Left, Right in the Road

It was tourist season in Jackson—an easy excuse for poor driving, over-consumption of sweets, and regrettable decisions on wildlife art. I drove through town thankful I was leaving the mayhem while people honked up and down the street. The van was loud, but it was a van, and it was having issues, and so I didn’t question the road noise until I took a sharp right turn and felt air woosh across my neck. The view in the rearview mirror looked suspicious. I pulled over. The back door—a 8X6 foot panel, in this case-- had swung wide open, with all of my disorganized trappings of life perched in the exposed shelf. Based on quick math, and my recall of the last time I had opened the back, it had been splayed wide for five miles, at an average of 35 MPH....

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Vertical Homesteading

Home In Namibia, Photo by Peter Doucette

--In collaboration with Petzl, check out the good things, and the good people who make that company one of the best--

Quick test: What’s the first word that comes to mind when I say the following four places: New Hampshire, Namibia. Spain. Wyoming.

Did anyone else answer home? I’ve been in Wyoming for five weeks now, before that it was Europe for three, Namibia for five, and New Hampshire for 3.5 months before that. I pay a mortgage in Colorado, but I’m homesteading everywhere else.

Visitation implies a temporary sampling of an area. Homesteading implies making an effort at living in an area. I think I’m doing the latter—through climbing.

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Exotic Normalcy

Majka Burhardt at work, Spanish Style. Photo by Boone SpeedI’m sitting at a table under a grape vine, with a reverse pyramid of identical green fruit dripping from the vine. I’m in Spain. Even breakfast seems exotic. I’m here for work.

No one really believes me. Not even the gas station attendant. I walked inside his small shop to buy a Coke this afternoon and he asked me how my vacation was.

“Oh,” I said, “I’m here working.” It was 97-degrees outside in the sun. It’s summer, and everyone in Spain knows it.

“Trabajo?” he said, winking.

“Si,” I refused to wink back while I paid for my drink.

“Buen Viaje,” he said as I walked out the door.

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An Inbox President

I’m three months behind on my reading. I catch up in random coffee shops and doctors offices along the path of my current road trip. This is why it took me until last week to realize that I stand to risk being like George Bush.

I know. A January issue of the New Yorker told me so. Maybe if I had been more up on my periodicals, I could have stopped this likening from happening. But it’s April, and more than three months ago the Shouts and Murmurs section uttered this one phrase: George Bush was an Inbox president. Oh god, I thought when I read this, what if I am, too?

It just sounds bad. Never mind that maybe responding to crises as they arise might be considered a good trait by some—a great trait for certain situations—but to be wholly governed by the ping of a new message? Each day for the past six I have hovered my cursor over my mail program and told myself I will not be an inbox president. I repeat the mantra with the click, have a post it note on the screen as another reminder.

But is it really that bad?

Systematic life plans seem lovely to those on the go. Whimsical career changes seem envious to those focused on staying. How do you run your day? How does the day demonstrate your life? It’s self-governance, likely. It’s not being an inbox president, but checking your inbox.

Going Local

...It’s not a bad idea. I could convert the pop-top of my Eurovan to a mobile garden and grow rutabagas, kale, and garlic. It would be the ultimate in green living—I could sell my produce everywhere under the same local label. As long as I was on the move and the dirt stayed in place despite highway winds and snow, I would be my own localization....

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