Reflections On A Journey

As warmth returned to our Arizona days, I realized I've been here for nearly three months. That's two months longer than I expected or intended to stay at Lonesome Coconut Ranch. Funny how time has a way of slipping by when you're occupied with other things! This time I really mean it when I say I'm taking off this weekend. I'll be making my way to Santa Cruz, CA where I have another WWOOFing arrangement and where I hope for a chance to get lost in the redwoods for a little while.

Facing immanent departure, I've been taking inventory this past week and been surprised time and again by the many roots I've grown without meaning to. You need only to look at the greenhouse/conservatory to see a significant physical representation of these: what is now a complete building, roofed and sealed, was barely four rows of bottles high when I arrived in November. But there are other ties as well. This land has it's own stark, sweeping beauty and the people who live on it are good people. I will miss the lively dinner conversation, evenings spent quietly clustered together, the visitors to the farm, the little dogs crawling into my bed with cold feet to escape frozen mornings. I will miss the sunsets and the cliffs along the dry riverbed. And while I know I can find sunsets and dinnertime conversation everywhere I go, nowhere will it be the same.

When I travel, the driving mechanism isn't, as it seems to be for many, a hunger to connect with new people, (though that connection is a welcome if challenging side effect). Rather, I push myself onto the road when I'm afraid I've grown too comfortable. Stuck with a place, person or occupation that stifles my vitality, I can feel myself collapsing inward and it scares me. For a long time, (months? years?) I was stuck in this unhappy vortex. I was drowning and thought I didn't know how to swim. I reached for lifelines, kept my head above water, but exhausted myself without seeming to find a way out. Last year, a conversation at work with Robert Black (my high school architecture teacher) led me to this poem by Mary Oliver. I copied it into the collection of poetry that travels with me (the journal that I rarely use for actual journaling) and as the months passed I felt Oliver's words sinking deeper and deeper into my core.

The Journey, by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

When asked by the people I meet why I'm traveling, I can rattle off any number of true, location- and job-specific answers, but I think the truest answer lies in this poem. Events in my life had reached a critical mass where I just knew what I had to do. No notion of destination, no idea what came after the next step until that next step had been taken. I am learning how to listen to that voice, the one that comes from the deepest part of me, learning to feel the truth of what I must do in my gut. As my journey has gone on, the clouds that once obscured the next week have receded but not gone. I suppose to some extent they will always be there; my lesson is in coming to know their nature and welcome them as a part of my life. I cannot predict what will happen and will disappoint myself if I try, if I become attached to a predicted outcome. Accepting uncertainty and that inner voice as my compass, right now I am doing the only thing I can do, living the only life I can live. I've been feeling off-kilter lately--a sure sign that a change is in order.

I know I've promised several people an account of rocket stove progress, and that will come eventually. I have never promised that these posts would be regular or frequent--I tend to write when the whim strikes. Progress on the rocket mass heater has stalled often, to our many frustrations. My report will come once I've gotten a bit of distance from those metaphorical brick walls we keep running into! 

This has been an introspective entry. Here, have a pretty picture!

By Virtue of Working Through the Holiday

All along, our goal was to have finished the greenhouse by Christmas. This particular holiday doesn't mean a whole lot to me these days, though I do take the time to think of the people I love right around the turning of the year. For Anna, the big event is Boxing Day (December 26). There was to be a big party for which she was determined to have the whole room enclosed, even if it meant she was up on the roof alone on Christmas Day. David and Dianne, wwoofers from southern England, weren't particularly keen on having the day off, not when they could be doing something productive. I have to say I agreed in this instance. It really felt so close to completion, and with the threat of rain some days later I thought it made more sense to keep at it.

Christmas Eve morning:
So close to our goal, and yet so far. The roof is more than halfway covered, but it has taken several days to get this far.

At least it doesn't look like this anymore!

Two of the three outside walls are totally done, but the west wall is only hip height. Dianne is zooming along with it, but despite her remarkable progress we doubt it'll be complete before the party.

view from up top

Luck is on our side. The weather is beautiful, warming enough for t-shirts for a couple hours. Richard from Quebec has arrived, and his presence spotting Anna on the ladder and handing up tools speeds up the process considerably. And of course, work is more productive now that we aren't all entertaining the 8- and 3-year-old grandsons like we've been doing for a week. (They've gone on to stay with their 'normal granny' now.)

A few hours later: the design in Dianne's wall is really starting to show up, the roof is only lacking a few more panels and I have managed to patch most of the holes left in the metal from previous usage. (A side effect of this: I am covered in black tar.)

With so little left, Anna insists she'll be up on the roof bright and early to finish the next morning. I figure that as long as there's more panels going up I might as well patch them then and there, so I commit to the roof as well. Dianne says she might as well continue building up the wall, and David will make more cob than she can use. Richard will continue with ladder support.

Christmas Day:
Our early morning plans meet some obstacles. We've had a few visits from a skunk these last days, and Anna has an allergy attack and goes to the hospital for a breathing treatment before the crack of dawn. Half the day passes before they release her and she arrives back on the ranch, raring to go. This time, the weather is less pleasant, cold wind blowing and the sun vanishing behind an ever-growing haze of clouds. Finally, running out of screws as we fumble our way through attaching the very last panel, Anna informs me that I am climbing down from the roof the moment she is done. Patching the remaining holes is finish work; save it for another day. We pop the bottle of champagne to celebrate--the roof is up!

Zero and Lily keeping themselves warm and entertained.

Almost there!

All tidied up and ready for the party.

Lessons From Building A Bottle House

In the very first email exchange between me and Anna, she mentioned that the immediate big project was the greenhouse because it was "getting cold and the iguana needs a new home." (Since then, the intrepid iguana has managed to wander off into the desert [more than once], so the question of iguana furniture has been shelved until either she returns or a new iguana is acquired.) When I first arrived at the homestead I initially did lots of random tasks: yard and garden work, organization and so on. The past several weeks though, I've been focused on greenhouse work: washing bottles, mixing cob and laying bottles, and most recently hanging rafters and going on a tin-collecting mission for roof material.

If you would like to have your very own wall, room or house that lets in beautiful, colored light whenever the sun shines through, you can build one in just a few, easy, time consuming steps! (The sight of a finished wall is absolutely worth the effort.)

Collect bottles - Depending on how large the space you hope to fill, this may take some time. Start saving. Consider making friends with a nearby restaurant or recycling facility. Ask your drinkin' friends to save glass bottles for you. Keep an eye out for interesting colors and shapes.

Green (and clear and brown) bottles are fairly easy to come by.

Blue makes a striking and unusual addition to any bottle wall.

Pick a location - Here at the Lonesome Coconut Ranch, what we've been calling a "greenhouse" is in actuality a conservatory of sorts, 15'x30' attached to the south side of the house. When the winter sun is low enough in the sky, the room will collect heat from the sun and with help from a rocket stove (a small, clean-burning stove that stores heat in a large cob biomass). In the spring, the heat collected and radiated out by the cob biomass of the wall will prevent grapevines from freezing during cold desert nights. In the summer, the now-leafy vines will help shade and cool the room. The two separate doors into the house proper mean that both hot and cold air can be recirculated from house to conservatory and vice versa, as needed.

That's a big space.

Mix cob - First, you'll need materials. Dirt can come from anywhere (say, the excavated floor space) as long as it has a high clay content. Sand can also come from anywhere and prevents drying mud from shrinking too much. Got a dry riverbed or beach nearby? Add straw for structure and a water supply to your list and you're pretty much good to go. Your ratio of dirt to sand is 2:1. Add water and straw, the process is much like making dough--keep playing with it until it feels right. It should be damp and sticky, but not too soft.

Traditionally, cob is mixed by foot. Stomping and squishing mud between your toes is a pretty good way of familiarizing yourself with the consistency you are trying to attain. We happen to have a small cement mixer here. We've experienced a few technical difficulties, it doesn't handle large batches well, and some workers prefer not to use it. But boy is it nice to be able to mix cob in the colder months without freezing your toes off!

Billy and Justin contemplate the mixer: to stomp or not to stomp?

Build - Building is fairly straightforward. If your foundations are in place, simply lay a layer of cob, place the bottles where you like and surround them with more cob, smoothing new layers and old as you go. It's just that easy!

cobbing in progress

final result

Prepare to have mud under your nails, in your hair, on your face, ground into all of your clothes and smeared on every surface you touch. Learn to live with the grit; you won't be rid of it at any time during this process and it is better to simply revel in it! (Also invest in some good lotion. It will prevent your hands from feeling like the skin is too tight once you've washed the mud away.) Take a minute to stand back every now and then to appreciate your progress! Hey, look at that cool thing you did!

Don't forget to take progress pictures as well!

So far to go still

Windows of all shapes and sizes.

About to lay the remaining bottles and windows in this wall all by myself.

Nearing the top on almost all fronts.

So exciting to have a completed corner!

Bottlenecks are surprisingly strong; I spent the top rows clinging to the wall like a monkey.

Next to come: rafters and then a roof!

"Well, this gives new meaning to the term 'Winter Wonderland'"

(title courtesy of Anna)

Winter has come late this year, but this week it finally arrived. After weeks where the nights barely dipped below freezing and days where I was working barefoot in a t-shirt by 11 am, the cold season is now here with a bang. Yesterday, after a nighttime temperature in the low 20's, I found the bottle washing station iced over and the previous day's leftover cob frozen in the cement mixer. Took me nearly all day to thaw it. And this morning, this is what I walked outside to find:

What happens when you forget to turn off the sprinkler at night.

Grass doesn't usually look like this...

(It sure puts the brakes on an early start to work when the hose is frozen solid!)

I promise promise promise that soon there will be a nice big post about greenhouse, with a building progress report and pictures of the greenhouse and so on. But can you blame me for wanting to share this first? As much as I'm enjoying the near-constant sunshine of the desert, I've been feeling nostalgic lately for snow. This is probably as close as I'll get for a while.

Life goes on

It's been a couple weeks, and while I wanted to leave you with a little something sooner, I haven't many words for you right now. Instead, enjoy this photo essay of life at Lonesome Coconut Ranch. Work continues apace: window washing, firewood gathering, winterizing the garden and greenhouse construction. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Much love to you all.

exploring the property

 things you come across walking through a dry riverbed

Mailboxes at evening

Evening in the river valley

Zero & Lily - my cuddle buddies and marauders extraordinaire

Cobb greenhouse: you can see the layer we recently added with the window.

Greenhouse-in-progress

Dia de los Muertos, a parade

If you asked me about the Spanish language classes I took from third through eighth grade, I'd tell you I couldn't recall much of the language beyond scattered vocabulary words. I might remember singing some random songs that I never actually understood, and I know(knew) enough words to get really excited by connections between language bases, but in the end, when I chose to continue learning German in high school, I quickly let go the contents of those Spanish classes. One thing I do remember, rather vividly: making altars to celebrate deceased loved ones on Day of the Dead.

At fourteen (just!), I hadn't had anyone very close to me pass away. Still haven't, for that matter. Certainly, I knew of people who had died, but even the deaths of my first pet rats didn't hit very close to home. So when, in eighth grade, we were assigned the task of building altars for an in-class celebration of All Souls Day, I dithered a while before deciding I would honor my great-grandpa Bill. I dutifully called my granny to learn more about her dad, (I had met him, but as a young child my first instincts were not to find out such things as favorite foods and pastimes of such a venerable old man) and set out to decorate a shoebox and fill it with pictures and objects in honor of Great-Grandpa. (I'm sad to say that nearly ten years later, I can no longer recall much of what went into that shoebox. Although I'm certain there is a photo somewhere of me proudly holding it up at the front of the classroom.) In class, Señora Perla brought in fruit and sugar skulls, while each person described the person (or pet) they honored with an altar.

Fast forward to this past Sunday. Anna and I hopped into the car shortly after noon to meet up with her friend Jude and her son Jose. Jude is an artist-type who makes lovely dyed t-shirts with Anna to sell at the Christmas market in December. She also makes these beautiful, traditional looking puppets for the All Souls Procession in Tucson. This year, we were remembering a recently passed friend of hers, and she had asked Anna whether I was interested in walking the parade with them.

We arrived in town hours before the parade started, with plenty of time to park and eat an early dinner. Most people on the street were already clearly dressed for the event, some with costumes, some with face paint, many with flowers. We assembled the puppet and walked to the start of the parade while Anna took the car to wait for us at the end. Then we stood on the street as the sky grew darker and the crossroads of Toole and Congress grew ever more crowded. All around us were people with masks, costumes, faces painted to look skeletal and deathly. Some carried homemade altars, signs and photos. Some had made elaborate floats. There was a tribute to Neil Armstrong, a horse skeleton covered in marigolds (the traditional flower of the dead), someone wearing a dinosaur skeleton, a large Jane Addams puppet probably twice my height and many remembrances of beloved dogs and cats.

Left to Right: Jude, puppet, Jose (hiding) and Anna

credit: http://tucsoncitizen.com/community/2010/11/07/jane-addams-in-all-souls-procession/

credit: http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/arts/report/110512_all_souls_procession/photos-thousands-remember-loved-ones-all-souls-procession/

credit: http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/arts/report/110512_all_souls_procession/photos-thousands-remember-loved-ones-all-souls-procession/

In addition to the expected memorials of lost loved ones were a number of groups who seemed to be pushing an agenda: a biodiversity group, a number of religious groups (one of whom sang an off-key, repetitive song behind us the entire procession), a protest of nuclear power remembering workers in plants that had experienced catastrophe, and bunches of people with signs declaring their political opinions. (Most of these seemed out of place at an event intended to joyfully celebrate dead loved ones.)

save the frogs - biodiversity group

We appear briefly in this video between 2:42 and 2:49, sandwiched between the biodiversity group's giant banner and the moon landing. Sorry for the poor quality!

It was a lovely evening, all told. Much more solemn and respectful than any other parade I've ever been to, but by no means dull. We skipped out on the end performance due to a long drive home and the late hour, but I'm beyond grateful that Jude invited me. I had so much fun helping move the puppet. I think my favorite part was the looks on the faces of little kids when the puppet would turn and wave, bend over them or offer a high five!

My own tissue paper marigold, handmade by Jude.

After A Dead Snake

Earlier this week, I met a rattlesnake in the wild for the first time. (And a scorpion, but that story is much less eventful. It mostly consisted of the scorpion sitting on the ground beside a shed when we uncovered his hiding spot.) Up until now, my experience with these creatures has been essentially theoretical: from books, glass cages at the zoo and the section on venomous snakes and other animals in my Wilderness First Responder training. But maybe I should set the scene first.

I arrived in Tucson, Arizona on Halloween, after a series of bus drivers who spoke minimal English (but still more than I could comprehend in Spanish these days), a lovely evening catching up with Julie in Albuquerque and a mostly sleepless night on a hostel bunk. My plan? WWOOFing. I had sent out several messages to various hosts over the past weeks, most of which had either been at capacity or not desiring of helpers at the time. Finally, Anna replied. She had space; I could come at any time.

So, on Halloween, Anna picked me up at the bus station. After helping unload her daughter’s furniture from the truck into her new house we hit the road again. An hour later, having passed the small town of Benson and followed small, dusty roads for about twenty minutes, we were definitely in the middle of nowhere. The welcoming committee at the gate of Lonely Coconut Ranch consisted of two Chihuahuas and a very enthusiastic young hound dog named Lily.

The ranch itself, located on a mesquite bosque, in reality consists mostly of mesquite trees and desert grasses and a few cacti. Most of the property is unused; the house and various buildings (toolshed, studio, another shed), a small vegetable garden and even smaller chicken coop, some ramshackle trailers surrounded by piles of junk, the outdoor cobb bathroom and the bunkhouse where volunteers stay are all contained within a less than half of the five acres. We set to cleaning out the rather neglected bunkhouse, where I discovered a few places where a rodent had removed insulation foam in a bid for freedom. Anna said we’d add filling up those holes to the list of projects for future days.

I settled in, played with the dogs, got acquainted with my surroundings, had dinner and went to bed. (I was still exhausted from the numerous bus rides and the sleepless night, not to mention a bit of shock at suddenly being in a desert.) In the morning, I sang myself a birthday song and went about the day’s tasks: pulling out frostbitten tomatoes (the chickens were delighted!) and turning a large section of the garden to prepare for next year’s crops. After lunch, we rummaged through boxes stored beside the bunkhouse in search of dyes for a project Anna had in mind. When I later thundered back into the bunkhouse for the first time since breakfast, I heard an odd hissing sound. Though my first thought was that someone was letting air out of a bicycle tire, I quickly wised up when I remembered what sorts of critters might live in the area. After a perfunctory peek towards the sound’s origin, I tore out of the bunkhouse and halfway to the main house before stopping and creeping back to do a more thorough assessment of the situation. That was definitely a rattlesnake, coiled up underneath the dresser, triangular head pointed in my direction, rattling when I got too close.

Anna said her neighbor had a device that would allow a person to grab a snake from a distance. I entertained myself far away from the bunkhouse for a few hours, and when we went back, device in hand, the snake was nowhere to be seen. Or heard. Anna and her friend Preston stomped and poked around for a good while, as I cowered in the doorway. We determined he must have relocated himself, I ensured that the door was all the way shut and made sure I brought my flashlight to the house at dinnertime. Walking back in the dark, everything looked like a snake, but I made it to bed with no further incident, and thought no more about it. Not even when I heard a rustling in the corner after I settled into my sleeping bag and turned the lights out.

Then next morning passed much the same way. Right up to the part where I got hissed at walking back into my living quarters after lunch! This time, I noticed the rattler was hanging out right by one of the rodent holes I’d discovered while cleaning, the same corner from which rustling had emanated the previous night. Luckily we still had the grabber. Anna couldn’t have had a more perfect shot if she had tried; we caught the snake just behind the head on our first try. When we brought it outside to kill it, the dogs hovered and barked from a safe distance. (Lily still goes on high alert when she enters the bunkhouse now, poised and sniffing cautiously toward that particular corner.) The snake’s body now rests (in pieces) in a bin far from the house. Once it rots and insects clean away the flesh, Anna will clean the bones and use them in jewelry and other of her crafts.

Moral of the story: I still enter the bunkhouse very slowly and check in corners and under furniture before moving beyond the doorway. I know that the exposed wiring, water lines and roots in the road are not snakes, but I still approach them cautiously when walking back at night. So I’m a little jumpy. I guess I’m okay with that; I’d rather be that than bitten. Maybe I’ll brush up on venomous creatures in my WFR field book. And I should probably find that foam Anna thinks she has and plug up those holes in my house!

When Preston was here the other day, he mentioned that the town was named after a rattlesnake. Curious, I remembered that the nearest ‘town’-type place is called Cascabel. According to Wikipedia, cascabel comes from the Spanish word for 'rattle', the town named by a guy who met a Mexican fellow holding a rattlesnake he had just killed.  Fitting, I guess, that I encountered one on my first day here!

Sorry Dom, I wasn't able to get photos while he was still alive...

...but here he is still squirming around post-mortem.

This doesn't actually have anything to do with the previous pictures. I just found a snakeskin on my walk!

I know I’ve promised a lot of people location updates and status reports as I go about my travels. Problem is, I’ve probably forgotten if I promised you anything particular. This is my attempted solution, since I do have occasional internet access here at LCR but no phone signal. If I’ve forgotten to mention something you wanted to know, or you’d rather have conversations, I love getting email notes and promise to respond! I’ll be here the next few weeks or so before moving on to who-knows-where.