so it appears that we're going to be staying in the Mimbres, NM area for a little while - through the new year, at least. Mimbres is between Silver City and Truth or Consequences, NM. suffice it to say i fucking love new mexico. i've only been here three times, but every single time i get back here there's this giant sense of relief, this calm feeling of being somewhere i really am supposed to be. so, here it is. yeah friends, i'm moving to new mexico. at least, ya know, some of the time.


the chain of events has been pushed along by the dream michael and i have of buying some cheap mesa land and throwing up a shelter on it. i never wanted to own property before this, but the idea of having somewhere to get back to and sit down for a while, while still being able to maintain a moderately nomadic lifestyle, well, it makes a lot of sense.

so do earth bags here - www.networkearth.org/natural...gs.html.

so here we are in the midst of sustainable, eco-hippie heaven. we're being passed around a bit right now, happily, and in between passings-arounds we've been ducking to local sets of hot springs and camping. it's very, very cold up there in taos at the moment, as is usual for this time of year. so, we've decided it's a good idea to stay down here a bit longer where it's tolerable, and where nearly everyone we meet is willing to teach us something if we're willing to offer some sweat equity to their projects, too. since we decided that what we were going to do was go and build a house (yeah we're crazy, thank god there are two of us), the path has been thrown wide, wide open to do it. we're currently on an off-grid property where one of the men has offered his design and educational assistance once we get a patch of land (we're to come here and sweat in return). in a few days we'll be headed back to Truth or Consequences for four days of sustainable living and building education and daily yoga, and when that's done, we'll be returning to Mimbres to housesit over christmas. the house, by the way, is part of a old hippie commune built around, yeah, some hot springs.

friends, it's not warm here. it's beautiful, but it is not warm. unless we've been offered a bed (which we have, fairly regularly) we've been sleeping in the truck, mostly, getting up with the sun and going to sleep just after it sets (except for the other night when we wound up spending five hours in a hot pool with the moon overhead). in the Gila National Forest just outside of Silver City, 21 inches of snow happened the other night. we drove in the next night and camped in, oh, about seven inches of it.

it's cold, and lord knows i don't really like being cold but fuck, life doesn't suck.