Land!

Posts about buying land, and my adventures on the land I bought.

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Journal: July 14th, 2010 (Part 2)

Right now, I’m feeling incredibly proud of myself. I had this moment earlier, when I realized what I’d accomplished. Less than a year ago, this was bare vacant land. There was nothing here, but completely untouched wilderness, save for a single dirt road. Today, I have a hut, a garden, solar-generated electricity, refrigeration, enough water and food to last me a while, and all the tools and assorted materials to build most things. I am comfortable enough, that I can spend my days laying in my hammock reading, and stay up here for months if I wanted to. I’ve done it. I’m living in the woods.

Granted, there’s a lot more work to do, but most of it is non-essential, at least for the time being. One of the bigger construction projects on my list is to build a water tower so that I can setup an automated irrigation system, but that’s mostly so that I can leave my property without depending on my neighbor to water my garden. The other big project is obviously the hut extension, but it’s not something I really need during the summer. It’ll be nice to have an insulated, clean, bug-screened structure to stay in, but I’m actually doing ok without it for now. The hut will become essential when it gets cooler, but I have 3 or 4 months to prepare for that.

I don’t want to call this homesteading yet, though. It’s probably more like pre-homesteading. I still consider it an experiment, and the objective is still to learn. What I’m doing now is also not sustainable in the long run. I’m living off of savings, and burning through cash way too fast. In the fall, I’m probably going to have to find a job again, and this time, I’ll probably take the plunge and get a full time job so that I can pay off all my loans, save enough money for a well, and then some. Once my debts are paid, and I have the bigger comfier hut, and a well, I think I’ll be ready to actually homestead. Without loan payments to make, and big construction projects to pay for, the cost of living will be ridiculously low. The well is also crucial. Right now, it’s not practical to haul in enough water for a garden much larger than the one I have now. But if I have access to virtually unlimited water right here on my property, I can grow a garden large enough to actually become self sufficient, and maybe grow a surplus that I can sell. I’d also be able to raise livestock; the area around my property is an open range for cattle, after all. Even then, I don’t know if it’ll be possible to be completely self sufficient, or make enough money to be cash-flow neutral or better. But I guess I’ll find out, and I’ll let you know when I get there.

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Journal: July 14th, 2010

It’s been an exciting week here in Serenity Valley. A couple of days ago, my neighbor came by to tell me about some bear tracks he’d found about half a mile away from our respective camps. The tracks were very faint, but two of them were very close together making them look like “Big Foot” tracks. Bears have five toes, like humans, so the confusion isn’t entirely surprising. But this is the clearest evidence of bears in the area, though these are probably black bears, and my neighbor estimates them to weigh 200-300 pounds based on the size of the tracks, so I’m not terribly concerned.

Later in the day, I went on an ATV ride with my neighbor’s granddaughter through our “backyard”, also known as Lassen National Forest. I feel truly fortunate to have a 1700 square mile backyard, that’s literally a fence hop away. There’s a network of well maintained logging roads throughout the area, as well as narrower hunter’s trails, and a trail that follows the BNSF line that cuts through our section and through the national forest. We followed the BNSF line for a while to one of her favorite spots, then I saw a meadow in the distance, so we went to check that out. It turned out to be a rather large field, maybe a third of a mile long and a couple hundred yards wide, and completely treeless. We found a pond or a spring in the middle of it, which we predicted would be there based on the greenness of the grass. Near that, we found an old crumbling log structure of some sort, probably not a cabin but perhaps a corral or pen for livestock.

From there, we followed some dirt roads back towards our respective properties (my neighbors live in the same section, and have setup a trailer about 300 yards from my camp), by way of an interesting (and random) sand quarry, and the pond near my property, where we found interesting tracks (pictured above). These tracks were huge, but I’m not sure whether they’re dog prints (it’d have to be a giant dog) or mountain lions. (Check out this photo for an analysis).

I went into town one day with my neighbors too, and while on the county road leading into town, we saw smoke in the distance. It was still light colored and faint enough that we thought it was maybe a huge dust devil, but the smoke had turned darker in color by the time we reached town, and if that wasn’t clue enough, it was clear from the trucks driving out of the volunteer fire station in town that we were witnessing the first significant local forest fire of the season. The smoke continued to grow larger and thicker while we were in town, and apparently the fire had grown to 140 acres in a matter of an hour. We could see fire fighting planes and helicopters with buckets slung underneath them circling around and through the smoke. Fortunately, they evidently got the fire under control, though I don’t know what the total burnt area was at the end. And the sign at the local ranger station only said fire risk was “moderate”… (The ranger I talked to today said they thought it might’ve been a sleeper from lightning that struck last week, that suddenly flared up.)

While in town, we also heard the big news of the day: a local boy had been killed in Afghanistan. I’m sure losses like that hit harder in small communities like these, where everybody knows everybody else. I also wondered whether people here reflected on the fact that their boy ostensibly died fighting “terrorists” who would never possibly strike rural communities like these1.

Other than that, life’s been pretty chill. I’ve given up on trying to do much work, and have been relaxing. In some sense, I think it’s an accomplishment that I’ve gotten my property to a level of comfort where I actually can just relax all day. Between sleeping in the tent, and the fully enclosed hammock I got, the bugs haven’t been too much of a nuisance either.

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Footnotes:
1 – I might mention, though, that during WW2 the Japanese hatched a plan to bomb and shell the Pacific North West, to start massive forest fires. They did manage to send bombs on hot air balloons that did reach the US homeland, and a submarine also managed to lob some shells at the Oregon coast, but they didn’t do much damage. Though, if done right from the actual interior of the country, a similar plot could do quite a bit of damage….
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Journal: July 11th, 2010

I got back to Serenity Valley last night from a 4 day trip to San Francisco. The first thing I did, of course, was to check my garden, which my neighbor had been watering for me. Fortunately, I hadn’t lost any plants in my absence, so it seems like my little fence might’ve done the job, though I guess I never know when my garden terrorist might come back with enough persistence to get past the barrier.

The corn had grown noticeably, though the other plants mostly looked the same. The squash continues to do well, and I had a couple of tiny, but ripe, strawberries on one of my strawberry plants. Today, some zucchini seeds I sowed before I left sprouted, and a couple of okra seeds are also sprouting. The bean and corn seeds I sowed to replace the lots plants also sprouted today, though the corn that got razed seems to continue to grow, and are back to being a couple of inches tall. The egg plants and peppers continue to be sort’ve meh. A couple of the egg plants seem to be doing ok, but the other two seem to hardly be growing at all. The peppers also don’t seem to be getting noticeably larger, though they do seem to be sprouting new leaves. I might take out two of the six pepper plants, and plant more zucchini instead…

I didn’t do a whole lot today, mostly because of the heat, and also because it usually takes a day or so to get acclimated. About the only significant “work” I did today was to string up a new hammock I got. It’s a fully enclosed hammock, with sides made of mesh cloth to keep out insects. Unlike ordinary hammocks, I can use it without getting bothered by buzzing insects, or getting my blood drained, though mosquitos might be able to still get me through the canvas bottom.

The other thing I did was to pitch a tent, and prepare my bed. I’ve noticed that how well I sleep impacts my quality of life, and my quality of sleep is affected by what I sleep in and on. I’ve noticed that I don’t sleep as well in or under a sleeping bag, as I do under a proper blanket or duvet. Pillows are also important, and clean sheets also are an added bonus. I slept in the hut last night, but the sleeping pad in my current hut isn’t too comfortable. It’s only 2ft wide, hard to climb into and get out of, and I have very little head room. I’ve also been sleeping in the car, but the back seats don’t fold down completely flat, it gets hot in the morning when the sun pours in through the windows, and it’s annoying to have to move my bedding in and out when I need to use the car to haul things. So I pitched my larger 7’x8′ tent, under a nice oak grove next to my hut, on the western side where it’ll be shaded all morning. Inside, I first placed a 3’x6′ OSB sheet so I have a flat surface to sleep on, rolled out a rug that I bought at Wal-Mart so that I have a clean “floor”, laid down my sleeping pads, wrapped it up in clean sheets, and put the duvet that I brought up from the city on top of that. This is about as comfortable (and clean) a bedding as I’ve prepared for myself up here. We’ll see how I sleep tonight.

Temperature regulation continues to be a challenge. I am obviously not freezing like I was last November, but now I’m having a hard time staying cool. It was 92F in the shade today, and while that’s a little warmer than average up here, it’s not atypical either. It got hot in the tent. It got hot in the hammock. It got hot in the hut. The only place where it was reasonably cool was right in front of the hut, where there’s shade all day, and I can catch whatever air movement there is. Though, I think the hut will stay much cooler if I can insulate the roof. I think that might be a project for the coming week.

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My future commuter (flying) car

Lately, I’ve been spending most of my time up on my property, but have been driving down to San Francisco every couple of weeks. Depending on the stops I make, it can take six or seven hours for the trip, which isn’t too bad for a day’s drive, but it’s long enough to discourage me from going on short trips. Though my city-to-woods ratio may vary depending on how much free time and/or money I have, I will be living a dual lifestyle for the foreseeable future, and this long “commute” has been something of a headache for me.

Fortunately, a solution is on the horizon: flying cars will soon (finally!) become a reality! The Terrafugia Transition has been approved by the FAA, and will apparently be available next year. Once I come up with $200k and get a sport pilot license, this’ll be the perfect solution for getting to my property and out to the city. The Transition supposedly gets 30MPG on the road, and 5 gallons per hour in the air. It flies at 115 miles per hour, which means it’ll take a little over 2 hours to cover the distance between San Francisco and my property, burning a little over 10 gallons of gas. That’ll cut transit time to a third, while consuming less gas than it does to drive! The best part is, the Transition only needs a third of a mile of runway, so I can take off and land directly on my property if I build a landing strip (which is actually permitted by zoning codes). There’s also an airfield about 20 minutes away from my property as well, not to mention, nice long straight empty county roads nearby, where I can land and drive to my property without ditching the plane and switching to a car.

This is really exciting because it opens up new lifestyle possibilities that currently aren’t practicable. For instance, a flying car like this would totally make it feasible for me to live on my property and commute to Silicon Valley a couple of times a week, or perhaps for a few days a week. Sure, $200k for the plane and 20 gallons of gas per trip ain’t exactly cheap (not to mention the maintenance costs), but it’s sure as hell cheaper than buying a house in Silicon Valley (average home prices are around $500-700k). Also worth noting is that flying cars like these can be parked in regular parking spots, which alleviates the need for expensive tarmac or hangar spaces at an airfield (which, if I understand correctly, is one of the big recurring expenses that makes private plane ownership prohibitively expensive for many).

While the manufacturer seems to currently have rich hobbyist fliers in mind, use-cases like the one I outlined above will ultimately decide whether flying cars remain toys for the rich, or become ubiquitous transportation options for the masses like their grounded predecessors. I’ve been working on a longer article about how, contrary to popular thinking, modern technology could (soon) make rural living comfortable, practical, cheaper, and more efficient. This seems like another piece in making that a reality.

Originally seen on Boing Boing
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Bored?

People often ask me whether I get bored up here. They ask me what I do, as if I need to do anything to pass time in the woods. Next time someone asks me that, I’ll explain it this way: Imagine watching the Discovery channel or Nature channel. Except it’s in super ultra realistic HD. And it’s in 3D. And it’s all around you. And, it’s like a video game, in that you can move around, and look at different things. That’s what it’s like, but more awesome.

The reality is, most people my generation don’t seem to have ever experienced the woods. Yes, many of them go hiking. I’ve gone hiking with them. But hiking in the woods, on trails, is completely different to experiencing the woods. When my friends go hiking, they walk pretty fast, and they talk most of the time, without really paying attention to what’s around them. Covering ground and socializing seem to take priority. But you actually can’t see much when you’re walking and talking. All the noise will scare off wild life, and most of the interesting things in the woods happen at such a micro scale, that you simply will miss it if you are walking.

When I’m up here, I spend most of my time within fifty yards of my hut. That area basically covers my entire camp, including my solar panels, my garden, and my cargo trailer. And let me tell you, there is so much to experience even in just that 50 yard radius. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, I watched entranced as a few ants dragged a caterpillar, still alive, across my garden bed. It was an epic struggle. The caterpillar would wriggle and writhe and hook its stubby little legs onto anything it could, but it was no match for ants a tiny fraction of its size. Just in the time I was watching them, the ants had dragged the caterpillar about 6ft down my garden.

Just a few minutes ago, I came across some interesting night life going on on a young pine tree. The tips of some of the branches were covered in little tiny insects, little brown mites, and swarming above and around these mites were a bunch of huge ants. In comparison to the mites, these ants were giants, and they were busily feeling about with their antlers. They weren’t attacking the mites, but it looked like they might be collecting mite poop or something, though it was all too small to see clearly what was going on.

And those are just a couple of examples. I can remember one time when I was sitting in my chair, and a humming bird came and hovered an arm’s length away. A couple of days ago, I saw a big fat lizard acting all weird, then found it dead later in the evening, just outside my hut. Yesterday, Skippy the Squirrel came and sat on his tree near my hut, looking all adorable (I’m glad he survived the winter). Later in the day, I found a dead fox, legs all curled, as if it had died while running. Earlier today, I noticed drag marks in the dirt right near my car, with squirrel tracks, and what might’ve been fox prints. Around dinner time, I found out that the tender stems of wheat grass can be quite tasty (though, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to eat them). In the past I’ve photographed interesting plant phenomena, as well as all the pretty wildflowers, of which there seems to be a new type blooming every week. And of course, I check on the sprouting seedlings in my garden several times a day, and every time I look, I spot a new sprout breaking the surface.

Then there are projects. Right now, I’ve got lumber to build a nice big worktable. I also need to make a couple of planter boxes and sow more seeds. There’s also this solar water distiller that I want to try and make to recycle gray water. My hammock could use some shade over it. Of course, there’s the hut extension to think about.

If that’s not enough, there are always chores and life tasks to perform. My solar panels need to be reoriented several times a day. I need to think about what to eat, and prepare my meals. I need to put my solar shower out, then take a shower before it cools. I need to move water from my 7 gallon carriers into the 55 gallon drum. The garden needs to be watered, and before dark, my headlamp batteries need to be charged.

Then the sun sets, turning the sky into a magical gradient of orange and blue and violet. The stars come out, more of them than you’ll ever see in the city. Up here, you can see satellites zipping across the sky. I brush my teeth, lock everything up, and turn in for the night. I read in bed for an hour or two. Then, I’ll go to sleep, knowing that tomorrow morning, when I step out the door, I’ll be stepping into the most amazing museum in the world, with a brand new exhibit, and a surprise or two.

Bored? Never.

Note:This post was written last week.
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Defending the Garden

I checked my garden first thing in the morning, as I usually do, before even pulling on my pants. To my dismay, I found that I’d lost another 10 or so corn plants, or twice as many as I lost yesterday. Clearly, what happened yesterday wasn’t an isolated incident; whatever it is that’s eating my plants knows they’re there, and likes them. I don’t blame them. I ate some corn shoots myself, and they’re actually quite tasty (slightly bitter at first, but then surprisingly sweet).

Great. My plan for the day was to lock up camp and head out to the city, and since that trip takes 6 hours, I usually try to leave as early as possible. But it was clear that if I left my garden unprotected, my entire crop could be lost before I returned. Something had to be done.

Before doing anything, I stepped off the dirt and onto the rocks to avoid further contaminating the crime scene, and carefully observed the ground for tracks. Unfortunately, I didn’t see much: a couple of prints that vaguely looked like rabbit, and some marks that might’ve been deer hoof prints. But without solid evidence, I wasn’t even sure what I’d need to protect my garden from. If I wasn’t sure whether it was rabbit or deer, I’ll have to defend against both.

I considered my options. If I were truly awesome in a McGyver-esque fashion, I might’ve concocted a chemical solution using random spices and cleaning liquids, that I could spray on the plants to discourage animals from eating them, without doing harm to the plants themselves. Or, perhaps I would’ve written an iPhone app to emit a frequency that plant eating animals don’t like. No. It should be a robotic sentry. Maybe it’ll even be armed. But know not to shoot at my neighbor when she comes to water the plants.

Rest assured, I only wasted mere seconds –okay, maybe a few minutes– on such fantasies. Obviously, I needed a fence. I surveyed my resources at hand. I had some chicken wire that I bought a while back, though the roll I had was only 2ft wide and 50ft long. Not enough, but it’ll have to do. I had plenty of two-by-fours laying around to use as fence posts, though it took me a while to decide how to erect the posts. One option was to bust out the post hole digger, but I quickly eliminated that option. The dry compacted ground is solid, and rocky. I wasn’t going to dig holes in that kind of ground in this kind of heat, while under time pressure. I eventually opted to build free-standing mobile fence post structure, consisting of two 4ft posts attached on ends of a single 8ft length of 2×4, with legs coming out for stability (and corner braces to keep the whole thing rigid). Two sets of those, and I’d have 4 corner posts. I busted out my power tools, and got to work.

The end result is what you see in the picture above. The chicken wire only goes 18 inches off the ground (6 inches spill onto the ground and are weighted down with rocks to hopefully prevent rabbits from digging underneath), and I strung up some neon pink twine with bright orange flags tied to it a foot or so above the wire, to hopefully discourage deer from stepping over the mesh.

I have to admit, it was a fun project. Since I still wanted to hit the road as soon as possible, I had to think fast and work fast. Running to the hardware store would’ve been too time consuming (at least an hour round trip), so I had to make do with what I had, and I think I did ok. I guess the real question is whether it works. We’ll see…

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Journal: July 4th, 2010

Being alone for a holiday is often difficult for me, but up here, today was just like any other day. Except, quieter. It seemed like I didn’t hear as many cars on the nearby road, fewer trains on the nearby tracks, and no sound from my neighbors, who probably were away for the day.

While I wasn’t particularly lonely, I did reflect on how many holidays I’d want to spend alone. I wondered whether being alone up here really was better than being with friends in the city. Admittedly, if I wanted to, I could’ve gone to the city for the holiday, though, the garden needs watering, and I’m reluctant to ask my neighbor too often. But, irrigation issues aside, I do dream that someday I’ll meet a lady who’ll want to spend time up here in the woods with me. Maybe it’s not realistic, but a man can dream…

The last several days have been unproductive and difficult. I’ve been rendered completely useless by a swarm of bugs. Yes, bugs. They’re these little itty bitty winged insects, that look somewhat like tiny flies, but sound like mosquitos and fly erratically like mosquitos. And they bite. Most of them don’t most of the time, but I’ve definitely caught a few in the act, and they squirted blood (my blood, presumably) when I squished them. They’re everywhere, and I can’t go anywhere without them forming huge buzzing swarms over my head like a dark cloud. They not only buzz around my ears, but on a few occasions, they’ve even gotten into my ears and gotten stuck there, which is a really disturbing feeling. I think they’ve been munching on my ears too, because both ears are puffed up and swollen. Yesterday, my right ear was so badly swollen that I could hear the “woosh, woosh” of my blood pumping. The rest of me hasn’t faired much better. I have 15 bites just on my left shoulder (24 for the entire arm that I can count), 8 just on this small patch of skin on my neck above my right collar bone, and a continuous bumpy ridge line across my forehead where my hat meets my head. Not to mention the 4 on my toes, 6 on my legs, 3 on my stomach, 4 on my back… I haven’t been sleeping well, because I’ve been waking up in an itchy fit in the middle of the night. I’ve scratched through skin in a number of places, and most of the bites are topped with broken skin, where reddish yellowish ooze crust up like volcanoes. I’ve used up an entire bottle of insect repellant that I bought years ago and only used about 20% of until this week. I’m not sure that stuff even works for these little tiny swarming suckers; I’ve seen them practically swimming in pools of the stuff on my skin, though areas thickly coated in the repellant have so far avoided additional bites. For the most part, undeterred, they fly and crawl around until they find a patch of skin that’s unprotected.

So far, the only way I’ve been able to avoid them has been to outrun them (or walk into the wind) and keep moving, or to stay in my hut. For some reason, only half a dozen or so of them will follow me into my hut, and I can kill them off one by one. So, I’ve spent most of the last few days in my hut, feeling rather useless. The workbench that I’ve been planning on building this week is still just a pile of lumber (though I did manage to cut some of the pieces). And I only today finished the raised garden bed, doing most of the work after sunset when the little bugs seem to be less active (and are replaced by for-real mosquitos, which, at this point, I actually prefer).

Life hasn’t been completely bad though. I’ve managed to do quite a bit of shooting this week; I shot 500 rounds through my handgun, a 9mm Sig Pro 2022 that I got this spring and hadn’t had the chance to really familiarize myself with. I’ve been shooting my handgun on my “handgun range”, a place pretty close to my camp where I can shoot into the side of a hill at ranges out to 50 yards (though I only shoot the handgun out to 25 yards at most). I also got my 100yd range set up, but haven’t shot my match rifle down there yet, mostly because it’s farther away and I’ve been too lazy to haul all my gear down there, and haven’t been thrilled by the thought of putting on a sweater and shooting jacket in this heat. I’ve been debating setting up another 100 yard range right next to my camp. I’ve measured out the distance, and it’s feasible, but I’m reluctant to go through with it because the impact area, a hill about 200 yards past the target, is obscured by foliage. The hill’s on my property so it would be legal, and it’s highly unlikely that anyone would wander into the impact area, but it still makes me a little uncomfortable.

I’ve also been spending more time thinking about the hut extension, and last night, I started putting the design into Sketch-Up. The extension is going to measure 9ft by 8ft, bringing the total, when combined with my current 6ft by 8ft hut, to 15ft by 8ft. That’s 120 square feet, and the maximum allowed size for a structure without a permit in my county. The walls on the extension will be over 10ft high, allowing for a loft that is high enough off the floor to provide sufficient headspace underneath. I’d like to try something different, and frame the structure with four-by-fours instead of two-by-fours, but I’m still trying to decide if that’s practical, given that my saws can’t cut through 4 inches (well, 3.5 inches) of lumber in one go (though I could always cut half and half, if a precise cut surface isn’t required… or design so that I don’t need to cut any four-by-fours).

The garden continues to do well. The corn continues to grow at an astonishing pace, and I can’t believe that they were just tiny green shoots only a week ago. The beans are doing less uniformly well. Some seem to be doing great with a pair of nice big leaves, but some are still just stems sticking out of the ground. A couple of days ago, I found a couple of bean sprouts mysteriously broken, cleanly at the ground level, wiping out half a row (those two were the only ones that sprouted on that half of that row). I sowed more seeds there, but we’ll see if they sprout.

It’s interesting to see different plants do better or worse than others. The zucchini has been doing great, and now looks twice as large as the yellow squash plants, even though they were about the same size two weeks ago. I think the squash didn’t like the heat, but they seem to be doing better now that it’s cooled off. The strawberry plants also seem happy, and I’ll probably have a few strawberries in the next week or two. The egg plant and peppers are doing kinda meh. They don’t seem to be growing fast enough to tell, and I put some shade over them to see if that’ll help. One of my Japanese egg plant plants bloomed a flower, which I guess is a good sign, though the plant itself doesn’t seem to have grown much. But these are all plants that are supposed to take a couple of months to mature, and it’s only been a couple of weeks, so I guess it’s too early to tell.

All in all, life continues. I can’t say that it’s been the greatest week, mostly thanks to the aforementioned swarming blood suckers of doom, but it was what it was. Such is life.

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Journal: June 28th, 2010

I was in San Francisco last week, taking care of some stuff and seeing friends, and got back to Serenity Valley on Friday. I’m planning on staying up here for a couple of weeks, at least, since, once my bills are paid towards the end of the month, I have relatively little to worry about until the middle of the next month (when I have to start thinking about bills again).

I got in right around dusk on Friday, and headed straight to my garden. My neighbor had been watering my garden for me in my absence, and wanted to see how my little babies were doing. Lo and behold, I was pleasantly surprised to see little itsy bitsy vibrant green shoots sticking out of the dirt in neat little rows! Baby corn! They’d sprouted in just about a week, and man do they grow fast. I can see them getting bigger by the hour.

A row of beans have also started to sprout just in the last couple of days, though some of them seem a little under-developed. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but my hypothesis is that some of them weren’t deep enough in the ground, and are coming out of the ground prematurely. But, at least some of them are looking just fine. I have three more rows of beans between the corn that haven’t sprouted yet, and I’m a little concerned. I sowed those rather haphazardly (after unexpected rain, mentioned in the last post), so we’ll see if they sprout. I still have some seeds left, so if they don’t come out in the next several days, I’ll probably redo the beans.

It occurred to me recently that growing corn my first year might’ve been kinda silly. Corn is a heavy feeder, and will suck out all the nutrients in the ground. And besides, I don’t actually even eat that much corn, though, maybe my corn will be super amazing and it’ll all be worth it. Nonetheless, that’s partially why I’m concerned about the beans; beans put nutrients (namely nitrogen) back into the soil, so I was counting on them to balance out the corn.

Other than that, I’ve been trying to relax, which isn’t too difficult seeing how it’s been really warm. It’s around 100F in the sun, and close to 90F in the shade, so my natural inclination obviously has been to just sit in the shade, like all animals do when it’s hot out. It’s actually surprisingly difficult for me to just sit back and relax. I feel guilty if a day has gone by and I haven’t done anything productive, as if I owe it to someone to actually do work. It’s an interesting phenomenon, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of work, which I’ll hopefully write about in another post…

And speaking of work, now that my garden’s basically done, I’ve been thinking about my hut upgrade in earnest. Today, I came out to Redding (the nearest city from my property, about an hour and a half’s drive away) to check prices of building materials. I also stopped at a place in a Big Town en route to check their prices. The biggest problem is logistics. The place in Big Town would charge nearly twice as much for OSB (for instance), but deliver for only $25. Stuff’s cheaper in Redding, but delivery would be super expensive, and the cheapest option might be to rent a U-Haul, or get a tow-hitch for my car and rent a trailer.

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Journal: June 21st, 2010


Friday was a down day. I have those every now and then up here. Maybe it was the weather (partly cloudy, and humid). Maybe it was the isolation (absolutely no human contact for a few days). Maybe it was both. Either way, I spent half the day reading and dozing, and eventually got restless and decided to go into town without any clear idea what for. I tried to get online at the usual place in town, but the internet connection wasn’t working. I then went to the hardware store, where the garden section lady recognized me, which was nice. Not wanting to walk out empty handed, I bought a water sprayer (for watering carrot seeds) and some more seeds (okra, which does well in heat, and beets, which are good companions for corn). Still wanting to get online, I headed to the next town over, another 20 minutes’ drive away (so over 45 minutes’ drive from my property). The only reliable internet I could find was at a McDonalds, so McDonalds it was. I couldn’t remember the last time I stepped foot in a McDonalds, but, well, that’s where the internet was, so that’s where I went.

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.”
–May Sarton

Solitude and loneliness seem like flip sides of the same coin. I enjoy solitude, but sometimes I can’t escape loneliness. Ideally, I’d like solitude, without the loneliness. Can the two be separated? This is a process I am still struggling with, and probably will for some time. I know I can’t go for long completely disconnected from the world, but I also know I’m happier being mostly disconnected. I don’t want internet on my property. I’m happier when I’m not distracted by Facebook and Twitter and Google Reader and email and everything on the internet that demands my attention. But I’m thinking of getting a cheap Verizon phone, which should work on my property, so that I can text and call people if I get lonely. We’ll see how that goes.

I spent the better part of Saturday clearing brush around my camp. I do this partially for aesthetics (less brown and more green looks nicer), but mostly I do it for fire prevention. Or rather, I should say, to improve the odds that my stuff can survive a forest fire. There hasn’t been a fire in the woods around my property in a long while, and it’s ripe for one; there’s plenty of fuel waiting for a spark. In my admittedly amateur assessment, though, the area around my hut seems relatively safe. There’s a nice wide dirt road to the immediate North and West of my camp, and it’ll be difficult for a fire to jump that, especially considering that there’s only low brush to the North, and that prevailing winds are from the South. To the West of my property is well cleared BLM or NFS land, so it’s relatively unlikely a fire will come from that direction. Unfortunately, the South and East sides of my camp aren’t as well protected, so I’ve been clearing that area as much as possible. I’m pulling or cutting dead branches off the trees and pulling out dead brush, so that even if the ground litter burns, there won’t be much fuel to ignite bigger stuff. My garden is also to the South-East of my hut, and that clearing will hopefully act as a firebreak, if need be. Ultimately, I’m comforted in the knowledge that a forest fire is good for the forest, and the worst that can happen is that I lose some stuff, most of which can be replaced. Unlike a house, when a forest burns, it actually heals itself over time, and usually ends up healthier than it was.

On Sunday, I finished planting the last few plants, and sowed more bean seeds since the bag of seeds I’d left out got wet in unexpected rain during the night. I also busted out my power tools to build a couple of things. I first built a planter box for my anti-social tomato plants, using mostly scrap wood I had lying around. Then I made a target frame for my 100yd shooting range, using some two-by-twos and one-by-threes that I’d brought up a while ago, then faced it with tar paper I’d bought for roofing.

I had this moment of great satisfaction, when I realized that I had everything I needed. I had lumber. I had screws. I had power tools, and solar panels to charge their batteries. I craved fruit, so I rummaged through my bins and found some canned fruit. For a moment, I could pretend like the world had ended and that I was living off of my stockpile, and that I was all self-sufficient. Of course, that’s just an illusion. I have trees, but I can’t mill my own lumber. I can’t make my own nails or tools. I don’t grow nearly enough food to be self-sufficient, and my stockpile would only last me a few of months, at most. But it felt like a step in the right direction, and it felt good.

by

Journal: June 17th, 2010

I feel great. I just took a nice HOT shower, and let myself use a few extra gallons of water to even shampoo my hair! The temperature is a perfect 70 degrees, and after I finished my shower, the cool breeze felt so great on my skin that I just stood there for a while letting the air dry me off. I stood there, in the clear air, under blue skies, watching the sun mingle with the tops of ponderosa pines off to the North-West-West. Showering is one of the many perks of summer… When I was up here last Fall, I couldn’t really shower because the sun didn’t shine long enough to heat up my solar shower, and even if it did, it was too damn cold to stand outside naked and actually get wet. Now, it’s just perfect.

Now I’m sitting here, with a cold bottle of raspberry cider. I don’t drink alcohol very often, and never bother to bring booze with me to the woods, but I had this bottle of cider in my fridge, and I figured this seemed like a good time to break it out. I’m in a celebratory mood, not just because the shower felt so damn good, but because my garden is done! Well, I still need to figure out where to put those stupid tomato plants, and I have a couple more plants to put in, but most of my plants are in the ground, corn and bean seeds have been sown, and every square foot of my garden bed has been claimed. All that remains to do is to water them, and see what happens over the coming weeks and months. If all goes well, I’ll have some homegrown organic corn, zucchini, yellow squash, red bell peppers, egg plants, strawberries, tomatoes, and beans! Though, really, I’d be happy if the transplants survive the next week, and the seeds actually germinate at all. It got pretty cold last night, so I brought the yet-to-be-transplanted seedlings inside to keep them warm. But now that they’re in the ground, they’re on their own.

Planting a garden is an act of commitment, but I feel good about it. If I want to see my plants survive and grow, they’ll need to be taken care of. I won’t be able to abandon them for a long period of time, which means I’m committed to spending most of my summer up here. And I feel good about that. The last few days have been great, and I’m happy that this warm season will continue for another few months. There’s no shortage of things to do, and I doubt I’ll ever get bored of being in the woods. There’s constantly something new to see, even just outside my hut. The forest is ever changing, and always full of surprises.

Anyway, the sun’s starting to set beyond the hills, which probably means it’s about time to get ready for dinner. Once the camp fire dies down, I’ll be ready to start cooking. I’ve got some chicken marinating in lemon and thyme, and I’ll have some rice and steamed veggies to go with that. It’ll be good. It always is.