I said I would post pics of the actual setup once I got a chance, so I finally got around to getting them all uploaded. All the pictures can be clicked for larger views.

The basic problem that I needed to fix is that the bed of the Explorer is just a couple inches too short for me to stretch out all the way and sleep (I’m not quite 5′7″). I needed a sleeping platform that would lift me up over the barrier of the back seats (the part that sticks up when they are folded forward). There are a ton of really cool projects online for how to do this all stylish-like (search for “truck sleeping platform” if you’re curious) but I needed something really easy and low-tech because I can only hold two numbers in my head at a time and I get frustrated with a project if I have to, like, plan it out ahead or anything. (Just one of the reasons that Preston and I don’t work well together on projects like this.) I also wanted my platform to break down really easily so that I could still fit passengers in the truck if I needed to. So I created two simple boxes, sized so that, when stacked up, they fit into the very back of the truck with all the passenger seats available.

The legs are just 2×4s, cut to be the same length as the height of the edge of the bed in the front (you’ll see in future pics). The top is 3/4 inch plywood. Note that the top box has two layers of plywood on top. That’ll make sense in just a minute. Each leg is attached from on top of the plywood with two screws. The odd leg arrangement on the top box is to accommodate the wheel well on that part of the bed. The platform fits over the top of the wheel well, increasing usable space a little bit. Clothes and books fit nicely under the box, and the space under the second box is used to store the Thermarest and sheets and what-all when the boxes are arranged all compact-like. Laying the bed out is as easy as putting down the back seat and setting the top box down in front of the bottom one.

At this point, it’s only about 4 feet long, which obviously won’t do. And that’s where the second layer of plywood comes in.

There are hinges on the front of the top box that allows the top layer of plywood to swing forward and rest on the edge of the back seat. That’s why the legs of the boxes need to be the same height as that barrier. I’m actually using that edge as another set of legs to support the hinged piece of plywood. I know it’s hard to tell in the following picture, but the platform is now 6 feet long, and plenty long for me to rest comfortably and kick the covers around and what-all. The driver’s seat has to be tilted forward in order for the whole thing to fit, so I can’t drive with the bed down, but I don’t have to break it down completely. I can just fold up the hinged piece and have plenty of room for the driver’s seat to be comfortably arranged.

Because I am very lazy, I didn’t want to deal with sanding down the plywood, but I was worried that it would poke a hole in my thermarest, or scratch me up in my sleep, so I covered it with a warm, fleece cape that I made years ago and never use. Looks almost legit, doesn’t it? Also helps keep clothing and other items that are stored under the bed out of sight and looking a little tidier.

So then I roll out my Thermarest, throw a sheet over it all, and my pillows and sleeping bag on top of that, and it’s one of the more comfortable places I’ve ever slept, once I figured out how to manage parking spots. This one you pretty much have to click on to see the details.

I specifically designed the platform to be narrow enough that the other passenger seat could be up without breaking down the bed. That passenger seat is where my spinning wheel rides, buckled in for safety.

Then, I don’t have pictures, but the floorboard in front of the spinning wheel was where the food and cooking supplies (backpacking stove and nesting pots) went. There was plenty of room to keep a week’s worth of food in a box there. Coupla jars of rice goulash that I canned up one weekend and used to make burritos, a bag of mixed oats that I heated up for breakfast, some dried fruit, some pb and honey to put on tortillas, some canned fruit, a handful of biscuits that I made at home before I left, and let’s not forget the coffee singles! That left both front seats for whatever I needed to have out (books, my backpack, whatever), or to drive around with a passenger.

It was totally freaking awesome and I will never again be really all that stressed about being able to make the house payment Seriously, I could totally live this way semi-long-term and I would love to travel around the country with this setup. It would take a little more planning to get it to work for two people (and I’d probably have to stick with a drop spindle and leave the wheel), but it’s definitely do-able. If I was going to do it longer-term, i would make a couple simple adjustments to the platform:

1) Add braces to the legs. Any of you with any carpentry skill at all are probably cringing at the sight of those 9 inch long legs spindling around with no support but a couple of screws, and you’re right. While I didn’t have any middle-of-the-night disasters, the legs had started to work loose after two weeks, and there would have been a collapse eventually, when one just tipped sideways. Just a simple 45 degree connector from each leg to the plywood would make it last a lot longer.

2) Cut the cape down to the right size. You can’t see it in the picture, but it is oddly-shaped (you know, like a cape) and it was hard to keep it from bunching up awkwardly under the platform.

3) Add some way to attach the top box to the lower one when they are stacked in the back. It has an annoying way of tipping over when going around corners. If I was really using that as a shelving system while it was stacked, the constant tipping would be inconvenient.

3a) Add some sort of lower shelf to the top box, so that if I want to use it as a shelf, all the stuff can stay with it, whether it is stacked or extended. This could be as easy as attaching another piece of plywood to the four legs at floor level.

As far as the overall set-up, separate from the platform, I would invest in some sort of curtain set-up, and a sunshade for the windshield. The night that I spent in the Walmart parking lot, I felt like I was sleeping in a display window, since the platform is pretty much level with the bottom edge of the windows. For the most part, that wasn’t an issue this time, since I was sleeping in places like the private property that belongs to Wilderness Awareness School.

But obviously, if I was driving across the country, it wouldn’t always be possible to park in beautiful secluded cedar groves. And I would invest in some sort of system to keep the mosquitos out with the windows open. Some sort of velcro system and screen. Pretty simple fixes, all in all. I highly recommend it.

I am so excited about this!! I think it’s brilliant, and if I saw this flyer, I would totally sign up. But since no one else is doing it, I decided I’ll just have to do it myself. Click for a bigger image, where you can actually read all the text. Feel free to repost anywhere you like. And here’s a higher-resolution version to print out and hang up anywhere.

I’m so excited!

I’m back from summer camps, and I plan to write up my experiences from the second week, but a lot happened (all good) and I haven’t yet processed it into a linear format. So in the meantime, I want to tell you about one of the oddly synchronistic experiences that has happened to me since I’ve been home. I’m telling you about this one first because it’s the cutest

Tuesday evening, I was feeling restless. It’s hard to adjust back to a desk job after running around in the woods for a couple weeks. I went out for a bit of a wander around the neighborhood as it was getting dark. I wandered around and smelled people’s flowers near their front walks. I watched a buck and doe wander down the street, meandering from apple tree to apple tree in various front yards until a dog chased them off down the street. Eventually, I circled around towards home, it being nearly completely dark. There’s a house a few blocks from ours with a really big front lawn, as as I started walking past it, I noticed a 20-something girl in the front yard. It took a minute or two for me to walk past the width of the yard, and just before I turned the corner out of sight of the girl in the yard, she called out, “Excuse me…”

I paused, and she came over to the edge of the lawn with something in her hands. “Um, I know you’re just out for a walk in the neighborhood or something, but, umm, I have this baby bird and I was wondering if you know what I should do with it.”

She has in her hands a complete nest with a gawky little baby robin in it. The robin is sleeping soundly, taking slow even breaths, and seems content. He is fully covered with downy feather, but definitely hasn’t fledged yet. His flight feathers are just starting to come in, but they are still in the shaft. His beak is by far the biggest part of him. It turns out that the landlord was there cutting down some trees on the property earlier in the day, and the nest and baby had fallen out of a tree when it came down. The parent birds were around then, but the people didn’t know what to do with it, so they hadn’t put the baby out where the parents could find it. Of course, at dusk the parents had gone to roost and weren’t around any more.

The girl’s name was Christina. I told her that I have a wildlife rehabilitator friend that I could call. I thought that the parents would come back in the morning and look again, but I didn’t know how long baby robins could go without eating, or if he was old enough to keep himself warm though the night outside. I called Tammy, and she confirmed that if we could get him into a nearby tree near dawn that the parents would probably be back. But they definitely wouldn’t fly at night, and the baby should be kept somewhere warm and quiet for the night. He wouldn’t need anything to eat for the night, but if the parents hadn’t shown up by 9am or so, he would need food and I should bring him in to her. Neither Christina nor any of her roommates was able to be there at dawn or at 9am to check on the little guy, so I took him home and he slept peacefully in my craft room for the night. Preston and I got up at 5am and took him back to the house. Preston climbed up in the tree nearest the one the nest had come out of and hung it up there in a hanging planter box.

Preston walked back home to go back to bed, and I settled in to watch the nest and see if the parents showed up. Nearly right away I heard a lot of robin commotion. Lots of chipping, and a call that I haven’t ever heard from a robin before. I couldn’t tell if it was coming from the baby or from one of the two adults circling the general area. Sort of a high-pitched squeeling whistle. One male and one female bird spent a long time checking out the whole area. They landed on the stump of the tree that was cut down and peered into every nook and cranny of it. They seemed to see the nest in the adjoining tee, but they didn’t land on it. Afer 20 minutes or so of patrolling the area, they seemed to start hunting. One or the other of them was always in sight of the nest in its new location, while the other would do that little robin dance (scurry scurry, head tilt…scurry scurry, head tilt) across the lawn, or would fly into the nearby trees. I watched one eat two whole salmonberries off the bush. After another 20 minutes, I was starting to worry that they weren’t going to feed the baby, but just after I started to wonder, I saw the female robin stop briefly on the nest and seem to feed something. I wasn’t sure, so I hung out another 10 minutes or so until she did it again and this time I got a better view and saw for sure that she had been handing over some food.

I left feeling pretty good about the world, and like that is the sort of meaningful work I want to do.  I left a message on Christina’s phone letting her know about the success, and also tipping her that in a week or two the little guy would probably fledge and she shouldn’t worry if she sees him on the ground then, but if she sees him out of the nest or on the ground and there are no parents around, she should feel free to give me another call.

Interesting that this is the second close encounter with a baby robin I’ve had this year. Maybe I should do some looking into what robins are all about.

It is purely a testament to how well this model works, and nothing to do with my skills, that this week turned out really well. Overall, I felt really out of practice. It’s been almost a full year since I’ve done any work with WAS, and it took me up until Wednesday afternoon to remember that *Blindfolds Are Magic*. I remember now that that used to be my number one trick in previous years. When you can’t get a group of kids to calm down and focus, just put blindfolds on them. I’m guessing this works with adults too. By Thursday at lunchtime, they were willing to take the Lunch Challenge, and a group of eleven 6- and 7-year olds actually chose to spend their whole lunchtime blindfolded and silent. Can you even imagine!?

And I remembered also, that sometimes you have to let kids fail at an activity before they’re willing to learn how to make it work. If the challenge is for them to all line up alphabetically without talking, and I can see that there’s no way it’s going to work, it’s so hard not to help. But if I just tell them where to stand in line, then they haven’t learned anything except that they aren’t capable and they should rely always on adults to tell them how to figure things out. If I let them fail at it, and then we talk about why it didn’t work (that part’s the key), then they’ll be able to do it themselves the next time. And when I say “talk about it”, I really mean that. Even this group of six-year olds can tell me exactly what went wrong (“everyone was telling everyone else what to do, but not doing it themselves” “No one would agree on which side was the beginning, even though it didn’t matter” “some people were pushing”). I don’t need to lecture them on what they should do differently, but have a genuine dialogue where everyone gets a chance to say what their experience was, and I maybe subtly highlight some key points (“so, are you saying that next time everyone should agree on where the beginning is before they start trying to get in line?”)

So the way that I got them to *want* to try a blindfolded lunch was to try a silent-but-not-blindfolded lunch first. The goal was to make it all the way through lunch without talking. If you’ve worked with kids, you know how unlikely this is. One kid makes faces at another, the other giggles, a third kid hisses at the second one to be quiet, a fourth kid sees a bug, and soon all hell has broken loose. I was actually surprised that they made it ten minutes the first time, but someone couldn’t help remarking about the cricket they found in the dirt. So the next day, when the subject of the silent lunch came up again (they were trying to earn the chance to make a fire on Friday), I offered the blindfolds (introduced as part of a fun game earlier in the day, so they were already familiar with them) as a way to make the challenge easier. If your friend is making faces at you, you won’t know. And so we spent a really nice 25 minutes sitting in the grass, in the dappled shade, spread out from each other a ways (far enough that one kid couldn’t “accidentally” bump into another kid), eating our lunches and feeling the breeze. When I told them that it was time and they could take their blindfolds off whenever they were ready, one kid took off his blindfold and looked around in wonder. “That was so beautiful!” he said. Another one chose to leave hers on for another 10 minutes or so.

Hobostripper wrote recently about making God human in the strip club, and that’s how she knows she can do anything. I know I can do anything because I can get eleven 6-year old kids to *want* to sit silently for 25 minutes. And both of us, Tara and I, are teaching people how to be human. Hopefully, if they learn how to be truly present in the world, and in their bodies, and in community, now, then they won’t need to be taught the hard way later, when someone like Tara has to take away all their cash in order to show them what’s real.

I took two weeks off from one job in order to do another job. I’m spending this week and next week working summer camps for Wilderness Awareness School. I remembered intellectually how much I liked it, but I had forgotten how really emotionally rewarding it is. And also how challenging. But that’s actually a story for another time. I’m only three days into the first week, so I don’t feel like I can sum it up yet. The story for today has to do with where I’ve been parking my truck at night. This is a very interesting topic to me, because I’ve been sleeping in my truck rather than trying to set up various couches to sleep on.

Two weeks before my first summer camp week, I had a chance to sleep in the back of my Explorer for the first time, and learned that the back is too short for sleeping comfortably. With the back seats folded forward, the bed is 5 feet long. I thought I’d be able to make it work by laying diagonal, but it only took one sleepless night without being able to straighten my legs to convince me that I needed some sort of sleeping platform if it was going to work for two weeks. The weekend before I left, I created a system of two boxes, about 10 inches off the floor of the truck. I’ll post a picture later when I remember to take one. I can organize my clothes underneath it, and sleep on top of it, which leaves me room for my banjo and spinning supplies (including my wheel!) in the other side of the truck. In fact, there’s actually room for me to sit in the rear passenger seat and (with the front seat folded forward) my spinning wheel sits on the floorboard, so I can actually sit in the back seat and spin! Here’s a not really great picture off that setup.

So my grand (and somewhat naive) plan was to simply sleep in my truck in the parking lot of the county park where I’m working the first week. I knew that the park had hours that they were closed, but figured who would know? Here’s the beautiful spot where I planned to hang out for the week.

Alas, I had not considered that it was the local sheriff that comes to make sure everyone is out of the parking lot before they lock up the gate at dusk. So my first night, things didn’t go quite as planned, and the copper ended up with my license plate number in the system. That meant that my Plan B (to find a busy 24-hour parking lot at the base of the hill) was a no-go. I was worried that my plates already having been run, I’d be really conspicuous anywhere in town. As always Google came to the rescue, although this time it was guided by the nimble hands of Preston, who I called at 10pm to look up the nearest Walmart. Don’t get me wrong, I am not even a little bit excited about Wal-mart, but they do encourage people to sleep in their parking lot (brilliant marketing). So Preston graciously gave me directions to the Walmart 10 miles away, even guiding me turn by turn past the closed freeway on-ramp that mapquest suggested. And that is how I came to find myself waking up here on Tuesday morning.

It was an interesting night, in the company of a couple of RVs and a couple of folks who seemed to be just driving acroos country or something, and a couple of people who definitely seemed to have set up camp in the Walmart parking lot semi-permanently. It made me wonder about Walmart’s official policy on homeless people. I assume they don’t just let them stay there forever, so I wonder how they decide who gets the boot and when. But anyway, it was fine. I figured I could stay there all week if I had to, but I had a couple of back-up plans to try still. By Tuesday afternoon, I had exhausted all my plans, and none of them had worked out. Resigning myself to another evening at Walmart, I stopped off at the local tea shop to use their wi-fi. The girl working there recognized me from the day before,
“You’re back,” she smiled.
“Yes, I’m working up on Cougar Mountain for the week and you’re the closest wi-fi connection,” I explain.
“Oh cool. I live right at the base of Cougar Mountain,” she says.
“You wouldn’t happen to have an extra driveway that you wouldn’t mind letting someone park in, would you?” I ask, mostly joking.
“Absolutely!” she says, without even missing a beat.
And they (she and her boyfriend) totally literally have an extra driveway. They live in a duplex that has three separate driveways. So this lovely place is where I’ll be staying the rest of the week.

They invited me in for a beer last night and we chatted for quite a while. She’s an herbalist and just got her massage license. He’s a dental hygienist for money, but he’s actually a rock climber. Really nice couple, and I’m stoked to have such a great place to sleep. I’m writing this while lounging on the sleeping platform in my truck, and I’ll post it after work tomorrow from the tea shop.

Now if I can just figure out how to keep my truck cool inside without letting in eleventy billion mosquitos… I wonder if they make screens for truck windows.

p.s. I’m at the tea shop now and wanted to update that the spot is still super cool, I had one of my long-standing nature mysteries answered for me this morning (just where do ospreys find all those huge sticks to build their nests with? Now I know), and as soon as I shut the computer so that it was lighter outside the truck than inside, all but two of the mosquitos left out the open window. With no lights on, I hung out on my bunk for an hour or so playing my banjo. Really nice. Life is good.

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

“Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”

– Frederick Douglass, 1852

You can read the whole text of this speech here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927t.html

I found the quote here.

Throughout the dream, I am a disembodied observer, like watching a movie.

At first, Preston is in a library and he’s researching lots of information. Other people think it’s weird that he wants to have all this information. Some people start asking him questions and he knows all the answers. They ask him a question that he doens’t know the answer to and he gets very excited and starts looking through all these books on this table trying to find the answer. The people, in unison, say “Smarty-pants nerd!” which sounds hilarious to say right now, but in the dream preston’s feelings were hurt. Then the camera pans away from the library and we see the whole primitive village that it’s located in, and the voice-over explains that from those roots, this person went on to study to become one of the first surgeons (and I realize that it isn’t Preston we’re seeing, but one of Preston’s distant ancestors).

The scene in the library was just before the onset of the Dark Ages, and Preston (I’m just going to keep calling him that) had access to all this information until all the libraries were done away with during the Dark Ages. So then the camera pans through some scenes of Preston dissecting cadavers in the cemetery a la da Vinci. In particular, there is a close-up of a hand and forearm with the skin peeled back and Preston studying how the tendons and muscles respond to moving the fingers.

Skip ahead 30 years or so, and Preston is a skilled surgeon working under the rule of some sort of medieval lord. He is only allowed to use his skills to work on the upper classes and his time is strictly controlled by some sort of overseer. His profession is seen very sceptically and the ruling lord keep very strict control over anyone with doctor skills. It’s unclear what has happened immediately preceeding the scene, but Preston has found someone in trouble who isn’t rich but who is somehow very important to the future of the world.
It’s as if he has found Jesus Christ wounded in a ditch and he understands the importance of fixing up this person.

He goes to the overseer and says, “Give me two of the best surgeons. It is very important. I can’t explain now.” The overseer is an unfeeling automaton who says, “I see no reason why you are not reporting for duty. You are not ill.” And the overseer tries to insist that it is time for him to report to work. Preston tries to insist that there is a very important reason why he doesn’t have to work now, there is something very worthwhile to be accomplished down the road, but the overseer doesn’t listen. They argue heatedly until the overseer grabs him by the hand and motions to the guard standing behind him. The guard steps forward and uses his sword to sever Preston’s hand at the wrist. The cut is complete and clean. Preston wails, not in pain, but in disbelief that they would damage the hand of a skilled surgeon. The overseer and guard don’t understand the importance of what they have done. “Let’s see you try to do surgery now,” they taunt him.

Cut to Preston in some sort of dungeon in shackles. His wrist is bandaged clumsily with strips of cloth, soaked through with blood. He is thinking to himself that it is his left hand that was cut off, and he could still do surgery better than most people, even with only his right hand, if only he could figure out how to escape. He still is focused on the person outside of the scene who needed his help. Preston is trying to figure out how to release another surgeon who is also being held in the dungeon.

End of Dream.