From the West to the East, and Back Again

Almost thirteen months after our departure on our excellent adventure, we flew east from New Mexico on Thanksgiving Day, landing in Boston in time for a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at Keith's brother's cozy home in Somerville. With our niece visiting from Port-au-Prince where she works with the Haitians on rebuilding their country, and our nephew on break from college in Washington, DC, it was like "old home week", made even more delightful by the presence of our son and daughter-in-law who had flown from Albuquerque to Boston just two days prior to us.

Our lovely daughter-in-law Bevin and handsome son Rene

Our good friends Deborah and Nancy

Keith and his brother Ken

Having ten days to see everyone we wanted to see and do everything we needed and wanted to do, it was a tall order to accomplish it all and manage to be fully present for each encounter with family and friends without allowing our minds to wander too much to the next destination.

The first few days in New England were relatively easy, and our time in Boston and Manchester-by-the-Sea flew by. Walking on Singing Beach in Manchester with our dear friends and visiting with our god-daughters was joyful, but we were still quietly daunted by the next leg of the journey.

With our friends Maria and Vint

Keith's goddaughters, Andi and Vikki

A five-hour drive to New Jersey on the Monday after Thanksgiving delivered us to the hospital where Keith's father was dealing with some serious health issues, and we were closely involved in his transfer to a nearby rehab facility. Unfortunately, our itinerary prevented us from lingering too long, and it was most difficult to leave him in the rehab, miserable and lonely, as we made our way to Brooklyn in order to visit a very dear friend who is waging a battle against metastatic ovarian cancer.

Having only twenty-four hours with our friend was bittersweet, but we were quickly able to adjust to her skeletal body and see that her spirit is intact, and no matter her outer appearance, she's still "in there", with the same sweet smile and loving manner. Being entertained by her delightful grandchildren, the two cherubic children were an antidote to our weariness and opened our hearts for a visit that lifted all of our spirits, even as Keith became ill with apparent bronchitis and our subsequent destinations beckoned us away.

Exhausted, we drove north to Western Massachusetts and our beloved Pioneer Valley, spending the night at the Pioneer Valley Cohousing community, a stay made all the more enjoyable by the hospitality of good friends.

Once in the Valley, Keith's illness became worse, and it became apparent that Mary would need an emergency root canal. As if orchestrated by powers beyond our control (as it most likely indeed was), Mary was able to undergo urgent dental surgery by the best root canal specialist in Massachusetts, surgery that immediately resolved the pain that had been incrementally increasing over the last few months, coming to an excruciating head during our visit. (Thanks to this masterful oral surgeon, Mary was able to avoid the astronomical pain that the high altitude of the flight home to Albuquerque would have certainly caused.)

During our few brief days in Western Mass, we were able to revisit the home of our friend David who took his own life last November several weeks following our departure, as well as spend some time with an elderly disabled friend who brought a joyful lift to our spirits.

David, one month prior to his death

Amidst Keith's illness and Mary's pain, our very dear friends hosted a heartwarming and wonderful party in our honor, and we were able to spend an unforgettable evening with more than 20 friends who arrived with delicious food, drinks, smiling faces and open arms. The conversations and sharing were deep that night, and a circle towards the end of the gathering allowed many to share life updates, memories and stories with the entire group.

Finally, as our ten day sojourn came to a close, it was time to face the ultimate test: our 10 x 10 storage unit. Sorting and repacking the flotsam and jetsam of our lives in the damp, cold New England air was no picnic, but we were able to successfully fit everything into a 6 x 8 x 10 space on an 18-wheeler moving truck which will deliver our worldly goods to our New Mexican storage unit in just under a week. It was a Herculean effort, but it will bring us great peace of mind to have all of our things where we can access them, rather than sitting in a damp storage bin 2,000 miles away.

Even though it was a stretch, to say the least, dealing with our stuff now clears the way for more uninterrupted quality time with friends and family during future visits to the East Coast. We look forward to certain special things being once again in our possession, including our super-duper juicer, German vacuum cleaner, and some beloved art that will soon grace the walls of our casita.

We are so grateful to our friends and family who hosted us, treated us with such love, and who made this trip wonderful despite the physical and emotional challenges that confronted us along the way. We honestly had some trepidation that our visit to New England would engender some wistful nostalgia, perhaps triggering the feeling that completely relocating to the West was not necessarily what we ultimately desire. However, what resulted from this trip back East was the cementing of the notion that we can continue to nurture and grow the many wonderful friendships that will no doubt mature into lifelong connections regardless of geographic distance.

Absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder, and this also applies to our return to New Mexico. Flying over the breathtaking mesas and mountains, we did actually feel like we were coming home, and Tina greeted us happily with a wagging tail and her ubiquitous and unending desire for treats.

It wasn't easy, but the trip was extremely successful, and we feel incredibly blessed and grateful for the wonderful people in our lives. Now we will settle in for our first New Mexican winter, and continue to allow our lives to unfold as they will. It's good to be back.

Thanksgiving Images

Our son, Rene

The Thanksgiving table

Brother Ken

Near Harvard Square

Chandelier in The Plough & Stars, a Cambridge bar

Our niece Sabina, visiting from Haiti, and our daughter-in-law Bevin

Our handsome nephew, Adam

Sister-in-law Barbara, brother Ken, and Bevin

Ken and Barb, married 26 years

A Reggae Artist on the Beach

Here we are on Wingaersheek Beach in Gloucester, Massachusetts with a reggae artist (Zeblum?) from Jamaica, who was doing a shoot for a music video, despite the insistent wind and blowing sand. They began filming at sunrise, and when we arrived at 11, they were still getting shots of him dancing on the rocks, one of his songs blasting from a boom-box.

At Mary's insistence, we went over to speak with them on a break from the filming, and he graciously posed for a photograph, saying "We are all family, mon. Bless the mama, bless the papa, blessings, blessings on all. Rastafari!" This sweet, loving man also said, "Family, keep dem togeder, mon. Jah Rastfari".

For me (Mary), it was especially nice to hear this message from a Jamaican man who may wield wide influence on his fellow Jamaicans. From our experience implementing our humanitarian relief project in Jamaica, we learned that it is common among certain segments of Jamaican men to father many babies from many mothers. This cultural norm still exists today that Jamaican health workers described to us as a contributing factor to the rise of single mother households unable to meet their most basics human needs. In our outreach to "the bush", we witnessed firsthand how sadly right they were and thus committed to channel resources from the richest country in the world to this rural area of Jamaica in St. Thomas parish. How we did that is a story for another time.

Meanwhile, Keith and I made a lasting special friend, Rainford Brown, during our 3-year project. He is an artist whom we hired to repaint and decorate the dilapidated children's ward of Princess Margaret Hospital in an impoverished rural Jamaica area. Since there is much suffering and little work on this part of the island, we've also provided annual financial support over the years, thanks to many friends and family who've joined us in this tithing. Rainford has thus been able to slowly build a little home that will now house his growing family. Yes, we recently learned that Rainford and his girlfriend will be having a baby in late January! We just sent him an early holiday gift that was a portion of the proceeds from the sale of our house. 1% for peace, right?

After our photo opp. on the beach that windy day, Z. warmly hugged each of us in turn and blessed us once again. Sweet.

---Keith and Mary

Cape Ann Camp Site

Ahhh. Friday evening, and we have landed ourselves at Cape Ann Camp Site, not one mile from Wingaersheek Beach in West Gloucester, MA!

When Mary and I first met in 1988, I was living in Gloucester in the home of my great-aunt, the well-known artist and writer, Theresa Bernstein Meyerowitz. At the time, Mary was living in the Washington, DC area, soon to move to Woodburn Hill Farm, a communal intentional community in Southern Maryland, founded in 1975 and still thriving to this day.

We lived on Woodburn Hill Farm together for 4 or 5 months, celebrating an outdoor hippie wedding on the farm on July 2nd, 1989. After our honeymoon, I spirited Mary and Rene away to New England, where we lived with Theresa and several of her assistants for a series of summers. During the chilly seaside winters, we served as caretakers of Theresa's drafty and haunted house when Theresa was back in her studio on the Upper West Side of New York City.

We spent three full years in Gloucester, enjoying life by the ocean, living in semi-poverty most of the time while Mary pursued her undergraduate education at Lesley College in Cambridge (now known as Lesley University, the site of Rene's recently completed baccalaureate education). Medicaid, foodstamps, fuel assistance and the local food pantry kept us in good stead along with Theresa's largesse and our hard work cleaning the houses of the rich and not so famous of Cape Ann.

In 1992, we finally extricated ourselves and settled in Amherst, our home for the last 17 years. Actually, we moved to Western MA in search of intentional community, originally intent on life in Oregon or Northern California. However, we only got as far as the hills of the Pioneer Valley due to our attraction to the Sirius Community, a relationship that never blossomed into us becoming active members, however we remain friends of the community and hold their vision of sustainability and spiritual growth in our hearts. We are now actualizing that vision for our lives through more simple living, embarking on our tour of the United States in search of an intentional community to call home.

So, here we are, full circle, back on Cape Ann in our new biodiesel rig, Scottie LaBlanca, within reach of the ocean, the chilly sea air blowing in our open screen door, with a sunny weekend stretched before us. Local friends---including my lovely goddaughters---will visit us at our campsite, and we will bike and walk (and maybe even borrow a car), tooling around the seaside over the next 36 hours. We will be sure to take some photos and post them here, including you, dear Readers, in the action and adventure.

Thanks for stopping by, for indulging my walk down Memory Lane, and for supporting our full-time RV journey by paying us a call. Please leave a comment so we know that you were here, and our blessings to you from the shores of the New England seashore.

---Keith

One of Meike's Goats

Our Maiden Voyage

Well, we did it, folks. We launched our rig and ourselves on our maiden voyage last Friday, and although the start was rough, we did have fun!

Before we were out of the starting gate, the toilet backed up (yuck!), the engine battery was dead as a doornail (we did something wrong, of course), and the front brakes were grinding like the molars of a narcoleptic.

So, what did we do, you ask?

First, we cleaned up the toilet overflow, jump-started the dead battery, and high-tailed it to the Amherst Sewage Treatment Plant and emptied our "black water" tank. What a relief!

Next, we found trusty local truck mechanics who told us to simply "baby" those recalcitrant brakes, downshift on the hills, and head out of town without a care in the world. We took their advice, crossed our fingers, and lumbered down the road in Scottie La Blanca!

First stop was Shelburne, MA, where we visited our good friend Meike who is living on the land with her cat, goats, llama, ducks, rabbit---an entire lovely menagerie of creatures.

Trusting in our solar power to get us through, we were able to run lights, cook on the propane stove, and even take a hot shower, completely unconnected to any source of power or water.

In the morning, we had a leisurely walk on the beautiful Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls, visited some tag sales (shopping judiciously only for things we need, of course, like books on CD and Tupperware), we also had a swim in the river just north of Shelburne, one of favorite swimming places.
Saturday night saw us in Warwick, MA, camped out on a dirt road and attending a party with old and new friends at a luxurious and rural home on a rushing stream. We participated in a wonderful Qigong lesson in the yard, did a Laughter Yoga session for some of the partygoers, and then shmoozed and ate and drank and shmoozed some more with a very interesting and wild group of diverse people. Mary talked gibberish, danced, hula-hooped, and was generally the life of the party, while I was more of a quiet but content observer of the fray. Between the pot brownies, the joints, the beer and the 60's music, it felt like I was a Gen X'er paying a visit to Baby Boomer Heaven.

After a good sleep (despite our less-than-level site on the side of the dirt road, with the rig lurching to starboard something fierce), we were treated by our friends Dona and Jedd to an incredible outdoor brunch at The Copper Angel in Warwick, MA. The cook and owner is actually a puppeteer, and our table was lucky enough to be visited by her newest creation, The Queen of StinkyLand, who will preside over the North Quabbin Garlic Festival in early October.

Further testing our rig's capabilities, we successfully located our dear friend Shen and her compatriots from the Insight Meditation Society at a state forest campsite in Petersham, MA. We were very impressed with our rig's ability to negotiate a steep gravel road into the woods, failing brakes be damned! We talked into the night about philosophy, Enneagrams, travel, the Dharma, and we all slept the sleep of the blissfully content.

Rolling home to Belchertown, we looked back over our maiden voyage, happy that the brakes did not fail us, and ready to have them repaired forthwith on Tuesday after the long holiday weekend. We are emboldened now to think that our rig can do just about anything, that diesel engine ready to tackle most any challenge, and it seems that only our 29-foot length and 11-foot height will stand in our way now.

At any rate, Scottie La Blanca is now broken in, and we are finding our sea legs as we careen with certain momentum towards our departure at the end of October.

Stay tuned!

---Keith

Within Reach

Last night at the Sirius Community in Shutesbury, MA, we had the pleasure of meeting Ryan and Mandy, a spirited and wonderful couple who are "bike-packing" around the United States with the goal of visiting 100 intentional communities, using pedal-power and solar-powered computer equipment. (Randy carries a 20-pound solar panel for charging all of their electronics.)
During the course of the trip, this intrepid and inspiring couple are making a film entitled "Within Reach" about sustainable living in its many forms, and last night we caught a tantalizing glimpse of what that film will eventually become when completed. The film will be a feature-length documentary which will inspire ordinary people to take extraordinary steps vis-a-vis creating a more sustainable world.

Mandy and Ryan are now half-way through their journey, already having bicycled 4,762 miles and having visited 72 communities. Their website is worthy of frequent visits, and you can donate by the mile for $8.33, or simply send a sum of your choosing to support their trip and the making of the film. Within Reach is now registered as a non-profit, so your donations are 100% tax-deductible.

We were incredibly inspired by Mandy and Ryan's presentation at Sirius, and hearing about their adventures and ideas for creating a better world has lit a fire under us as we continue to plan our journey of discovery.

Coming home to our new mobile abode from that lovely evening, we realize that visiting intentional communities, learning about sustainable living, and bringing the gifts of Laughter Yoga and health and wellness coaching to people around the country is something we truly feel passionate about. Please join us in supporting Ryan and Mandy, and bookmark their website so that you can follow their progress as they complete the second half of their incredibly inspiring journey.

---Keith