Seasonal life in the van was quite possibly the most fun, freeing, and horrible experience of our lives. The horrible part was that we had no real feeling of rootedness, or rather we felt completely ungrounded.
Here in Pinedale for the past year and a half, we get the groundedness, but miss the fun and freedom of seasonal work. We liked that kind of carefree existence. Work is rewarding. Having a place is rewarding. Consistent friendships is rewarding. But we miss the wandering.
The first thought here is that you can have one or the other, and it may be irresponsible to ask for both. As Eric Beck said, “At either end of the social spectrum, their lies a leisure class”, we felt like we neither wanted to be at the bottom end forever or to ascribe to the idea of getting rich in order to enjoy a life where you get more than 2 weeks of vacation a year. We also like this country (with all it’s hurts) and don’t desire to move abroad just to get more vacation time.
Then we came up with The Plan. we’ve had many “plans”, but this one was The Plan that we decided to go for. It was based on the desire to defy the logic of Eric Beck (who was just a yosemite climbing bum anyway), by falling somewhere in between.
It is simply this. Step 1: Buy a home somewhere we like living and where there is a culture of sustainability, responsible growth, and “local”ism. Somewhere that has sustainable energy and water resources and good gardening opportunities. Our old Kentucky home seemed to suit this bill well. Berea Kentucky in particular seemed ideal given it’s ties to the college and Wendell Berry followers like ourselves.
Second step is paying for this home without having a mortgage debt that forces us into the rat race. We’ve accomplished this (though with no help from our horrendously managed lending institutions). We should have our home completely paid for and own outright by June of 2010 barring loss of jobs or breaking too often from our spending plan.
Step three is to learn to live as responsibly as possible within the framework of our kentucky home in addition to seasonal summer work in wonderful western parks and locales. Maybe there’s a month or two of volunteer work in the winter that allows us to both serve and to ski. Then there is the idea of overseas social justice work, working on making our home truly ours, graduate school in public administration in order to work with non-profits who do good for this planet and it’s peoples.
There might be a garden in there, possibly a dog. We’ll see where the plan takes us. We’re dedicated. We’re smart. We think it’ll work. If not. There’s always another plan just waiting around the corner.
