The Distinction Between Homesteading and Survivalism

  This morning was the big clean-out day in my pantry and larder. Through the years, one tends to amass items that, for a short time, seem important but upon further reflection bear no real significance to one’s current daily activities or lifestyle. Today I came face to face with the small nooks of my own hording and asked myself, truly, if these items were really necessary for me to continue to hold on to into the future. Some of the treasures I uncovered included various shapes and sizes of vessels for holding any number of products; gallon jugs, half gallon jugs, salad dressing-sized jars, glass cylinders for ferments, etc. etc. etc…. Every item I touched was covered in a thick layer of dust indicating their obsolescence to my current life stage. So I sucked it up, grabbed a cardboard box and one by one placed these items into the give-away pile. Some I pondered longer than others before placing them into the box….my inner preparedness expert screaming out that ‘someday-I might need this or that’ and when that time comes I will be overcome with regret for placing said item willingly into the hands of someone else. And then a part of me opened up and was overjoyed with the prospect of the future life that existed for everything contained within that box.  To someone else, my ‘yesterday’ would be their ‘today’. And with a great sense of relief I placed the box in my car, forever sealing its fate.

  Next on my list was my stockpile of canned and dried food. Each jar I touched contained hours of love and labor. Each had been prepared under the best of intentions; the long-term security of my family’s needs. I ruminated over the small mountain of clearly past-prime goods that started to build on my pantry floor. Then, one by one, I opened the lids and dumped the contents into the compost.  And inside, part of me rejoiced and part of me cried.

  The reality of the matter is that it is impossible, even when you try your hardest, to hold on to everything. All these jars were my attempt to hold on to the sunshine that I felt years ago, to hold on to the colors and flavors that I no longer feel a desire for.  These jars were meant to hold onto a feeling of safety and of ‘enough-ness’ in a time when I felt so much vulnerability and desperation (and despair).  Today, I came face to face with my past and chose, for the most part, to move into the future.  I realized that there is a distinct difference between survivalism and homesteading and often that line is a blurry, hazy mess of emotions based off of past life experiences and future hopes and dreams.  A survivialist goes it alone; a homesteader believes in the power of community.  I mean really, how naïve we humans are to believe that we have the ability to make do in this world without reliance on the talent of others. Truly, my pantry is not large enough to ‘survive’ any major catastrophe longer than a few weeks, maybe months. How large of a horde would one need to really survive or more importantly, to continue to thrive? Frankly, thriving is not something I would choose to do alone and instead feel it is much more rewarding to continue into the future believing that given the opportunity to test ones abilities, we would all be better off working together.

  So today, I transitioned back to being a homesteader and made one more move away from the depressing world of survivalism.  I will continue to set aside the provisions I need to keep my family well-fed and comfortable and I will hold on to the tools I still feel are relevant given my own personal talents. But I will no longer hold on to the quiet expectation that has lingered on and off in the back of my mind that, if the moment arrived, somehow my family’s future would be fulfilling without the assistance of others.  This little lie is the distinction between optimism and fear. I am letting go of my fear and am trusting in my friends.

2016 May Edition of the Good Life Magazine: A Sail in the San Juans

**This article was written for the Good Life Magaine, May 2016 edition**

I started to fall in love with sailboats during middle school. In art class, I would spend hours painting watercolors of sloops, schooners and colonial trading vessels. I would sketch small figures in striped shirts manning the decks and would imagine that it was me. My art teacher told me that, in dream psychology, boats represent a desire to escape and be free. That revelation couldn’t have felt any closer to my own personal 13 year-old truth.  This was also about the time when my family acquired a small, single-sailed Sunfish. During the hot summer weekends, my dad would load the small craft into the back of the truck and would take us sailing on Crystal Lake. On windier days, we would race the little boat as fast as possible to see how far she would lean before catching water in her sails; eventually swamping or flipping. Over time, our family dynamics evolved. Weekends of taking the little sailboat out on the water made way for pre-college employment and other teenage distractions. The Sunfish was eventually sold and my sailing days came to an end. However, in the years that followed, I found myself gravitating toward the water now and again, if only to admire the beautiful sailboats that were moored along every coast that I have ever visited. I kept having this urge to jump aboard the deck, throw the lines loose and sail away on some epic deep sea adventure….but it never happened; until recently.

Robin Kodner has been my best friend since college. She is a take-charge kind of woman and her adventurous spirit never ceases to amaze me. During grad school on the East Coast, Robin found herself leading multi-week sailing courses for Outward Bound during her summer vacations. After graduation, she crewed for a private family and spent time sailing around the Canary Islands and various other exotic locations. For years, we have joked about running away and becoming pirates; two women on the high seas with wind in our sails and salt in our hair. So it came as no surprise, when she found herself permanently residing in Bellingham that she would end up as a partner in a 3-way boat share of a 38 foot sloop named ‘Arpege’.  

Peg is a beauty. Built in the 70’s, her interior is composed of impeccable mahogany with sleeping space for 5 people, a small kitchen and an even smaller ‘head’ (bathroom). Her lines are classic and graceful and her previous owners showed obvious care for her (including all new upholstery and a full engine rebuild). Although a financial stretch for a single, professional woman, Robin couldn’t refuse her and drained a good portion of her savings to both purchase the boat and pay for moorage. During the first months of ownership, Robin defaulted to her more experienced boat partners and never took Peg out in Bellingham Bay or the San Juans without a few additional crew members to help out with the lines and the rigging. But when mid-summer arrived, I could tell that Robin was itching to become the captain of her own vessel.  I talked her into taking me out on an overnight sail as her only crew member. Just the two of us, like we had always imagined.

My summer work schedule is hectic. I am often limited to trips that can happen within 36 hours or less from door-to-door. I knew that taking on an overnight sailing trip in this amount of time was pushing the limits of what was logistically possible coming from Leavenworth. But the idea of taking Peg into the San Juans with my best friend was too good to pass up. I was in my car by 10 AM on a Monday morning in July. By about 1 PM I was at Robin’s house. By 2:30 PM we were loading up the boat and throwing off the lines. The weather was sunny and bright with a variable wind of 5 to 10 knots. The water was flat and glassy; a perfect afternoon for sailing.

We tacked our way across Bellingham Bay and crossed Lummi Channel with a favorable wind. Peg glided through the water at a reasonable pace and we only needed to tack one time while shooting through the narrow channel between Lummi and Eliza islands. We set ourselves on course for Vendovi Island, a remote private island that is now held in a preservation trust. We reached Vendovi without incident and went on a quick hike around some of the most amazing, pristine forest I have ever visited. All vistas on Vendovi looked out over the water and the multitude of small islands that dot the Washington coast. Vendovi closes to the public at sunset with no overnight moorage available, so we hopped aboard Peg and motored our way back over to Lummi Island where we spent the night anchored in Inati Bay. We entered Inati just as the sun was sinking into the water; the heavens ablaze in oranges, reds and purples. The night entered the sky clear and calm, with the stars in full array across the horizon. I fell asleep to the gentle swing of the boat on its bow line as Peg swayed back and forth with the surging tide.

In the morning, we awoke to an unforeseen bout of weather. Although Inati Bay was calm, we could see that the Lummi Channel was surging with five to six foot swells and a wind blowing a steady 20 knots in the wrong direction. Feeling slightly out of my league as first mate, we motored across the channel and only raised the sails after passing into calmer waters, coasting gently back to Bellingham.

True to plan, I was back in Leavenworth by Tuesday afternoon having completed my first overnight sail with one of my favorite people. This summer we plan on sailing together out to the Sucia Islands. It’s our practice trip for when we really do run away and become pirates. 

TATTOO

**This piece was written for the Write On The River annual writer's competition where it received an Honorable Mention for non-fiction writing.**


Her grandmother called it a sin.

  March got her first tattoo when she was twenty-one. A Christmas gift from the Wolf (her lover), it was a modest self-drawn snowflake inked into place by a shaky-handed apprentice to the great Wanda H. of Peoria, Illinois.  They had driven 7 hours along flat, featureless winter roads to fill a weekend with wake-n-bakes, hard music, heavy drinking, long-standing friendship, unspeakable love and some virgin ink. The needle offered a new sensation to her life and her brain felt in tune with the rhythm of its sounds and the heat from its sting. Later, standing in the filthy bathroom with her shirt pulled up over her head, March carefully removed the bandages from her shoulder, examined the art she had acquired and smiled. It was as if someone had opened the door to an invisible cage and allowed her to walk out, free.

  Thinking back, March remembered the first time she had entered this room. Flash Art encased in protective acrylic sleeves filled the walls as her high school girlfriend flipped through the pages of each plastic-bound book of images. It was a neon-filled parlor in a Wisconsin tourist trap of a town. Overweight moms and Harley dads and newly turned eighteen-year-olds exploring their freedom and not much else. She couldn’t even remember the symbol that had finally been chosen since it was meaningless. Art didn’t live here. This was more like a dare. This way, was without love.....

  Her next visit to a parlor happened within the year but, again, it was not she who sat the chair. Standing alongside her enigmatic friend, March watched as the artist tried to make sense of the sinuous space left behind from the scoliosis along Little Bird’s spine. Little Bird had been a gymnast as a child and the rigors of training and poor genetics left her twisted but strong. The final piece followed the center of Little Bird’s back, but not the bones beneath. It was a list of carefully chosen symbols in black and flesh, set with an overly-heavy hand. The art healed dark and scarred and beautiful like Little Bird herself.

  At a party that winter, someone pulled out a home tattooing kit and began working the soft skin inside Kiah’s lower lip. Small stabs of blueish ink began to form out the word that would remain there forever. On the perpetrator’s wrist lived a bolt of lightning and on her partner’s hand a crescent moon.  Eventually, March would watch those two people grow older together, separate, remain friends and finally dissolve into obscurity. But still, the bolt and the moon remained alongside the memory of that night.

  In the spring, March got home late from class and had to ride her bike as fast as the wind to reach the shop in time. He was already in the chair and the work was nearly complete. The Wolf had chosen an ancient script that wrapped gracefully around his muscular calf. The needle began to bounce as it passed over the bone in his shin and he drew in his breath deeply to compensate. The size and scope of the art was larger this time, the session lasting hours. In the end, the Wolf was tired and drawn and shivering with adrenaline. March followed him home and kissed his watery eyes.

  The fall was crisp and golden. Always happy, Cat decided that her time had come and asked if March would sit with her while the ink work was done. Cat’s skin turned red and blotchy beneath the needle and small droplets of blood exuded themselves from the damaged tissue. A cacophony of musical notes spread gracefully across her supple back; a symphony to play on forever….

  And then, nothing. For years, there was nothing. No needles. No Art….at least not for March. She wandered into a small shop at some point during the hot summer and had almost conceded to a meaningless piece of work if only to have some connection again to the transcendence, focus and love that the ink offered. She made an appointment; but never showed up.

  Then quite suddenly and unexpectedly March’s heart was again moved. Captivated, for 10 years she carried a photograph tucked carefully inside the creased and dirty pages of a CrimethInc. novella.  Occasionally, she would pull out the aging paper and wonder if she would ever commit to fulfilling her desires. Once, she thought the image to be lost and nearly panicked; so encircled was her soul around its subtle meanings for her life. A mustang ensnared by a pair of griffins. In the face of certain death the steed remained poised and strong, meeting its fate boldly and without fear.

  It was her 37^th birthday. The Wolf had arranged for her to meet Little Bird in a back-alley parlor amidst the chaos and beauty of Capitol Hill. The room had tall tin ceilings and walls the color of new blood. The vertical surfaces were adorned with mounted animal heads (boar and coyote)and the gilded frames of petit paintings in oils and acrylics. The windows were large open panes of glass and as the needle worked, March watched a man walk past dressed in tube socks, underwear and nothing more. Over the course of four hours, the soft skin of her belly became transformed into the gruesomeness of a truth only she could really understand. The wings of each beast spread out toward the bones of her hips with the head of the wild horse dipping gently below her navel. As the ink flowed, March did not cry out. Indeed, she barely moved. Her thoughts remained quiet and her breathing came in long flowing sighs as she explored the calmness of the world inside her mind. After all this time, March had again found peace….. At last.

On The Road: Maui Part 1

Iteration #2. First iteration having been swallowed whole by a passing shark (or a bad keystroke).

Introduction:

For me, after a new experience, it is helpful to decompress through writing. I am not much of a travel writer. Or in reality, I have never tried to be a travel writer. However, having just returned from my first trip to Maui I am feeling compelled to write a travelogue of our adventure. This is the story of our trip, though my eyes.

 Hawai’i is a complicated place with a relatively recent history of upheaval that still remains a very real part of its culture. After this visit, I not only have an appreciation for Hawai’i’s fragile diversity of abundant life (both on land and sea) but also for its people and their traditions and language. Traveling can do amazing things for a person. It may be the most important form of education. It is one thing to read books with lists and dates and facts and figures and a very different thing to witness living reality with your own eyes. I am always grateful when life allows me the chance to expand my horizons. This trip has been one of my favorites. It has changed my heart and if anything I have left the islands feeling more compelled than ever to lend myself toward their conservation (which ultimately, relates to a planetary-wide mindset of conservation). Hawai’i sits in a precarious position. Without an awareness of and a desire for a change in anthropogenic habits, the decline of Hawai’i seems as inevitable as the loss of polar ice or the expansion of the great American deserts.

 Aloha and Mohalo Maui. You are an incredible gem. A paradise; proof of the profound beauty our earth is capable of. Thank you for sharing your treasures with me.

Prologue: The Plague

For the record, this trip was nearly cancelled due to natural circumstances. Leading up to departure, Leif succumb to a bout of stomach flu, Ingrid developed a 102+ fever and I came down with a mild cold. Fortunately, we persisted and everyone (except me) made a miraculous recovery just in time for travel. Illness did not re-appear until our return to the mainland (and a return to 20F nights).

Day 1: Meeting Stella

After an overnight on the backside of Tiger Mountain with Jeff, Lisa and Isiah, we are immediately swallowed up by the early morning rainy Seattle commuter traffic (When isn’t it rainy in Seattle in November?) on our way to the airport. A stop-and-go session leaves us 45 minutes behind schedule, yet we survive the late airport parking shuttle, the understaffed airline check-in counter and the ridiculous (yes) process of homeland security before being essentially forced to run to our gate. Breakfast is not a possibility and I make promises to the kids of on-board snacks (peanut M&Ms for breakfast…no problem!) as we become the last family to board our mid-morning flight.

Flying is uneventful and both Willy and I are amazed at how well the kids handle 6 hours of being strapped into their seats like sardines. Apparently the years of training them to survive 12 hour car rides to Salt Lake City have paid off.

We land in Kahului around 2 PM and are hit with a sweet-smelling wall of heat and humidity as we leave the plane. Birds fly through the open-air sections of the airport and banana trees reach for the sky all around us. We catch our shuttle to Kihei where we first become acquainted with our home away from home for the next 6 nights; a 1989 Steel Blue Volkswagen Westfalia pop-up camper van. Brandon, her owner*, briefly acquaints us with her quirks and shows us the location of several essential features including the jumper cables and an extra screwdriver….just in case…. We throw our packs in the back and prepare for departure. As I am about to turn the key, one of the mechanics knocks on the passenger side window. Willy rolls it down and the guy throws us a big smile…. ‘Her name’s Stella!’ he shouts through the window. We promise to take care of her and head out in search of a grocery store and a place to spend the night.

After stocking up on groceries, ice and guava-papaya juice, we end up heading out toward West Maui in search of an ‘official’ campground. We miss our turn and our turn-around ends up being a roadside fruit stand, which is a good omen for us. We stock up on pineapple, star fruit and strawberry papaya. The dude who runs the stand, although mildly sketchy, is friendly enough and gives us directions to the campground.

We arrive at Olowalu after the office has closed for the night and pull into an over-flow parking area that is currently under construction. There’s orange ‘Caution’ fencing everywhere and a shitload of torn up palms and vegetation stacked on the margins of the platform. Not exactly what I had envisioned when dreaming about camping on Maui but a perfectly acceptable option for the night*.

We exit the van and wind our way down to the beach to enjoy the sunset and wet our toes. Approximately 20 minutes in, Leif has the good fortune of stepping on an extremely thorny branch which alerts us to the fact that the trees overhead are littering the beach with shrapnel. ‘Note to self, wear shoes’ is the take home message of the evening.

We head back to the van, pull together a make-shift dinner of fresh fruit, rice and beans and figure out how to pop up the top of the camper. Still unaccustomed to the tropical heat, we restlessly move through the van trying to figure out the best place to store gear and how to open the windows without blowing out the flame on the propane cook stove. The night is WINDY with gusts around 40 mph. Keeping the windows open is nearly impossible due to flying dust and so we spend a semi-uncomfortable night tossing around blanketless. I get up in the middle of the night to pee and am awe-struck by the clarity of the sky. The stars are bright and clear and the planets are easily visible and in near alignment.

 The van continues to rock in the wind throughout the rest of the night but we are all too tired to care. However, even minor time differences are a bitch and by 4:30 AM all four of us are awake and staring at each other wide-eyed (but good humored) as we wonder when the sun will rise over the horizon. Renegade chickens begin to call from the forest all around us and at about 6 AM the darkness fades into daybreak. By 6:45 AM the van is converted back into a traveling machine and we are on our way.

Day 2: Beaches, Kings and Locals

We drive down South Kihei road and start to sus out the terrain. At the far end of the road we find a quiet public beach which technically falls into the Wailea district. It is 7:30 AM. We make some good strong coffee in the van, cut up some more pineapple for breakfast and head out to explore the beach. Ingrid begins to collect Plumeria blossoms like treasures and an older gentleman with an amazing tan shows us the overhanging avocado and banana trees in the parking lot. I nearly start giggling as I wade into the 80+ water. The sun is still low in the sky and everything is lit in a golden hue.  By 8:30 AM the kids have already built a sand castle village and the beach is filling up with morning walkers and runners. By 9 AM the air is hot and we decide to track down some snorkeling gear. We end up at a Kihei pawn shop and purchase a snorkel and mask for $8 and a fishing pole and reel for $25. We head back to the beach and decide to start doing a little underwater exploring….

On my second snorkel of the day I have my first real-life encounter with a sea turtle. I will admit that I screamed briefly through my snorkel. As it approached out of the blue haze of open water, its size was immense. For a mainlander like me, you spend your life seeing pictures of these incredible creatures, watching nature videos and even visiting them in an aquarium now and then. However, the magnitude of their size is not truly tangible until you are face to face in open water. I am 5’3” tall and my first turtle was almost equal in length and certainly larger in stature than myself. It moves through the water with delicate ease and I feel incredibly clumsy in my false plastic flippers and artificial air. The turtle swims directly toward me with amazing speed and just as quickly changes course and heads off toward the far end of the reef. I exit the water in a state of bliss, with a huge smile and my body vibrating with adrenaline.

We spend the rest of that first day wasting time on the beach (it was still so novel!). Our pale skin starts to feel a little bit crispy from the large doses of UV and salt, so it is time to take on a new adventure…preferably out of the sun. We agree that camping on the coast toward West Maui seems like the best plan for the night so we head in that general direction. There is just enough time in the day to explore the Iao Valley and, as a last-minute detour, we crisscross the van along roads lined in sugar cane for a quick hike in this valley of kings.

The Iao Valley sits just to the West of Wailuku. Wailuku and Kahului tend to blur together into one, large suburb. This is where I start interjecting the not-so-pleasant observations of my time on the island…..

So, we drive North along HWY 30 and encounter the first historical signs of Hawaii’s most recent colonization; namely old plantations, a sugar refinery and some beautiful old buildings that are now home to a grade school and a historic church. The guidebooks claim that before the surge in affordable airfare the islands received about 500 outside visitors a year. After airlines started using Hawaii as a hub (and the US set itself up as a military power) that number jumped to nearly 7 Million. Alongside the older buildings and structures from another era are the pop-up neighborhoods one associates with the suburbs of any large American city, including their strip mall accompaniments. So one starts to ponder the immensity of resources necessary for maintaining a Western-style standard of living on a remote, Pacific Island. Honestly, if the tanker ships stop arriving tomorrow, the population of new-breed Hawai’ians will be forced to live off of sugar cane. There simply aren’t the on-island resources available to keep this many people alive without major environmental degradation and collapse.

I avert my eyes from the new-found sprawl and divert my attention to the abundance of plant life that lines the roadside. The Pothos plant living in my house would be embarrassed to meet its tropical cousins! Hawai’i is a botanical paradise. Even mundane roadsides become exciting when a person stops to enjoy the diversity of species that call Maui home.

The road we are traveling takes a sharp left and begins to climb up toward a looming, cloud-filled valley ahead. Like all good roads on Maui, the driving becomes more involved as the road narrows. Corners become blind obstacles and all bridges become single lane right-of-ways.

We get to the entry booth for the Valley (which is now a protected State Park) and the guy inside looks at us, looks at the van and says ‘You local?’ We feel compelled to tell the truth and to pay our $5 entry fee…our small donation to keeping this place beautiful and accessible…..

Side Note: The Hawai’ian islands have become so popular as a world tourist destination that resentment has been building among the locals for some time now. After essentially having their royal government overthrown by a handful of white colonial sugar and shipping barons, there is still a strong negative emotion elicited toward the large population of visiting ‘Haoles’ (yes, this term is derogatory, and aimed strictly toward Caucasians). We knew this coming into the trip but decided that we would do our part to be respectful visitors and hopefully avoid being labelled too vigorously with this slanderous term.

As a consequence of the upsurge in visitation by the outside world, certain culturally significant and historical sites have been forced to check IDs; charging entry fees to off-island visitors while allowing the local population to continue to enjoy their home country free of charge. This feels completely acceptable to me. So even though, as it was becoming obvious that our family could pass for Hawai’ian locals, we were always honest about our origins and paid our way.

Immediately upon exiting the van, the Iao Valley swallows us whole. The kids run loose up the trail toward the overlook and I feel a little breathless as I marvel at my surroundings. The energy emitted by this valley resonates clearly with me and I understand why it has been set aside as sacred ground. We spend an hour or so wandering about on the winding pathways both up toward the needle and then down along the stream. We scan the treetops for native Hawai’ian birds. For the first (and only) time on the trip our bare legs are bitten up by hungry mosquitos. The sun begins to drop lower in the sky illuminating the foliage. Our stomachs are starting to grumble and we make the decision that it is time to leave and start heading toward our new camp somewhere out along the beach.

 We had decided to camp ‘legally’ on our second night and bought a permit for the county park known locally as ‘Grandma’s’; an unmistakable strand that winds along the coast between Maui and West Maui. All of the sites are drive-in style with a bush or two delineating one camp site from the next. We find a vacancy and back the van in so that it is parked about 20 feet from the edge of the breaking waves.

Within a half an hour we meet our first locals, Jimmy and Chris. Both of them live on the beach. Jimmy, in his converted cargo van and Chris in his Previa. They come over to check out Stella. This is when we learn that Westies are a hot commodity on the islands. Very few are still in private circulation, forcing most Maui surf bums to convert older mini-vans instead. We knew that at some point during our camping adventure we would be running the risk of stepping on the toes of the locals. But Dirtbags love Dirtbags and we all hit it off immediately….our parking spot being located directly between both Jimmy and Chris. Jimmy had been living on the beach for probably 25 years, with his spot marked by the grave of lava stones dedicated to his dog Nuisance. Chris is an East Coast transplant who saved enough money to move to the island full time for its warm and sometimes ‘sharky’ surfing. We talk about fishing and turtles and surfing and winter and van life. Then, as quickly as our visitors arrived, they departed… Jimmy leaves to go turn off his TV (so he wouldn’t drain the battery) and Chris decides it is time to settle in for the night. The beach becomes quiet and dark as the sun sets and the sky lights up in a rainbow of color. Everyone turns their attention to the ocean, the sky and the soft warm sand.

During the night the campground is dark and quiet so we open up the back of the van and let the air move in off of the ocean. We fall asleep to the sounds of crashing surf. I wake myself up regularly to look around and soak it all in. This was going to be a great trip!

*Westfalia rentals on Maui available through Aloha Campers 

*If ‘van camping’ on Maui, skip Olowalu. You can’t park anywhere near the beach. The tent camping is much more inviting here. We opted to not ‘pay’ for the experience of spending an overnight in their parking lot.