Wanderlust and illness

I don't know what it is about Arizona. Something in the mountain air, I guess, has me aching to explore, to wander, to hike new trails till my feet ache and then cool them in new rivers. I want to learn the songs the trees sing in different forests. 

      Aspens and ferns on Kachina Trail

At the same time, I'm feeling so rooted and at home here in my woods. It's still surreal, that I get to live here, that I get to raise my son among the Ponderosas in the shadow of the San Francisco peaks. How did we manage to pull this off?!  It feels like a dream. It's too beautiful to be real. 

Sunday driving back roads on a Saturday. 

I wonder when the wonder will wear off. When will we start to curse what passes for traffic here, instead of laughing at the absurdity of the contrast to the gridlock of rush hour gridlock in Austin? When will I drive through town without my breath catching in my throat at the sight of the mountains? Will I stop hearing the pines sighing in the breeze? Will I stop stopping to close my eyes and feel that same breeze on my cheek? 

         Horned lizards are everywhere. 

I'm not feeling well today. I've spent the entire day lying in bed listening to the rain, alternating sleeping and feeling sorry for myself. I don't know if I'm coming down with an actual illness or if my body is just worn down from the exhaustion of suddenly working really long really hard days building things, doing my best to run a construction site 1200 miles away, raising a child who came back from a week and a half at Grandmas farm an absolute monster, and trying to run a household from the dirt. It's a lot to handle, and as usual I'm not taking very good care of myself. Hopefully a day of rest and chicken soup will be enough to recharge my batteries, because as it turns out, life doesn't just stop because I feel crappy. 

Onward! And hopefully upward, to an upright position. 

Home sweet homestead

I woke up a few times in the night, restless and a bit irritable, and then I looked out my windows at the moonlight filtering through the trees that stretch till the eye can't distinguish seperate trunks anymore even on the brightest nights. "It's okay, I'm home now", I thought to myself, and settled back into bed with a smile on my face and contentment in my heart.

Rob and I spent a long weekend in Texas this past weekend, and other than a few shining wonderful moments spent with family and friends, it was an incredibly jarring, uncomfortable and often depressing trip. It's weird to be in a place that was home for so long and feel no connection to it at all. It really reinforced to both of us, though, that the move was the right choice. 

Now we're back and hard at work! We've got all four structures floor framed, joists hung, cross bracing in, and sheathing down. It turns out that I am, much to everyone's surprise, quite handy with a chop saw and framing nailer. I did very nearly shoot Rob in the stomach today with said nailer, though. 

Rob heads back to Texas on Friday for his brothers wedding and to pick up the boy from Grandma and Grandpas, so we're holding off on wall framing till Monday. It's really happening, though, and for all my aching muscles I couldn't be happier. We're literally building the lives we've always dreamed of, from the ground up, with the people we love the most. Who could ever want more than that? 

Broken concrete mixers and new friends

I have somehow slipped into being completely slovenly. Every dish is dirty (and in the yard, mind you), but I don't feel like washing them so I'm going to post instead. 

The saga of the access continues. It's now settled as to who owns the road (it's BNSF), now I'm just trying to get them to let me use the damn thing. I have the distinct and uncomfortable feeling that I'll be fighting this fight for a while yet. 

In the meantime, without access we can't permit and without permits we can't build. There are three adults, two dogs, and a boy, all living in a small travel trailer. That is not going to last long before someone snaps. So, after some careful reading of codes and zoning laws and some serious thinking outside the box, we've started construction on four tiny structures. 

Photos by Brooke Biette, who is the best. 

Two tiny houses with lofts, a bath house, and a hand tool shop. 

Rob, who is thankfully a badass with heavy machinery, scraped the sites and dug the piers with a rented bobcat tractor. We foolishly assumed that form tubes would be easy to get, which led to a day's scrambling to every hardware store in town buying a hodge podge of sizes just to have enough! The first concrete mixer... well, let's just say it met with an accident and lost some gear teeth. The second one just sort of stopped working. The third FINALLY worked, and after two days the three of us successfully poured 26 piers without killing each other. 

Meanwhile, I've been having my heart charmed right out of my chest by this tiny amazing person named Brooke who I met on Instagram, of all ridiculous places.  I'm so glad for her sake that we're not insane serial murderers, because this fearless little woman drove several hours to come camp three nights here after only a few weeks of knowing me and never having met me in person. The poor guys, it was just incessant chatter the entire time, and now I am deeply in friend love and she's stuck with me for life. (For LIFE, Brooke!) Some people just... Fit. 

This afternoon, on to floor framing! 

Half memories and heat.

Last week or thereabouts, we went to Anorexic  roof to meet some friends. One guy told me it was nice to see me again, and I don't think much appreciated my blank stare. No memory of him at all (sorry, Tyler!). That led, as it usually does, to explaining about my brain injury and a lot of "I'm sorry"s (I really am sorry). See, our summers here fall squarely into the period of years that disappeared from my memory after the last concussion. There's so much of life and living that fell away into the black period...

                     Prairie Smoke

A few days ago, we drove around through Mountainaire to climb at Mars Roof, and as soon as we parked I was overwhelmed with frustration and irritation and anger. I don't think I could've picked the spot out in a photo line up, because it's almost entirely in the afore mentioned black period. But I still could feel that I hated it there. I'm not sure why. I do know that despite my best efforts to shake it off, those abstract emotions ruined it there for me that day. 

                   Stevie on The Girl

The half memories are the greatest struggle for me here, at the end of the day. I find myself being angry for absolutely no reason, hating everything, and I know it's residual resentment from that hard second summer when I was alone all the time in the dusty meadows with a very unhappy toddler while Tim was out climbing and doing his best to enjoy his time despite my best efforts to make him as miserable as I was. I don't remember much of it, but I wrote some that summer in a private journal, and I recognize how I'm feeling now in those entries. It's hard to snap myself out of it. It doesn't feel like memories, it feels like now and it's taking a lot out of me to get the better of it. It's a constant battle between the present me and the barely remembered me.

It's getting better. One day at a time. I'm trying not to be too hard on myself. Brain injuries aren't easy. 

In other news, it's getting pretty hot during the day. Havoc is in a growth spurt and has taken to napping after lunch, and I join him because, hot. The nights are clear and crisp and absolutely lovely, though, we open all the windows and the breeze drifts through the trailer and it's cool and cozy under the blanket. 

In less important news, I dyed my hair pink and I'm loving it. 

 Because if you can't be punk rock when you're living in the woods, what's the point of anything? Right? Right.

Yesterday was the Solstice. Happy summer! It's all downhill from here, y'all.

Access or bust

The biggest, most important, and thus far most obscenely difficult and frustrating project I've had since we moved is obtaining access to the land. As I think I've mentioned before, the biggest reason we were able to get so much land for so little money was the fact that there is no legal access, as in no roads leading to it that we're legally allowed to travel year round. There are two roads, however, that do lead here. One is a forest road that travels in and out of City of Flagstaff open space, in which the road is closed to all motorized vehicles. The other is a forest road that was closed to the public last year, because it gets frighteningly close to the rail road tracks for a section. I spent a good bit of time working with the city to figure out if there was a loophole in the paperwork that would allow us to drive through the open space (many thanks to DM at the city, he's a super nice guy and worked really hard to help me), to no avail. So I set my sights on the front road. Bah.

       Havoc loves to swing on the gate.

Turns out, neither the forest service nor the rail want to claim this road. That led to weeks of back and forth between myself and the entities, before the forest (thanks Judy!) found a document going all the way back to 1875 showing that the rail owns the road. Well, most of it. All of it but a few dozen yards, which the forest owns. So, I have to get a lease from the rail for the part they own, and then a permit from the forest for the part they own. Oh, and create a HOA to hold both the lease and the permits. OH, and join an existing HOA so I can use the road to get to the road in question. 

             Dinoland, because Havoc.

Here's the real kicker, kids. Until all this paperwork gets filed and all the hoops have been jumped through, I can't get building permits issued. Without building permits issued, I can't get power to the land. At this point, it's a near certainty that none of this will be done before fall, and likely not until winter. Which means no houses until spring. So... It's gonna be a cold winter.

Send firewood. And whiskey.

       Monument Plant, because pretty. 

Rim to Rim and the great fire tower adventure

Tim is insane. Certifiably insane. I realize we all already know this, but he proved it again this weekend by running from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon to the North  Rim of the Grand Canyon, just for fun. Fun. Ha. There's no way that was fun, no matter what he says. 

After work Friday afternoon we drove to the South Rim and camped, in an actual camp ground. We haven't done that in years! It was really weird sleeping that close to other people. Having a picnic table to cook on was pretty cool though. I spent some time looking like a crazy person, talking to a pair of ravens, but I was rewarded by one of them preening out a feather and dropping it for me. The boys lit a little fire, felt very manly, and we went to bed. 

Cue 4 goddamn am when we got up and got moving. I dropped Tim off at the trailhead, he started running and I started driving. Havoc was unreasonably wide awake and talkative, which, just, ugh. Vermillion Cliffs is a gorgeous drive, but less so when a sleep deprived 5 year is rambling nonstop in the back seat. 

Tims truck is fast and I speed a lot, so we got to the North Rim just about when we expected a very tired Tim to be arriving. We went to the lodge and waiting. I watched a massive cloud across the canyon open up and start pouring rain on the South Rim, and thanked my stars that it wasn't at the North Rim, at which point it immediately headed to the North Rim with a vengeance. Clouds move fast when they've got an agenda. HC and I hunkered down in the truck to wait. Then it started hailing. Hailing. Thankfully, just then, Tim arrived, safe and sound and mostly dry, thanks to a Swiss couple who drove him to the lodge from the trailhead. 

We had greasy pizza for breakfast, and headed into the forest to escape the rain and take a nap. 

After napping (I think I'm the only one who actually napped) we headed back for my part of the adventure. I'm a huge Ed Abbey fan, and my favorite of his books is Black Sun. Once I realized that Abbey actually manned the fire lookout he wrote about in the book, it became a life goal to visit the tower and cabin. That was 5 years ago. Finally, Tim managed to find it for me just in time for his run (I think he knew he'd have to give me a damn good reason to get up that early, and it worked). We set off down the trail with great excitement, which turned to trepidation, and then crushing disappointment when we realized we'd gone the wrong damn way on the trail and wasted several hours and were all too tired and sore to get there today. So we made camp, and I made dinner (which also was a crushing disappointment, I was so very full of fail this weekend.) and we went to bed. 

The next morning, we got up, I made grilled cheese bacon and avocado sandwiches for breakfast to make up for dinner, and we set off the right way this time. The trail was easy, gently sloping upward, through fir and aspen groves, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, Tim was limping, and Havoc was whining. Had we all been 100% I think we'd have made it in 20 minutes, but  the shambles we were in arrived at the cabin 45 minutes later and oh my god it was the coolest thing ever. 

I have an absurd love for things ruined and decrepit, and this cabin was just perfect. 

There was a dead porcupine under the table. A birds nest in the toilet paper holder in the outhouse. Peeling paint and missing door panels and a rusted out bed frame against the back of the house. I was in heaven. 

Then Tim made me climb the tower. 

More technically in heaven, I guess, but a lot more scared. I don't do heights. 

I don't look nearly as nauseous and terrified as I was. 

Abbey carved his name into the door when he left. I mean. 

Finally seeing that cabin and tower was damn near a spiritual experience for me. The rest of this summer can suck (and probably will, all things considered), and I'll call it a win. 

God, Havoc is loud. 

Washing dishes, homestead style.

Since I don't have a fully functional kitchen (stove works, but that's it), I wash the dishes outside on a table with a jug of water and a tub. 

Every morning, I put yesterday's dishes in the tub on the ground to soak. (There are more dishes than normal in this pic, it's been snowing so I haven't done the washnh in a few days.) Around noon I go out and scrub them, and toss the dirty water. Then I rinse them with the jug water, over the tub, so I can reuse the rinse water for tomorrow's soak water. They dry on a rack the fits into the nonfunctional kitchen sink. I use about a gallon of clean water a day. 

When it's nice out, it's actually kind of fun; and very very "green". When it's cold, though? That sucks. One day I added hot water to the jug and soak water, which brought it from frozen to slush. Luckily slush makes for excellent scrubbing! Unluckily it took about two hours for my hands to return to a normal color. 

Looks like the snow may finally be over. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against snow... but it's unpleasant at best when you live in a glorified tin can that can't run heat without sunshine.