Archive
Holiday Letter 2024
What a year it’s been. The New Year found me in San Diego celebrating with my friend Steve from grad school. I always feel like, if I haven’t seen you for a long time when I do we’ll pick up where we left off and we did.
The La Brea Tar Pits have been on my list of things to do since I was a kid and they did not disappoint. I traveled on to the Bay Area where I stayed on another friend’s boat in the Berkeley Marina and also visited friends in Concord.
I was traveling in a Dodge Grand Caravan that had been given to me to support my homelessness work. During this phase of travel I started to work on my book The Practical Guide to Building a Better World. I began with an outline of each chapter and finished that in the first two weeks of the year.
After visiting friends I went back to travel, dispersed camping, hiking, seeing the sights and finding time to write. I had memorable visits to Death Valley and the surrounding area before heading East.
Chapter 1 was written as I more or less drive across highway 40 across Arizona and New Mexico. I stopped at a lot of ancient sites and took a deep dive into Petroglyph National Monument. I stayed a few days in Gallup which I’ve always liked and spent a day in Canyon de Celle which had also been on my list for a long time.
I stayed in more motels then usually because it was fairly cold for van sleeping. Between completing 28 days of stoic philosophical exercises and building in a routine of exercise and writing I accomplished what I wanted to on the trip.
Coming back through Kansas I visited Shae who I’d been talking to during my trip after starting dating before I left Leavenworth for an epic road trip last November. It went well and I returned for a Valentine’s Day date and she and the kids visited me in Columbia as well.
I had left my job to travel and write but I did some homeless outreach work and related case management in Columbia in the Spring for a couple of months with 4-A-Change. My brother John has taken over the business since I left Columbia but as he was between case managers I helped out until he could hire someone and I helped train them.
It was timely as I wrote my chapter on social service delivery doing the work. I had some modest successes and showed I could still do it. I also did training on case management for volunteers with CoMo Mobile Aid and Loaves and Fishes and later for the Flourish Initiative while I was steeped in the local resources.
Mostly though I was struck by the increase in homelessness and the difficulties at finding housing. I also noted a lot more seniors out there. It’s getting tougher and meaner every day with services increasingly strained.
My romance with Shae continued to blossom and we took a romantic weekend to Excelsior Springs. Our spending time together led me to staying over more until in retrospect we were living together.
Adjusting to family life was a nice transition and being a writer is a good lifestyle to relocate for your relationship. I kept on pace with the book and over the summer I found my voice for the book and began telling more stories versus technical details on building positive change.
We started to look for a property to buy but we struck out on finding the right live/work space for her photography studio. We did find a great historic home and we closed on it just before Thanksgiving.
I finished my manuscript and began to edit. A month or more of that and it was off to the publisher. We’re through the copy edit and initial cover design. We should be having presales together shortly after the holidays and should have books in the spring.
We’ve been packing and getting ready to move early in the next year. It’s very exciting.
I also reconnected with some old campaign staff and organizers who were excited about the book. Together we launched a political action committee called the New American Community to support my organizing and to promote localism. We’re claiming July 4th, 2024 as our born on date.
We supported some house candidates with fundraising assistance and built a digital fundraising operation. We have been preparing materials as well as doing some election advertising around the overall disappointing national election. Mostly though we’re building for the long haul.
Our goal is to identify, train, and support an organizer in every county in America, all 3,153 of them. We’re starting with the hard ones first. Our big campaign for 2025 will be to outreach and organize with county parties.
We believe that especially in very Republican areas organizing to win an election every 2 years is not the best strategy. We would like to see county parties organized as community benefit organizations working to meet the needs of their residents whatever that may be.
Think Nationally, Act Locally is our motto so we’re starting in Kansas where we received a promising welcome from the state party. We’re also talking to Missouri leadership and have been well received where we’ve been able to make contact.
Tomorrow Shae and I fly into Detroit to spend the holidays with my family and friends. New Years will find us in our new home celebrating a late Christmas with the boys.
On a personal note I’m down 62 pounds since my 2023 high. After returning to Leavenworth I joined a gym and hired a trainer to work on my posture and gait. I have been discharged from treatment for my liver and my sports medicine doctor who was addressing my knees.
Life is good and I’m excited to see what adventures 2025 brings. The move, the PAC organizing and book tour promise another year of consequence and travel. I hope this year your holidays are safe and bright. I will close with an important message from Batman.
Epic Road Trip 2 #3 (4 forts in Texas)
Well constant reader, I have made it Great Bend National Park and have been here about 4 days. I made much better time than I planned and the trip has become more and more magical. I am in a campsite in the Cottonwood campground drinking a cup of herbal tea and winding down from the drive in before I turn in. I don’t have a signal so I will work in some photos if I get the chance, if I don’t please excuse the wall of text.
I believe I left off in Oklahoma. Oklahoma has a lack of outdoor recreation that makes it really standout, not only in the West but nationally. The conservation area I camped at probably required a hunting permit. My second night in Oklahoma was in a Walmart parking lot.
The bright spot was the Seminole Museum. They have a number of very cool artifacts and their interpretation tells their story very well. I was somewhat familiar but definitely learned something. They had the longest campaign to force their relocation of any tribe. Basically in 3 waves they were defeated militarily and forced to move over 80 years I believe. A remnant was able to maintain in the swamps and that group ultimately received tribal recognition.
The British encouraged slaves to flee to Florida and they were taken into the Seminole Tribe. I also learned the Seminole were a composite group of remnant tribes decimated by disease that formed the Seminole fairly late in history. A lot of their tribal traditions, like dress, were based on trade goods. Trade cloth was a lot better than buckskins for the Florida heat.
They originally started more northerly in Alabama, Georgia and the panhandle but were pushed deeper into Florida. The museum had cultural artifacts and a lot of contemporary art. I did enjoy driving the back roads through Oklahoma. I found a conservation area to camp in after crossing into Texas.
I got an early start but backtracked back a bit to Tulsa and went to a park and botanical gardens that also had the historical museum. The Japanese maple were in all their Fall glory and it has been fun to turn back time to the leaves changing as I’ve traveled south.
I visited 4 forts in Texas under different arrangements and in different conditions. Fort Richardson is in a State Park and has preserved buildings and some recreational similar to Fort Scott. The state park has more buildings open but less interpretation and archeology than the feds but provided an overall better experience. The Fort
Fort Phantom Hill was ruins, mostly chimneys and some stone foundations. Fort Chadbourn was privately owned and run by a foundation, with like 4 people doing it. It has a little bit of ruins but mostly reconstruction. It also had the best collection of artifacts. Lots of guns including guns from the Little Big Horn.
The Comanche had killed a couple guys on a mail run, it was precipitated by one of the soldiers but it got them both killed. The Comanche were confronted and threatened with arrest so they seized an officers barracks and forted up. A Lieutenant kicked the door in and got killed for his trouble but the Comanche were defeated. You could still see the bullet holes. There was also soldier graffiti writing Tecumseh, Michigan about 20 miles from where I grew up. Warmed my Yankee heart.
I had a nice talk about running a nonprofit with my museum tour guide and met the ranch owner who grew up with the ruins and learned they were important in college and built the museum and led the reconstruction. His workman consulted on the stabilization of the chimneys at Fort Phantom Hill, which did have an existent magazine. Ammunition storage buildings are mad so thick they stand the test of time.
The last fort was Fort Stockton. It’s owned by the city and run by the local historical society. Not much to it. It was a Buffalo Soldier fort. Noticed it’s guardhouse had chains on the wall and it was the first fort without a bakehouse. They fed those fellows leftover hardtack from the Civil War in 1858. The chaining up was reflective of the harshness of Civil War discipline the interpretation said but I wondered if it wasn’t the fact that they had white officers and Black soldiers?
I got my first hotel a week into the trip at Fort Stockton knowing it was the last cheap city before Big Bend. I finished my tea and will take another trip to the pit toilet before calling it a night.
PostScript: I am at a McDonald’s in Alpine Texas enjoying access to a sink and flush toilet, a second cup of coffee, a couple of sausage biscuits (one would have been better) and crappy wifi. I’m going to slow track to Marfa camping at roadside parks unless I find something better. Researching on how to do Guadalupe Mountains National Park with camping full.
Epic Road Trip #13: Across Colorado
Boy a lot has happened in the last 6 days. As I mentioned in the last post I stopped at The Ancestral Pueblo Cultural Center which apparently is rebranding but the maps haven’t kept up. There were a couple of ruined pueblos on site and the museum had tons of current artifacts. When they built the nearby reservoir they harvested all the artifacts they could find before submerging them.
The ranger recommended Sand Canyon and to start early but it was already too late for that and I hit the trail at noon. I took it slow and with a gallon of water I hiked to all the sites on the first 3.7 miles before I decided to turnaround. It was really cool being in the wilderness and finding all of these cool cave dwellings you could get fairly close too.
I was surprised I was up to 14 miles with the hiking I had done earlier and the spur trails to get to the sites. I had also missed Castle Rock Pueblo by entering on an alternate trailhead but I stopped in a winery and picked up a half bottle of a white blend to taste the local terroir. I considered a tasting but even 4 oz of wine didn’t seem wise when I was going to be doing more desert hiking.
Took me a walk to find the site which turned out to be the big rock that looked like a castle. It was sad to see it pockmarked with gunshots and you couldn’t see the ruins from outside the prohibited area.
I drove on to Hovenweep and saw in the brochure my dispersed camping was really a campsite. It was $15 which I would have paid if it had included a shower. I decided to hike the 2 mile main trail even though I was 15 miles into the day and dark was approaching. It was an amazing hike and Hovenweep is the unknown gem of the trip for sure.
After the cliff dwelling period the ancient pueblans built free standing towers right before abandoning the area and moving south into the Rio Grande basin. There is another ruin on a 4 mile trail but I left that one for next time. I took the hour plus drive back to the BLM land by Mesa Verde I’d been staying at. It was a bit of a harrowing journey with 3 episodes of mule deer in the road one where I slammed on the breaks and stopped within inches of it as it looked at me sort of dumbfounded. Even more nerve-wracking there were these birds flying in front of the van scooping insects out of the headlight glow I assume. I made it back late and slept the sleep of the just. 17 miles hiked through the desert, I’m definitely getting stronger.
I drove the Canyon of the Ancients loop the counterclockwise this time and went to Sand Canyon Pueblo. It’s excavated ruins reburied to protect it. It had a subtle beauty and good interpretive signs but the young family who hiked it after me were unimpressed.
Then I challenged some dirt roads and visited a couple more ruins. You never know what you’re going to get but Painted Hand Pueblo was especially cool with a nice freestanding tower.
I then did some driving and got a burger and green chili beer at a brewpub in Durango. Drove seven miles up a mountain and was in some beautiful Aspen/Ponderosa Pine forest and a nice cool night. I noticed I had a rapidly developing flat tire but decided to wait until morning to deal with it.
I swapped on my donut and drove back to Durango. Got a great breakfast at a diner, picked up a pair of pants at a resale shop and they fixed my tire for free. I’d hiked a piece of the Colorado Trail on my way down the mountain which was amazing and hiked the interpretive trail by the overlook on my way backup the mountain. Had a nice campfire that night which was a nice surprise being in a worse drought then what drove the Ancestral Pueblans out of the area in the 13th century.
I hiked the Log Chute Trail coming down the mountain and should have known better by the name. It was a 5 mile loop with the last bit being super steep downhill and was obviously designed with mountain biking in mind. It was a lot of loose sand and I had one bad moment but I got my feet back under me before I had a fall.
I started up 550 North and pulled into an overlook at Coal Bank Peak, steam erupted from under the hood. I popped the hood and saw a hole in my radiator hose, about the only mechanical problem I was capable of fixing. I saw an auto parts store and looked at the map and thought it was in Silverton so I hit hitchhiked there. Got a ride right of way and quicky learned Google was messing with me sending me to Silverton to turnaround and drive back to Durango.
Rather then doing that I went to an auto repair place and the old boy running the place sold me a random one for $22.00. I had a choice of 2 so I picked the longer of them. I walked about an hour before I got a ride back to my van with a dude who knew his way around cars and gave me some sage advice.
It was difficult getting at the clips and then getting the hose on. Twice I felt my composure slip a little bit and I took a few breaths and centered myself and treated it like a meditative exercise. I got it done and it heat sealed and I drove my hot and filthy self to Silverton. I searched hotels and they were all pricey so I settled for some ok pulled pork and fries and got some cool dispersed camping by the river right outside of town.
I took this as a sign that mountains were not for the Cookie Monster and considered heading for home. My ride had said only a couple of passes and 550 flattened out. My last picture wouldn’t upload so I’ll wrap up and publish. I stayed at Steamboat Springs last night and am going to camp and hike in the Medicine Bow-Rout National Forest for a couple of days and figure out my next moves. The heatwave broke here and it’s pretty nice being at some elevation. Looks hotter then he’ll everywhere else so I’ll try and stay put. Stay cool.
Epic Road Trip #12
So after buying shoes I drove back up into the Jemez and went west on 4. I stopped at a hot springs which was more of a warm springs but was beautiful and after a hot and sweaty day, much appreciated.
I found another dispersed camping site and was able to get back more into the woods, just in time for the sunset. I cooked dinner in the dark which turned out to be a critical error. I use zip stove and left it out to cool and broke it putting it away when I packed up in the morning.
I drove down to Battleship Rock, which is an impressive formation. It’s really a pinnacle as the Jemez Creek horseshoes around it. I hiked 6 miles over tough terrain trying to follow a path to a hot springs. There were so many informal paths I ultimately realized my knees were shot and I needed to head back while I still could. I met some hikers who said most who tried couldn’t find it and one was making her third attempt and wasn’t optimistic.
I caught a burger in Jemez Springs and drove out of the mountains. I stopped at the Pueblo Cultural Center and checked out their museum and picked up some trifles for the folks at home taking care of my house and dog. I also got a Zia ginger ale, it’s nice to see regional sodas making a comeback and it’s spicy and delicious.
There was no closer free camping to Chaco then where I’d stayed last night so I drove out there and steeled myself to pay to camp if they had any sites left. They didn’t, so I did some sunset hikes and boondocked off the first turnoff from the rough gravel road you take to get there. My first time this trip and it was nice. Peaceful with lots of stars. I did realize I’d made 2 critical mistakes in the morning and had left my hygiene/med bag on the roof of the van when I stopped for my morning constitutional.
I went to the visitors center and met a local Navaho getting water. We talked about living without running water which I had done for a few months squatting a cabin outside of Columbia. He was sanguine about it and filled enough barrels to water his plants.
I hiked some of the main sites when they opened and took a long hike in the back country to see isolated ruins, petroglyphs and some rare pictographs. It was all told about 15 miles mostly over loose sand and I was whooped. Killing time in the shade until I could boondock again didn’t seem appealing so I drove to Fairfield and got a Subway salad and a hotel room.
I went to Aztec which is a cool ruin, right in town with a reconstructed kiva. It was a great spot to grab some meditation time. I’d planned to head west into Arizona but threading the needle between fires didn’t seem appealing and I was so close to Mesa Verde I decided to head north into Colorado.
I stopped in Cortez and got some sage advice at the Colorado Welcome Center as well as maps and guides. I did a nice hike at a nature preserve and saw some pueblo ruins and got my steps in. There is nice dispersed camping on BLM land right outside of the entrance to Mesa Verde where I’ve spent the last 2 nights.
Mesa Verde is very cool but the one large cave dwelling you can go in without a reserved ranger led hike was closed because of a landslide. I did have a great 5 mile hike with Shannon, another epic Road tripper on her way back to the Northeast. We both talked up a blue streak and it was nice to connect with a kindred spirit.
I did the petroglyph hike which was a tough hike in the heat and coming after a lot of miles and had close to 15 miles in again. It was only one panel but it was a nice one.
This morning I drove into Dolores for breakfast. I’m going to the Anasazi (note that word is a slur and ancestral Pueblo is the preferred term) Museum and then tour the Valley of the Ancients sites. There is BLM dispersed camping on the far side of the circle and I may take 2 days.
After that I have decided to explore Colorado and stay out of the southeast heat wave. I’m going to go to Durango and then north up the valley and spend a couple of days at my friend’s hotel. Then I am going to go West on 70 more or less and work my way to Bay Area and then south down the coast to San Diego before turning towards home. I’m 7 or so weeks in and am a little past the halfway point time wise. It’s been truly epic and I feel blessed to have made it this far and seen so incredibly much.
Epic Road Trip #11: Jimez Mountains
For full disclosure I have left the Jimez and moved on to Chaco Canyon, one of the coolest places I’ve ever been. I’m on a back country hike and I’ve settled in some shade under an overhang/shallow cave and I am going to wait out some of the heat.
At the end of my last post I was camping in the Santa Fe National Forest trying to hike this elusive Civil War Trail. I ultimately found it and it was closed on a Saturday. I have never known a trail to keep banker’s hours or worked so hard to do something I wasn’t that excited about. Google maps took me to another trail which was not open for the public and I drove to the Jimez a day easier then I’d planned.
You have to pass through Los Alamos which was weird having a military checkpoint but I ended up spending enough time in the area it just became life. They have great dispersed camping in the greater Bandelier National Monument.
I spent a day at Bandelier proper which is very cool. Long house ruins and cliff dwellings. Lots of tourists but I’ve been isolated enough to find them all charming.
I took a long drive to the second site. It had a nice unimproved trail and there were cliff dwellings and some petroglyphs. It was an interesting climb up the Mesa and didn’t see too many people.
I did enjoy the prairie dogs and saw some elk. There is a stand of old growth Ponderosa pine but it’s a manicured stand and didn’t feel like a forest. I climbed one of the hills and there were a lot of wildflowers especially wild irises which I’ve seen a lot of on this trip.
I went back to camp and the next morning I went to Valles Caldera at my friend Rodger’s suggestion. It’s a beautiful valley surrounded by the hills of the long extinct volcano that formed it. It’s a fairly new National Park (2015) and feels more like a cattle ranch (which it still is by statute, when there’s not a drought) then a National Park.
I hiked a short nature trail and drove down to Los Alamos for a vegetable rice bowl which was cheap and excellent (Tiger Bowl). I did the Los Alamos walking tour and learned about life during the making of the first Atomic bomb. There are a few original buildings, some settler stuff and some ancestral Pueblo ruins; all right downtown.
I meditated at the Unitarian church and grabbed a Gatorade out of their Gaia Box. It was raining so I went to Starbucks and enjoyed a coffee and some WiFi and it was well worth three dollars and a poor nights sleep.
It was still raining a bit and their was a nice rainbow which I took as God’s promise he wouldn’t destroy us with atomic bombs. I picked up a quart of oil and made the clerk go look at the rainbow. She was glad she did.
After another night at my usual spot I drove down through Santa Fe and south to La Cinguella Petroglyphs. It’s on BLM land and it’s pre-columbian and a huge collection. I scrambled over the rocks awestruck for 5 hours before I was done in and didn’t see them all.
I got some great Guatemalan food down the road. A steak with a chili sauce and all the fixings. Then I went to REI and got a new pair of Chacos. My old pair were hanging together by a thread as I’d had them for more then a decade of hard wear. Coincidentally I broke the new pair in at Chaco Canyon. Having some tread is amazing.
Speaking of those Chacos. I’ve forgotten how unpleasant the afternoon heat is and I’m getting stuff setting here so I will get back to the adventure and catch you up later. I’ll have to climb a bluff to get a signal tomorrow so maybe I’ll have time to catch the narrative up to the present before then.
I got hot and tired at Chaco and got a hotel room. Going to Aztek today and camping in Bizi badlands tonight.
Multiconstruct 
Recent Comments