Earthship travels

Maybe this is true in your town, and maybe not, but in our little mountain town most of the adult transplants have some variation on a quirky story about how they arrived and then stayed, whether they intended to prior, or not. Down in the southern part of the state, we have Roswell, with space ship crash downs; here in Taos earthships have landed. They are the lure that brought me through northern New Mexico and inspired me to move here, and they were the foundation of the first part of my story here.

Earthship? Think off the grid housing, reused, reclaimed, recycled: tires, cans, bottles and dirt, tons of dirt. These were the DIY (do it yourself) solution to housing that architect Michael Reynolds dreamed up in the 1970s that have been built by the sweat equity of thousands of people laboring in dozens of countries around the world, in climates as varied as the high desert of Taos to the rainforest of Guatemala. His vision includes thick walls (think a mid size car's tire width bulging with the earth rammed inside), oriented toward the southern sun and bermed at the north to utilize passive solar most efficiently and the earth's constant temperature as a buffer to extremes of hot and cold, rain and snow collection off the roof, and use of grey water in planters where you can grow your own meal year round. They integrate with the landscape and function with minimal external input once complete, thus the earth ship, one with which to travel the mesa sea that encapsulates much of the terrain around their origin. These buildings have other features and modifications that allow them to function in varying climates, but to find out more visit the Earthship Biotecture website earthship.com or visit their visitor center in the Greater World community when you next find yourself a few miles west of the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.

I first heard about these innovative structures in 1998 from a roommate in a cooperative house in Seattle, and my exchange student boyfriend and I were intrigued from first mention. We decided that we would visit Greater World when we drove across the southwest that summer in my 1969 Volkswagen van, and we stayed there a week out of the month and half we were on the road. We met an architect who rented an earthship for the month's duration of an internship and he invited us to stay in the spare bedroom. We fell in love with curved walls and tranquil ambiance, with the beauty of subtle details: cupboards fronted in beaten copper, plaster embedded with mica sparkling in the light that poured through ceiling high windows and planters a profuse riot of blossoms and green leaves. I slept as well in that room as I have ever slept anywhere, and the desire to return and live in such a place rooted within even before we left.

The following summer I sat in the pub where that same former boyfriend tended bar, trying to figure out my next step after I left Edinburgh. I planned to either travel to India to learn massage or fly back to Seattle, pack the van and return to Taos to work for the earthship building crew and set myself up as a contractor and build these houses myself. He convinced me that NM held more prospects and that I might get lost in India.

By October of 2000 I extricated myself from my life in Washington and headed south. I managed to survive the drive to Taos, although the van's front end crumpled during a high speed collision with a deer in Colorado. A little over 30 years old, it still rolled over mountain passes with confidence. I lived in that van in the parking lot of the earthship community's visitor center for the first month, while I volunteered for the building crew, instead of working for them as I had assumed I'd arranged before I ever left Scotland.

Around the time my savings dwindled so did enthusiasm for doing thankless hard time. I found work at the local ski area, and I connected with an absentee earthship owner and arranged a work trade for rent-free living. I never really did much more than clean up the space, wage war on tumbleweeds with fire, and battle futilely against the dirt clods that fell from the unfinished walls on a regular basis. There's not much work in a finish-upper that can be done lacking funds, tools and supplies.

The best parts of living there were my two roommates, lovely, fun and eclectic women also in their early 20s. One made beautiful stained glass art and necklaces strung with dry animal dung, and the other had a dry, dark sense of humor and became my ski buddy after I learned how to do it. She switched from snowboarding, due to our resort's prohibition on one plank snow sliding. It was this latter gal's birthday yesterday, and I cheered this woman on from afar in a social media way. You know, well-meaning but vague. And not actually on time, because I realize in writing this that I just thought happy birthday wishes, and about that long ago friendship in an earthship, but never typed the words and sent them across the web. Until now.
Thank you, friend. I'm grateful for your companionship during those long ago quiet mornings drinking coffee, dancing under the stars, for the thrill of hurtling down the mountain with you. I'm grateful, too, for the ship that brought me to this town, for the possibilities I foresaw when I arrived, and even more for the detours that became a life I'm blessed to have created. You never know where the current will take you, particularly when you travel in an experimental craft.

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Little Wildhorse Canyon

Up until two weeks ago, I had never walked through a slot canyon, but the ancient and almost alien landscape of the San Rafael Swell in central Utah provided the perfect introduction to such a place as a solo adventurer. I do hesitate to explore the outdoors alone in certain circumstances, but embrace the opportunity in ones I deem safe 'enough.' Sometimes I get that gut thumping reaction, a visceral sense of danger, and I listen to these. Call it instinct - I am an animal first and foremost - it's intuition to me, and I've learned with fortunately few failures that I have to heed those warnings.

The friends who suggested the Little Wildhorse to Bell Canyon loop advised me that it was a friendly, low risk hike of 8 miles, lacking the deep-water crossings and gear assisted scrambles necessary to travel through many slot canyons. This would be a Canyoneering 101 sort of experience. So, while my male companions rode dirt bikes on single track a hundred plus miles from our camp near Green River, Utah, I drove west and south to an area near Goblin Valley. Sola, right.

The Swell is an anticline aged between 40 to 60 million years, which means that it's one long line of rock turned back over on itself, a fold with the oldest rocks at the core. Massive sandstone reefs rise in misshapen towers across the mesa that fronts it, and flash flood erosion over millions of years has ripped away sedimentary rock to form canyons, valleys and gorges. It was up one such canyon and down another that I walked through layers of time, event and a beauty rivaling that of any cathedral.

My being requires time spent alone in nature in the same way a Catholic goes to mass: to connect with the Divine, to breath in the ever renewing power of grace, and to find the peace of prayer. Yes, there are more risks in the wild, but the rewards of solitude for my spirit and the movement of my body, and my breath, far outweigh these. I take care to watch the weather - a flash flood in this narrow space could mean possible death - and my amygdala hums at the ready in case I need to scale the rock to higher ground. My steps are measured and the pack I carry is loaded with water and a few snacks. I temper wild with caution when I'm sola, just as I do when I ride my mountain bike alone.


The trail starts out as a superhighway, an open water-graded and graveled path, until its first choke a mile in. I scramble up a nearly vertical stack of boulders and soon reach the Little Wildhorse and  Bell Canyon juncture, where I choose right into Little Wildhorse. From there, the walls undulate wide apart to so narrow that I have to squeeze through sideways, and there are enough climbs to stay challenged. I trot past groups and couples, until I'm truly by myself.

The sheer walls are painted with 'desert varnish,' or oxidation from water, and I can almost believe the art has been formed with intention. When the wind quiets in the hush I hear the earth, still now but resonant with the floods that created the space where I stand, and this is a place where the Mother creatrix reigns unique.

I reach the Bell Canyon sign and walk along a road for a mile or so, until I reach the actual trailhead, and then I descend into Bell. Downstream as the water flows where it fills the gap in the rock, so I'm downclimbing instead of upwards. I reach standing water, and remove my shoes and socks as some boys and their grandma I meet instruct me to do. It's a foot deep and the most moisture I've seen that day, the only other evidence of water pools in pockmarks in the stone or moistens the lower layers of sand. The canyon residents I encounter - lizards, birds, bees, cacti and flowers in bloom, penstemon, Indian paintbrush and globe mallow - thrive, not troubled by the dry climate.

All too soon I arrive back at the juncture where I turned right, and I exit the canyon as a family meanders into it. I am calm, happy and just tired enough, and certain I will return to Utah, and navigate other canyons, alone or with company.

I have fallen in love with this desert, this remnant of inland seas in the driest land, where a diverse ecology thrives in its environs, and beauty is found in the margins.

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Restless moon

Just shy of 3 a.m. and I'm determined to make efficient use of a restless mind, instead of staying in bed in the vain hope I'll fall into sleep, while the wind blows, my man snores and the full moon shines bright through the cracks in the blinds.

Tonight I read the first five chapters of Dave Ramsey's book on making over ones' money - per the recommendation of my sensible youngest brother - and although I skim the 'praise the lord' parts, my brain crackles and sparks with the possibility of a different relationship to my financial circumstances. Ramsey emphasizes that debt is not a tool - though in regards to buying a home he concedes it can be a necessary reality - in 180 degree opposition to the attitude of the vast majority of the US population. Most of us were trained this way, through relentless marketing, 'need it now' impatience armed with plastic, or general ignorance. I know, I'm a frustrated and indebted citizen: college debt, credit card debt and car payments. Besides that, at present my husband and me are in seasonal unemployment, which adds to the excitement of juggling funds to pay all our bills. Sort of like tossing around knives when you haven't quite learned how to negotiate apples and oranges.

We've both been followers of a summer work/winter work pattern for more than a decade, because we both believe in the philosophy that you might not arrive alive in time for retirement (at least not in good enough a state of physical fitness that we can play as wild of games as we like: ski, bike, hike, raft, etc.); live it while you can. We appreciate its challenges more every year, in particular when our savings diminish quicker than the next cycle of work arrives. Recently, this way of being has become tempered by other desires, too, the ones that more forward thinking adults appear to take for granted. A home, one to call our own. Possibly a kiddo or two, if that's what fate and biology determines. A mattress stuffed with cash, wait, I mean a retirement savings. No debt, an anchor to slow us down and potentially pull us under.

No debt? A life without debt has become the promise land, but seems as far away in this bleary eyed and moonlit moment as Avalon. No matter, I believe it to be a worthy journey, and like all distant destinations it can be attained given persistence and patience.

Traveling on a budget is a skill I've already acquired, and since I lack others related to money, it's time to go back to school. And this round I'll "just say no" to student loans. Tomorrow, I sign myself up for remedial Adulthood 101, focus on financial responsibility and financial consciousness, and I'm going to master it, previously but no longer allowing my finances to be the boss of me. The moon, on the other hand, reigns supreme.

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Green River

Early last week I sat in the shade of a cottonwood that leans east towards the sediment tinged flow of Green River, cool in a thin sun cover and bikini, refusing to layer up because this is the closest I'll probably come after a chilly winter in the mountains to lazing on the beach. It's in between seasons in our resort town and that means neither my husband or I are back to work yet, so we went on vacation with some friends in the desert near the town that bears the name of the river that sustains it.

The husbands were out riding dirt bikes and the ladies had just completed the shuttle back to retrieve the truck from our earlier launch in town. We rode stand up paddle boards eight miles from there to our camp, underneath a rail road bridge, in the shadow of I-70, choosing one channel of the braided channels over another, enjoying the landscape, the water's flow and each other's company. My friend's dog is along for the trip, sitting, standing and occasionally leaping into the water, adorned in her doggie life jacket and her fur kinked with wet. Of the three of us, I am the only one who has fallen into the river... three times.

Today we drove down the dirt track that heads through the sandstone remnants of what used to be the sea. The irony: here in this driest of places - with an annual rainfall average of 10" - everything around us reflects millions of years of oceans moving in and out, leaving behind monoliths and ranges, each formed from aggregation and erosion. The wind carves the landscape, as over time it shifts shape and form, and yet we can still see the echos of the arcs of the waves that used to be here, so long ago, when we walk across rock scalloped by the ebbing waters.

This desert is a revelation of evolution. You can see time in frozen slices, the starts and stops of events that appear catastrophic to human eyes, with their limited scope of vision, but these might simply be the equivalent of cells in their expansion, contraction and multiplication. What we see is what we notice, of course, and what I notice is the beauty, the austere perfection of apparent desolation that in fact harbors a surprising quantity and diversity of life, lizards, hawks, globemallow and evening primrose in bloom.

I cannot imagine how any person can believe that the earth is younger than ten thousand years old. Is it because our eyes and minds can see a century at most, and we can't imagine a planet that doesn't contain us? The river flows and in it swim ancient creatures we can only dream about, the river meanders along whatever path it chooses - and we see the evidence of its path through the ages - the river drifts over its bed and it will do so long past two women and a dog have left this plane of existence.

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Trade off

This is the first summer in five years that my partner and I will live in a house with right angle walls, separate rooms and a working bathtub instead of in the classic Airstream we called casa sweet casa in Jackson, Wyoming. After three years away we moved back to this little northern New Mexico town - no passports required, just a love for chili (red or green), sage brush and quirkiness - in the hopes that we could stretch out into a house. Our home, one we could settle into, sink down roots as we plant trees, build a garden, create a place to connect with community around a huge kitchen table, make art and hopefully babies, a nest but also a launch pad for future adventures. A place we could sink our money into and see it in return as time leads us toward those golden years when our hair is white and our steps slowed, when the rocking chair is more appealing than the chair lift and ski slope. I'm talking about a long time from now...

We've started to house shop and so far that dream place hasn't revealed itself, at least not in the price range we can afford. Our town shares similar economic circumstances to that of many a resort town in the US - high prices in the real estate market due to the large number of vacation homes and rentals, the desirable land priced high at over $100,000 an acre, and a job market that mainly consists of service oriented positions - and yet the appeal of living here still seems to outweigh the challenges. Here you can ski, mountain bike, hike, run the river, etc, and enjoy the mountains, gorge, mesa, forest, etc, while eating delectable food in the company of a diverse range of people who speak myriad languages, all in this small town with its expansive atmosphere.

Jackson had almost as much appeal, and certainly a better wage, but there didn't appear to be a way to stay long term that included home ownership, not when affordable housing means a two bedroom condo that costs $300,000, or the commute from the suburbs is either 45 minutes away and/or over a 10,000 feet pass with 10% grades. Although the American psyche might have the daily commute hard wired into it, I feel that spending a huge chunk of time in a car on a daily basis lowers my quality of life. We could ride our bikes in town up there, but we also moved every spring and fall, into and out of the Airstream, in the attempt to stretch our income and make hay for the future while the sun shined.

Now we're house hunting and I'm back to thinking the Airstream might be a good long term home, especially if we get a significant amount of snow next winter and we can bury it, igloo style. What we can afford is a small assortment of run down structures that might be better served to be flattened and then start over again. The rest is a collection of homes that will probably be bought by out of towners seeking their x number property for rental purposes or the occasional visit to our economically disheartened town. Here, it's not as extreme as the market in Jackson, where 10,000 square feet homes often sit empty, except for their caretakers and the property management workers who keep them ready for their rare use, while the imported Mexican workers and east coast gap year kids live crammed many to a house. There, we were high on the hog in our 20' travel trailer compared to our raft guide friends who lived in the raft stacks at the boat house.

In response to the housing crisis in Jackson, one letter to the editor suggested that those people who can't afford to live in Jackson should leave. This comment fails to consider that without those low wage workers who stay despite the financial struggle - because they love the area as much as you do, dear snob - who will take care of your children, home, feed you, serve you? A 'resort' community needs its teachers (probably the most undervalued profession) and trash collectors as much as it needs its entrepreneurs, doctors and Fortune 500 CEOs. But the real estate market does not reflect this truth in mountain towns, or indeed in many places of beauty, where somehow it's a privilege to live there.

I can't offer a solution to this sad state of economic imbalance that really just reflects the state of our nation, which has become a land of the have nots and have a lots, with the bulk of us struggling along in between. I do know that in my own particular experience, learning to want and need less has increased my happiness. The trade off to living simply is that you can live more and work less, which is our particular dream. Although we hope to own a home, what we seek and what we'll get will probably look less like the average American home and more like a stationary version of the Airstream, with a working bath tub, of course. We won't trade off on quality of life, but rather we will trade off the part of the American that means big, bigger, biggest.

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How to be an adult

The lessons I learned on how to be an adult must have been very subtle, delivered so quiet and unobtrusive that I didn't even notice I learned them. I'm generally certain I've mastered some of the basics: how to treat others as I'd like to be treated (except for when I'm feeling vulnerable or when I'm cursing slow or erratic drivers from behind the not opaque enough windows of my car with out of state plates), how to take pride in a job well done (thanks worker bee ancestors and to my hard working parents), and the necessity of love, play and laughter for a life well lived. Household chores, changing a flat tire, building a fire, and filling out a 1040ez, no problem. It's some of those other skills in the realm of being a financially responsible adult, such as buying a home or ridding myself of a college debt that feels like a boulder sized ball and chain, that make me want to curl up fetal and suck my thumb.

Did you learn any of those skills essential to staying on the surface of our American economy from family, community or your school? Having taken an unofficial survey amongst my peers I will guess that you did not learn how to pay your taxes, handle a mortgage, make an informed decision about taking on debt, or even handle the more mundane task of balancing your budget: rent, food, bills, etc. If you can't perform the tasks that are required of a person aka an autonomous adult, does that mean you're simply a child, pretending to be a grown up?

Don't get me wrong, quite a few of the habits and attitudes common to the average concept of the American adult appear grim and undesirable to me. Work 40+ hours a week, with your only time off through the year a two week vacation from which you return to work more exhausted than before, all the while trading your time for an existence you may or may not like. Rack up debt going to college, co-own an oversized house with the bank, and buy things you probably don't need or even really want with credit cards that come to rule you. I've tried some of these habits and they don't suit me.

And now my man and I intend to buy a house. Amongst the price range we can afford is a meager assortment of run down and poorly built abodes. My husband gets to be the on paper provider because my college debt is just debt. I'm so very grateful that I was fortunate enough to continue my education beyond high school. I regret, however, the lack of foresight that given my lifestyle choices, I doubled the debt from my first year of college alone by ignoring it. A liberal arts degree doesn't bestow a whole lot of economic bang for the buck to pay that debt back. Thankfully, a massage therapy certification and license does.

So my hard working high school graduate husband will be our loan holder, and because of my college loans I'll pay rent and help renovate whatever foreclosure or for sale by owner we can afford. We won't purchase beyond our means - we strive to rid ourselves of credit card debt and I scheme how to pay for a college education I haven't yet figured a use for - our goals are clear. Be fiscally responsible, learn how to do that in the ways to which we currently lack knowledge, and continue to find the balance of work and the rest of life. To that end this bookworm has gathered materials from the library on how to manage money, buy a house and get out of debt. Because I believe that's what an adult does: accepts her ignorance, her frustrations, but doesn't hold a grudge, and then sets out to change her circumstances.

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Seasonal changes

For my husband, myself and many of our contemporaries here in this northern New Mexico town - along with people in mountain communities across the northern hemisphere - it's a time of seasonal change that ends with winter and invites in summer. Except there's spring in between, which is both a magical period when buds form and explode into a riot of new leaves or delicate pink and ivory blossoms, grass emerges from ground that already longs for snow or rain, birds chorus in a riot of mate or fight songs, and then there are the maddening spring winds that scour the earth and raise dust clouds up and over and into you.

I wake this morning with grit lodged in the corner of my eyes; yesterday I dared to ride the old dirt road a couple miles east of our house, which has been closed to vehicles to become a trail for pedestrians and mountain bikers. I waited too long to leave the house, meandering from one project to another, so that by the time I peddled from road to roundabout to dirt access to trail it was afternoon and the winds had dropped their playful act and gusted in earnest. The air current wasn't so bad when I rode through the protected juniper and pinon, and much of that "Talpa traverse" follows the natural curve of the earth across the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo, and I had more tailwind riding uphill than otherwise. The sky burned blue overhead, granite sparkled under my tires, and my improved skill set thrilled me when I was able to ride sections of the single track that had in years previous made my stomach turn over with fear.

The return ride, however, proves that the wind dominates the landscape: columns of dust rise high and turn the sky cafe au lait, tumbleweeds skitter across the road, and the decline of the slope is not enough to keep me in a higher gear as I pedal against the buffeting force. I want to hide in the sagebrush, call a cab, will myself arrived - which is what I do. Then I'm grateful to hide from the elements, and so very glad for body and mind that I chose to ride my bike, despite the challenges of the return.

It's essential to stay active when the seasons shift. All those lovely days with no particular commitments, since the next season's work hasn't yet appeared. For me, though, I'm not really much a part of either camp these days - no 9 to 5 job, nominal time spent teaching skiing last winter, about that much time on the river ahead of me - I just work when there's work. It would be easy to slump into the couch, watch TV and movies, grow plump with snacks, forget about biking and devolve into less than slothhood.

Instead, I'm riding my bike, getting on the river when I can, and working to renovate the 1962 Airstream I'm lucky enough to own. We have chosen to stay here in our unique New Mexico town for the summer and beyond, instead of returning to Jackson and diving deep into the frantic schedule that is the reality of the seasonal worker in that resort town. We have started to desire following the seasons without having to move from Airstream to cramped apartment and repeat.

Seasonal shifts and the desire to change the trajectory of our lives, from sort of vagabonds to householders who are capable of both rooting down and being able to spring into experiencing other places without having to start over again and again, without that monthly storage fee as a tether. This transitional period is even more exciting and bigger a shift than usual. We won't get blown off course by the winds, and this off season will be a great period of deepening connection and an opening to expansiveness.

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