Discoveries

So we homeschool. Specifically, we are unschoolers. There are lots of places on the web where you can read about unschooling - for us, it has grown into our preferred lifestyle. We are curious by nature, nearly always passionate about something or other, and don't mind a few hours in a hot car as long as we are on an adventure.

 And, you know, life is an adventure.

For the past few months, we have been slowly figuring out how to be together, mostly in a small RV, a lot of the time.

We have discovered some of the banal things: cloth diapers are a really pain on the road. Honestly, laundry in general, can be a bit of a drag, although you meet some really interesting folks in laundrymats. Early in our trip, we stopped at a grubby burg in southern Pennsylvania, hoping to find some huge industrial washers to clean everything at once - who sorts on the road? - but ending up in a dead-ish looking strip mall, plastered with signs warning police that certain individuals were not allowed on the premise. Jason stuffed as much of our clothing, sheets, towels, diapers, and several sleeping bags into washers as he could, and we sat in the RV, biding time time the dryer switch.

The folks loitering outside the 'mat eyed us curiously, as my tribe eyed them back. They did not look like the kind of people we'd want to cross; on the other hand, our RV, as we would be reminded of numerous times during our trek, looks a lot more like something out of Breaking Bad than the Mystery Machine, so they were probably worrying about their well being as much as we were worrying about ours.

As drying time neared, Jason hopped out, with several kids, to change the laundry and one of the fellows, sauntered forward.

"I had one just like that", he called to Jason, pointing to our beat-up ride. "Never could get her on the road. Did you really drive here from New York?"

And that sparked a spirited conversation about old RVs and missed opportunities and how cool it was that ours was actually taking us somewhere. And I found it pretty awesome that we have one more example of goodwill to add to our growing stack.


Mostly, though, we discovered that we really like what we haven't discovered yet, which may be one of the tenets of good unschooling. I know that hitting the road with an open heart and an open mind has led to incredible adventures, and a ton of learning.

And, man, we do love driving over just one more bridge, rolling our old Travco onto just one more ferry, and planning just one more route into the great unknown.

Lessons learned, part 1

So we are home, though slowly learning that "home" is, at least for us, a relative concept. We are back in Medusa, glad to be in sunshine, thrilled that it is warm enough to happily boondock at our now closed store in upstate New York, but feeling pretty unmoored.

Glad to be near family, but looking forward to being on the road again.

We left with a clear objective - not only did we want to see a bit of our country, and share it with our curious, passionate and occasionally unruly tribe of children, but we wanted to find somewhere that was doing better, whatever that meant. And there are places that seem to be thriving - we stayed with a friend east of Nashville, always enjoying his company, a slice of very good pizza and a night under the stars. It's booming there, the locals tell me. And we shared brownies and cookies at a bakery in Highland, Illinios, where the proprietor tells me that folks always bounce back - Highland is rather miraculous in that regard, I guess.

And we stayed in Denver, with generous lifelong friends, where the tech bubble continues to expand. Denver and Boulder are hopping, too, it seems.

But for the most part, we traveled through hundreds of downtowns in small communities from here through the midwest and back, where boarded up buildings and empty storefronts were the rule, not the exception. Where there's a Harmony, Indiana, bursting with energy and optimism, there are ten places like Dumas, Texas, where Walmart seems to have overtaken the culture, color and spirit of the region.

Thrift shops galore, and thousands of auto parts stores, gloomy abandoned strip malls. Lots of farmland, not many farmhouses. And cows, always lots of cows.

Really, we have been left with far more questions than we have answered. How can there be so many people who seem to be barely making it, so many folks who remember better days - can describe them in colorful details - but when queried about the future, have only the sparest of optimism? Why, too, is there so little room for alternatives to conventional ways of living? Why must we all settle down into jobs and commit ourselves to a bit of geography, when there's a whole world out there?

We are pretty convinced that some of it has to do with a quote we heard when visiting a fantastic museum in Manhattan, Kansas: to paraphrase (badly) we are plagued with this beautiful and irrational commitment to place. Some places just call to us, and once we are hooked, we hang on for dear life. What, perhaps, many fail to realize is that, these days, the place we ought to holding onto is a whole lot bigger than a chunk of limestone hill in middle Kansas or a spicy, never-say-die burg in upstate New York. Maybe we just need to expand our concept of home to mean the country or the continent or the planet.

Can you imagine what our country, our world, could be like if we considered everyone a neighbor, if we treated everywhere like home?

Calculating the risks

As you might know, we spent months working on the RV.

And if you know us at all, you know that when I say "we", I actually mean Jason. The kids and I are supportive - ridiculously and completely believing that he is capable of anything. Anything, in this case, means his mechanical ability. No matter what "problem" crops up, we assume he can fix it.

One day before we finally left town, we pulled out of his shop in Greenville, only to make it to South Westerlo, a few moments down the road, where it died at an intersection. Died, as in stopped running and refused to start. With us sitting startled in the back, he whipped off the cover of the motor - which is handily right inside the truck, unscrewed and tinkered and diagnosed, and within several noisy, smokey minutes, we were back at the shop.

This, my amazing husband said, was a good thing - we needed to know what could go wrong, and how to fix it, when we were home.

So, in that vein, we had been driving around our region, raking up the miles and testing and tuning. Mostly, we were trying to get an idea of the gas efficiency of our little beast. We had been hoping for 15 miles per gallon, which made quite a few people chuckle, but would have been thrilled with 10. On one of our last trips out before we took off for parts unknown, the best we could get was a measly 6.

Depressing, I thought. We were idling a lot, said my husband.

On day 2, flying down an interstate for 100 miles, we eeked out a handy 9 mpg and cheered. Unfortunately, that also resulted in a ticking motor which had sucked down two quarts of oil. We decided that our initial decision to stay off the interstates (seconded by the amazing Doug Story), was a good one.

On day 3, we thought we had our first flat tire, only to discover that the battery case had broken and was rolling about - a quick bungee cord repair and we were on our way.

And these sorts of minor, but briefly terrorizing, incidents happen fairly regularly, as if it is warning all of us not to get too comfortable. Earlier today, in fact, our trusty steed stalled drifting into a light in a small town in eastern Kentucky, and refused to start. Carburetor, cursed my husband, but had us moving along within moments.

This is all to point out that such travel is not for the faint of heart - as if keeping six kids in a seat for countless exhausting hours on the road wasn't enough, our vehicle keeps us on our toes. (Frankly, there are many nights when we agree that a collective insanity is responsible.) But, even with the real potential for calamity, the lessons learned on the road, for my kids as well as for us, far outweigh the risks.

Sometimes you just have to live a little. 

On the road!

Where are we?

Somewhere between - YAY! We are finally on the road! - and what on earth are we doing?!

As some of you know, we had a delayed start, as we unexpectedly lost our rental of the last few years. Moving is always a trial, but when you had been focused on trip planning and RV renovations, having to pack everything you own up and find a place to store it, with a week's notice, is draining. Luckily, spring arrived just then, too, and even the mud wasn't enough to slow us down.

We finally hit the road on Tuesday, heading out Rte 32, down through Kingston. (Adam - we made it further than Kingston!) We hopped on 212 all the way to Pennsylvania, passing stone houses and prisons, Walmarts and sprawl. We were lucky enough to come across the Delaware Water Gap, a national recreation area, which was, till then, only a blue smear on a map. (Thanks to Freddie, who suggested we take his trusty maps even though I insisted we had a navigational device!) Next time, we think, we'll plan not to cross the 20 mile span when it is gloomy, drizzling and dark.

We camped out in a Walmart parking lot, as I had been unsuccessful at finding a boondocking location with real people. In a bizarre kind of way, we found the ambiance fascinating - this might be what freedom feels like. We woke to find that another RV had pulled in after us, a massive bus of a beast, towing a car behind. We wondered what they were having for breakfast, then discovered a cool little bagel spot down the road.

Our plan was to hit Allentown by our first night, then head on to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Unfortunately, we have realized that in addition to be less gas efficient than we were hoping, we also take a lot more time getting anywhere.  So we got into Allentown this morning, and found the Da Vinci Science Center. As it goes with us, Garmin or not, we managed to pass the turnoff and accidentally discovered an amazing playground. So between the science museum (which would have been cool if we weren't already science museum groupies!), and the playground, drizzle be damned, we didn't actually get back on the road till 3pm. And even though google maps claimed it was a 4.5 hour jaunt to Waynesboro, we've snuck our little 76er in alongside several great big rigs here in our second Walmart parking lot, happy to have managed to get as far as West Virginia.

A few discoveries so far? Pennsylvania seems to have a remarkable ability to support their little cities while attempting to not convert all of their farmland to suburbs. (Incidentally, why are do many new developments look more like upscale barracks than places where people live and grow? It's eerie.) Every little city we've traveled through this afternoon also seems to have a college or university (or a Department of Defense installation, in the case of Carlisle, which is probably also handy), which means that even if there are quite a number of empty store fronts, even at this end of the recession, business seems to be bustling.

If you are following along to see what happens when you put six kids in a small RV with two harried parents, well so far, everyone is still smiling. While we are wishing for a little more sunshine, and maybe a day or two at a beach, our adventurous crew can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!

Stay tuned - and a prayer every so often can't hurt either!
Lots of love,
April

RV renovations

First 100 miles on the RV and, mechanically, all is well. We still have a few items to test - and we are adding hoses, fuses, replacement parts and tools to our growing on-the-road emergency box - but so far, so good.

(And since we received word that my tugboat captain brother-in-law has been laid off and is stuck in New Jersey with a broken car, we might just have a handy test run happening this weekend! Fngers crossed!)

Renovations have begun in earnest, though, thanks to carpenter friend Steve Pfleging. Classic RV enthusiasts are gonna cringe, but we got some pieces ripped apart yesterday, and the bunk bed frame completed. Thanks to Steve, it is safe and seems like it can withstand the antics of my crazy tribe.

Foam mattress cover will get ordered today, and plywood completes the frames tomorrow. Zaria and I are planning to camp out in the hardware store parking lot until we get it looking attractive again.

We've also got our sanding hands ready to repaint cabinetry. More importantly, we have a few spots picked out that are 3yr old height for chalkboard painting. (Did you know you can tint chalkboard paint now - such amazing ingenuity.) And we are sewing some basic curtains for bunk enclosures.

We have a 200-300 miles road trip planned for the middle of next week, barring any calamities between then and now. Then it's packing and food prep.

A bigger question is our route. I am still mapping out a general Google map - and planning to boondock down the east coast. (Loving that we found boondockerswelcome.com - while it seems to freak our family out a bit, we are looking forward to making some new friends - and smuggling along some Lady Bug soaps and local maple syrup to give away!) We have meetings planned with someone from the Transition movement in northern California, and someone from New Stories in Washington state. An amazing friend of mine in Oregon has offered her help with sites and contacts there.

Meanwhile I am sending out emails like  crazy person, trying to uncover he places where rural resilience is happening. If you have heard of somewhere that we should visit, give me a shout - times running out!

PS: Please share our fundraising campaign around, would you?
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/determined-to-thrive-a-pilgrimage-to-find-america/x/6898573

Up, up and away!

We have a departure date!

(But maybe I am getting ahead of myself!)

My unschooling family of eight will be hitting the road on April 1st! After five years of running a general store in bucolic upstate New York, adding three more babes to our young family, and living deeply and richly in a community, wanderlust whispers seductively: just a little trip.

Photo credit to H. Soderquist

But our eyes have always been a bit too big for our stomachs.

So our little trip morphed, to use a Minecraft word, into a pilgrimage. First, we wanted a vacation, but large families don't have an easy go of the vacation thing.  And then we dreamed of "traveling' without a destination in mind. But we wanted to come back with stories, from specific places, told by real people.

Here, we figure, has a lot in common with lots of other places. We are specifically interested in the places that are engaged in the kinds of mindful change that we'd like to see in our hill town communities. We're looking for those with the foresight to plan for a transition to a more equitable society, those that are preparing us for a climate changed world, one that necessarily must adapt from consumer-centric masses to resilient (and often self-reliant) placed based communities.

So we are building a map - I still haven't quite got it right, yet - to share with all of you.  It's a path of stories, we hope, across our great United States, that will excite our imaginations and nurture our own best strategies for engaging our neighbors and planning for our future.

We are, as we suggest, determined to thrive, despite what feels like mounting odds against us.

And we think that sometimes the best way to grow is to bring back some seeds of change.