Copy and paste of the past two updates from the facebook group of our travels.

 Here's the first update on our travels from way back:

What an adventure it has been. I'm finally getting a chance to lie down her at Sandhill Farm in Missouri https://sandhillfarm.org/ and put out an update on our adventures since the Genome Collective http://www.genomecollective.space/. I've updated the ecovillage tour map and added some notes to the file. The journey from the Genome Collective to White Hawk Ecovillage http://whitehawkecovillage.org/ was a beautiful relatively short skip.

When we arrived, we took a little walk around the property and ran into a family that was just beginning to put up their maple sap buckets in a beautiful little grove on the 120 acres property that is mostly former pasture land in the wide open hills above Ithaca. There are nine homes presently clustered around an open common circle with hopes of growing to thirty homes, which may not take all that long given the relative affordability of building there. The community is getting close to completing the major milestone of buying out the landowner and founder, which will open up the possibility of getting income qualified grants of $40k that should almost cover the land buy-in requirements, leaving one only needing $60k or so to cover the cost of building a home by or in conjunction with a contractor.

We set up our tent on the undeveloped side of the circle and were serenaded nightly by coyotes. The clustering of the homes around the circle seems to improve the cohesion of the community and allows for children to roam freely from house to house. The community seems to be presently attracting families with young kids and seems likely to remain fairly self-selective. The members were generally quite warm, inviting, and generous, even to the point of offering up their guest spaces to us when winter suddenly came back with a vengeance. What a beautiful storm that was!

The community seems to offer everyone a greet deal of independence in how much they can be involved. Everyone's home seems to have all the modern amenities the mainstream is used to. Everyone is hooked up to one septic with plans for only one more and everyone is grid tied. There is no common community building yet and probably won't be until the lots are mostly sold. The one community meeting we attended seemed to run fairly smoothly and efficiently despite a bit of a hickup in initially trying to get enough people together to achieve a quorum of at least 51% of the membership. It seems like most of the community documentation and agreements were written by people that are not presently part of the community and that there is some work left to be done in refining the agreements and developing certain processes, but that's to be expected at the present stage I suppose.

I'd write more about some of the wonderful people and families we met there, but I don't think I'm going to have time for that sort of detail if I'm going to roughly cover all the communities we visit. Suffice it to say that Keya had a blast with the village kids, generally having someone available to play with and I even found a fellow venison roadkill enthusiast willing to partake of a little raccoon with us for the first time. Then there was the village sourdough bread maker... you cannot imagine the yum!

On our trips around beautiful, extremely progressive, and artsy Ithaca, we got to experience a few mind-blowing waterfalls, a children's science center and a few of the co-op scenes. On one trip back to White Hawk, our car produced a most ungodly noise which we later found out was a failing front wheel bearing. Getting that repaired by the village mechanic kept us there quite a few days longer than we had originally planned, but it's held up fine ever since. The car still is in pretty rough shape and could probably use some new rear shocks/struts and a new rear wheel bearing soon, but I think we'll chance it. The windshield wiper system stopped in a rain storm a couple communities later, but I've got some cord tied to them now that allows me some visibility with a little coordinated yanking about. The car is quite the sight now, piled high with gear, overloaded, heavily cosmetically damaged by a hit-and-run state plow truck, and occasionally drenched in blood from roadkill picked up along the way and tucked under the rescue sled roped to the top of the cargo carrier. On a visit to Red Earth Farms, some of the folks here at Sandhill Farms caught a glimpse of the parked car at one of it's finest moments carrying four raccoons, two redtailed hawks, and a bisected buck that had drained blood all over the windshield. Some days later, after receiving rave reviews on the marinated roadside deer steaks, one of them mentioned that at first glance they thought it must have been a practical joke of some sort.

 Anyway, Keya and I had a great time at White Hawk Ecovillage, made some great friends and are looking forward to visiting again soon. While we were in Ithica, we were also able to go to a potluck dinner in the Tree neighborhood of the Ecovillage at Ithaca and a common dinner in the Song neighborhood http://ecovillageithaca.org/live/. Our liason was very kind and welcoming and we got to have some great conversations with some folks renting there that led us to believe that it probably wasn't the right place for us. I could speak more on that if any of you are interested.

  We left White Hawk after the snow had mostly fallen but while the winds were still blowing strong. The drive to an old little community called Currents near the small college town of Athens Ohio was both gorgeous and grueling. My back had slipped out of place while carrying nothing but a frying pan of racoon at White Hawk, so I had to take frequent stretching breaks, which Keya needed anyway to move his hyper abundant energy. The wind was sending the snow wiping across the farmland valleys in the evening light creating snaking drifts and colossal spiraling snow giants that would bound across the road in front of us, sometimes knocking the car sideways. The 8hr journey turned into 16 with us arriving around 3am and unrolling our sleeping pad right on someone's lawn.

 That morning we met the two nearest members we had dropped in on and got a tour of one of their innovative homes including the vintage volkswagen bug he had converted over to electric power. Then it was on to meet our main contact, Bob the village builder, a very gentle kindred soul and tree herder. He gave us a wonderful tour of the absolutely gorgeous property and introduced us to some of the other folks there.  The forest, streams, caves and rock formations were really quite stunning. Most of the property is undeveloped and ripe for some amazing crew with alot of energy to come in and get something going in that wilder area where just about anything could happen relatively free of governmental meddling.  The membership is aging and there seems to be the need for some sort of transition soon.  There aren’t many kids there presently and it seems like the community would benefit from more regular communal bonding and an influx of younger folks. Community buy-in to the non-profit that holds the 163 acres is only $1,000 and has some other attrative features. The community operates on consensus and there seems to be a little resistance to change in the already developed areas, but elsewhere on the property the possibilities seem wide open.  

 We spent the evening there with a linguistically gifted, witty and highly educated couple and their young son, dined by lamp light, and visited their wooly sheep in the morning before hitting the road enroute to an urban community of four households with eight kids in unique Bloomington, Indiana. The community is called the Bloomington Christian Radical Catholic Worker Community but don’t let the name fool you at all. They’re quite open minded and non-dogmatic and were exceptionally welcoming hosts doing some wonderful work in their neighborhood, sharing in the care of the children, and partially sharing their incomes as well. We only really got to know the family that hosted us, and had some great conversations. They turned me on to the Bruderhof communities which helped them when they were in need and in many ways seem to be doing something right despite the obvious critiques one might raise of their beliefs and practices.   http://www.bruderhof.com/en/our-faith/foundations  

 We left there early the next morning enroute to Red Earth Farms http://www.redearthfarms.org/who-we-are/ near Dancing Rabbit in Missouri http://www.dancingrabbit.org/ .  While at White Hawk, we heard the tale of another family that had preceded us on a similar quest. The family’s website, http://lifeofalocavore.com/ revealed that they had chosen Red Earth Farms out of the 11 communities they had visited (their second favorite was Shannon Farm Community in Virginia http://www.ic.org/directory/shannon-farm-community/.) We had contacted Red Earth Farms but had heard they wouldn’t be there yet for the start of their 6-month trial residency. We sped to Red Earth Farms trying to get there before Dancing Rabbit’s regular ultimate frisbee game, but were slowed by all the raccoons, the big buck, and an empty gas tank along the way. We serendipitously rolled up just in time to briefly meet the family that had visited White Hawk as they were unpacking, then got a brief tour around one of the farms, Dandelion Farm, and finally Keya and I got treated to a game of ultimate frisbee followed by a chilly skinny dip in the pond at Dancing Rabbit. While there we got to sit in on a community meeting at Red Earth Farms, a potluck at Dancing Rabbit, and a song share at Red Earth Farms. I got the sense that Red Earth Farms is growing well, that they’re functioning well together, that they all have their hands quite full with homestead life, tend to be somewhat more self sufficient, and each have their own unique visions for their individual farms. The two nearby communities of Dancing Rabbit and Sandhill Farm make for a rich social life without alot of committee obligations.  Red Earth Farms seems to be an offshoot of Dancing Rabbit and borders it while Sandhill Farm a couple miles away, where we are now, apparently preceded Dancing Rabbit and helped it get on its feet. We were graciously allowed to stay in a little unheated cabin at Dandelion Farm that had been the haunt of an incredibly gifted wood carver that was now living at Sandhill farm. We did a little pruning and firewood processing while there but spent a great deal of our time process the roadkill and turning much of the buck into some lovely jerky that will hopefully serve us well over the remainder of our coddiwomple.

 

 During the potluck at Dancing Rabbit, an invitation was tentatively extended to us to camp near a new family’s home, but it later proved to not be a good time for them or anyone else in the village. I wish we had some time to get a better sense for life within Dancing Rabbit, but that may not happen on this leg of the trip. I get the sense it is a great environment for the kids with the tightly clustered village of funky hand-crafted homes, but I also get the sense it is not growing like it could be or retaining people for as long as I’d like, that there aren’t as many kids as I was expecting, and that finances there can be tricky.  

Next we were invited over to Sandhill farms https://sandhillfarm.org/about/ for a couple days, an invitation which has since been extended to as late as Tuesday.  We had a fantastic first day and love the heart-centered closeness of this income sharing community.  There’s so many things to love about this community, from the diverse businesses and income streams, the woods, the history, the buildings and ancient trees around it, the mealtime member appreciation ritual, the eco-activist/anarchist literature everywhere, the gardens, the shop spaces, the 155 acres of forests, ruins, and fields, the hand-crafted beauty and soulfulness of most everything here…  I could go on and on and I’ve only stayed here a couple nights. On the other hand, it is also a community in transition. It’s elders/founders recently left, others are set to leave this summer and at the end of the season, and there is only one young lad here for Keya to play with when they’re not hosting other visitors. The place seems ripe for some big changes.  

At the moment we are trying to get in touch with the Blancheflowers who I think are somewhere in the Blackhills  https://www.facebook.com/landliberationproject/   https://www.facebook.com/ande.blanchflower  https://www.facebook.com/kayla.blanchflower   In the meantime, we may visit Keya’s great grandmother on the way to a new DAPL protest camp near Williamsburg Iowa https://www.facebook.com/LittleCreekCamp/   We may also stop by the huge Mahareshi Transcendental Meditation community in Fairfield Iowa along the way.  

http://www.ic.org/directory/maharishi-peace-palace-fairfield-iowa/  While here at Sandhill we’ve repeatedly heard great things about Eastwind in southern Missouri, but I think we’ll need to leave that for later at a time when we can devote a full three weeks at least to experiencing life there http://www.eastwindblog.co/   We also had plans at one point to visit the Possibility Alliance in La Plata, Missouri, but things are in flux there at the moment with some key players moving to Belfast Maine.  

Thanks for all of your support and we’ll do our best to keep you updated as our journey progresses!

  

And here's the recent update: 

From the Midlands through the Far West and into Cascadia

Sometimes a journey takes so much of one’s being that there’s few spoons left to be spread around on writing up tall tales about the past. My apologies to my cousin Cody, my niece Zowe, and Keya along with the folks at the Mothership, all of whom will be baring the brunt of my absence as I plod through this chronicle.    

So where were we last?  We’d made our way through the socio-bioregion known by some as the Midlands, landing in a cluster of communities on its western edge in what is now called northern Missouri.  After half a moon shared between the folks at Red Earth Farms and Sandhill Farms, with a brief visit or two to Dancing Rabbit, it was time to head north to Ellie, Keya’s great grandmother, a community pioneer, mystical psychonaut, writer, massage therapist, energy healer and much much more. She was still living in the town and community that I guess she helped midwife through the relative innocence of infancy, the Maharishi universe of Fairfield Iowa.  

But before we go there, let’s go back to Sandhill farms. The feeling of those folks circling for meals, their shared ethos, sincerity, sweetness, and acceptance of one another, it’s stuck with me, a true comfort, and a mirror of things to come. With a little magic exchanged, we rolled north, feeling the tender tug of a past and future tribe left behind to meet again.  

Before long we found ourselves in the oddest of midland towns, with a city square pulled right out of a western, with only the thinest slime of modern gimmickry splattered across the high facades.  As I drove through the middle of town in befuddlement, an old lawman stepped out of his truck and ours eyes locked. I registered a knowing in that glance, that put me on edge. I should have known not to dial up Juliana while wondering about that village looking for the way on north. I can barely follow directions from that gadget as it is, much less hold a conversation on it while careening about that anachronistic nexus, seemingly beaming conservative small town values from every doorstep and street corner, a mix of old west, far west, and midland values.

After a couple missed turns spiraling about town, we said goodbye and found our road north. While rubber necking a particularly odd home, I let the car drift an inch over the line before quickly correcting. A quick glance in the mirror revealed a cop right on my tail. Somehow I instantly new it was him. I subconsiously smacked myself for psychically engaging with him back there, poking at his paradigm. I checked my speed, it was fine. I checked myself; a little tight but still enough. Calmer now, I still couldn’t shake the sense that I was about to be pulled over. The fact that my ridiculous rig was caked in roadkill gore didn’t help matters much, nor was that even particularly high on the list of concerns. So a few slow deep breaths later, just as I was about to slip out of town, he turned on the flashing lights.  Right on cue, I swayed smoothly to the side, lassoed on the shoulder of the main road, ready to tango.   

He sauntered up to the window and attempted to assuage my supposed fears.

“Now don’t worry, you haven’t done anything wrong. Where you coming from?”

He proceeded to inquire out about our trajectory as well, finally letting on that he’d seen us rolling about town and had supposedly concluded that we were lost and in need of some blue-light-gang good Samaritan intervention. I explained the situation, assuring him that all was well, but then, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, I got a little carried away and offered him some of our illegally acquired, home-made, roadkilled deer jerky. “No, no...” he protested, leading me to further up the ante, revealing the home-made and venison aspects of the offering while remaining silent on the rest.

“Oh…. Homemade venison? Mmmmmm.”

Luckily Keya didn’t pipe up with any elaborating details, and off he strolled chomping on a tough strip while I fought to contain the cosmic giggles. To top it off, not a mile out of town, I spotted a little doe dead on the side of the road. In a few minutes, I had the front legs off and the brains scooped out for tanning.  We were off again, hassle free, in a minute with the legs wedged between the roof and the cargo carrier.  

With us free to continue our coddiwomple, we made our way on north to Ellie.  What a sweetheart!  She showed us all over town.  Took us back in time to when she was just a young sprite, part of the early Maharishi crew, bringing song, joy and plenty of giggles to those wide plains. She told with sweet and sour acceptance of how times had changed as slowly gold-chained dogma dictated by overdosed egos wrapped the community with picket fences capped with towering hats and flattened the faith into a form more like fashion, forcing many into better-than-though isolation from each other and themselves. We rolled through one little intentional community on the edge of town hoping to sense something wiggling free between the fences, but found my expectations met and chose not to dive much deeper than exchanging a couple passing glances with a resident.

Sometimes we visit loved ones without a thought to the precious passing of time, to the times we’ll have left to dive in, to be moved, to touch something real between us beyond time. It wasn’t to be one of those times.  Ellie was oh so alive, oh so loving, oh so full of light, and yet obviously oh so ready to let go of her fading form like a flickering mirage. She hadn’t seen us in ages and was astonished at how Keya had grown. Upon arrival, he immediately began his landscaping and flint knapping efforts, making an utter mess of her stoop and front yard to her utter delight of course. He thrilled in showing her his skills medicine making skills and helped weave together a fish trap basket from shoots off the tree in her yard.  She was so happy to see him, beaming her soft nurturing love all over the place. He took to her right away.

With what steam she had available, she pampered us like kings, showing us the town, treating us to chai, and generally cherishing every moment we had together until it was time for us to depart the next day for a water protector camp called Little Creek near Williamsburg, Iowa. She died a few days ago at her home with her daughter Cynthia and grand daughter, Juliana, Keya’s mom. She embraced the “once-in-a-lifetime” experience and I’m grateful for how well she was held through it all.

Little Creek camp was a world all it’s own.  I don’t think I could convey the story of my time there without coming across wrong, so perhaps I’ll just share my one-sided judgments. I heard a long range vision of the land becoming a thriving ecovillage. At the time, there was a metal structure with electricity and talk of bringing in water.  There were never over twenty folks on site.  The land has a beautiful tiny stream rolling through it. Despite bordering a well trafficked country road, a mountain lion was sited near the property while we were there.

I never got a really clear story on what the land’s legal situation was, but there was some talk of issues with the courts but few details. On the plus side, the town officials seemed to regard the encampment as being within the law and there seemed to be good relations with at least some of the neighbors at the time as well. The people in the camp were a mixed bag, with some hot tempers, big egos, low productivity, and questionable communication skills that had me questioning the longterm prospects of the camp. There was a relationship with a nearby college that was bringing in some great kids though. Overall, I was quite relieved to be on the road again, but grateful for the experience and lessons learned navigating some very tricky dynamics. It’s liable to be a monumental challenge, but I think the place has great potential if a crew could come in with exceptional social skills, dig deep to get an accurate picture of what’s really going on there, and then collaborate with the existing players on a viable plan with clearly deligated responsibilities and consequences.

After a few days at Little Creek, we made our way to Ideal, South Dakota, hoping to check out a water protector prayer camp of dubious existence.  Along the trail, we called ahead to the Blanchflowers, who we planned to visit afterwards, asking them if they’d like any venison should we happen to stumble across a fresh deer along the way.  They said yes, and sure enough, we spotted her just before entering Lakota territory.  I pulled out the gloves and started gutting her right there on the side of the interstate.  Just before I had finished with her, a police car pulled up behind us. The cop strolled over and said, “You know you need a tag for that.” I feigned ignorance and to my surprise he headed back to his patrol car to right me up a salvage permit!  By the time I had man-handled her onto the bike rack, dripping blood all over the back of my car, he was done with the paperwork. I signed and he took that copy, insisting that the pen was now mine. That salvage permit would come in surprisingly handy in versatile ways in the days and weeks to come.    

A few hours later, I found a field road that curved up a hill out of site, and spent the night there and the better part of the next day butchering that doe while it hung from a tree with Sioux Falls in the distance. We were still in the cultural region known as the Midlands, but the Far West was nearly in site.  

I’ve read that the Midlands stretch from Quaker territory west through Iowa and into more populated areas of the Midwest, running about as far west as to where the Missouri River crosses between South Dakota and Nebraska.  The Midlands are pluralistic and organized around the middle class. Government intrusion is unwelcome and ethnic and ideological purity isn’t a priority. The Far West can be said to extend all the way to Cascadia and was built by industry and shaped by the harsh, sometimes inhospitable climates.  Far Westerners are more intensely libertarian and deeply distrustful of big institutions, whether they are railroads and monopolies or the federal government. Sometimes overlooked is the First Nation cultural regions checkered throughout the Far West Territory; the focus of the next phase of our coddiwomple.  

Shortly after passing through the Sioux City area, we entered the homelands of the Yankton subgroup of the Dakota tribe where I spotted some enormous feathered thing on the side of the interstate.  On closer inspection, it proved to be a turkey. Someone had left a sprinkling of tobacco on her mangled body; something I’ve never encountered before in a decade or so of stopping for roadkill.  

Heading into the late afternoon sun, Keya passed out leaving me alone fighting the irresistible urge to take a siesta. Spotting a patch of healthy-looking juniper forest amidst the open plains, I pulled off and made my way down a dirt road that looked to be a private driveway.  Of course Keya woke up and proceeded to make his way into the forest, immediately spooking up several white tail deer and a few enormous turkeys which he continued to stalk deep into the woods.  Having driven off all the wildlife, I rested awhile in the grass while Keya munched on juniper berries and hacked into rotting stumps. Just as it was time to leave, the land “owner” rolled up on his tractor and said hello.  We told him that we were just leaving having enjoyed a lovely siesta and that we were heading west.  He seemed friendly and welcoming and figured that was that.  

Half an hour later, we were passing through a small town when I spotted a cop car and made eye contact with the sheriff who was about to pull out into the highway right behind me. In the feeble hope of nonchalantly brushing him off my tail, I made an immediate right hoping to make my way back to the dollar store parking lot he was exiting to look for a knife and sharpening stone.

 

Of course, he pulled out right behind us, staying right on our tail as we suspiciously made our way through a car dealership back to the dollar store, he turned on his lights but we kept driving until we were parked at the store.        

This time there were quite a few more questions; all the usual ones plus deeper inquiries into where the missing womenfolk were. Finally he got around to asking about the blood on the back of the car. I explained our unusual habits and diet, showed him the salvage tag which he glanced at and handed back, only then revealing that the reason he had stopped us was because that guy on the tractor that we had talked to had seen the blood on the back of the car and had called him up to let him know we would be rolling through and with that we were free to go with no further scrutiny.  

Towards sunset, we drove over the Missouri on Fort Randall Dam, an immense monstrosity of an earth embankment dam that stretched across the whole valley.  On the other side, we clearly entered into a different slightly drier region; a world of near abandoned homesteads occupied by mule deer too wily for Keya and I to sneak up on.

Late that night, we rolled into the tiny village of Ideal in the checker-boarded mess of Off-Reservation Rosebud Trust Land in South Dakota.  It was only a handful of mobile homes with one road passing through it patrolled by loose and loud canines who knew an outsider when they smelled one.  We clearly weren’t in the same country anymore.  Seeing someone on their stoop, I slid to a stop and slowly sidled over, awkwardly making a midnight introduction while inquiring about the camp. Luckily he had heard of it before, an open field a few miles away. I had the hardest time finding clear signs of the camp, eventually concluding that it must be behind this one farmstead that just happened to be magically marked by a possum that had been hit just hours before; the only roadkill I’d seen all evening. I drove by it a few times, debating it’s meaning before picking it up and settling on that site for the night. It would later become bait for the fish basket trap we had begun. We made our way back to a fallow cornfield lined by windbreaks of juniper trees the likes of which I’d never encountered before.  The mama trees were dripping with burgeoning bunches of the sweetest and brightest flavored berries I have ever devoured and the papa trees limbs produced suffocating clouds of golden pollen at the slightest prodding. Come dawn, we found the fields crawling with deer that had been enjoying the rare cover afforded by the juniper grove. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Keya had little luck galloping up on them.  

In the light of day we managed to spy the empty camp a couple miles down the road. It consisted of some round bails and a few poles in the middle of the treeless plains at the end of a gummy carriage path. I could see how the austerity of the site could be powerful in its own right, but it didn’t feel like the most nurturing environment for a prayer camp. Interestingly, I just now stumbled upon an article about the camp in 2015 describing a storm that came through and tore down and ripped four of five tents to shreds and sent one person to the hospital.  I later heard that the tribe had decided to forgo opening the old prayer camp until legal efforts had been exhausted. I don’t know if anything other than a few gatherings have ever been held there since.

We meandered west through Mission, stopping at a grocery store where we got a taste of what it means to live in an over-priced food desert although the store was delightfully decorated in old photographs with the isles labeled in both English and Lakota. We took a detour through the lusher tribal headquarters of Rosebud before arriving in Parmalee where we got directions to the land where the Blanchflower family was now located; the land of a local Lakota family coming from Standing Rock who were hoping to assemble a water protector prayer camp and ecovillage on their family’s allotted lands. The allotment act was arguably one of the biggest blows to First Nation people and their way of life.  

The land was right off the main highway, a wide open field that dropped away after a quarter mile down toward an unseen lake.  There were prayer flags flying from some tipi logs and a sign at the road but little else.  These would be torn down hours later by someone suspected to be in cahoots with a shady neighbor and relative of the the family for confused reasons or at least reasons that were never all that clear to me. We met Ande there and he directed us down to the valley where their bus was parked with tipis still packed away.  We would be leaving a few weeks later just as the poles were going up.         

We were coming in under rather odd circumstances, greatly interested in the camps arising after Standing Rock but specifically there to explore the possibility of joining forces with the Blanchflowers whose epic family life had been loosely published on their blog ourtipilife.wordpress.com and on their land liberation project site. We were also arriving early on in the camp’s existence at a time when it was commonly only Ande, Kayla and their five young kids around. There was also a nasty stomach bug that got shared amongst us early on.  Of course they’d just left Standing Rock a few weeks prior which was full of undercover infiltrators and agitators like the ex-military employees of the private mercenary firm Tigerswan whose shady operations continue to this day. I also shared a little about my shady past at Pearl Harbor, so it wasn’t a huge surprise when we found out a few days later that Ande suspected me of possibly being an undercover agent.  

Compound that all by the fact that I was coming with a great deal of admiration for their bold way of life and soulful writing and an intense desire not to get off on the wrong foot. In addition, it became quite clear rather early on that navigating relations with the Lakota family was not going to be easy.  To start off with, communication was difficult and I got an uneasy feeling about the father right from the start. While the Blancheflowers were out on a multi-day grocery run trip, the weather went from hot and sunny to a blizzard that laid down three inches of slick thick snow in late April. Strange thing is, a little later that day on the way to Ron Cotner’s in Wanblee, SD where the Blanchflowers were temporarily camped, I noticed that there was only a spattering of snow on the ground just a few miles from the Parmalee camp. The Lakota family offered first thing that morning to take us on a mission in their SUV. I thought it would be a good chance to get to know them better, but mentioned my concerns about getting stuck and suggested they stop near our tent so I could grab my come-along and shovel just in case.  Instead of just stopping near my tent on their way out the easy way, they turned up the hill and headed straight for my tent to save me a few steps I suppose and got sort of stuck. The father quickly gave up and walked back to their camp to grab their other SUV to extract the stuck SUV. I grabbed my shovel and saw that it wasn’t really stuck and could easily be turned back around down hill, so I gently suggested as much to the mother, recognizing the delicate situation, and the possible agitation in the air.  It worked, but instead of just stopping back on the road, she headed back towards their camp passing the father coming the other way in the other SUV.  He then piled in and they proceeded on up the much steeper way out of camp where they promptly got stuck again. Once again, the father headed back to get the other vehicle, but once again it seemed clear to me that the SUV wasn’t really stuck and could be turned around back toward camp so I told the mother how she could get it turned around in very clear calm language and she promptly told me that she didn’t need to be told how to drive at which point I completely backed off and watched her do exactly the opposite of what would have worked which got her stuck again facing the wrong way. Then the father drove up and proceeded to ram the back of the other SUV in some sort of vain attempt to push it up the hill or something. After making no substantive progress and much denting of bumpers, his bumper caught on the hitch of the other SUV so that both were stuck together.

Now if this had been my cousins doing I would have laughed my fool ass off while offering assistance, but the situation seemed to delicate to let my poker face crack in the slightest. Perhaps that was a mistake. Perhaps I should have allowed my inner Heyoka out. It would have been more honest. Somehow I doubt that jester would have been able to penetrate their mood at that point though. They headed back to their tent to regroup without so much as a glance in our direction, as we headed back to our tent we passed by theirs and overheard something that sounded like them blaming me and my energy for the incident. I gave them a moment and then went to offer them something; maybe it was just to let them know we were headed back to our tent.  At any rate, at that point, after seemingly wavering for a split second, the father took the opportunity to just come out with it and let me know that the whole thing was my fault and the result of my negative thinking and energy, that I was stupid (I think he meant something more like ignorant), and that I needed many many more sweats if I was ever to get better, concluding his rant by waving me off and stating that I had nothing to say to him. In an attempt of mine a few days later at making peace, he did back off some of that a little bit, but not much, leaving me with the sense that introspection was not likely to be his strong suit.  

I had been praying that relationships and situations would reveal themselves quickly and clearly so that our journey could proceed with all due haste towards fruitful grounds, so I was quite happy to see the masks fall to the earth in such an unambiguous situation that obviously wasn’t to be taken too personal. My next concern was to let the Blanchflowers know about what happened and what I felt it revealed about the family; the family that they were seemingly hoping to develop community with. Given what I’d just seen of their apparent modus operandi, I didn’t see cause for much hope in harmonious communal relationships going forward in the longterm, particular if things ever got interpersonally difficult, which in my experience is pretty much guaranteed in such a situation. I didn’t take into account that they already had a six month relationship with them at Standing Rock or the fact that I was the untrusted newcomer, so it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise when my account and warning wasn’t seemingly given much importance, particularly by Ande. If anything, it seemed to cast a further shadow over our already wobbly budding relationship, in a way that must have reasonably led them to view me as a divisive character.  

To further throw fuel on the fire, after some time had passed with me still struggling to connect with or even read Ande correctly, I took an opportunity to talk about it with Kayla, even though I knew it didn’t feel quite right to be doing so, seemingly behind his back, but I was really struggling with it all by then and like I mentioned, probably was harboring an overly desperate need to be liked and understood by this unique family so that we could begin building a big beautiful mobile tribe of families together, co-creating a way forward together in solidarity with others in a similar struggle.

As soon as we all first all set down to talk, there was obviously alot of strain in the air between Kayla and Ande. I couldn’t parse how much of it was due to the cultural trials and difficulties of life at Standing Rock now flowing over into the challenges of envisioning a longterm future there attempting to raise up children amidst such widespread and dire cultural and interpersonal disfunction borne of generations of horrendous trauma and oppression without a larger core tribe in place beside their family, and how much of it was due to some other dynamic at play in their relationship with each other. Nevertheless there were a couple moments where I was almost positive I saw something like disdain in the way Ande addressed her. Now to be fair, I guess he comes from a rather gloomy culture, has no patience at all for sunny pretense or hollywood perfectionism, and seems to be quick to disdain towards those that may very well deserve it, but it still kind of shocked me. It brought to mind a study I had heard of that had found that divorce could be predicted with a high degree of accuracy, and that the strongest predictor was the degree of contempt within the couple’s conversations. Now reading that study, the findings don’t seem so clear.  

“Ever been in the middle of a heated argument when suddenly the other person pulls out their phone and starts texting? If the answer is yes, and if you find it happening constantly, we hope that person isn't your significant other. This behavior, known as stonewalling, is one of four reactions that John Gottman, a psychologist at the University of Washington and the founder of the Gottman Institute, has identified as a telltale sign that all is not well with a married couple.

In fact, when Gottman and University of California-Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson lumped stonewalling together with three other behaviors — contempt, criticism, and defensiveness — and measured how often they occurred within the span of a 15-minute conversation, they found they could predict which marriages would end in divorce with striking precision. When the psychologists added questions about things like relationship satisfaction and how many times the research subjects had thoughts about separating to the mix, they could predict which marriages would end in divorce 93% of the time.

The figure, which comes from a 14-year study of 79 couples living across the US Midwest (21 of whom divorced during the study period), was so striking it spurred the researchers to label the four behaviors "the four horsemen of the apocalypse."”

However, the study also says that while “negative affect

during conflict predicted early divorcing” (<7yrs), it was “lack of positive affect in events-of-the-day and conflict discussions that predicted later divorcing” (7-14yrs) which would be more applicable to their longstanding relationship.  

Anyway, after telling myself to keep my mouth closed for the longest time, I found myself timidly mentioning my observation of what I thought might be disdain. She was kind of quiet for a moment but there was obviously alot going on inside of her. I can’t recall exactly, but I think a brief moment later Ande strolled into the bus and the slow motion trainwreck began to immediately ensue. To my horror, she almost immediately began to tell him how I had brought up something very interesting to her. She seemed particularly interested by the fact that I had chosen that particular word, “disdain,” and that I had come to it without any prodding or provocation from some outside context, and I still have no idea what if anything she specifically was referring to. Of course, after apologizing if she might be putting me on the spot, she basically asked me to repeat it all to Ande.  

So I basically repeated what I had said in brief, ending with that dreaded word. But rather than deny it, he mentioned something about it being a long story and something about her mother, to which I replied that I was quite eager to hear the story, trying to convey my eagerness to withhold judgment, but at that exact moment some catastrophe erupted outside and the conversation was cut off at the most awkward moment possible. I never got to hear that story and things just never seemed to get any less awkward between Andy and I, although we were still able to have some very transparent conversations that left me feeling alot of admiration for them both and their willingness to continue to engage with me through it all to some degree, despite the awkwardness and sense that I was being divisive.    

Things between the native family and I also seemed to be beyond recovery, adding fuel to the fire, particularly after another crazy misunderstanding, and a couple stupid miscalculations on my part. I learned alot about how little room there is for the slightest slips in judgment and impeccability in such situations. I don’t know if I’ve got the energy to elaborate more on those challenging moments or the beauty that came through them, but I should at least mention some of the other people we connected with while there.  

There was the semi-nomadic bus traveling family of Wylden Freeborne who we may meet up with again in southern Oregon. They were an interesting clan with a witchy way about them with  an older crew of kids and a few traveling strangers in tow.  I found them to be quite easy to converse and relate with and look forward to getting to know them better under different circumstances.

They came through at a time when we were all stuck up on the high ground by the road and I had just picked up another deer under strangely magical circumstances after coming back from this other guy’s parcel in Wanblee who was providing some much needed assistance to the indigenous community there. Someone had seen the deer on the back of my car and had called it in to the tribal authorities who showed up one morning a couple days later to investigate. Ande was able to shoot me a text with a heads-up just before they rolled up on my tent giving me time to hide all the other road-killed hides and raptor wings. They questioned me for awhile and I showed them the salvage tag for the deer two deers back and was doing pretty well for quite some time at not quite lying until finally one of the quieter deputies piped up asking if that was the ONLY deer, to which I probably replied something that could have been construed as a lie. It seemed like the best course of action given that it wasn’t permitted for tribal outsiders to pick up any roadkill at all and they didn’t seem to be already phased by the distant location and dates on the salvage tag. We shook hands and they rolled over the hill to talk with the local family while I waited for my lie to come back to haunt me. Luckily, a few minutes later they headed off without another word. I then informed the local family’s father about the little lie, but he seem charged up by it all and joked about the other deer being in everyone’s bellies.

Another interesting older man we met is Ron Cotner, who lives in the hometown of Crazy Horse, Wanblee. He has a pump house with bathroom and laundry facilities, horses with all sorts of tack, a sweat lodge, a couple trailer sites, a circular chicken coop in the works, and a creek running through the bottom of the parcel.  When we first visited, we helped put up a big ranch-style gateway. The next time we visited was on our way west to the next water protector camp near Bridger, SD. People of all ages seem to come and go and he talked of wanting to put up a big sign over the gateway saying something like Eagle Nest Butte Children’s Center. He also wanted to clear out a bunch of brush around a cedar tree down by the creek, level the land, and add guard rails to the little bridge going over the creek so that community elders could come and walk down to the cedar to tie their prayer cloths.

We had a lovely dinner with them and then the next morning before he left for work he left us with the words along the lines, “there is plenty of work you can find to do around here, be creative.” So Keya and I headed down to the creek and spent hours clearing away brush and trees, leveling the land, jacking the bridge back up to level after it had been partially washed out, refilling soil around the bridge so that it was level with the surrounding walkway, cut earthen  steps where needed and finally installed a beautiful handrail tied into three supporting arches entirely independent of the little bridge. I figured that in the event of a significant downpour, the little bridge could easily wash down stream, so why not make the handrail independent of it and make the whole thing out of beautiful curvy on site saplings that I lashed together with cord. It took most of the day but came together beautifully and blended well with the spot. Everything was held together without knots for easy tightening and adjustment.  

When he came back he was quite happy with everything except the sapling handrail structure. Surprisingly, he thought it was quite beautiful but was concerned that kids would be attracted to it and would hang out there because it was so organic and charming I guess. I think he might have been worried that they would mess up the area or take down prayer cloths from the little cedar, but I’m not sure. He wanted to tear the arches and rails down and just screw a few boards onto the little bridge. He seemed really concerned about the kids liking it too much which I had a hard time understanding since I thought he was trying to create something appealing to children and children and adults of all ages always seemed to be coming and going. The place seemed to be quite the community resource for alot of people and it seemed like folks were always stopping by to sell him something. If not sure if he has ripped the down yet. I’m also not quite sure what to make of it all, but get the sense I’m not getting the full picture.  

After Ron’s, we headed to Bridger SD where we hoped to find out if the planned Keystone XL pipeline camp was open yet.  On the way, we passed so many pheasants, mostly males hanging out on the shoulder of the road. Sure enough, we soon came along one that had just been hit and brought it with us to share with the camp. At one point, a male began to cross the road in front of us and I got the instant sense that it was also meant for dinner, so I sped up and hit it in flight at 65mph with a definitive thump which I believed killed it instantly.  There was no sign of life in it when I had it gratefully cradled in my hands a few seconds later.  I would later find out that the plains there were home to one of the densest populations of pheasants on the continent.  

When I arrived in the river valley of Bridger, I was astonished by the character of the place, particularly the old giant contorted cottonwood trees scattered across the valley. I whispered a prayer and made an offering of the pheasant’s head I’d killed to one particular tree that grabbed my attention, then moved on into the little hamlet where I came upon a few young adults rolling the cab of a pickup truck alongside the road back to their home.  I stopped and said hello. They had plans to use it as a chicken coop.  They told me the camp wasn’t open yet but that there was one up near Red Scaffold a few miles away. I thanked them and headed out, arriving at the camp well after dusk, and was well received and shown where to pitch our tent.  

The next morning we began to meet some of the folks and really hit it off with this one couple and their two kids.  There were also a handful of others there that really seemed to have their heads and hearts in the right place.  I got to flesh buffalo hides with Ryan Flesch who started the Walking Thunder Buffalo Project. He purchased 63 poorly honored buffalo hides from Jamestown Hide, Fur, and Metal Co. with his own credit card for $30 a piece before raising donations to help offset the cost.  They then set up a workshop to process the hides in camp to help youth and elders learn the old ways and skills. The project is intended to bring the people's hearts, minds, and spirits together through the unified action of honoring the Buffalo spirit and learning to process the hide to create and learn traditional indigenous arts and skills. Hides were sent out to camps and communities all over the country.   

However, at the Native Roots camp near Red Scaffold, it seemed that there were very few interested in working with the hides, and it appeared that already too much time had passed with them not being fleshed. So I helped them set up three fleshing stations and we went to town on the hides under a pretty blistering sun. The camp would be blanketed in snow a few days later just as we departed. We also had the most incredible experience sawing three massive sections out of a perfectly rotted out ancient cottonwood tree that had fallen at the oxbow of a nearby stream, a powerful location where a buffalo horn had been found just days earlier and offerings given.  In the still waters of that stream, I watched my heartbeat send ripples out through the water, through the clouds reflected in the water. I also watched Ryan nearly kill himself unsuccessfully trying to dislodge a muddy cliff face into the creek that he planned to ride all the way down into the water. Together we managed to pry it loose without killing anyone and everyone got to enjoy the spectacular splash that ensued. Good times.  

Ryan also shared with me some of  the story of the buffalo hides and how some people started to get sticky fingers around them.  He told of one native sweat lodge leader who, if my memory serves, had attempted to take many of the hides without even informing the leaders of the project, but luckily they were tipped off that the hides were about to taken and they were able to stop it from happening.  Many or all that had come close to taking hides were given ones, but not that particular gentlemen. It just so happened to be a man by the exact same name as the father of the family whose land we had just been camping on! A name that he had prohibited me from mentioning after leaving that camp in Parmalee! It was quite odd to just hear it brought up in a random conversation out of all the thousands of people that had been at Standing Rock, but nothing merely coincidental ever seems to happen in Lakota country.  

It eventually became clear that the camp was something of akin to a communal disaster with nearly all the folks we had come to admire and connect with looking for where to move onto next as soon as possible. We had one group visioning session where I shared my vision for assembling a semi-nomadic village and my hopes of meeting up with them again at the National Rainbow Gathering in southern Oregon in late June where we could attempt to bring together a solid core group and strategic plan.  There was a great deal of enthusiasm for it, but it remains to be seen who will actually make it and what will come of it all. I’ll be reaching out to them more once the location is announced around June 10th.  

Before leaving, it became clear that it would probably make sense for me to bring one of the wet hides to the rainbow gathering as there was not likely enough will or energy left in camp to properly care for all of the hides. The car was packed to the hilt, but there always seemed to be a way to fit one more thing in. So I asked Ryan if he would be willing to entrust one of the hides to me that I would attempt to tan and bring and with me to the gathering. He enthusiastically agreed.

A little while later, a wild horse that had hanging about off and on in the distance, decided to prance into camp.  It’s spirit filled me and I rushed to dance with it.  This way and that we galloped about camp until it finally led me to the tipi the hides were being worked at. It felt like the perfect moment to choose the hide that would be coming with me.  I picked out one that didn’t have too much hair slippage, packed up camp, said our goodbyes and received our blessings, and set out for the Black Hills with the snow flying in early May.  

In the Black Hills we met with an architect and builder who was selling his antique hexagonal single pole military tent from the 60’s. It was much like ours except larger at 18’ in diameter and missing the liner. It was in worse condition than expected so we picked it up for only $300 and put a considerable amount of effort into patching it up.  We then headed for the reservations in Montana.  Just as we crossed the border into Montana and had passed the highway heading south for Devils Tower, our headlights illuminated a herd of deer, and a few yards later, a freshly killed buck on the side of the road.  We found a dirt road and managed to find a slushy spot in the sagebrush to camp and butcher the buck the next day. That day we only made it to the foothills of Northern Cheyenne territory where we set up camp and prepared to devote the entire next day to fleshing the buffalo and deer hides.  It was a good day and the hides came out well.  

The next stop was Crazy Head Springs where we filled up our jugs with the most unusual soft tasting spring water and then it was on into Lame Deer where we had a mechanic replace a valve stem and check the computer.  The car had a new check engine light on. The results of the test included a long list of error codes, only one of which did not disappear after resetting. Of course the mechanic recommended a total rebuild. We got the chance to talk with a lady there about the reservation and our hopes to find a community and she sent us to talk with current Sacred Medicine Hat Holder in Lame Deer, Alan Black Wolf. We gifted him with some deer jerky and an American Kestrel we had just picked up and he gifted us with stories of his people, there current desperate plight living like the white man, and $10. He seemed to regard me as Jesus in disguise and was quite eager to get a picture with me. He spoke briefly of their oral tradition of having annihilated a blue-eyed force long-long ago that they believed were the Vikings. He also dispelled my hopes that any on the res were still living in anything like a healthy communal way close to the earth. I asked him about the neighboring Crow reservation, but apparently they still don’t really get along with those folks to this day.  

That night we camped in a fairgrounds on the banks of the Yellowstone river where we gathered morel and oyster mushrooms, sliced up the deer into jerky to marinate, washed our clothes, planted a garden, chased sheep, and made friends with the sweetest lonely grounds keeper.  

From there we made it almost to Porter’s Corner where we camped near the most delicioius gushing mountain spring in a location that just might work for a covert village.  Next we attempted to connect with my friend Evan at the Wheaton Laboratories community of permies.com near Missoula, but the timing of our communications wasn’t quite right.  We had been hoping to head to Vedrica Forest Gardens in Weippe, Idaho, but then found out they had just recently undergone a contentious schism that made prospects there sound bleak.  

Next we stopped by the National Bison Range, but the park entrance was closed. We did visit a Bison farm nearby though and Keya got to experience the gaze of those incredible beasts in person.  The bison farmer was kind enough to talk with us awhile and then out of nowhere gifted us with a big tube of ground bison, some liver, and a pack of bison sticks!

From there we went to a deserted bar, which directed us to Paradise Gardens, an organic farm at the confluence of the Clark Fork and Flathead rivers.  The owner, Ted Seaman, was an exceptionally generous and kind man who showed us a perfect spot to camp for the night near an idiosyncratic gentleman by the name of Don Moore, a one of a kind woodsman who was quite interested in our vision and happy to take a deer neck roast off our hands.  The owner of Paradise Gardens tolds us a little about the unique prehistory and microclimate of the area.  Apparently all of it was once submerged under a vast glacial lake that drained rapidly forming a massive whirlpool above our heads and hundred foot ripples on the lakebed in a valley we would soon be passing through on our way to an odd hippy town called Hot Springs. Paradise Gardens was an old small intentional community of sorts itself and happened to have the longest growing season in the state, but was short on kids and somewhat seasonal.

We never found the intentional community we were sensing in Hot Springs, but we did find a great hot springs hotel there called the Symes Hot Springs Hotel and Mineral Baths. They were super generous with thus and Keya had blast!  I walked out of their completely transformed and ready to make the rest of the treck to my sister Cathy’s home in Sandpoint Idaho.  

On the way there though we had the strangest thing happen to our car which reduced us to traveling at about 1mph while clanging away like a crazed cow bell. We happened to stop at a gentleman’s home that had just moved from Vermont! He offered to let us stay for the night, but had to resend the offer a little later and sent us clanging on down the dark road to a campground which we never found; but we did find a powerline pass, and then just as we encountered a herd of deer on the spot we would then camp, something let loose and the car was able to travel 40mph without too much noise. That allowed us to make it to my sister’s house where her husband helped me remove the broken drive shaft.

We were able to get that fixed relatively inexpensively and then focused on building a smokehouse tipi to process all our jerky in addition to patching up and waterproofing the tents some more.  While there we were able to first visit the old Gold Light Ranch community near Sandpoint where we met the two land owners for a couple hour conversation. They were open to working out an agreement that would allow for a semi-nomadic treehouse community to set up camp there, and the steep forested parcel would work well for that, but I’m not sure how easy it would be for them to integrate kids into their lives. They seem to prefer a quieter chill community.

We also visited Steve Holt at the nearby Eureka Institute in Sagle ID, an aspiring intentional community and thriving retreat center hosting a variety of large events. The place had recently lost it’s live-in groundskeeper, so it was mostly just him there, but I really got a good vibe from him and loved the work he was up to which included the beginnings of a startup business building expensive tiny homes that the banks could lend on. The grounds were quite well developed with several structures and a big shop space. The cedar and pine forests around it were beautiful and worth exploring as a potential treehouse village site. Steve was quite enthusiastic about the vision, not really seeing the likelihood of a community coming together there without some radical infusion of new energy. The business seemed to be doing okay, but cash flow was a limiting factor on some improvements. He was also potentially open to a sale of the business and site to an incoming community, but it would run around $700,000.  

We also carpooled down with Cathy to my sister Rachel’s home in the Richland, Washington area. Our visit with Rachel and her family was a real treat.  We also visited my parents who haven’t really seen Keya, or me for that matter in years, but that’s too much of a story for now.  Anyway, Rachel and her partner, Spencer bought a nice truck while we were there and they gifted us with their super long van which was exactly what we needed moving forward given that we’re going to have two more passengers soon when Juliana and Wilcca fly in.  In addition, Rachel was thrilled with the vision for putting together an adaptable semi-nomadic tribe and offered to substantially cover the startup costs along with getting involved in other exciting ways.  

While there we briefly visited nearby Nexus Farm, an aspiring community, currently only one family, and a legal cannabis cultivation operation, struggling to break even and seeking to expand substantially. The crew there could really use an influx of reliable hands and extraction wizards to take advantage of the huge financial opportunity I see there.   

The next community we dropped by was Tolstoy Farms in a remote Our west of Spokane, WA. We didn’t spend much time there as there wasn’t much of a kid scene and the one neuroatypical resident we hit it off with was kind enough to be upfront about the challenges of life there and the dark history of the community, but perhaps we were a bit quick to judgment. We sped out from there in hopes of making it to the start of the annual open house at the Windward Education and Research Center in a dry oak and ponderosa pine forest north of the Dalles, Oregon where I have relatives.  

Windward is a cooperative community of over thirty years in the making dedicated to preserving and developing village scale technologies needed to support a thriving sustainable community on marginal land. It’s near impossible to describe all the extraordinary intertwined projects that are well underway there right now. The culture of the small community is really exceptional as well, with the core group of 4 being in a polyamorous line marriage of sorts, and the other three longterm individuals there as well being quite intimately and harmoniously integrated as well. Some have had concerns in the past about the exclusion of relationships outside the line marriage, but having talked with a core member, it didn’t seem like there was any unreasonable rigidity around how anyone chose to structure their relationships. I highly recommend taking a look at their website, which details their philosophy and efforts. The are also greatly in need of more funding for their game-changing work, preferably through their monthly-donation fan club program.

It seems like a time of transition there with the one original remaining founder, a treasure trove of information and communal experience, passing the torch to the new crew. I found them to be welcoming to the idea of sharing the land with a semi-nomadic tribe and collaborating on projects together.  There are so much already paid for resources on site that it seems kind of astonishing that there aren’t more helping hands involved in progressing things forward, but it is good to see such a strong core group in place there and there should be more living space available there soon. I would like to see a crew come in and help them crank out some sweet accommodations for a substantial crew of interns or new members.  Given the projects underway and how busy everyone is, it doesn’t seem like a good fit presently for kids to be  welcomed in absent the support of a whole subcommunity dedicated to their care and oversight.

While there, I also had some discussions with a woman from the Eugene area that spent a couple months at a community in Portugal called Tamera that I’ve had a longstanding interest in. She was quite impressed with what they had created together there. There was some talk of creating something similar here, but it hasn’t gained traction yet.  I find myself repeated wondering if that is where I’m being called to,... but Portugal?!  This kind soul also filled us in on some other communities in the area and offered to host us once we made our way down to her area. She also sounded eager to join forces at the national rainbow gathering and shared a surprisingly similar vision to mine.  

It just so happened that one of the newer and younger members at Windward, Skye Rios, happened to be the son of a leader in the Network for a New Culture back east that I had encountered years ago in New Hampshire and had come to admire deeply.  The Windward community derives about half of it’s cash income from gatherings held there like the New Culture Cascadia Sumer Camp (July 1-8), Surrender (an ecosexual conference June 15-17), and Reradical Village Camp (June 22-25). He suggested we visit his mom in Portland, and check out the community his sibling, Davi, was working on in northeast Portland Oregon called the Mothership. It’s a sanctuary for radical faeries of all types and very poly-friendly, with a fun cuddly communal vibe. Skye’s niece there, Yarrow, is Keya’s age and the two are something else together. It’s sweet to see how the kids are supported in their growth and boundary testing by most everyone in the community, which is presently two standard homes and a handful of tiny homes or modified sheds in the backyards.  However, they did just purchase a third adjoining property that is under renovation and should open up soon to more folks.  There are also many in the community that would like to see another community bud off from the mothership that would be more rural and food production focused, but that could be awhile absent the efforts of a capable champion/pioneer.

The area also seems to have an extraordinarily high number of communal houses within walking or biking distance that aren’t listed on ic.org. The broader culture in Portland also seems to inspire alot of hope, with a big push towards making the city more bike friendly. In spite of there only being three kids here now, only one of which is Keya’s age, and the fact that it is definitely suburbia with little yards, I find myself wondering if we could make it work. Keya is really loving it here and I could see it being quite nurturing for me as well, provided we could figure out a suitable living space. It also seems quite affordable with everyone sharing just about all their living costs except cell service for about $725 per month.

Juliana and Wilcca fly into Seatle in three days, so we will head that way tomorrow to a community called Wiseacres across the bay from Seatle.  We’ll arrive before the community dinner and see how things unfold. We hope to also visit Persephone Farm next door which is a community in its own right.

After that we’ll head to the Port Townsend area to stay with friends for awhile and check out communities there; send Juliana off to her sexological bodywork training for a couple weeks, then head south with Wilcca and Keya to explore communities down around Eugene Oregon and the Ashland Oregon area most likely, go fetch Juliana from Portland, and head back south to the National Rainbow Gathering and maybe check out some more communities together before Wilcca and her fly back out of Portland the evening of the third.  

If any of you out there have suggestions of communities or areas to visit, please let me know.  I’ve significantly updated our route map and notes file and I will try to set up a blog at some point for those not on facebook. If you’d like to hear anything more about our journey, please let me know and thank you all for your support and well wishes.

Long life. Honey in the heart. No misfortune. Thirteen thank-yous!