to AWAKE. It’s where you pay attention, and this is dangerous work, for hearts like ours, that have such a way of falling in love with things. We pay attention, we get excited, and then what happens? We fall in love with the world, and look, it betrays us. Everything goes wrong. There are earthquakes. Bombings. Explosions. Abandonment. People, in particular, are very stupid, although perhaps we judge them more harshly than we do the butterflies.

It is better not to pay attention. It is better to build the shield and resist.

But I believe this, too. Unreason battles reason every day, and the mystery will win. Someday you dream up something not just good but utterly magnificent, you dream the kingdom, and you bring that into contact with reality. The disparity is shocking. The difference between actual and potential is like a sheer cliff. That’s where things get interesting. That’s where I do my best to live.

The writing class is the same as the homestead is the same as the writing is the same as the dream. I dabble in the hot zone. The place of pain, but also miracles: the place of Love. I scribble post titles for posts I can’t write, and maybe won’t ever try to write: “Techniques for Interfaith Dialogue,” “The Wounds of Peacemaking,” “How to Fall In Love Every Day,” “The Secret to Hope.”

I say, YES, I am interested, yes, I am paying attention, yes, I reach for wisdom, yes, my hands are open. To this world. Even this world. Even this world with bombings, earthquakes, starvation, sorrow. Even this life. I won’t hide from it. I will live.

—

AWAKE is my one word resolution for 2013. Read more about it here. 

Filed Under: AWAKE, Creativity Tagged With: , , , ,

Homestead Diary #11

April 22, 2013 By 3 Comments

The. Yurt. Is. Up.

And it is awesome. Especially the frame. We love putting up the frame. It’s a good thing that we love putting up the frame, because while we were putting up the frame, we ran into a little spot of hail. And then some snow. And then some more hail. All the while our three year old and five year old were “playing” in the tent, which is sometimes fun and sometimes World War III, and the baby was on my body. For each rafter, Nick would stand on his six-foot ladder and sink one end into the crown. I would stand on an upside down bucket and sink the other end onto the khana.

Next time your inner critic wants to tell you that something is impossible, I want you to think of me, putting up my yurt in bad weather with my baby on my chest and my other two kids in the tent. Seriously, if you’re thinking about starting a business, or writing a book, or engaging in interfaith dialogue, or inventing a better vegan banana cupcake. If you need to make the impossible possible… I recommend it.

Although, and this is also relevant, don’t say I didn’t lie to you, I have been sore every day this week.

WHAT WE DID THIS WEEK…or…THREE DAYS OF YURT

Day One: Frame. (see above)

Day Two: The blue-sky canvas overhead, and the thrift store bed sheets around the wall. The bed sheets are my favorite thing, likely because I picked them out myself. Also, the double bubble insulation — that’s the silver stuff — tied to the frame with zip ties, holes sealed with duck tape, can’t live without duck tape. And…the vinyl outer skin part one: the roof. Nick did this by himself, crazy mountain man.

Day Three: Vinyl outer skin part two: the wall. We only have one wall, because it’s round. You’d think that would make things easier. But here’s the obstacle. The khana is essentially, by nature, loosey goosey. It expands when it is able to expand. The vinyl does not. Nick took this into account, rolling the ends onto verticals so we can pull the vinyl tight and clamp it. But we cut the windows the first time we put it up. And now one of our windows is several inches off from where it ought to be. Bummer.

Because a week is more than three days: The floor (see below), door, window coverings…and we moved in most of our furniture.


MIRACLE OF THE WEEK

I love this gift from our neighbors across the street: a whole bag full of seed packets. My mother, before she died, liked to plant something every single day, in her dry and sandy Arizona soil. Many things didn’t make it, but some things did. She loved the tough ones that came through. Every one that germinates is a miracle.

WHIMSY OF THE WEEK

I turned 34. Nick made me this vegan carrot cake, which is full of crystallized ginger, which I recommend. Crystallized ginger goes very well with making impossible things possible.

OBSTACLE OF THE WEEK

We had to give some love to the yurt floor. The single sheet plywood floor was not enough protection, from draft and moisture. For a while we tried a layer of plastic under the floor. Now, this is sort of incidental, I love comments, and advice, but if you feel a great urge to leave a comment telling us that putting plastic under our floor was a stupid idea, let me save you some time. We figured that out! It did precisely the opposite of what we wanted it to do (just like our three year old) in that it caught the rain and held it, preventing our wood from drying out. Oops. We cut the plastic and got it dried out, then put another layer of masonite on top, overlapping seams.

NEXT

Tomorrow night the whole family sleeps in the yurt for the first time! My posting may be a little off and on as I get into a rhythm with this, but I am still around, and still just as full of thoughts and opinions. For sure there will be another Homestead Diary, so check back next week, or subscribe. Thanks for following along on our adventure!

Oh, and if you have #yurt questions, ask them here, or on my twitter. We can answer them.

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A Love Letter To the Boston Marathon

April 18, 2013 By 19 Comments

Last year, I took my two children to see the Boston Marathon. They were two and four years old and I was pregnant. The scariest thing about it was the traffic on the turnpike.

I wasn’t there, this year, when the bombs exploded at the finish line. This year I was putting up a yurt frame on a mountainside in Idaho, completely out of communication – our cellphones don’t work up there – and I heard about it on the radio on the way down the hill.

I could tell you how lucky I am that it worked out this way, that I got my property in the near-wilderness of the rural inland Northwest, that I’m getting out of the craziness, that I’m taking my children out of the scary places where people plant bombs.

But the truth is, I love Boston in the spring.

And then, last night there was an explosion in a fertilizer plant in Texas. Sirens and screaming, all over again. Exhaustion. Grieving. Sorrow. Someone on my Twitter feed found an explosion in Oklahoma City, too, and there’s speculation, and panic, and somebody says, “there is something hella strange goin’ on.”

But the truth is, there is nothing strange about fear.

Somebody gets hurt somebody dies somebody kills somebody plants a bomb somebody runs to save another person’s life somebody hurts somebody heals somebody drives the ambulance somebody runs to save another person’s life.

I wasn’t there, when the bombs went off at the finish line. But if I still lived in Boston I would have been. And if I lived in Boston next year, I would be there. I would be there if the bombs were planted by a lone wolf, and I would be there if if the bombs were planted by a terrorist organization with cells in every major US city. I would go a hundred thousand times to see hope do its awesome thing.

I love you, Boston Marathon.

I love Patriots’ Day. I love that Boston basically has its own holiday, just because, and just for another day to celebrate. I love the bunting, and the cookouts, and the free balloons. I love the cops on every corner.

I love the spectators, all along the route, in their lawn chairs, with their picnics. I love it that the city rallies around the race. I love that people pour out of everywhere, to cheer for those who run.

And of course I love it when the lead runners go by. They are so beautiful. There, right there, is God’s hand on humankind: the image of nobility and grace, unsullied. And we are not so far fallen that we can’t participate in this, the majesty of God’s creation, sheer beauty of life: power: sinew, breath and bone.

But I love it even more when the ordinary runners go by. I love the woman who is beet red and panting. I love the man who staggers on the hill. I love the whole team in matching t-shirts who pushes the guy with cerebral palsy. I love the old guy on wheels who waves and blows kisses to everybody who claps for him, and everybody claps for him.

I love the ones who barely finish. I love the ones who don’t finish at all, but try.

And I love Marathon Sunday, at my church in the Back Bay, two long blocks from the finish line. I love it when the person preaching says, those who are running the marathon tomorrow stand up, and they do stand up, and on that day pride in what we are is not a sin. We pray for pride. We pray for perseverance. We pray for strangers, running. We pray to be an icon for hope.

If that’s where evil attacks, so be it. There is nothing new about fear.

And fear will not win the day. 

Somebody gets hurt somebody dies somebody kills somebody plants a bomb somebody runs to save another person’s life somebody hurts somebody heals somebody drives the ambulance somebody runs to save another person’s…hope.

You are an icon for hope, Boston Marathon. And hope is worth standing for. This is worth standing for.

I wish I could tell you why people do wrong things. I wish I could tell you why that eight-year-old had to die. But I can’t. I don’t believe that eight year old did have to die. Somebody did a wrong. Somebody did wrong to you, Boston, and I’m sorry.

But I can tell you this.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Thanks for holding the light, Boston Marathon.

 

Filed Under: faith Tagged With: , , , ,
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