Let's see how well we are

"The safe oasis room on wheels became the right answer for us when our savings and resources could no longer pay the asking price for renting unsafe space and gravity was working against us as well. We are aging faster than we can continue to recover from Diaspora. The small space we have built is what we could manage and afford to build. If the choices of others affect us, we’ll move our home. What it boils down to is this: the inconvenience that make up our daily kuleana (Hawaiian word for responsibility) today is no less inconvenient than Earth’s endurances. We have admittedly been part of the problem when it comes to living with environmentally triggered illness. Now we have a chance to be part of the solution. Let’s see how well we do." - from the July, 2009 Interview "A Gypsy Life: Notes from the Diaspora" with Julie Genser of Planet Thrive

We found The Egg and Berry Farm in the summer of 2010. Within weeks Pete found gates to build, and places to use his drill and his inimitable humor. This is him and Eileen (1/2 of a pair), and the foundation of the "intentional community" we had imagined. We share 5 acres of woods and 'aina with these women. The relationship we have with them evolves and we all learn to be the best we can be; and practice acceptance and forgiveness when it's a day when we are being human.

Time has been softening the ground of our being allowing Pete and me to root and build other tiny spaces as gently as we possibly can. The Hale (pronounced ha-lay) pictured above is a metal wash house with hot water, a shower and a double stainless steel sink we use to wash our clothes(by hand with a washboard and a hand wringer). My sewing machine has a place of honor in the corner just inside that drain pipe. There's nothing I love better than a space for stitiching!

To the right the Quonset is our cooking and eating hut, and the writing/computer space. It's also JOTS hang-out, sleeping room and all around get your rubs and company place. Like the VFT the Quonset is 12 feet long and 8 feet wide.

We have four chickens who root around the lower half of the orchard, and give us fresh eggs. We used to live with ducks, too. But no longer. The chickens teach us a lot about being, and becoming dependent; and the ducks taught us about dying and loyalty and I wonder about "animal husbandry" now. Domesticating animals, enclosing them (and us). It's a subject that is tickling at my curiosity. I've not yet come to many conclusions. But wonder about domesticating.

JOTS is the real mistress of the tiny spaces. Above, the vardo porch is one of her familiar lookouts. She was sent to keep watch, and we are the lucky ones. Below, it's her first winter (2008). She found us and nestled her way into a box warmed by a wool blanket and Christmas tree lights.

This fall I took a view of the yellow leaves that brighten the woods with their seasonal magic. Taken from the corner of VFT, the Tall One (Grandmother Pine) anchors us When we first arrived it was she I chanted to specifically, asking permission to live among them. She said, "Yes." The garage (with the chimney that does not get used) provides the attachment wall for The Hale, and the rain barrel catches water.

Thank you girls!

The VFT roof and new canvas porch awning gets covered with pine and fir needles, Pete's sweeping and lifting that chin for the Raven to see.

We're grateful and humbled for the life we live. The tiny spaces we live in are small in comparison to the woods and the Nature that allows us to be here. I'm reading a good book that I'm sure to blog about before too long. It's Philip Shepard's book New Self New World. This is one of those books that offers turn-on-your-head redefinitions; like the difference between "being tired" versus "being exhausted; another loop for throwing at Darwin's theory of "survival of the fittest"; and a chunk of consideration for domestication of humans and farming and animals. All of it suits my Scorpio curiosity, and my habit of digging around.

Onward on Route 66, a highway I am told by one who has spent much time on it, "Metaphoric or real, it's a great highway."