Saturday, April 6, 2019

Rain Day Reality

Wisconsin cheese from Minnesota, playing out with a game of Solitaire
The first rain has come to Whidbey after a long stretch of dry. We are tucked up snug in the vardo enjoying the comfort of our twenty five dollars a night campsite here at the Langley Fairgrounds Campground -- more affectionately nicknamed "the Bunny Camp."

A box of goodies arrived from Minnesota yesterday, gifts from Margaret, Pete's sister. The chunk of aged white cheddar sliced and stacked between bread and toasted in the small cast iron skillet was precious and delicious.

One of the things that we're doing -- part of the process of consolidating our living small life -- is to maximize the ways we use the space we do have. In the ten years since we began our vardo/golden wagon life we have kept the vardo a primarily sleeping space. To ensure a pristine and fragrance free space, we have eaten outside the vardo; in the outdoors when it was conducive and in a separate space when we had it or could create it.

Now we "tincture down" as I have begun to say about the consolidating process going on for us. Making our own medicines using the Plants who have made themselves known to us (Plant Allies) I listen as I introduce myself to the Chickweed, Gobo Root, St. Joan's Wort, Echinacea Root; I watch as I harvest and gather, prepare and fill a clean glass jar; and smell the 100 proof alcohol as I fill the jar packed tight with the leaves, flowers and roots. I cap the jar tightly and set it aside.

Over six weeks, or more, I watch the Plants "tincture down" giving their essence to the alcohol and changing the vodka to People's Medicine. I notice how the thick white rooti-ness settles to the bottom of the jar. Though it's not necessary, I turn the jar with root tincture makings upside down on occasion and thank the Plant for her generosity.

A tin once filled with cookies (thanks Joan) is now my tinctures tin, looked after by the Goddess Kwan Yin



Kitchen on the porch, a Pete retrofit

Booties and a Fleece Robe ... gifts that really do the trick! Mahalo nui Jen & JT
We are "tincturing down" the essential nature of our lives. What we thought we could do over the long haul we have to rethink, re-imagine and make room for the magic of a different sort of connectedness.

We have found a way to pay our way, here at the Bunny Camp, with other people many of them with young children. I introduced our readers to the first dose of family with children here, and here. And this week we met other children and a mother. They are Storytellers! We have exchanged stories, and gifted one another with the getting-to-know you thing that is the first step in reciprocity. Oh how good that feels.

We have found what it takes, now, to combine our wishes and dreams into another form of safety pin magic. The same kind of magic that dropped from the sky one winter day and fed me the original story on a day only a duck could love. What I'm getting at is now we are literally adding The Safety Pin Cafe to the front of our wagon! A dream of a scheme like that one, or any other dream with your essence tinctured in it, takes time.

We have bought sheets of red metal siding to begin the process of creating a four foot by eight foot moveable feasting and prepping area off the porch of the Golden Wagon-Vardo for Two. The add-on will allow me to cook and prepare our meals in the shelter of walls that keep us 'private' yet convertible when we have to move from 'camp to camp.

Thank you Teri and Martin for sharing a bit of your unexpected bounty, which is a lot, with us. We're using some of it for those walls of the tiny Safety Pin Cafe. One of the big lessons we have learned from the months of attempting to share space is: there are limits to which others will share and then sometimes gifts come at expected moments. 

We are here at Bunny Camp getting to know what the culture of camp is like; at least this campground. And that is helping us get real making the most of what we have and who we are. The issues of adjusting and adapting to the culture within a culture raise the question of self-worth; the definitions of home and homelessness factor into our lives all the time. There's no pretending the judgements of our way of living isn't happening; entitlement and privileges reign in this consumer culture.


I have begun the other part of adding onto the original medicine of the Safety Pin Cafe to coincide with the physical creation of the tiny space Pete will fabricate. My part of the process is called LUNCH @ THE PIN. You can read about that project here in a post entitled "Samsara", and I hope it will inspire you to join us and support our effort to "focus on tough topics that need to be chewed."


Saṃsāra (/səmˈsɑːrə/) is a Sanskrit word that means "wandering" or "world", with the connotation of cyclic, circuitous change.[1][2] It also refers to the concept of rebirth and "cyclicality of all life, matter, existence", a fundamental assumption of most Indian religions.[3][4] In short, it is the cycle of death and rebirth.[2][5] Saṃsāra is sometimes referred to with terms or phrases such as transmigration, karmic cycle, reincarnation, and "cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence".[2 - Wikipedia

And a final gift just purchased at our local mercantile, Star Store, set on the kitchen burner. As promised Jennifer, we found a teapot. It works and it whistles!That's the thing about being human and being on a spiritual path. Sometimes things do ... work as well as whistle. Thank you to all our friends and supporters who share what they do.

 xoxo Moki and Pete







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