Reawakening

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The past few weeks have been a very dynamic and transformative time of personal growth. In recommitting to yoga, I asked the universe for a mentor, and she stepped forward. From the first few minutes of Jenn’s class, I knew that I had stumbled upon something good. Jenn’s class is a mixture of yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, deep breathing, and intuitive movement – it’s one of the most intense, sensation-filled, and fun indoor fitness experiences I’ve ever had. She uses the lats (latissimus dorsi) and obliques as the gateway muscle to athleticism and dynamism: “your lats are your wings.” 

In a world that is full of superficial influencers reciting tired sequences and claiming to know the way, it is refreshing to learn from a teacher who is humbly sharing what she knows, pointing us in the right direction, and authentically embodying truth and light: “the best teachers tell us where to look but not what to see.” In her class, I have rekindled my inner flame, leaned into my strength, and found joy, release, and transformation. She reminds us that “groundedness does not mean stagnation.” I have learned a lot about moving through pain and protecting my energy from negative influences. Most of all, I have been reawakened and reminded how to have fun in my body. 

As a consequence of these experiences, I have been thinking a lot about how to prioritize movement and fitness in my next step. This is a key element of my life that I can’t neglect or forget: in San Diego, this looked like surfing; in Colorado and Chile, this looked like trail running, skiing, and mountain biking. For me, the opposite of movement is the sense of being “trapped” and this is one of the reasons I am suffering in San Diego: air pollution and dangerous road conditions keep me from moving freely in the ways that I want to. Thus, I’ve come up with a new framework for evaluating all my ideas – let’s call it the “triangle of joy and meaning:” 

It’s pretty straightforward. To give a little more specificity to this framework, I’ll sort out my life goals from the previous post into categories:

• Movement and fitness
• Exercise: mountain bike, run on trails, paddle? Ski?
• Home and garden:
• Learn to grow all types of vegetables
• Learn natural building techniques, including underground / earth-sheltered construction
• Adopt a dog and maybe some cats
• Take care of chickens and maybe goats
• Community and relationships:
• Establish a community structure that gives other homestead-minded folks the opportunity to plug into what I am currently striving to create from scratch

Now let’s use it to evaluate four big ideas for my future. #1 involves remaining employed, whereas #2-#4 involve taking a sabbatical. I’m feeling very tired and burnt out after remaining steadily employed since ~age 16, and although unemployment is generally frowned upon and much less fun post-age-26 due to the health insurance climate of the United States, I think a period of unemployment could be useful to push me into a more meaningful way of being. I sometimes wonder if one strategy for moving beyond a world that considers tired, overworked, and burnt out “knowledge” employees the default is for us to refuse to be tired, overworked, burnt out “knowledge” employees.  Still, it’s almost certainly the case that the reason I am burnt out is the academic and government hierarchies / bureaucracies that I have subjected myself to over the past seven years, and that a move to the private sector or just a more effective working group could resolve many of these problems. But I digress. Here we go:

1. Buy a property with an existing home and a large lot where I can start building a farm and cooperative community. This involves a mortgage and transitioning to remote work with my current employer or with a new employer. This strategy prioritizes Home and Garden most of all, keeps the door open to Community and Relationships, and should only happen if I can find a property near a system of trails so that I can honor Movement and Fitness. This is probably my favorite choice right now and would be financially possible in northern California or Maine. This could also allow me to rebuild the cedar cabin we deconstructed a couple years ago (see #3). 

2. Put my stuff into storage, buy a touring / bikepacking setup, and go on a tour from San Francisco to Seattle and/or the Great Divide Bikepacking Route that runs from New Mexico to Banff. This honors Movement and Fitness most of all, could honor Community and Relationships if I meet like-minded individuals on these tours, and could honor Home and Garden if I stumble upon the place where I want to build the community in (1). I’ve been feeling inspired by people who, when confronted by uncertainty, simply “start walking.” A long time on my bike could help me peel away layers of expectation, regret, and disappointment, and rebuild confidence, strength, and life energy. 

3. Buy a small amount of land in northern Wisconsin near my folks’ cabin and rebuild the cedar cabin we deconstructed a couple years ago as a hunting retreat. This approach would honor Home and Garden in that I would be learning valuable construction skills, would honor Movement and Fitness in that I would be working with my hands and could ride my bike / run around in my free time, and would honor Community and Relationships in that I would be near my folks. Although I like the idea of using the construction process as a practice of healing and growth, I do think it honors my three triangle points a bit less than (1). 

4. Go to work on an existing farm community (e.g. southern Oregon) to further develop my skills and meet like-minded people. This approach honors Community and Relationships most of all and honors Home and Garden to the extent that I would be developing skills for my eventual Home and Garden. This approach does not really honor Movement and Fitness, especially considering the possibility of long periods of wildfire smoke / unhealthy air. This is not as appealing considering I am pretty tired of being told what to do. 

Low Tide

San Diego is currently experiencing “king tides”, a colloquial term for the exceptionally high and low tides that occur when a New Moon coincides with the lunar perigee (the moon is closest to earth in its elliptical orbit) and to a lesser extent the solar perihelion (earth is closest to the sun in its elliptical orbit). Although the high king tides tend to make headlines, I find the extremely low king tides fascinating. It’s strange to see grass- and moss-covered reefs emerge from underwater, and to see waves breaking so far from shore in places they don’t usually break. These low tides even sound different, a steady shhhhhh instead of the periodic thunderous crashes of high tides. 

The past week has been very different from the past year. Raffelina and I are officially separated. I bought an unlimited membership at a yoga studio down the street ($40 for the month!), and I have been doing hot yoga every day, sometimes twice a day. My mind is sharp, my heart rate and blood pressure are very low, and my skin is clear. I have been flossing, grooming my facial hair regularly, and making my bed. My housemate’s cat Sookie picked up on my transition and has been spending a lot of time hanging out with me and sleeping on my bed. We are similar in many ways: she loves to chill and relax indoors, but then goes outside for extended periods to explore the grounds, climb trees, hang out on the roof etc. I can’t surf at the moment due to my ruptured eardrum, but I am staying occupied by posting unnecessary stuff on Craigslist / Offerup, applying for remote data science positions, journaling, drinking tea, and going on walks. It is nice not to have to drive or leave my neighborhood, except to go to the grocery store! 

For the next step, much of my thinking revolves around what happens with my job. Last week I started a conversation around the possibility of working remotely after “emergency maximum telework” ends. We are meeting about it this coming Wednesday, but through the brief conversations I have had in the meantime, I am doubtful this could be achieved within my time frame. For example, my supervisor suggested that I “be open to a couple years in Sacramento”. During an unrelated meeting, the head of our group attributed the communication failures of the past year and a half to “not seeing each other in the hallway”. So it seem as though there is a bit of a culture clash: I don’t have much patience for working informally, haphazardly, and chaotically. It’s become abundantly clear over the past year through conversations with my coworkers and through my own experiences that the work culture in my group is consistently stressful, frenzied, and frantic, so I am hesitant to tether my future to this sinking ship. I have started applying for remote positions – generally data science oriented. 

I recently had an opportunity to visit with my Aunt Peg, Uncle Keith, and Keith’s parents Ted and Carol. Like my grandma, Carol is wise in a very matter-of-fact way. After I shared much of my process and my goals, Carol said (paraphrasing), “Well, it seems like you should take some time to visit lots of different places and then choose the one that feels right.” She inadvertently pointed out what has been a big limitation of my iterative life process so far. Generally, I have relied on logistical factors (employment or funding) to steer where I go. This worked really well in Colorado and Chile because both those places are ideal for someone like me. Although my San Diego move was a necessary and important step, I definitely now understand the limitations of allowing those logistical factors to steer me so much. It turned out to be a good place to spend some time and get to know the ocean, but not a place I can spend my life. 

From a climate perspective, I am really excited about living in a verdant, foggy, misty, mossy, and rainy environment with mountains and forests. I became acquainted with this vibe in Patagonia and I’ve been excited to get back ever since. If I am to stay in the United States, this goal steers me north of the San Francisco Bay Area. Humboldt County, California has a very similar climate to Aysén, Chile and would be a great hedge against climate change: the climate projections I’ve seen recently suggest that the storm track that dumps rain on Humboldt County during the fall, winter, and spring will remain consistent or bring more water. Because the "green rush" has been ended by crackdowns on illegal growing operations, lots of affordable properties are up for sale there. That said, Humboldt is extremely remote and isolated. 

To explore all the possibilities along the rainy coast, I have considered going on a bike tour from San Francisco to Seattle along the coast highway and getting to know all the little towns on California’s Lost Coast and the Pacific Northwest. I might be able to accomplish this with the ~three weeks of vacation that I will have stored up by April or May of this next year, but I also wonder whether that would add a stressful element to my journey (“gotta get to Seattle by next week”). I think it could be fun to have a bike setup where my backpacking pack can be converted to a pannier so I could lock my bike and go on a backpacking trip for a couple days. If my current job doesn’t work out and I don’t find a remote one in the meantime, this could be a good option. 

I have broadly been putting thought into what exactly I want to do with my life, more than just “where”. In no particular order, these things are:

- Learn to grow all types of vegetables

- Learn natural building techniques, including underground / earth-sheltered construction 

- Adopt a dog and maybe some cats 

- Take care of chickens and maybe goats 

- Exercise: Mountain bike, run on trails, paddle? ski? 

- Establish a community structure that gives other homestead-minded folks the opportunity to plug into what I am currently striving to create from scratch 

I have recognized that there may be a tradeoff between my vegetable-growing goals and skiing. Places with snow have a much shorter growing season and would require that I get really crafty with greenhouses and cold frames. This could still work, but the best places to enjoy the snow are where the snow is cold and fluffy (like Colorado, Minnesota, or Alaska). In other words, a place with a decent growing season that still experiences some snow (e.g. the Pacific Northwest or Maine) would come with many months of sloppy, slushy, wet snow, especially as the climate warms in these places. Because Colorado is so high, it gets lots of “cold smoke” and plenty of sun throughout the spring, summer, and fall. But there is still the limitation of soil: Colorado’s soils are extremely thin with very little organic matter. I honestly feel like I have mostly gotten my kicks when it comes to skiing; the only experiences that could top previous ones are living near an experts-only or ski-only resort such as the ones in Utah or the Swiss Alps. Maybe when I get tired of homesteading, I can retire to one of these places. 

You will notice traveling didn’t make it onto my list above (aside from the potential West Coast bike tour). Maybe I will feel the need later in life, but what I really want right now is to be in a place for a while. I want this stability so that I can adopt a dog, invest my free time in creative projects and in my own future, stop paying rent, prepare for climate change and steady societal collapse, and put my small stack of chips into land rather than cash. A big part of what didn’t work in my recent relationship was that I was not established and not in a place I really wanted to be. This is a bit of a Catch-22: I want to live in the middle of nowhere, but I haven’t found the partner and community to go do that with. It seems though, that I probably won’t find these people until I am a little closer to doing what I want to be doing. 

I don’t really know how my family fits into all this. A small farm with animals wouldn’t give me much leeway to take extended trips home. Northern Minnesota is definitely on the table for this reason, but the climate doesn’t really support my vegetable growing goals. I could extend the growing season with greenhouses and cold frames, but I would still be limited to about half the year. There are no mountains there. 

Big Sur, Santa Cruz, and Beyond

Over the past week, Raffelina and I took a road trip up to Santa Cruz to visit her college campus and friends; along the way we drove the coast road through Big Sur and spent a couple nights there. 

The first day, we drive through San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo counties to the southern edge of Big Sur, Ragged Point. The traffic in Orange, Los Angeles, and Ventura counties is an absolute nightmare! We don’t have a campsite booked for that first night and plan to camp out of the truck at a Highway 1 pull-off near San Carpoforo Creek. Unfortunately for us, the spot is better for tent camping than truck camping, because there is plenty of open space for tents on the beach but the pull-off spots are right on the side of Highway 1. On this remote coast, we don’t have cell service to search for alternatives. Adding to our misfortune is the early sunset that ends the day at 5pm. This has always caught me off-guard: it feels like summer, but the day ends so early! Thankfully we had stopped at a pull-off overlooking the ocean about a half hour before sunset to cook our rice noodle dinner and watch the sunset. After we accept our less-than-ideal accommodations, we go on a little moonlit walk on the beach, where the San Carpoforo Creek fans out to the ocean, and then do some reading in the truck before going to sleep. 

In the morning, we greet the sun on the beach – Raf does yoga, I drink coffee. We walk around and take in views of the rocky headlands, wide beach delta, and pale blue surf illuminated by the rising sun. We drive north along the coast, stopping at a handful of scenic overlooks and state parks, including Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, where a creek tumbles over a cliff onto a small cove beach. In Big Sur, the mountains meet the sea: the road winds up and down along ragged cliffs cut by steep stream channels and ravines. We arrive far too early at our campsite for the second night in Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, so we park just outside of the park and go for a hike. Unlike much of the Big Sur coastline, which comprises steep mountainsides that drop precipitously to the sea with little forest or flat space, Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park lies in a northwest trending coastal valley forested with redwoods and oaks. On our hike, we walk up through the redwoods, into the oak shrublands, and take in views of the valley opening up to the ocean.

Around 2pm, we check in to our campsite along the Big Sur River (really a stream, not a river). Raf wants some reading time in her hammock and I am feeling more exercise, so I ditch my shirt and start running up the Mount Manuel trail. I hadn’t gone on a trail run in about two years, and it feels absolutely fantastic! I can’t bring myself to run in the city, both due to the toxic air and the pavement that pounds away at the knees. I live to push my cardiovascular system; I feel most alive when I’m hurling myself up a mountain, whether on a bike, skis, or my own two feet. The trail switchbacks four miles up through the redwood forests and the oak shrublands into wide open chaparral. I run the first three miles and walk the last one because the shrubs are a little too thick for running. The views from the top are incredible: jagged peaks of the Santa Lucia mountains to the east and south, where they bow to the Pacific blazing blue in the sunset glow. I feel my soul awakening. When I return to the campsite at dusk, Raf had made rice noodles. We go to sleep listening to the sounds of the stream. 

The next day, we enjoy a leisurely morning with teff pancakes, reading, and tea next to the stream. We pack up and drive a few miles down the road to Andrew Molera State Park on the coast. There, we hike a short distance to a secluded beach, where we swim and warm up briefly before starting our longer hike. This leads up through open chaparral and oak shrublands onto a bluff overlooking the ocean to the west and the Santa Lucia Mountains to the east. We descend the bluff toward the coast and follow a spur trail onto a pristine, sandy beach glowing in the late afternoon sun. From there, we walk along the shoreline back to the trailhead, passing through rock archways and wandering through mounds of seaweed. That night, we again have no accommodations lined up (all the campgrounds are super booked!), so we drive north along Highway 1 until we find a road leading east into the Bixby Canyon on the north side of the bridge. Trying to find a spot that is isolated from the lights and noise of the highway, we drive a few hundred yards down this road, cook dinner on the tailgate, and call it a night. Even though we have good flashlights and headlamps, darkness at 5pm makes camping a challenge, and a little less enjoyable! 

The next day, we leave Big Sur and drive through Monterey before stopping at a beach in Marina, where I make coffee and teff pancakes and Raf catches up on some communications with her friends in Santa Cruz. In Santa Cruz, we explore the beautiful University of Santa Cruz campus in the redwood forest, eat at the dining hall, and then sneak into the hot tub at the Dream Inn near the wharf. Afterward, we head over to Raf’s friend Ezzy’s house, where we are spending the night. The next day, we go on a rambling hike along some train tracks in the redwood forest and then along the San Lorenzo River (really a stream, not a river). We eventually lose the trail and find ourselves scrambling on boulders and steep slopes lining the stream channel. We have a great time trying to find a safe route back up to the train tracks, which we eventually do, just in time to find the established trail that leads back down to the stream. Later that day, Raf’s friend treats us to a spa session at “Well Within”, where we drink tea, soak in the hot tub, and sit in the sauna. We spend Thanksgiving with the family of one of Raf’s friends before driving home on Black Friday. 

Reentry following this trip has been a real challenge for me. I’ve been struggling to appreciate San Diego life for a while now, and this trip gave me a brief taste of the forests, streams, and mountains that I am missing. As someone who values clean air, clean water, quiet, open space, things that grow, and generally healthy living, my life in San Diego feels wrong. I sometimes feel like I’ve betrayed my former and future self. In contrast to some of the beautiful places I’ve lived over the past ten years, my daily life can feel a bit nightmare-ish at times. I don’t regret making the move to San Diego: after years of living in remote places and then visiting cities occasionally, I had developed a renewed curiosity for city living and forgotten why I had rejected it years ago. This experience has served as a reminder (hopefully for life) that city living is not for me. It’s possible that I could be happy in a city that has embraced the benefits of dense living (e.g. good public transit, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, limited vehicle ownership etc.) and associated improvements in quality of life (e.g. clean air), but Americans seem to have no interest in such a culture. 

Over the past few months, I had settled into a routine of working 7am-4pm at my place in Ocean Beach, and then riding my bike over to Golden Hill to visit Raffelina. For a while, I was really loving the ride – it was the perfect way to get in some exercise and avoid the stress of afternoon traffic on the 5. Sadly, in September I noticed some tightness in my chest, dizziness, and headaches following these rides, so I did the ride with a “Pocket Lab” air quality monitor. At the intersection of Nimitz and Rosecrans, the reading of PM2.5, those particles that are too small to be filtered by the nose and mouth and tend to lodge themselves deep in the cardiovascular and nervous systems and lead to respiratory problems, cancer, and dementia, shot up from around 20 to 70 micrograms per cubic meter, fourteen times the World Health Organization recommended level. The Air Quality Index shot up from 50 to 170, solidly in the range that is “unhealthy for all groups”. 

Needless to say, this experience had me feeling pretty deflated. It really takes the fun out of riding a bike when it doesn’t feel healthy. This is a problem I’ve confronted at various times in my life: biking down 30th street in Boulder during sunny ozone-full afternoons, hauling produce through the summer streets of Minneapolis. I started avoiding my rides to the grocery store, limiting my rides to Golden Hill by arranging a bike-pool with Raffelina, and wearing a respirator when I ride my bike. Still, I feel like I’m wasting my youth energy playing in traffic, shaving months off my life, and accelerating my mental deterioration. 

I long to spend my free time gardening, building structures, and generally investing energy into my surroundings and future, rather than the leisure activities that are currently available to me. Surfing is fun and really helps me get a sense of freedom and peace, but it’s not something I could build a life on. San Diego has some cool hikes, but I really miss forests and streams, and I value access to places for regular recreation that don't require getting in the car for too long. I really need nature to be integrated with my home life; I need to be able to spend time outside at home. 

My employer (the Department of Interior) is working (at a snail’s pace) on a new process for employees to apply for “remote” work (in contrast to “telework”, an established policy that requires two visits to the office each biweekly pay period). As the remote work option becomes available, I will apply for it; however, my job has become a nightmare over the past few months as I continue to be handed over-budget, past-the-deadline, dumpster-fire projects that I am expected to frantically push across the finish line. I’ve started putting out feelers for a new gig. Raffelina wants to be in San Diego through June 2023 and then go on a long world trip, so it’s looking like our timelines are sadly not in alignment. 

For a while, I’ve been trying to honor my journey, be patient with the process, let life unfold, and avoid forcing the next step. However, I can’t lie to myself and ignore the inescapable fact that I am unhappy. I sometimes wish that I could be satisfied with city life in the same way that my friends and family can, that I could resolve the need to improve my life and my surroundings. Although my iterative life process has brought me a lot of joy and personal growth over the past ten years, it can also be extremely painful to make changes and improvements to my life on a regular basis. My soul must have been forged in pre-Industrial Revolution times, or even pre-Agricultural Revolution times, for I often struggle to exist as a 21st century human. I don't understand how you all have adapted so well. 

I want to live in a place with clean air, moisture, mountains, streams, and forests. I long to be established enough to adopt a dog. I long to rebuild the old cedar cabin that we deconstructed in June 2020. I turned 29 a few months back and 30 looms ahead; the thought of my San Diego experience bleeding too far into my 30’s doesn’t feel right at all. I need to spend ages ~30-40 putting my energy into my life projects. I have stashed away a pretty comfortable amount of cash and retirement savings at this point, so I feel some freedom in making a move that prioritizes my mental and physical health. While it’s certainly not advisable to make changes to one’s employment, relationship, and home all at once, I feel ready and empowered to begin making careful plans. I’ve begun talking to a forest farm community in southern Oregon that could offer a great opportunity to develop my skills in growing food, caring for animals, and natural building. The only drawback is the intense fire season throughout inland southern Oregon and northern California that reduces air quality significantly more than vehicle traffic, but for a much shorter time period. I am tempted to spend solitary and silent time in nature (e.g. Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Bike Tour, rebuilding cedar cabin) to gather strength for the next opportunity. Let this post serve as a formal solicitation for advice or recommendations for the next move. I am overwhelmed, but I am driven, calm, and resilient.