Happy Anniversary Natter!!!!

ONE FULL YEAR!!! Even though we have been in the Natterbus for 3 years now, the first two years we jumped into an apartment or house when the bad weather arrived. Since going West, however, May 1st marks our first full year in the bus (minus some apartment time when we didn't have enough power)!!!! This feels huge. I will not pretend that this involved the bliss of living a simple life sitting back by a fire at night watching the snow flakes glide by the windows and laughing at how we've solved the answers to all the world's problems. There were constant challenges - from condensation and mildew to dissent for any number of moody reasons, losing power in a snow storm to tracking mud and snow through the bus, cabin fever to a leaking pipe, evacuating in a flood to a screaming voice for one reason or another echoing embarrassingly through a campground. I will also not pretend that this isn't self-imposed suffering. There are many people in poverty who do not choose to live smaller, alternative existences and they may not find this journey particularly thrilling or appealing. in fact, they may downright resent it and I do not mean to belittle their experiences. However, these were not insurmountable challenges and it is my hope that these obstacles are, as they say, "building character".

I suppose you could call it spring now. This year was so difficult to tell, being in a new area of the world and not knowing what to expect compounded by unusual weather everywhere. We returned to the Vancouver area in March to another round of snow. The locals are flabbergasted by this.

We spent a few weeks East of Vancouver while Rowdy did some work. Since he had the car this gave us some great experiences continuing to learn to ride our bikes on bike paths and in and among traffic. It was fantastic to be in such a multi-cultural community - hanging out at the local rec center pool with people from around the world. I hope to replicate this with the kids someday in parts of the world where they can experience all those other cultures first hand. Nothing pulls you out of your own ethnocentricity than landing somewhere totally foreign.

Since that time we have landed back where the kids have a homeschool group and have had some awesome school and bus moments. First, at the campground we landed at, another bus pulled in one day! What a fun experience it is for our kids to meet and see other bus folk!

This bus is wayyyyy more advanced than ours when it comes to being off the grid...the amazing woman who built it created the walls, shelving, kitchen, dinette and sleeping areas all out of clay and straw!!!!

There is a wood stove you can cook upon and she even carries a chainsaw and wood in the jockey boxes. I took many notes touring this beautiful and passion-filled bus.

The timing of this bus was perfect since we have been doing quite a bit of learning around the environment, managing our resources and waste/recycling. It is easy to feel overwhelmed as you discover more and more about the sad facts around our accumulating waste (especially plastics poisoning the ocean and washing up on remote beaches and our dwindling resources (ie: the actual amount of "clean" water in rotation in the world). However, seeing people like this who set a good example for the rest of us gives hope. We may not all be that far along, but each in our own lives we can commit to learning as much as we can, not turning a blind eye and seeing how we can make our own positive step after step.

The kids' homeschool group studied the water cycle and what happens to water during its travels. They went to a wetland and discussed the path the water took to get there and investigated what creatures lived and relied on this area. Then, they toured an amazing Water Resource Center that takes waste and turns it into usable water. Next, they visited an aquifer to find out more about where the clean water comes from and what it tastes like compared to bottled water. Back at the school they mapped the water routes to and from their individual houses and then had a week's worth of garbage dumped in front of them to envision and sort. May all trash-creating beings experience this!

Other recent homeschool projects have included felting, engineering with simple machines to more complex structures, social justice, voting in the BC elections, photography, puppet making and sharing our heritage.

At home we've been navigating our usual math, reading, never-ending Amelia Earhart project, poetry, baking, costume making, stick carving, volunteering at the local SPCA, Canadian culture studies (i.e. Corner Gas episodes :) and constant, fantastic imaginative play along the creek and on the beach. They are soooooo amazingly productive when I remember to get out of their way and let them direct the learning - which is hard coming from a traditional, success-driven learning approach myself. I always feel as if we haven't learned enough and then I go back into their journals or look at these pictures and realize how much they are learning all the time.

Finally, our other bus friends here - the ones we happened to meet at the last campground - have been rebuilding their amazing space from barebones up.

It is crazy to watch and always interesting to see how different people design their buses. With awesome kid bunks, a luxurious king-sized bed, creative storage and space for the impending wood stove - the build has really taken shape.

AND, I got to hold a sweet-faced little redhead during it!!! While Momma got her hammering on, I stole kidlets on a few occasions and we soaked up any venturing rays of sun we could find.

After much contemplation and great sadness, Rowdy recently left his job in NYC with the Made in NY program to take work on the west coast. While this is a big transition for him and us all, it is certain he will be connected to this program always - based upon his deep love of the people and respect for the purpose of the MINY program. It has given and taught him so much and I believe it's impact radiates on into the future.

As for our immediate future, who knows what comes next...except a concerted attempt to live a bit lighter in general and to offset an upcoming visit to NY this summer when homeschool group ends. As always, keep on keep'n on!!! We shall keep you posted. Do good work, love each other and be just whatever it is you are...unabashedly so.

Bring the Rain

We landed, for a time, off the coast of Vancouver. This was an effort to be closer to loved-ones who get so little of us and to introduce the kids to ideas and culture from a slightly different perspective. We have been blessed with the awareness that, compared to the possessions and needs of so many in this world, we are kings and queens. This is a hard awareness to come by...for many people in all kinds of situations. It is hard to see your positives when the world wants to constantly sell you on your negatives. So, after many weeks of sunshine and warmth, the continued rain we fell into didn't seem to bother us. It was all a new experience for us.

After a time the locals remarked how odd it was for us to experience so much continued rain. Certainly, it rains here quite a bit, they said, but not THIS much. It rained everyday for over two consecutive months. Towards the end of the rainy streak the kids finally began to buckle. Then came the snow.

First just in the higher elevations, and then it made it's way to us. And it stayed. "This is so unusual!", people exclaimed! "This never usually happens!"

Now, weather doesn't necessarily bother me. In fact, I love the differences of the seasons and look forward to all the variations. The theme here isn't the hardship of weather...the bus is quite adept at keeping us warm and dry and comfortable. Truth be told, people are always asking if we are alright in the bus, warm enough, would like to come stay at their house, etc. and I am amazed at how hard it can be for people to see it as a real home. But I digress...the real theme here is CHANGE.

Change can be slow and painful and scary and enticing and awe-inspiring and hard to bear and exciting and educational and helpful and overwhelming and forgiving or not. When I was a kid, I couldn't watch Sci-fi. Not at all. There was so much change involved in the way things were as I knew it and the way things would have to become that my mind couldn't handle it. It made me physically uncomfortable and emotionally tender. Perhaps, this is why I wanted my kids to touch the differences of the world at an earlier age...so they would be more flexible than I was at their ages.

With the excessive rains and moisture, followed by cold and the use of our heaters, the bus began to weep from the insides. The change became too much for her to handle. While still warm and cozy, hard to reach parts of the bus began to mildew. We purchased a dehumidifier, wiped the walls, scrubbed the woodwork with vinegar and tea tree, among other remedies to try and curb the issue. Rapidly we developed colds and my asthma went nuts. The cold snap continued and was forecasted to stay. Once again, CHANGE was on the docket for us.

Every computation was made to decide what to do. We could move out of the bus, yet again, but this was our home and abandoning it and leaving it to mildew didn't seem right either. When you finally cease to agonize over a large, scary decision you are forced to make, things can become extremely clear. It is as if a combination lock clicks into place of all the things that have lined up for this moment and the reasons why. Seeing family, the flexibility of homeschooling, drying out our lungs and the bus - these things all became very fluid and in focus. We headed south for a while.

Sometimes, CHANGE is a bit too much for us to bear. Heaven knows we feel it here in the bus...almost like the canaries in the mineshaft. Driving off into the world to map unchartered emotional and social waters. And, for me, that uneasy feeling never goes away - you just get better at not cowering to it. Like being on stage or diving or making new friends or anything outgoing, really. The unknown of it all always turns my stomach. But it is the tumultuous times in my life that have allowed me to stand here now in 2017 on the precipice of uncertainty with a positive outlook.

So why am I telling you all of this? Because I want you to know that on the other side of all our smiling pics and sunset vistas, we are the same. There is no safe haven from "life" and "reality"...it is what we make of it. There is hardship and love and tears and craziness and, of course, CHANGE. We are working hard as a family to ride those waves of change and to expand our personal comfort zones; this is our way of spitting in the face of uncertainty. And in the end it is all OK. Why? Because if it's not, it isn't the end! So the next time something terrifies you, stick a "Let's Make America Great Again" sticker on your chest and hock a big loogie at uncertainty!

Where Did the Year GO!?!?!?!

Already November and it feels like 3 years worth of living gone by! Too much to tell in one blog. Needless to say, we have been busy this year. In order to be closer to those we have neglected for too long, and to give the kids a new challenge to soak up, we drove the bus to the West Coast in July/August and have been there ever since!

While my husband gets to be closer to his mommy, the kids have been homeschooling with me, engaging with the world around them and have found themselves tangled into a homeschool group 2x a week called Spider. What a phenomenal experience for all of us!! Make no mistake, this is not easy. Let me say it again, for those of you who think we are living on a cloud or some idyllic dream that we are bragging about...this experience is not always easy. But neither was being an exchange student when I was 16 - and, yet, the richness of the experience is very similar.

We've taken hikes, swam, waded, built forts, huts, shops, biked, bounced, organized shells, rocks, colonized crabs, stalked seals and sea otters and loons, bears, coyotes, watched eagles swoop and soar overhead, salmon spawning (totally magical) and photographed more than our fair share of disk space.

We've had gourmet chocolates that were given to us on a tour at a chocolatiers, potlucked, Thanksgiving turkeyed, trick-or-treated, sampled smoked fish, salmon, investigated local BBQ, Indian, Sushi, and "gumboot" cuisine (not to mention the finest food served around - Omi's!).

We've ALL learned from local painters, singers, teachers, blacksmith (and son), carvers, makers, musicians, fisherman, storytellers, scientists, and students of life, culture, compassion, patience, kindness, learning, and citizenship.

Despite some of the hardships of living outside our comfort zones, we survive with our humor intact. Not survive, THRIVE! We could write a book from the things we are learning about life in a bus, living in another culture(s), homeschooling, etc. But for now I leave you simply with a blog. I have some ideas for future blogs: the intricacies of living in various set-ups with the bus (i.e.: when we have no power, no water, no heat!!), learning at home, food in a small space, life closer to nature, creativity and the life of a gypsy, the compassion of people on the road, what "multi-cultural" can mean, citizens of the world, etc. If you've read this far you must be interested. Leave us a comment about what you want to know and we'll write it.

Til then....keep calm and VonRowdy on!!!!

The Merry Month of May

I have Internet again and can post a blog or two in the next few days to catch everyone up. Here was the entry as we rolled into May and I'll throw in some random pics from our last weeks at the house:

As I start packing up the bus and preparing, I start to say goodbye. I decided to take an early morning walk today all by myself - a rarity for sure. My first thought is, "Holy crap there are a lot of worms in this world!" The number of worm trails carved out through the mud and how far they travel absolutely astounds me! Who knew there were so many worms just in this one patch of earth alone? Truly. The things we take for granted. And I guess that's mainly what I'm thinking about today - what we take for granted, as well as the paths we choose in life.

I walked through the trees and down the road to a place most serene. It looks like heaven to be at this place and I thought about the people living in the house there surrounded by this vast expanse of beautiful pond and creek water with peace and starlings hanging from cattails, a garden that they are creating, chickens and goats, and the most beautifully manicured house and property I've ever seen. They were clearly still in bed because not a sound was to be heard from within the house. I envied their peaceful and serene life hidden here down deep in the countryside with rolling hills hat-brim level, trees galore, frogs and fish to toy with and lush grass as far as kids could run. I wonder if they know that they are living within a dream.

I watched two beautiful Canada geese standing on top of a thatched beaver dam in the middle of the water. They stared at me for a while and then they decided to pack up and move to water on the other side of the house. As they flew over onto that side they made such a fuss that I thought of the people lying in bed wishing the geese wouldn't frequent them so early in the morning, wishing the geese wouldn't be so noisy. At this point the geese alerted the dog in the house to my presence and the dog began to bark wildly. I felt bad for being the thing on their Saturday morning that caused them stress, waking them up when perhaps they wanted to sleep just a little later that day. I thought of them lying in bed, their thoughts a ticker-tape parade to do list on a Saturday morning in May when there was garden work to be done, animals to take care of, a house to fix up, kids to pay attention to. Suddenly their peaceful, serene life didn't seem so peaceful and serene anymore!

And then I remember, that I too am living within a dream. We all are. It's the voice in our head that keeps us from realizing it - that constant chatter that doesn't allow us to look up and take stock in what we actually have instead of what we wish we had or what is stressing us out at that particular moment. And I also remember that this was one of the reasons for the bus. Gratitude and not taking things for granted. It is difficult to take something for granted that remains in your hand but for a few heartbeats.

I will never take this house that I have lived in and this property I have grown a part of for granted. We will never take our time in Clarksville or Delmar or Brunswick or Yellowstone or Vancouver or Ventura, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, any of the places that we have been, the people we have been fortunate to spend time with, for granted. And even as I say this, even as I write this, I wonder if it is true. I suppose the day will come when even change and travel and the people we meet and love and gratitude will somehow be taken for granted. And maybe that's when we settle down, sink our teeth permanently into the ground where we stand and appreciate whatever we have, wherever we have it.

I reach in my pocket and find a squashed penny from the redwoods and it winks at me. I guess it's too soon to tell :-)

Unsung Heros and On the Road Farming

It’s time to get back into the bus again. I’m not entirely sure where to or when, but I feel it coming. The itch. Even the kids feel it. This picture below is from one of our son's reading books that came home with him. It's the second time one of his books mentioned a "bus house". Coincidence? :)

We had an opportunity to take a brief trip in our minivan to Wilmington and Savannah last week and it was such an adventure. It was the first real trip in something other than the bus and, wow, what a difference. While it was certainly faster for us and easier to maneuver, I missed the space and independence of it. The kids did really well on 7 and 8 hour days (which we rarely ever did even in the bus) but they were definitely cranky about being jammed so tightly together. Landing in Wilmington was a breath of fresh air.

And it was certainly in and out…there was no slow, meandering and finding hidden secrets and new faces. However, this enabled us to literally drive through DC, jump out for an hour or two at the National Museum of Natural History (you practically drive through DC anyway unless you circumvent, the parking is free, and the Museum is donation-based).

And, from there, we drove to NYC, crashed for a night, roamed the streets, pillaged a three-story candy store and whooped it up in Central Park before returning home! So, a whirlwind tour to be sure. I am a bit concerned that my children believe all lives are like this and all people this fortunate. But there is time to show them it is otherwise.

And so, for the unsung heros (I will scatter our Savannah pics throughout this part of the entry - more unsung heroes in the people that love us and open their hearts and homes to us time and again!). These are the people who can maintain a 9 to 5 and an actual routine year-round. These are the people who maintain sanity despite the hardest of times. Way above superheros, who traipse around in fun outfits finding excitement, I value the people I meet who manage the ordinary of life with grace and wonder and strength and make it extraordinary and beautiful. Every winter I aspire to this - falling into a very healthy structure and regimenting our daily experience - and every spring I lose it! But these are the people we meet in our travels or our community that give me strength.

Recently, I was with my three year old at the YMCA swimming. Nearby there was a mom with an extremely autistic roughly 9 year old boy. After watching her teach him how to swim (“Swim, Steven. Swim. Swim. Swim, Steven” and then moving his arms for him to help him.) I encountered her in the locker room. She was trying to get him to put his pants on. It sounded like this: “Steven, put your pants on. Put your pants on. Put your pants on. Put your pants on. Put your pants on. Put your pants on. Put your pants on. Put your pants on. Put your pants on. Put your pants on. Put your pants on. Steven, put your pants on. You are a big boy now. You can put your own pants on. Steven, for the love of God, I cannot do this. Pull your pants up. You can pull you pants up. Steven, put your pants on. I love you so much, and I need you to put your pants on. Steven, put your pants on.” This went on for another 10 minutes at least. In my mind I replayed how many times I have lived this experience with my own three when they were littler, but with only a fraction of the experience that she deals with and an even smaller amount of patience than she has. Wow. What a lesson for me. I still am holding it so deeply.

She emerged from the stall with that hardened face that I carry so often. I thought of the time, when wearing the same face and shouting at my own children, a neighbor’s gentle act of wiping snow off my car enabled me to soften. So I told this swimming mom that she was my hero. She laughed slightly and said “But you don’t get to see me at home”. I said it was OK because I know I have a fraction of the frustration she has and still a fraction of her patience level and wished her a good day. It was enough. She softened and I can still feel the impact of such a beautiful lesson from an unsung hero. It reminds me also of what beautiful souls Mya Gardener and her family are (who we saw on our trip). I wonder how their endeavors continue and when our paths will cross again. How fortunate we were to share such a moment in time. This is why, time and again, when we want to recoil and ignore and hide from the world, we have to get back on the bus! and meet it where it is.

Sometimes I struggle with our weird way of life, when I let my brain worry about how different we are and are we “normal”. Well, shoot, what the hell is normal anyway? I actually feel as if we are getting closer to living genuinely - if there is such a thing. I feel as if we are farmers in our own weird way. We respond similarly to the seasons. In the winter, we burrow in someplace and enjoy the cold/snow/ice. We sit by a fire and read our little eyeballs off. We create and renew and rest. Then, when we hit the spring I nest like NOBODY’S BUSINESS! (In fact, I’m freaking out right now that I am not cleaning and sorting something.) Spring cleaning, the birth and newness a farm or homestead sees as the weather changes, and preparing for the planting season.

And then, jumping back into the bus…whether we go someplace or just park and live in the middle of a field, it still has a major impact upon us and those around us. It forces us outside and to connect to our environment in a very real, candid and unapologetic way. We plant our seeds - ideas, inspirations and creativity that takes flight either in the fall or in the future for us or for others. When the fall arrives we return to “school” (though for us this happens really all the time) and work and harvest all the seeds we have been planting throughout the spring and summer. So, while we are not tied to one patch of earth, we try to be open and accessible to all the land, plants, people and animals we encounter and we endeavor to connect very deeply with the terrain and our neighbors. Here's our oldest, a girl scout, at the birthplace of the founder of Girl Scouts - Juliette Gordon Low. What an inspiration for girls and women! And another girl that never took "no" for an answer (I know a few of those ;) She even got to sign her name in the girl scout book there - a tradition that thousands of girls have done through the ages.

I suppose this farming analogy assuages my fears by connecting our very modern, non-traditional life to an ancient and traditionally rhythmic existence! In any case, we are feeling the rumble of the ground beneath our feet and looking forward to bringing you all along on our next big adventure!!!! Here are some more Savannah pics from an "Oyster boil" held with some loved ones...Thanks for riding this wild carpet with us :)