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Starting with a Blank Canvas.

After working full-time for 6 months, and wandering off camping and traveling for 3, my life is a bit of a blank canvas. I'm settled into the new house in West Oakland, with plans for renters' homesteading. Mushrooms, winter vegetables, et cetera. I've got a web design gig lined up for this month, and more exciting things to come for sure. But right now, I'm reveling in the small victories:

Furniture designed to re-use old furniture
Developing morning meditation practice
Practicing guitar fundamentals (scales) daily
Weight training to build upper body strength for aerials
Began making Tassajara bread, kombucha, tomato sauce, apple sauce
Got worms and manure for our new compost bin
Studying Paul Stamets, Ken Wilber, Allaudin Ottinger
Planning classes for winter
Re-engaging with friends old and new

I painted for the first time in 6 years today.

On the shores of Lake Tahoe, post-Burn. Ta-hoe!

Bike The Shoreline ride in San Francisco October 24! Join Us!

SF Bay Area Bicyclists! Get your bike ready for underwater pedalling! Pull out your floaties and snorkel masks!

Join actions for Climate Justice planned in 98 countries and participate as one of 350 bicyclists in Bike the Shoreline. This 3.5 mile route will trace SF's predicted future post climate-changed tide line given the worst case scenario: only cap and trade market mechanisms are implemented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and climate crisis is not averted. Help raise visibility as governments prepare for climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December, and encourage the US to develop a domestic policy that promises meaningful emissions reductions over the next decade. We will meet at Justin Herman Plaza at 2 PM on Saturday, 24 October.

To sign up as one of the 350, and receive info on Bike the Shoreline, email bikesnotclimatechange@gmail.com

July In LA: I Want To See You!

I am in LA for much of the month of July. Okay, so maybe half of the month of July. I want to see you! The Muppet Movie is showing on the 25th at Hollywood Cemetery. Orquesta Baobab for free on the 30th. What else is going on? Let's frolick!

<b>June 28 - July 5:</b> in Los Angeles!
(long interlude in Alturas + Mendocino)
<b>July 19 - August 1:</b> Back in LA!
(august 2: trot trot to Boston)

Hitchin' + Drivin' in the High Sierra.

After a nearly chance meeting with Pam and Nikki on the corner of 17th and Telegraph Wednesday afternoon, Brittany and I hopped a Greyhound out of Oakland towards the Sierra. We ate a burrito while passing slowly through Sacramento rush hour traffic and watched the clay and granite hills rise up before us before reaching Truckee by six. Having missed all the city transit busses, we walked out of town and hitched a ride to the north shore of Lake Tahoe. In two hitches, separated by a layover in Tahoe City that lasted no more than thirty seconds, we arrived at Sugar Pine State Park for the night, enjoying peanut butter sandwiches under the stars.

We took the hitching slow and easy Thursday. After lunching in alpine meadows in Hope Valley, we hitched a ride down Highway 88 with a young man who was headed to his father's wedding in Sheep Ranch. He dropped us off near Pioneer, where we got some milkshakes and started walking towards the nearest campground. The road had few cars, and just when we were certain that no-one would pick us up, a middle-aged gentleman driving to dinner with his son backed up his pickup and instructed us to hop in the tailgate with his two golden retrievers. He took us into the town of Volcano (which was a little further than we planned to go), bought us a couple beers at the local pub, and dropped us at the Indian Grinding Rock campsite afterwards.

We spent the weekend with my buddy Tim in the amazing natural home he takes care of up in Railroad Flat. When we met with Tim on Friday, we found ourselves chasing runaway chickens through the town of Mountain Ranch and helping to decorate at a pre-wedding potluck at California Caverns. The community was very tight-knit - and I later wondered whether that was the wedding that our ride down the 88 was headed to! We arrived home late Friday night. Brittany and I enjoyed a slow morning Saturday, and welcomed my friends James and Allison later in the evening for a fantastic slow food feast. We capped the weekend Sunday at noon with a refreshing swim in the local pond - equipped with a canoe and a diving board to boot.

We all left Tim's after swimming to drive over Tioga and Sonora Passes - camping in June Lake and driving through some of the most varied and beautiful country California has to offers. Even the majestic crests of Yosemite were merely standard fare compared to the serenity of June Lake, the dramatic climb of the eastern sierra above the desert in Mono Lake Basin, the emerald fields full of cattle and sheep 'round Bridgeport, and the incredible scenery of Leavitt Meadow, Ansel Adams wilderness, and the Dardanelles all along Highway 108. Two miles high, we entertained ourselves briefly in the frozen remains of winter, watching plows and snowclouds move into place over Sonora Pass before we descended nearly two miles to Oakdale, CA and found 99¢ ice cream to enjoy in the humid summer heat.

The Desert: Email Update

I am in Twentynine Palms, California. All the cafe's here are playing
an acoustic singer-songwriter station with unplugged versions of old
nineties songs and Tom Waits playing. I am reading the Times, being
stealthy about my eavesdropping on a girl doing a bible study in the
corner. She is tattooed and sandpapered from the desert, and is
talking to her study partner about her favorite book of the Bible
which is all about truth and forgiveness.

The bus is more than forty-eight hours out from its starting point,
and we have not reached our geographical destination - but we are
truly on that road where every moment is, indeed, the destination.
Jonah asked me on tape what I was looking for on this bus full of
seekers. I said, "I'm looking for a bus full of seekers."

Dale gave a woman sixty dollars and a cigarette last night. I don't
remember where we were. Riverside, maybe. She had a broken hand and a
child in the passenger seat. We related this event to the clerk at an
outdoorsman's store here in Joshua Tree, and Dale mentioned that again
that he was giving away his possessions and that he had a feeling that
American currency really wouldn't be worth saving up anytime in the
near future.

As a generation, we're going to be learning what it is to live by our
wits. A cohort of seekers and seers, spurning possessions,
enlightening ourselves out of these dark ages and into a new age of
truth and forgiveness.