Hi All,

Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged here, and I hope to fill in more details eventually.  Meantime I need to tell you the Good and the Bad – the beautiful camps and the highway crash.

Meantime, life continues to amaze me – as I’ve seen so much beautiful Nature – and human-made things like the planosphere above – made of solid slabs of – redwood? – with crystals (lighted!) that mark the stars!  I saw this in Slab City – in a community called East Jesus – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Homeless

In September of 2016, I found myself unexpectedly homeless!  I’d felt moved to sell my home in Silver City, but had been unsure until I was promised a small (and humble) but MOST lovely place to live in Nature – by a friend who managed the place.  However, after I sold my home and moved all of my belongings from New Mexico to Arizona, I learned that the current tenants of the home I’d been offered had chosen not to move, leaving me with nowhere to go and 4 storage lockers jammed to the ceilings with my possessions in chaos – and winter approaching and winter clothes impossible to find.

Since I didn’t want to live anywhere else nearby, and couldn’t afford to rent indefinitely, I opted for a new/used travel trailer and a new/used truck, and I hit the road looking for a new location that “called.”  Nothing called, but “the road.”

My first year, I traveled all around the West, visiting long-lost friends and incidentally visiting many beautiful places.

For my second year, I knew I wanted only one thing:

To Be of Service

September 2017, I spent the entire month doing annual maintenance on both vehicles – and then headed out in search of whatever Service work Spirit might lead me to.  My first week after the maintenance was done I spent working for my old best friend from grade school and high school, helping her move.

On October 7, just forty miles from my storage lockers where I intended to take care of one last reorganization, my trailer seemed to be remote controlled*, went into a most extreme series of increasing fishtails (despite my having experienced them and having pulled out of them before – easily, I could not control them this time), and the trailer fell over, pulling over my truck and me in it.

Thankfully no other vehicles were involved.  I awoke from unconsciousness, hanging sideways in my seat restraint, freed myself carefully, climbed out the back window of the truck, and proceeded to convince myself and everyone else that I was “fine.”

(*The timing and circumstances of this crash were both extremely weird.   I’ll explain them both later.)

Day four, I woke in extreme pain, realizing that my bed sheets (taken with my mattress from the trailer, opened up during the crash on the highway, and then laid as they were on the floor where I slept) were filled with road grit from the accident – that I’d never noticed the last two nights!  I also sensed for the first time that my spine was severely messed up and I had a concussion and could feel my brain swelling – and would for the coming weeks and months. Having not realized that, I’d done an incredible amount of work to move my belongings for the previous 3 days – work I should probably not have done.

Needing Help

Eventually both spine and brain were healed; however, not wanting to burden anyone (after all, I had just left my long-term community and was now where I knew only a few people and not that well), I carried all my own (ten) bags and boxes everywhere, into and out of each home that gave me shelter, tried my best to do for myself, cooking and organizing as well as I could, but unable to find the mental or physical energy for necessary things I thought I could do for myself – but couldn’t:  remember to pay bills, find the supplements like fish oil that I desperately needed, etc.  It was an extremely forlorn and painful time.  I moved 10 times in 10 weeks.

Mid-November, I was so depressed by the moving and situations that didn’t help healing (like loud TV when I desperately needed to sleep), that I HAD to find my own home.  After two weeks of searching the Internet, comparing prices and driving a few rigs, on November 29 I purchased a new/used rig – no truck and trailer this time, but a truck and camper, both older and more beat-up than my crashed rig, but what I could afford with the partial payment from my insurance company and a little borrowed money.

The Rubber Tramp Rendezvous

After 6 weeks of re-outfitting (it takes longer than you might imagine), I discovered online the CheapRVLiving.org site and the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous it sponsors every January – for people living inexpensively on the road.  South of Quartzsite, Arizona, it was too near to not attend, so I traveled there alone, picking up a solar panel kit on the way.

The RTR was a fantastic event, with an impressive demonstration of humans’ ability to believe in and practice a “gift economy.”  When I began working on my photovoltaic system my first morning there, a stranger offered to help – and continued to help after dark (!) till I was almost finished (just ring terminals to go, which I didn’t have).  That evening, visiting neighbors, I scored a couple of ring terminals, and finished the job first thing in the morning – generating my own electricity on day two.

Of course, throughout the coming two weeks, I offered to help other women with their solar systems, demonstrated solar cooking three times, led an impromptu rocket-stove building workshop, and gave away a lot of stuff on the “Free” blanket.  The entire gathering was wonderful and inspiring.

In Service again

There is much more to tell, especially the Service work I’m doing currently – helping a friend in serious need, whose details I’ll keep private.  In brief, I’m honored to be helping again.

As for the “Remote Control”

Uh…  Too long a story.  I’ll blog on that next.

[I recorded the story in a midnight video here.]

Meantime, I hope this serves as a “catch up” on the last 19 months – not counting the single Travelogue last Spring that had no context.  This is the context.

Okay, catch you later ~

(Soon, I hope.)

Jean