Anatomy of a Plan

It's been raining quite a lot this summer so we haven't really gotten to test the full capacity of our solar panel yet. Though every once in a while the clouds open enough to let the sun through for a brief brilliant moment. Here is a picture of one of those sunrise moments in through our sheltering trees and of Magnolia with early the dawn light filtering through the trees.


Hardly a day goes by when I don't find myself describing our lives in response to a casual question like "where do you live?" or "what did you do today?" and, so far I am not satisfied with any response. We live in a school bus, but I think of it more as a home and safe haven than a magical mystery touring vehicle. We aren't traveling across the landscape with a new view from the windows every day like the "full timers" with whom we have in common a living space on wheels. Like nomads, we migrate with the warm weather since we can't live in the lovely Magnolia in long extended cold, but we do not have a community that travels with us. We tend to settle for weeks at a time and engage with the land and people who become our neighbors - sojourners perhaps.

We are vagabonds wandering to places that call to us. We have been exploring the territory in northern Vermont known as the Northeast Kingdom. Here is a picture of a "living roof" we discovered there. My friend Rebekah suggested that we build a series of these roofs without walls, to shelter Magnolia in all the places that we return again and again.

Mostly though, the last two years have been flowing with the River Cancer. That river and we have parted company now and we are free to GO. Here is a picture of Zpora taking the very last of her chemo medications.


So what next? We have decided to convert Magnolia to run on straight veggie grease (we'd only need to collect and filter it). This means figuring out how to filter and store the ...er... smelly stuff and putting in a separate line and filter to the engine. Our friend Charles has agreed to help with that. I'll document the whole thing and post it here! We have an emerging P L A N, but it still needs to "mature" a bit before it's worth posting here. Stay tuned.