Kansas Kristmas

For the holiday evening, my three brothers came over to my parents' house and we all had a big slumber party. Below is Dan bonding with brothers Mick and Tommy as they play a Mario Brothers race car game on 'Wii". After having lived in a tent without TV for a year, Dan did impressively well adapting to this new behavior pattern!

Dan and I were the first awake on Christmas morning... so we went to the rooms of my brothers and gave them friendly wake-up call (/pounding). This, of course, is an old family tradition of ours. ;-)

Then, we all crawled weary-eyed into mom and dad's room to show them what Santa put in our stockings over night.

We opened presents from santa, and then presents from family. And one present from Santa AND family: a Vitamix!!!  Thanks to all who contributed -- best christmas gift ever!

Here's a photo of the gloves I crocheted for my mom -- the first crochet project I ever completed!


and Tommy II!

And then, after breakfast, we settled down for a nap with Mick and his horse, I mean Great Dane, Gus .

While Joe played us a lovely lullaby (sorry couldn't get video to download):

THE END

Two Days, 2,000 Miles

On Saturday night, December 20, Dan completed a three-day project he started with the help of his friend Zeb: constructing that rock wall and garden in his mom's front yard (pictured in the background of the photo below). For those of you living in a "normal" (non California) climate, the idea of planting a garden the day before winter solstice probably sounds insane... well, here you go:

Our last evening was spent with close friends and family and we left with an over-packed car at 6am. Here was our sunrise view as we traveled out of the SF Bay Area :


Besides an incredibly lengthy wind farm on the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas:

The Arizona sunset was the only other visual highlight from day one of our roadtrip:

...not too shabby.

We stayed in Flagstaff, Arizona, overnight with our farmer friend Anne and her husband Ryan. I wish there were "Anne's Places" all over the country for us to visit -- we were treated to three meals upon our arrival at 9:30pm, two of which traveled with us the next morning. What a deal! Thanks Anne.

Here is the Arizona sunrise:

And the New Mexico landscape:

And the windy Texas landscape:

And a brilliant Texas sunset:

...Oklahoma City was going to be our second night stay, but when we arrived at 10pm we were practically within smelling distance of Lawrence, Kansas -- so we just drove on through! Twenty-one hours on the road that day, with a 4am arrival.

Home sweet home (for this week, that is)...

Hittin’ the Road – Moving To Appalachia

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It’s official, Dan and I have fit our lives into a Toyota Camry and we are moving East!

[I would have included a photo of Dan and I in front of the packed car, but I accidentally packed my adapter already!]

We leave tomorrow (Sunday) morning and will post videos and photos at this blogspace all along the way.

"When and where will this roadtrip end?” you ask.

Well… that’s an interesting question dear reader.

The truth is: We don’t know!

This road trip is about seeking out our future. And when we find it, there we will be.

It’d be great to find jobs working on a farm, or in sustainable-living-related work… but we will just have to wait and see what options present themselves. All I can say is we’re hopeful that we’ll have a home and some form of employment by February.

So, friends, cast a wish into the wind for us, and keep checking back at this website to hear our latest story -- we’re off!

Benefits of Unemployment

Horray for unemployment! I’ve picked up two new skills/hobbies now that I’ve got the time for it. On our last day in Santa Cruz, Dan and I took a class on Mushroom Foraging. We got tons of wild mushrooms, including oysters and Porcinis that we ate fresh and a couple types of Sullius that we dehydrated and made into a powdered seasoning (fantastic on Lasagnas and Pizzas!).

 

On our first weekend of unemployment we visited our dear friends Ruth and Anthony up in Humboldt. They took us for a hike on a Forst Service Road in Cutlin, CA, where we saw TONS of different varieties of wild mushrooms. Here’s the ones we brought home:

[Note, the mushroom in my hand that Dan is eyeing is called “Witch’s Hat” – it is non edible in that it may be toxic and/or hallucinogenic… we admired it from afar and then composted it.]

 

To help identify the mushrooms (VERY IMPORTANT to do carefully and with the help of good books and professionals, as many are deadly toxic), we took spore prints. To take spore prints you lay out the mushroom heads on a sheet of paper:

After about 12 to 24 hours you return to the unmoved mushrooms and check out the beautiful designs they’ve left on your paper:

Each mushroom variety has its unique spore print, kind of like a finger print. And the color of the spores (and shape, if you choose to use a microscope) are essential to identifying the majority of mushrooms. Note that theyre seem to be blank spots on the sheet – that’s because some of the mushrooms we took prints of had white spores. They are better printed on colored paper.

Above is a photo of the Sullius caerulescens we collected. They are fantastic for dehydrating and grinding into powder for seasoning – and they are, clearly, very abundant along the central and northern coast of California.

This photo (above) shows the Lactarius deliciousus or “Delicious Milk Cap” we collected. They are unique for their orange colored bodies with green spots on top. Their gills bruise green and, like other Lactarius they lactate a creamy goo when their cap is injured. This mushroom is edible, but they were old so we just composted them.

The purple mushroom above is called “Shrimp Russula” or Russula xerampelina. It is apparently deliciously edible, but these were old and small and out of season so we composted them.

This mushroom may look like a delicious Chantrelle, but it’s actually a “Jack o’Lantern” or Omphalotus olivascens. It is poisonous! Oh well.

This incredibly beautiful set of mushrooms, we discovered, are actually called “Deadly Parasol”. Bummer! We decided to actually throw these out we were so scared of them.

 

In other news. I’ve also taken on learning to crochet:

 

(crocheted items not pictured, so as not to give away holiday gifts)

HORRAY for free time!

Where I've Been All Year

Well, Dan’s farm apprenticeship ended this week and we moved out of Santa Cruz and into his mom’s house north of San Francisco. We will be here for a little shy of a month as we prepare to head east towards a future together in Appalachia.

I want to devote today’s blog entry to sharing some images of our past year there with you.
Dan and I spent the year working on University of California, Santa Cruz’s campus – which is 2,000 acres of beautiful redwood and meadow (where development hasn’t happened, YET (grumble)) overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Below is a photo of the pair of Golden Eagles that frequent the Great Meadow above the UCSC farm where Dan lived and worked.
Note the Stellar Jay to the upper right of the Eagles, announcing their presence to all edible critters in the area. Jays are like the police of nature, if you ask me – albeit, the sometimes corrupt police force!

Here is a photo of the UCSC garden that Dan propagated baby plants for all year:

And behind us is a portion of the field that he also propagated plants for:

Here is a photo of the “hoop house” in the Alan Chadwick Garden on upper UCSC campus – the original 3 acre hillside site, now 42 years in cultivation:

Here is the barn the 2nd year apprentices (Dan and a handful of others) lived in during the course of their year-long term. Unfortunately, University bureaucracy saw them booted from the barn (with 3 days notice) half-way through the growing season… after that they moved back into their own tents, which is how the 1st year apprentices live.

Here are the solar showers used by 45 apprentices throughout the year. It feels so good to know no polluting energy sources produced the warmth of your water!

Here’s an example of bio-intensive, inter-cropping – where several plants are strategically planted side by side:

Here is the same example of inter-cropping, after a bit more sunshine, water, and time:

This year I learned how to keep bees. Fresh honeycomb... mmmm….

When the 2nd year apprentices were kicked out of the barn, they received little to no support from the “higher-ups” at UCSC. Instead, the farm staff and other farm apprentices came together as a community and help with this demoralizing transition. It was amazing, in all the frustration and tension of being made homeless by your own employer, to see how much bonds were strengthened between the folks who picked up the pieces together.

Here is a photo of the announcers for “Farm Olympics” – an annual event lead by each new group of (7) 2nd year apprentices in which (38) 1st year apprentices compete in events like: boquet making, tomato tossing, pitch fork throwing, and a hose ravelling –wheelbarrow pushing-gardeningbed prepping triathlon.

I learned to silk screen and participated in several rounds of printing these apprentice-designed prints on various clothing and non-clothing items:

I helped cook community meals:

Learned to bake bread, and baked more than 20 different kinds this year:

And played capture the flag and drank Mimosas with pirates like these:

And I volunteered at the farm and garden as much as possible. Here are photos from my last day volunteering:

The last day of the apprenticeship, Dan is reading a passage from the chapter in Grapes of Wrath where the depression-era bank representative comes to boot the farmers off their land and recommends that they head out to California, and explains how the bank will be doing mechanized, chemical-intensive farming that will eventually destroy the soils and leave the land useless, and desolate.

Gifts were exchanged and, not pictured, MUCH fine farm-grown food was consumed prior to the best Greenhouse dance party I could ever imagine.

After being cat parents for so long, Frank the Cat was our hardest goodbye.

THANK YOU to all the amazing staff on the farm who make this program happen year after year, despite and in spite of all the obstacles. You are all my heroes.

How He Proposed

Yip. It’s true. I dun gone and got engaged. This entry will take you through the week of bliss that surrounded the proposal.

Dan and I decided a while back that we would take a full week of for backpacking to celebrate our three-year anniversary. He volunteered to plan the whole thing and I took him up on it.

October 13 – Day One, Stop One – Pt. Reyes National Seashore:

Dan and I left Santa Cruz at sunrise and arrived at the Palomarin Trailhead by 10am.

Here is a view of Bass Lake, about 2 hours after the start of our hike.

Here’s the censored version of Dan swinging off the rope swing at Bass Lake – cold, crisp, refreshing, and liberating.

After playing around in Bass Lake, Dan made us this fine picnic lunch. Everything but the sharp cheddar cheese and balsamic-rosemary-soaked hard boiled eggs were from the farm, including my fresh baked dill bread and Dan’s dehydrated tomatoes and kale chips.

Another 1 1/2 hours and we were just above our Wildcat Campground (see small tents in photo), where we stayed the first night.

Once we got down to our campsite we set down our packs and Dan grabbed his top-secret daypack. We hiked along the beach to this amazing spot:

The bottom of Alamere Falls, right where it feeds into the ocean! I followed Dan across the falls’ stream and around a Cliffside to a beautifully well polished concave rock crevace, shaped by the tides. We took a seat and enjoyed the view:

At this point in our adventure, Dan whips out a bottle of (organic) KiwiStrawberry Wine he and I had made together in early spring. He then pulls out a boom box and, all a grin, gives me my assignment:

“OK, I’ve made you two mix CDs – they’ve been three years in the making and I need you to sit here for the next two hours and totally focus on them… just focus on your breath and listen to each song, and meditate on how much you love me and how you want to spend the rest of your life with me.”

And so, for the next two hours, that is precisely what I did. The mixes crossed genres and generations of musical talent. Their lyrics spoke volumes about the story of our relationship and the hopes we share for our future together. Two hours passed slowly and beautifully, we sat, we stood, we danced naked on the beach. It was the stuff fantastically cheesy movies are mad of, and we loved every moment.

At sunset we relocated to a spot beneath the falls for the final three tracks. And bit by bit, we watched one of the most memorable sunsets of our lives:

Dan, bless his heart, had meticulously planned this whole thing, of course. He knew exactly when the tide would rise and fall, and he knew the exact minute the sun would hit the horizon… and when that moment came:

The final song ended simultaneously and Dan looked at me with absolute seriousness and asked me to open up the player and read what the CD mix was titled.

It read in colorful block letters: “The Will You Mary Me Mix (Seriously)”

All the blood rushed to my head and I turned probably purple at that point as my heart fluttered and I looked up to see him down on one knee, holding a bamboo engagement ring he had hand carved himself.
He had called my parents that very morning to ask permission from both of them, and they’d affirmed, and so it was: we’re engaged!

We walked back to the campsite along the beach under a sky exploding with stars, made another fantastic supper, and closed our eyes… only to open them in amazement each day after the next with our first thoughts in the morning focused on what a blessing it was to be in each place after the next, together, and in bliss.

Please enjoy the photos of the rest of our backpacking “Engagement Honeymoon”:

The morning after Dan proposed, we woke up to the brightness of a full moon setting on the ocean just before sunrise.

We hiked back to Alamere Falls, racing against the tide, and climbed up above to see the other three of this four fall set.

We set down our packs and hiked away from the river and up to the highest peak we could reach, with this fine view.

After that, we couldn’t resist spending another day swinging on the rope swing at Bass Lake (rope swing is beneath red arrow pictured above).

Then we returned to the upper three falls and spent our afternoon doing basically this:

We ended up camping out at that very spot and enjoying another spectacular sunset.

The next morning we hiked out and drove through Yosemite to collect a bear canister on our way to Buckeye Hot Springs. On the way we made the comical mistake of camping out in the snow at 10,000 feet right at the park’s exit. Ooops! It was way too cold for the type of gear we brought, and at about 4:30 in the morning we gave up on keeping warm and headed out to watch the sunrise at one of my favorite all time geological attractions in California:

The tufa towers at Mono Lake!

It ends up we weren’t the only one’s thinking this might be a good place to watch the sunrise that morning!

**I didn't take any pictures during our 3 days at Buckeye Hot Springs in the Eastern Sierras. Why? Because I was way too blissed out to go digging for my camera! We spent three nights camped across the river from these 3 or 4 springs, which are fed by hot spring water that trickles down a sandstone Cliffside above it. Here's a photo I found on the internet of it:

For three days, we dipped each morning before sunrise and twice in the evening, once before sunset and once after sunset.

And then, it was on to Yosemite… the land of a MILLION sunsets.

Our first night there we backpacked just 1 ½ miles (though entirely vertical) up to Inspiration point and, again, we had the whole place to ourselves. We sat Cliffside at our makeshift campsite and watched for at least 1 ½ hours as the sun rose and set and rose and set over El Capitan (the giant rock wall to the left), Half Dome (the half-curved feature in the distant middle), and Bridlevail Fall (difficult to see in this photo, but just down and to the right of Half Dome).

Watch how the shadows change and dance around:

The next morning at the bottom of the trail we had a much better understanding of the trailhead sign that quotes John Muir saying:

On the final night of our vacation, we hiked up to Nevada Falls. The hike was about 5 or 6 miles both ways, and only about 3 miles from Half Dome... The photo of the falls below was after the rainy season, so there is actually much more water than there was while we were there -- but there was much less people too!

Below, note the seeming stillness above the falls, where we camped, alone, again, in bliss:

There were a lot of things to be grateful for throughout this trip, but more than anything, I am grateful for preserved open spaces like these… especially for those spaces we can get to in sustainable ways, by bicycle or by foot. And, equally, I am grateful for those preserved open spaces that we can’t get to, for those wild places too far and too rugged to be de-purified by human soles.