Thoughts on Endings

My amblings in technicolor.

Final mile count: 24,730

It’s been two weeks since Old Faithful and I rolled on home to Narragansett, completing our grand adventure of nine months, nearly 25,000 miles, 38 states and incalculable memories. To be honest, I never dared to dream the old girl would make it all the way! I envisioned a fatal breakdown somewhere in Kentucky or Alabama six or seven months in, leaving me to Greyhound it the rest of the way. But she’s still truckin’ on, oil leaks be damned!

After plenty of time catching up on sleep, TV from the past year and time with my family, I feel ready to address the churning mixture of emotions regarding what it means to close this wild chapter of my life and begin anew. Looking back on the first post, I feel a profound sense of achievement of all the goals of this trip. In no particular order:

• Visiting and spending time with scattered friends and relatives, gaining insight into the lives of people I know and love
• Exploring every nook and cranny of this country that caught my interest, whether the obvious (San Francisco, Grand Canyon) or the obscure (Astoria, Ocala National Forest)
• Making new friends, acquaintances and partnerships that are just now in their infancy
• Developing new skills, mostly having to do with outdoorswomanship and sustainable practices
• Consuming literature to my heart’s content
• Utilizing every one week free trial yoga deal in the country
• Chasing summer
• Experiencing how others live in a kaleidoscope of circumstances and lifestyles
• Listening to the ideas, hopes, dreams, travels, fears and concerns of random people every day
• Using this blog to practice writing, share the journey with others and record it for posterity
• Luxuriating in limitless freedom and independence
• Balancing the line between loneliness and solitude
• Discovering the physical capabilities of my body
• Finding patriotism and a personal relationship with my nation
• Traveling on a budget
• Maximizing the time I had to experience each place to the fullest
• Making the year I was 22 the most insane, extraordinary, freewheelin’ 365 days possible

There were, of course, some failings and regrets. They are as follows:

• Two speeding tickets, countless parking tickets, one car towing
• Sent two bikes to bike heaven
• Lost a plethora of personal items
• Wrote blog posts that were too long and too infrequent (like this one!)
• Got to San Francisco one day late for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival and did not see the Black Keys on tour when I had the chance.
• Did not work up the courage to play music in the street for money, even in cities where I knew absolutely nobody
• Started taking interstates instead of blue highways to save time and money
• Did not hike nearly enough of the Appalachian Trail despite living practically on it for a month
• Didn’t make it to: Glacier, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Monument Valley or Great Smokies National Parks. Nor did I get to Crater Lake, Mt. Hood, Napa Valley, Charleston S.C., Victoria B.C., Bozeman M.T., Olympia W.A., Monterey C.A., or a multitude of other places.

In regard to that last bullet point– a major discovery I made is that traveling is one of those things where the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know. The more places you go and the more people you meet, the more incredible places and adventures you hear about and want to experience. This is not in any way a bad thing, just overwhelming for us who want to do and see and hear and taste and touch it all, but know that it’s a lovely impossibility…

The Cascade Mountains in Washington. Taken the third week of the trip last August.

Two weeks ago in New York City, I was in Times Square thinking about–what else–time. I was in the capitalist and cultural epicenter of the nation, relishing in the utter anonymity of the most crowded street corner in the world, and beginning to get powerfully depressed about the impending end of the journey. Side note–this is another thing I love about New York, you experience emotions at their utmost extremes. Anyway, I was thinking about time and how there’s no way to stop its relentless flow. No matter how much we try to savor and preserve a moment (or nine months in my case), it constantly moves forward, never back. For us humans living in this world defined by Newtonian physics, time moves at the exact same pace every single second of every single day of every single year of every single millenium. Until we discover time travel or a rip in the fabric, that’s just the way of it.

Like death and taxes, the unshakeable truth of time steamrolling ahead and getting older is something we cannot change. Almost always, the things we cannot change or influence are the hardest parts of life to grapple with and understand. So, understandably, we distract ourselves with the earthly dealings and processes that fill our lives with pain, joy, and everything in between. While we cannot change or answer the Big Questions, we can change the way we spend our time on this earth: where we live, what we eat, how we make money, who we love, how we empathize with others, how we interact with the natural world. This journey has taught me to accept the things I cannot change and refuse to accept the things I can.

This journey has taught me that people way overvalue physical comfort. Human beings are tough and resilient, not just sacks of mostly water and carbon. Sleeping on floors or the ground, doing manual labor in the sun, traversing the land, not eating three huge meals a day– these are things our bodies can not only accomodate, but are better for. You will be better for it. I’m not insane, I do like warm beds and hot showers and extravagant meals. But knowing deep down that those things are a want and not a need is incredibly liberating.

This journey has taught me how preposterously large the United States of America is. Politically, it has made me a believer of state’s rights and libertarianism, a far cry from the classic liberalism I started out with. I think trying to govern 313 million ideologically disparate people over 3.8 million square miles of topographically diverse land is absolutely absurd. It’s just too. damn. big. Everything about the U.S. is too big– our debt, our government, our army, our waistlines, our greed. We need to think smaller. We need to worry about what’s going on in our regions and communities, and invest in our local land, businesses and people. The strength and spirit of the local food and sustainability movement has blown me away, and I know it will continue to grow and provide hope for the future.

Finally, this journey has reinforced the best piece of advice I ever received: “Fake it ’til you make it.” Just taking a leap and pretending like you can do something, even if you’re freaked out and don’t think you can, is better than not doing it at all. If you fake your way through a beginning, all of a sudden you’re in the middle, rapidly approaching an end. Jump, and you’ll swim.

Road in the rearview. Badlands, SD.

I’m terrified that it’s all over, for now my future is 100% unscripted. This summer I’ll be living in Narragansett, RI working two jobs and an internship that I would not have gotten if not for the knowledge and experience acquired on this adventure. I’ll be putting my newfound agricultural skills to the test for a landscaping/fine gardening business, integrating my love of bicycling and talking to strangers as a pedicab rider in Newport, and writing/editing/marketing/blogging/social media-ing for Edible Rhody Magazine, a publication dedicated to celebrating local food. Freewheeling will not die, however. In what little free time I do find this summer I’ll be trekking and exploring northern New England as much as possible. After that? Who knows.

I’ll bid farewell with a little help from some literary greats.

John Steinbeck, in the final chapter of Travels with Charley comments on the “life span of journeys. Who has not known a journey to be over and dead before the traveler returns? The reverse is also true: many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.”

William Least Heat Moon ends Blue Highways with Lines from a Navajo Wind Chant
Then he was told:
Remember what you have seen,
because everything forgotten
returns to the circling winds.

 

The Last Stop: New York City

Sunday afternoon watching street performers in Washington Square Park.

Mile count: 24,297. BUT I have 400 more to drive today, bringing the grand grand total 24,687. We can call that 25K, right?

In a state of unbelieving surreality, I type the following sentence: Exactly nine months ago today I set off on a journey around the country, and today I am going home. I’m going to leave all the symbolic conclusions, culminating thoughts and epiphanies for my next post (the adventure may be over but this blog sure ain’t!) after I sleep for a week in my own bed. Rather, I’ll use this time to muse on the greatest metropolis in the United States of America: New York City.  

Now that I’ve spent an entire academic year as a road scholar in the University of Life, I feel qualified to make such a strong assertion. Like it or not, it’s just true. If anybody in the world asked me, “I’m coming to America for one week and I only have time to see one place, where should it be?” It’s NYC, no doubt about it. Before you get your collective panties in a bunch, let me clarify a bit. New York is by no means the prettiest, the easiest, the friendliest or the sanest. It certainly isn’t the most comfortable, and the flaming hoops one has to jump through just to exist and live there every day are mind-boggling and overwhelmingly frustrating. But it is unquestionably the greatest, in the truest definition of the word. 

New York City is unrivaled; incomparable in human diversity, energy, intensity, and dynamism. As an avid outdoorswoman, the concrete jungle Kurt Vonnegut called “Skyscraper National Park” does thoroughly freak me out when there for long periods of time. However, when I’m inside the belly of the five-headed beast, Walt Whitman’s words ring truer still: “There is no place like it, no place with an atom of its glory, pride, and exultancy. It lays its hand upon a man’s bowels; he grows drunk with ecstasy; he grows young and full of glory, he feels that he can never die.”  

New York swallows you whole, chews you up, and makes you forget about everything on the outside. There’s simply too much going on within a ten block radius to imagine what could possibly be happening hundreds or thousands of miles away. Every rooted mode of existence (i.e. not nomadism) does this to some degree. No matter where you live, life in that unique geographic locale is its own bubble of norms, relationships and possible choices. Throughout the past nine months I have tried to examine and explore as many of these bubbles as possible, experiencing the unquantifiably diverse lives of Americans. New York just happens to be the biggest, shiniest and bounciest bubble. 

So what did I do inside this effervescent, undulating bubble for the past seven days? Essentially three things: 1. eat 2. walk 3. catch up with family and friends. My dad and Sonia spontaneously decided to come for the weekend and celebrate my birthday, and we had some truly spectacular meals and strolls. The eating and walking gloriously cancel each other out in an endless cycle of pleasure, and seeing so many familiar faces was the best homecoming I could ask for. Thank you all for the meals, drinks, smiles and laughter- it is the fascinating, ambitious and hard-working/hard-playing people that make the city truly great.  

I also celebrated my 23rd birthday and the end of my trip by getting a pair of wings tattooed on the outside of each foot. They are a permanent reminder to keep my feet light and moving, and a memento of this adventure of sheer freedom. My best friend and hostess for the week, Amy Greds, went with me to the tattoo parlor in the East Village. We were both incredibly nervous (it was my first time) but got through it hand in hand, using our normal chattering to distract me from the exhilarating pain. I couldn’t be happier with how they came out, and now my outsides reflect the permanent change this trip has caused me on the inside.

Ok, now I’m starting to get emotional. So I’ll wrap it up with the final freewheelin’ fotos from the Big Apple:  

New York Public Library

May Day protests in Union Square.

The NYPD busy policing the protests don’t seem to notice or care about the people selling marijuana paraphenalia on the street behind them. Ha!

30 Rock’s Jane Krakowski rehearsing a song and dance routine for the show on the street at Rockefeller Plaza. I just happened to walk by!

The perfect Jew York bagel. It’s good to be back.

Getting my first ink at Thicker Than Water Tattoo in the East Village- highly recommended. Photo by Amy Greds.

Now I can “teach my feet to fly” just like Joni said.

Boston girls in NYC

Children playing on the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park.

Amy and I at the Highline, an old elevated railroad that’s been re-purposed as a walkway of gardens and recreational space.

Now I’m off to Philly to pick up a friend, then home to Narragansett, Rhode Island at last. Gonna sleep wellllll tonight!

Wandering Women in the Old Dominion

"Oh Shendandoah, I long to hear you..."

Mile Count: 23,518

A week and a half ago, three wandering women set off for a week of renewal and relaxation in the woods of Virginia, the state nicknamed the “Old Dominion.” The three: me, my cousin Alex (our new staff photographer here at Freewheeling), and her roommate from college Maggie, who took a week off from her job as a cartographer for National Geographic. Since we left on a Saturday, we were accompanied by another car full of hardworking Washington D.C. young professionals eager for a respite from the pressures of the nation’s capitol. So altogether, eight of us took to the trees, hills and streams in style, opting to rent a cabin and bring extravagant food and booze. This was a stark contrast to the packaged noodles and blustery beach camping of the Outer Banks. Alex put it best as we heaved out of the grocery store under the weight of bags loaded with ribeye steaks and pineapple for grilling, hummus and cold cuts for wraps, and bottles of Sierra Nevada beer and Knob Creek bourbon: “this is gourmand camping.”  This was an entirely novel experience for me– being in the outdoors has always been an all-or-nothing type situation. However, a sturdy, rustic cabin in the woods completely cut off from civilization and cell reception, yet still stocked with every kitchen utensil imaginable and some decently comfortable bunks was a pretty damn great happy medium.

I’m really not sure how this happened, but nobody before or during my trip informed me of the sheer enchantment that is Shenandoah. I mean, I sang the song about it in sixth grade choir and I knew there was a National Park and everything, but I was not anywhere close to adequately prepared for the majestic resplendence of this valley. Words completely fail me. All I can do is present these nauseatingly adorable photos that look like they’re for the R.E.I. spring catalogue:

Cousin love <3 Me and Alex B'stein.

Taking a quick snooze in the midst of a nine-mile hike.

"the oldest technology in the world"

Spring awakening.

The cabin we rented was built in 1800 and had survived the Civil War! And only cost us $9/night each. Score.

Mango pancakes in cast iron make for happy mornings...

...and lazy massage trains even happier afternoons.

Unfortunately, no matter how still and silent the woods are, regular time moves forward and the magical weekend had to end. Melancholily, five of the crew returned in D.C., leaving Maggie, Alex and I to continue resting and roaming. We three moved to a smaller cabin a little north of the National Park where we cozied up cooking, reading, writing, doing morning yoga and afternoon hikes and bike rides.

I think because the end of my trip is nigh and there’s not much else brand new to look forward to (I’ve already to been to D.C. and New York), I felt the most at peace during those three days than I’ve felt…possibly ever. The combination of the tranquil forests, with soft sounds of spring awakening throughout the valley and the flowing, nurturing female energy in the cabin made for 72 hours of utter serenity and grace. Even when I was blissfully tending the vegetables at my wwoofing jobs, or zenning-out on the Pacific Coast Highway, or staring at the abyss of the Grand Canyon, I was always thinking ahead to the next place. The days in Shenandoah were different. It is such a rare blessing to be completely present in any given moment, I am so grateful, especially to Maggie and Alex, for making it happen and being there with me. It was certainly one of the loveliest pieces in the patchwork of memories I will quilt together in my mind when I look back on this adventure.

The view from our deck at the Glass House near Front Royal, VA.

After five days in the woods, we were ready for some arts and culture in the Old Dominion. Following a tip from my man Matt, we headed to Staunton where the American Shakespeare Center performs Shakespeare and his contemporaries in an exact replica of London’s Blacksfriars Theatre. We had the delight and slight discomfort of watching John Ford’s “‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore,” a Game of Thrones-esque saga of incest and violence. The excellent troupe of eleven actors delivers the half-a-millenia-old works to modern audiences in the boisterous Shakespearean style– lights on, no sets, multiple actors playing different parts/sexes, and lots of emotion. We even got to sit on the stage! The ASC pulls off three shows per season, often with two performances a day, for a reasonable cost (our on-stage tickets were $33/ea). In between acts, the actors perform musical interludes with songs from the likes of The Avett Brothers and Tom Petty while vendors sell candy and $2 beers on stage. This is Shakespeare in the South.

After a great night Couchsurfing in Staunton, we decided to check out Charlottesville, VA before ambling back to Washington. Like all huge public university towns, of which I think I’ve been to about 16 by now, Charlottesville (home of UVA) was charming, buzzing with young energy, and had delicious FOOD. A belly-rub-worthy brunch at the Bluegrass Grill & Bakery was the perfect way to end another wondrous week of wandering.

Islands of Change: The Outer Banks

North Carolina's Outer Banks, a 200-mile stretch of extremely narrow barrier islands stretching from Virginia Beach down the N.C. coastline.

Hello dear readers,

I know it’s been an inordinate amount of time since my last post. Even though it’s really not her fault, I’m just going to go ahead and blame my blogging absence on my attention-grabbing adoration for my co-pilot of the past two weeks: the one and only Alex Braunstein. Also, my beat-up old laptop was stolen in Madison, but that’s besides the point (joke’s on you, thief! Have fun with the cracked screen and water damage!) A fellow solo traveler who just returned from a six month around-the-world journey and sharer of my DNA, my cousin Alex has made April fly by on a sea of crab cakes and love. All the stunning photos you’ll see in my next few posts are her doing– you should notice a dramatic spike in quality from my usual photographic blunderings.

The territory we conquered together earlier this month was some of the land the first English settlers of our country laid eyes on. The Outer Banks series of islands nicknamed the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” for the enormous amount of shipwrecks caused by their hazardous waters. From north to south they are Bodie, Roanoke, Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands, with free interconnecting ferries and hordes of tourists in the summer months. As we drove through Roanoke Island, home of the mysteriously lost Roanoke Colony, I looked to the almighty Wikipedia for information. It benevolently bestowed upon me the knowledge that the very first English baby to be born in the Americas was born there in 1587. Her name was Virginia Dare, and nobody knows what became of her or the hundred or so other colonists who attempted to settle these wild, windswept coasts. Although Alex and I were not fleeing religious persecution nor claiming indigenous lands in order to rape the earth for natural resources, we did feel something in common with the early colonists: embarking on brand new lives in unknown territory.

We also shared their task of surviving the elements. On our first night camping on the beach on Hatteras Island, we kept warm by a blazing driftwood fire. The flames licked the salty air and danced on steadily galvanizing gusts, which began to relentlessly assault and contour the tent into shapes far past what I believed its flimsy materials capable of. If only the English settlers could’ve gotten their paws on some Mountain Hardwear products, they would’ve been golden. Even so, not much sleep was had that night; we were quite sure the tent would blow right off its stakes with us in it. Later on, I read that unlike most barrier islands, the Outer Banks aren’t anchored to any offshore coral reefs. This combined with their placement jutting into the Atlantic Gulf stream uniquely predisposes them to damage from hurricanes and Nor’easters. The Banks are ethereal, constantly shifting and eroding. They refuse to stay in one place– the storms make them ebb and flow just like the tides.

Three days of camping and exploring in the chilly springtime Banks was just the right taste of what could be fully realized in its summertime sweetness. Although we couldn’t really enjoy the beaches to their full potential, the lack of tourists gave our time there a lovely solitary, local feel. I’m honestly not sure if I’ll ever return to these shifting shores, but it was incredible to experience a land as unrooted and evolving as me.

Me on a sand dune, looking out at our campsite by the sea.

 

Midwest Surprise!

Gorgeous Lake Monona in Madison, WI

Mile Count: 21,560

What’s a homesick vagabond to do when she has a week with no plans and misses her friends so badly it hurts? Drive 800 miles overnight to her college town for a surprise visit, of course! Last Sunday I left the farm in North Carolina, drove 16 hours and ended up on my best friend Cara’s doorstep in Madison, Wisconsin at 9 30 a.m. After ringing her doorbell three or four times, she finally came to the door, robe astray and bleary eyed. The hilarious look of utter shock and disbelief made every minute in the car worth it a hundred fold. Monday was spent letting my many dear friends around town know I was here, and since then it’s felt like I never left. I’m even staying in my old house, which remains nearly exactly as I left it eight months ago. Meeting incredible and fascinating people in every corner of the country has enriched and enveloped me every single day on the road thus far, but there’s just nothing like the comfortable laughter of old friends.

I’ll be staying in Madtown til Friday, then heading to Chicago for the weekend. On Monday, I’ll do another 15 hour drive back to Raleigh to pick up my cousin Alex who’ll be joining me for an April of adventures in N.C.’s Outer Banks, coastal southern Virginia, Shenandoah Valley and Washington D.C.

Now excuse me, I need to go eat some fried cheese curds and drink a beer.

Tales of Springtime Homesteading Part 2: Potato Tires and Cob Ovens

Mile Count: 20,741

Throughout the past month at Colony Earth we’ve been working on some fantastic DIY permaculture projects. My eyes have flown open to all the creative, inexpensive, and simple ways to enrich a sustainable lifestyle. Today I want to take you through two easy, fun, and eventually delicious undertakings: growing potatoes in vertical stacks of recycled tires and building an outdoor pizza/bread oven out of natural materials.

Potato Tires

Old tire turned pretty potato patch!

Potatoes are an exceedingly durable root crop that can achieve higher yields when grown vertically in small patches than traditionally flat in a garden plot. The basic idea here is to make a cylinder of soil for the potato roots to go nuts in, letting them grow more with less labor for you. Discarded tires are shamefully plentiful (According to Backwoods Home Magazine, in 2001 alone, Americans discarded nearly 281 million tires, weighing some 5.7 million tons), are generally free, and if you utilize them for things they won’t end up in a landfill somewhere. A perfect marriage? I’d say so! Here’s the basic process:

1. Get old tires, paint them pretty colors, then place them on the ground where it’s flat and sunny. Another way tires are great for growing is they can easily separate different varieties. Entirely without meaning to do so, we ended up painting our tires pink, yellow and blue, and then realized we had red, yellow and blue potatoes. Color coded crops, qué perfecto!

2. Fill tires up to the bottom lip with yummy compost.

3. Place seed potatoes, cut into pieces so they have sprout buds, or “eyes”, in the tires. We put four eyes in each tire in a + shape.

4. Water your tires daily. When the stalks reach about eight inches, fill the tire with more compost and soil until just one or two inches of the tops are showing. Repeat until your stack is four to six tires high (or as long as you can maintain stability!)

5. Harvest at the same time of year you normally would for your climate, taking the tires down one by one.

There are a number of beautiful things about this potato-tire symbiosis. By adding the tires and filling them with soil gradually and vertically, the first existing stalks shoot off laterally, producing potatoes at four or more levels. If you tried to achieve this in the ground, you’d have to hoe and build mounds of soil around each plant, which is much more labor intensive. Additionally, tire stacks allow for way less weed invasion, again decreasing the work. Finally, the tires act as insulators, providing more warmth and therefore more growth. The average five tire stack will produce around 25 pounds of potatoes!

If you want to learn more about growing potatoes and other great ideas for recycled tires, I highly recommend this article from Backwood Homes Magazine.

We planted ten tires here, meaning the Hawks should expect a massive potato crop come fall. I hope they're ready for lots of taters!

Outdoor Cob Oven

First off, you may ask, what on earth (pun intended) is cob? Cob is a mixture of clay, sand, straw, earth and water. It is one of the world’s most ancient building materials and is still widely used around the globe today. It’s inexpensive and fireproof, making it the perfect enclosure for baking breads and pizzas on super hot bricks, exactly as they’re meant to be *drool*.

To get started on this project, we consulted the almighty interwebs for some foundational advice. This article provided the informational building strategy, but as with any DIY project, you end up improvising a lot. Here’s how it went down:

1. Decide how tall you want the oven to be. The basic question is, do I take the time to build a platform so I won’t have to bend over to put my scrumptious pizzas and breads in my oven… or do I not give a crap? The Hawks decided that they do indeed give a crap, so first we cleared a flat space by their deck. Then we stacked two walls of cinder blocks to ideal, waist-high pizza-inserting height, and laid a piece of plywood on top for the base. Again, this part is just aesthetics.

2. Mix the cob. This is undoubtedly the best part, because it involves lots of people dancing in the mud. Much like making the perfect biscuit dough, mixing cob is about feeling out the ingredients and incorporating them slowly and smoothly. We had an absolute blast with this!

Doing the cob conga!

3. Sculpt the base of the oven and lay down a layer of insulating glass bottles. This will keep the heat of the fire in the hearth, not letting it escape out the bottom.

4. Build up the base with and cover the bottles with sawdust (chicken bedding also works) and cob. Place the hearth bricks on a thin layer of sand, making sure they’re level and flush. This is where your pizzas and breads are actually going to bake.

5. Begin building the foundation of the arched door and cob dome. We used some old bricks for support, but mostly just the cob.

6. Cut a form of wood for support (we were lucky to have Hawk’s expert eye and hand saw skillz here) and begin building the brick archway, inserting plenty of cob. Try to get as much cob as possible in between each brick for maximum density.

7. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo for the next step, but it’s simple. Build a dome of slightly wet sand (think sand-castle consistency) on top of the hearth bricks. This sand is just a temporary placeholder so you can build the cob dome on top of it. We used the white bucket and more bricks as extra support, and filled it in with sand. When your sphere of sand is complete, cover it with a layer of newspaper to keep it separate from all the cob you’re about to dump on it.

8. Cover the sand/newspaper dome with very thick layers of cob, at least 4 inches deep. The bulk of the cob you made will go on at this juncture. You’re almost done!

9. Wait for the cob to dry. This may take anywhere from one day to a week, depending on how much sun is in your area.

10. Pull out the wood form from the door, and use shovels or hoes to scrape all the sand out of the oven.

Completed oven! The bucket of sand is what we scraped out from inside.

11. Make it pretty. Some people cover their completed cob oven with a layer of plaster so they can paint it. You can also etch designs in the cob. I’m not exactly sure what the Hawks plan to do with theirs, but I’m sure it’ll turn out just gorgeous.

12. Bake! The final test of the oven is making a wood fire in it, letting the hearth bricks get super hot, and then gettin’ yo bake on.

****

I completely understand how DIY projects can be intimidating to start–I’m a suburban gal with zero experience in this kind of thing. But people have been working with natural materials and figuring this shit out for millions of years, and we can too! We got the idea to make an outdoor oven, and a fews days, about 20 bucks and lots of muddy feet later, it was done. It always helps to have people around to bounce ideas off of when, inevitably, the project goes off the rails and you have to improvise. And, as in most cases these days, the limitless conversation and wisdom of the internet is the ultimate tool. I can’t wait to build one of these at home in Rhode Island! Pizza party, anyone?

Tales of Springtime Homesteading

Colony Earth in Burnsville, NC. Home for the month of March.

In any agriculturally-driven lifestyle in a temperate climate, March is a month of projects, preparation and planning for the imminent growing season. I am spending this exciting time wwoofing at Colony Earth, a homestead run by the Hawk family nestled in the gorgeous Appalachian hills of Burnsville, North Carolina. What’s the difference between an organic farm and a homestead, you might ask? Simply that the Hawks do not plan to make their primary income off the sale of the fruit, vegetables, herbs or animal products they produce on their land. Rather, the main goal of Colony Earth is to get as close to 100% sustainability and self-reliance as possible for the Hawks and their three adorable daughters. Later on, they hope to create a non-profit retreat center for yoga, music, lectures and native American ceremonies. Helping run this non-profit and providing some of the bounciest, most loving human energy I’ve ever come across is Maya Rose, a friend of the Hawks and fellow nomad who is building a temporary nest here at Colony Earth as well.

Since our arrival two weeks ago, Matt and I have gotten to partake in many of the preparatory tasks necessary before spring fully grabs hold of these hills. Here are some images of the various projects we’ve taken on:

Seeding is the most obvious job to kick off the growing season. Here in the greenhouse, we mix soil in the trays and pop in our baby seeds until they are big and strong enough to survive in the ground. So far, we’ve got peas, radishes, peppers, basil, chamomile, lavender, kale, chard and a bunch more. Overall, seeding is simple and peaceful, by far the hardest part is keeping track of what was planted and when.

Garden bed construction is a much bigger task, and one that requires some sweat! Last week this patch of land was just a slope of grass, and now it’s a two-terrace garden bed all ready for planting. First, we took spades and pick-axes to the ground, digging up about four inches of clay and grass in a rectangle and throwing the excess to the sides. Next, we spent an afternoon trolling around the property in an ATV hauling the long logs that make the boundaries of the bed. (Not gonna lie, we definitely made some extraneous trips up and down the hills on the ATV). After that, we dug out more of the clay base to make the two beds level, not sloping. Finally, a layer of potting soil was spread out over the clay, and voila! A home for the new seedlings is born. This project was extra helpful for me, as it’s exactly what I’ll need to do when I tear up my mom and stepdad’s lawn in Rhode Island to make way for veggies upon my return.

Weeding is obviously a year-round task, but it’s an extra-big chore in March when it’s time to clear the neglected fields of all the unruly wintertime growth and start fresh. Here, Matt and Isis (the Hawks’ precocious and stylish 12-year-old)  are attacking the strawberry patch where the weeds outnumber the strawberry plants 20 to 1. This may not be the most heroic feat, but I love going down to the patch for a couple hours at a time with my audiobook and zenning out on the mindless repetition. With a few hours of weeding here and there, this jungle of a berry patch should be pristine and ready to go by the time we leave in April.

Leilani (age 2) and Maya Rose during the construction of her new home!

Perhaps the most arduous and rewarding project to date was the erection of Maya’s new home, rhymingly called a yome. A yome is a portable living structure halfway between a house and a tent. It combines the principles of its cousin the yurt with those of a geodesic dome, creating a stable and insulted living space with high ceilings, windows, doors, a hole for a wood-fire stove, and even a skylight in the center of the roof. This one is seven-sided and 200 square feet, and is built atop a deck of pine and locust wood. Not counting the deck construction, it only takes about four hours to put up and take down. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows though– it took four adults one grueling afternoon to get it set up. We were all pleasantly surprised nobody’s fingers were broken and we only had sore shoulder muscles to show for it. Here are some photos of the evolution of the yome erection (as you can imagine, many jokes were made).

With the roof strapped on, waiting for the walls to be lifted and bolted up.

Bracing the beams as Hawk bolted all the pieces together. Luckily we had some dark dupstep whomping to keep the intensity up.

Whew! Hard part's over.

A happy little yome home. I hope I get the chance to live in one of these someday!

That’s about it so far, but there’s plenty more on the horizon. This week we’ll use all the clay and grass we dug up for the new garden beds to make an outdoor cob oven! I’ll definitely be posting on that sometime next week.Trail maintenance, more weeding and nurturing the plant starts will make up most of the rest of the stay at Colony Earth. Tonight we’re off to the charismatic, quirky cultural center that is Asheville, NC to see one of my favorite bands, Dr. Dog! Burnsville is just 40 minutes north of Asheville, which is quickly running up the ranks of my favorite cities– but what else is new.

I hope everybody out there is enjoying the burgeoning spring!

A Leisurely Loop Around the South

Mile count: 19,929 (by the next post I will have reached 20K!!!)

Sometimes in travel, as in life, the best route is not the most direct. For the past two weeks Matt and I have begun an ambling, circuitous loop around the South visiting family, exploring new locales and working on an organic farm in North Carolina. Here’s an approximation of the course, which will be completed in early April:

Savannah, GA --> Acworth, GA --> Nashville, TN --> Murray, KY --> Traveler's Rest, SC --> Greenville, SC --> Asheville, NC --> Burnsville, NC --> Charlotte, NC --> Charleston, SC

First off, I’d like to say thank you so much to all our hosts for the incredible southern hospitality– the rumors are true. Although I haven’t felt so gorged on red meat since living in Argentina, all the ardent welcomes of home-cooked food and warm shelter are unendingly appreciated. (Cardinal rule of travel: when in Rome, eat a shit ton of biscuits and gravy.) We are so lucky to have two large and far-flung families who enable us to hop-scotch around this beautiful country!

Since working my way around the South, I’ve found that I’ve needed to readjust my pace. At the beginning of this trip I found myself charging each day with a frenzied sense of urgency. I was (am) trying to prove to myself that full-time travel can be like a job, and that if I seize every moment, take every picture, climb every mountain, eat at every Yelp top-rated local spot, and meet crazy characters in every new place then I won’t be slacking off this year and shirking the responsibilities of the “real world.” I’m still inclined to think this way, and I wholeheartedly believe the ever-present, nagging guilt has pushed me to see and do miraculous things these past seven months. However, I’ve found that this approach just does not work in the South. Urgency and frenzy just isn’t in the Southern lexicon– not in its big cities like Nashville and Atlanta, and certainly not in its small towns like Acworth, GA or Murray, KY. After a few days of frantically trying to figure out what to do with myself in these places; how I could spend my time as fully as in San Francisco, South Dakota or the Rockies, I realized I had to change, not my surroundings. I’m learning to slow down a bit and take the days as they come, not turning each one into a marathon itinerary.

Luckily, the inner struggle of leisure vs. productive modes of travel is about to come to an end. On Sunday, Matt and I will embark on another wwoofing enterprise, this time on an organic farm/permaculture education center/arts community in the emerald mountains of western North Carolina. We expect to stay at Colony Earth for the entire month of March, although nothing is ever certain. I can’t wait to get back to working on the land and living outside, crashing my head in exhaustion against the pillow each night. No offense to the slow South, but this Yank needs to get moving!

Here are some freewheelin’ fotos from the past weeks in Dixie:

Red Top Mountain State Park, Georgia

The shrine to all things Jack White that is Third Man Records in Nashville.

The Union Station Hotel in Nashville. No we did not stay here.

Managed to locate some blues in the country music capital.

Big Mama Amy explaining the lost art of hand-twisting bunches of tobacco on the Workman family farm in Murray, KY.

The beginnings of the tobacco growing season take place in an irrigated greenhouse.

Matt looking like he really knows what he's doing on a farm.

The stunning Falls Park in Greenville, SC. Yes there is a huge waterfall in downtown Greenville.

Celebrating the arrival of spring with an old fashioned, straight-edge shave at the Distinguished Gentlemen's Barber Shop in Greenville. These guys really know what they're doing.

Life on the Road Part 2: 5 Ways To Pass Time In The Car

Taking in the view is only fun for so long. Below are my tips for entertaining yourself while driving.

One of the most common questions I get is “But how can you stand all that driving?” First of all, I really like to drive. That certainly helps, but it isn’t nearly enough to have gotten me 18,000 miles in six months. Oh no, I’ve got plenty of tricks for keeping myself entertained and alert on the road. Whether driving one hour or fourteen, it’s important to stay focused and do everything possible to actually enjoy the long ride. Initially I had considered trying to learn a third language while driving, but ultimately didn’t get it together to get tapes. I think that’d be a pretty spectacular way to make driving productive, though.

Below is a list of things I do to pass the time. The most important strategy, however, is to have lots of options and use them all in various intervals to break up the endless hours of open road.

1. Call everyone I know. I definitely speak to my family and close friends more on this road trip than ever before. Keeping in touch is extremely easy when you’ve got hours to kill in the car! (Sorry for all the calls at work Mom)

2. Audiobooks. For the long distance driver, audiobooks are a god send. For those on a budget, audiobooks are easily obtained through the same exact mediums one might use to download say… music and movies. (digital piracy? me? never!) For those with more respect for intellectual property, they are also available on Amazon, iTunes, and Audible.com. Audible even gives you one free audiobook every time you sign up under a different email address (I mean, it’s too easy). My M.O. is to download the book and then load it onto my iPod so I can easily stop and start it, and even take it on hikes and bike rides.

As a lover of literature, I’ll listen to anything– fiction, memoir, biography, philosophy. However, I have found the absolute best way to stay entertained and awake on a long drive is to listen to a thrilling mystery. At 18 hours each, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy was absolutely perfect and got me through the first two months of driving.

Recommended listening: 

Tina Fey- Bossypants. I may or may not have listened to this hysterical memoir four times already. The end result is always the same: having to pull over to pee because I'm laughing so hard.

Keith Richards- Life. Read by Johnny Depp, some cameos from friends and Richards himself, this epic memoir reveals the truth behind the legend. Beautifully ghostwritten, and a great chronicle of rock n' roll history.

Haruki Murakami- 1Q84. At 46 hours, this surrealist mammoth of a novel is my longest audiobook yet. I'm almost halfway through and loving every second of Murakami's maddening and deftly convoluted tale.

Jonathan Safran Foer- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This heartwarming novel about a precocious victim of 9/11 had me in near-tears for hours on end. The voice acting is excellent, and the time on your drive will fly by as you root for Oscar and his quest.

3. Music/podcasts. Even the best audiobook can’t keep you captivated for more than five or six hours at a time, so it’s best to have a loaded iPod/smartphone/CD collection at the ready.

Cheesy road trip playlist:

• The Traveling Song- The Avett Brothers
• This Land Your Land- Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings
• Come to the City- The War on Drugs
• That Western Skyline- Dawes
• Highway 61- Bob Dylan (entire album, really)
• Have Love Will Travel- The Black Keys
• The Breeze- Dr. Dog
• Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise- The Avett Brothers
• Lost in my Mind- The Head and the Heart
• Acid Tongue- Jenny Lewis
• Maps- Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• American Slang- The Gaslight Anthem
• Bloodbuzz Ohio- The National
• Lovin’ Cup- The Rolling Stones (all of Exile on Main St.)
• Keep the Car Running- Arcade Fire

4. Public Radio. You know you’re on a great adventure when you can’t pick up NPR on the dial. This has happened to me several times, but if you’re anywhere within 300 miles or so of a major city you should be able to get a signal. I may be a huge dork for quality journalism, but I don’t care: I LOVE NPR!!!! Whether its Marketplace, Fresh Air, Car Talk, Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me, This American Life, or A Prairie Home Companion, I adore it all with equal gusto. Listening to each state’s own public radio stations also offers unique insight to your surroundings, not to mention the one-up for concerts and other events.

5. Smartphone options. If you are a proud owner of an omnipotent smartphone, there are infinite ways to be entertained while driving. If not, I’m sorry! Keep working on that CD collection! All of the following obviously depend on the strength of the 3 or 4G in the area, often a problem when traversing the back roads and open spaces of the U.S. But if there is a signal, the following apps are your best bet for holding onto your sanity during a long drive. Just remember your car charger because every single one of these babies will zap that battery fast.

      A, Pandora. If you don’t have the patience to keep choosing songs on the pod or radio, Pandora is an enduringly great option. Yes, the ads suck but it’s still worth it to sit back and have a logarithm discover new music for you while you drive.

      B. Satellite radio. Sirius/XM has a smartphone app where you can stream their full station catalog for $13/month. With a cornucopia of news, music, comedy and other entertainment, this is a worthy investment. (Thanks Aunt Randi!)

      C. TED talks. Yes that’s right, TED has an app where you can stream the talks for free. They take forever to load, but even one illuminating 15-minute talk every couple hours is enough to keep the brain at attention.

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So there you have it folks, now hop in the car and drive somewhere new! Additional entertaining games you can play are practicing your knee driving, painting your toenails/plucking your eyebrows, and testing the outer limits of your bladder for sport. But these ones are for pros only, kids don’t try this at home!

Finding Contrasts in the Forests of the South

Much like the week in October when I drove from Telluride to the Grand Canyon to Vegas, this has been another seven days of crazy contrasts and stark juxtapositions. This week also marks the arrival of my friend Matt, who’ll be traveling with me for the next couple months. So it’s farewell to solo travel for now, but I couldn’t be more excited to embark on a new kind of adventure.

This time around, the journey first took me from the luxurious comfort of my Meemee’s home in Boca Raton (and Matt’s similarly cushy surroundings in Orange County, CA) to the rugged fringe culture of a Rainbow Gathering in Ocala National Forest. If you’re unfamiliar with Rainbow, it is basically a nomadic society of hardcore hippies and lifetime road warriors who travel and live in forests all over the country. Thousands of people set up for two to three weeks at a time, creating a series of village-like campsites, trade-circles, enormous high-volume kitchens and music venues in the woods. Personal possessions are almost nonexistent; everything consumable is shared freely. It is a dirty, difficult life, but one of constant connection with nature and community.

Having traversed the entire socioeconomic spectrum in just a few hours, the culture shock was damn powerful and took us almost a whole day to get over. However, we came away feeling overwhelmingly lucky to be able to touch both poles and float freely and comfortably in between. The experience highlighted my favorite part of travel: the adaptation of the soul to the setting.

Meemee's backyard is literally a golf course.

Our isolated campsite in the middle of Ocala National Forest, FL.

After three days of communing with the forest, we headed to…. another forest. However, the contrast to Rainbow was no less stringent. The destination was Hostel in the Forest in Brunswick, GA, the closest I’ve ever come to utopia. While Rainbow is an exercise in cooperative anarchy, the Hostel is an on-going project with an organized, directed vision of sustainable life. It also costs $26 per person, meaning we only stayed one night. However, 24 hours was ample time to fall head over heels for this hidden jewel of the Georgia coast where every room is a tree house and every night is a feast of mouthwatering vegetarian food enjoyed around the campfire. Even though almost every aspect of my life is variable and confusing right now, this much I know to be an absolute truth: I will return to this sacred space. Words can’t begin to describe the utter loveliness of the forest hostel, now in its 38th year of operation. So here are some photos:

The main buildings: office/kitchen, library and laundry room.

Inside of the newly renovated library/dance party space/yoga studio. Absolutely amazing.

Our treehouse!

The greatest bathtub of all time.

The meditation labyrinth, where you can walk a convoluted 20-minute path to the center, letting the world fall away.

Pathway out of the Tub of Tranquility.

Pond with canoes and sunbathing raft. Skinny dipping abounds!

The most fun I've ever had in a compost toilet. They even have a journal to read or write in when you "make your deposit."

We could have stayed forever, and I plan on applying to their 1-3 month staff program sometime in the very near future. From the huge organic garden to the gray water system to the constant carpentry projects to the standard hostel hospitality, there is a ridiculous amount of knowledge to be gained here. Saying goodbye was hard, but as always, the road beckoned.

The last stop in our week of delightful, woodsy disparities was Savannah, also known as “the Forest City” for its abundantly tree-lined streets and 22 green squares. The urban forest is populated mostly by different species of oak, dripping with that signature Spanish moss. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more attractive city.

Forsyth Park, Savannah

For the past three days we’ve been Couchsurfing with an awesome craft cocktail bartender named Cody and his art student roommates. We’ve learned that in Savannah the only entertainment you need is your own two feet, as each step through the charming streets is more beautiful and wrapped in history than the last. Like any major city, the food, activity and culture is stimulating and attention-grabbing. But here, you don’t have to leave the peaceful pace of the forest. To borrow from Fiona Apple, Savannah is strong like music, slow like honey and heavy with mood.

Now the weekend is drawing to a close and we’re preparing to leave for Atlanta, where I do not expect to encounter much forest. But that’s just fine, a short absence from the trees will only make my heart grow fonder