The Search for Community: "On The Ledge"

Julie Genser, Founder of the online community Planet Thrive for folks 'Surviving and Thriving with Environmental Illness" interviewed us in 2009. That interview is here. Julie's questions were thorough and begins with the physical process of choosing, testing and building with materials that suited our level of health. But in addition to the Q&A about the building process Julie was curious about the community we envisioned living with, and the personal journey that is inevitable when all former definitions implode. We were living "On the Ledge" in the town of Tahuya in Washington state at the time of this interview. The photo below is from that spring, 2009.

Hover on the image for some detail.

Link here to read "10 Things to Consider Before Building a Mobile Bird Cage." If you are considering building a tiny home (on wheels or not) these questions might be worth asking yourself, and your builder (if he/she is not you).

 "Something very special happens when all the former definitions of your self, your security, your entitlements change. If you live to tell the story that special something is REBIRTH. Our journey is that, a piecing or peacing together of many 1) thoughts and beliefs, 2) emotions and feelings and 3) intuitive knowing." – Mokihana

Medicine Stories
Though I was not yet calling the stories wrote 'medicine stories' they were without doubt the mythic spiral of life that healed where prescriptions could not. The chronicle of our lives from a tiny home over time would be incomplete, filled with puka, if these stories were not given voice. The piecing and peacing of the journey must include the spiritual quest and the multiple reality of life in a human body. As I write this paragraph I count 20 stories in my medicine bag.

While we living in the kitchenette (the basement kitchen aka our living space) Sam and Sally started to make sense of something that couldn't just be explained.

When we settled onto The Ledge in Tahuya, the grandest story unfolded like chocolate melting slowly and surely on a warm flame. Woodcrafting The Tale wrote itself through me.

"The story began when we arrived on The Ledge and poured through me like warm chocolate. It soothed me, transported me and gave me a place that did not poison me. I seek the story for refuge and the words come to me I do not seek them. Maybe, there is something here for your dear heart read as if there was a voice canting. ~ "