When it comes to surfing the joys and tragedies of life, I have learned one very good parameter which has helped me numerous times not make a big thing out of something that is, to most, quite unfortunate. This is asking myself: who is suffering here? my lower self or my higher self? who is the reactor?
Let me define what I mean by lower and higher self. The lower self is Tiffany, this material human form, incarnated here for specific purposes and goals. This is also called Maya, which means illusion. This self is finite, temporary, it will not always be, so it's important not to get too wrapped up in or identified with it's dramas and shenanigans. Then, there is the higher self. The blessed soul, or Atman, inside each of us. This is immaterial, eternal, infinite. My firm knowing, as I continue to practice Sanatana Dharma (not to be confused with modern Hinduism), is that this eternal higher self is truly me. I carry it with me into each incarnation, or- more accurately- it carries me. And it is that, in conjunction with my relationship and devotion to God, that matters more than any of the Maya-filters I can so easily fall prey to viewing life through.
I haven't finished the Bhagavad Gita yet, in fact I'm barely three-quarters of the way through, but I did finish Little House on the Prairie Volume 1, so a new "fiction" to pair with the Gita.
Here marks the beginning of my long-awaited sourdough experimenting! Thanks to a kind lady who was giving einkorn sourdough starter away at the local co-op last week, I brought some home and--so far!--have managed to keep it alive. Yesterday I experimented with my first loaf: a small rye loaf, no extra flours or ingredients, just straight old-fashioned dark rye with a little salt, water, and the starter. The result is a tangy, slightly nutty, ferment-y bread. I just had a piece with butter this morning and it's really good. I like knowing that if the proverbial poo ever hit the fan, as long as we had flour, salt, and water on hand, we'd be able to have fresh loaves of bread. Tip I learned: Put a baking sheet with water in the oven while baking, and your bread will have the perfect moistness to it. Next, I want to master the Alaskan sourdough hotcake, the kind that Dick Proenneke made so often.
Last night we watched the documentary Vanished, with Dave Paulides. It was really good. I know that speaking seriously of portals can be humorous to some people, but if someone taking portals seriously and truly believing in their existence makes you chuckle or discredit them, I would suggest delving deeper into the portal phenomenon yourself, and physics altogether.
In the documentary, the McCabe scientists, a father and son team, were brought to one of the sites where a man disappeared seemingly into thin air some years ago. He wasn't remote, there were people around, he didn't fall or get attacked, zero remains of him were ever found in this highly tourist trafficked area. The site is in Mesa Verde, Colorado, a place with ancient cliff dwellings and petroglyphs that were once inhabited by Native Americans- not just any Natives, though, but the Anasazi people who disappeared suddenly about 900 years ago. To this day, no agreed upon reason is known for why these people disappeared altogether so abruptly.
Included in this old site are circular rock formations, called kivas, which were sacred spaces for ceremony and other forms of ritual. But those areas weren't just chosen out of thin air, for no reason. The sacred sites were deemed sacred for already existing reasons (I think).
In this case, the McCabe scientists performed experiments to determine if any factors could be pinpointed that would signify this area possibly having special features...
A time dilation experiment was performed, which measures the passage of time at two different locations. Time, as I'm sure you know, is impacted by the different laws of nature, such as bends in space, velocity, and gravity. What they found is that time actually moved differently between two of the kivas, which were only feet apart. There was a .6% change in time between the two points, which, frankly, is insane! Normal would be 0%. So a person standing in one kiva was aging faster than a person standing in the other, though they were only mere feet away from one another. Not only are these very credible scientists, but the experiments were ran again and reported the same exact results.
Furthermore, the static electricity in the area around the kivas was measured and some areas of up to 40 volts per meter were recorded! The normal range is 0-10 volts/meter. Fluctuations like this can be caused by geological anomalies such as a high level in quartz in a rock.
But what really intrigued me was the time difference in that specific little area and how this could relate to the mysterious disappearance of Dale Stehling.
Just to be very direct: are some people who go missing, especially in national parks, perhaps passing into a kind of portal? Do I believe portals exist? Yes, 110%, but here are some questions I still have: are portals fixed or transient? I now believe it to be the latter, otherwise they could be observed and located and "found out." Do they just happen as a part of nature or are they created by some kind of intelligence? Right now, I think the latter.
Multiple people have gone missing in the same exact area at Mt. Shasta (which is not very precarious, has no ridges or crevasses, and in fact you can see for miles in any direction) and were never found, not even a single piece of clothing. A man and woman were driving forest service roads looking for a camping spot one night, I think it was in the Yosemite area, and the back of their truck began to spin around kind of slowly and when they turned to look, the back of the truck was warping out of its shape, stretching, as though being affected by some space-time irregularity. And this story really speaks to some high strangeness going on, especially as it relates to time being affected in a way we don't understand, even distance, memory (his phone had welcome messages from dozens of different countries within the same minute time stamp, which coincided with seeing this creature who was trying to jump up into something and the upper half of his body disappearing each time he jumped!).
Anywho- interesting things to think about and learn more about.
Oh, but an original thought of my own I had last night while listening to these physicists discuss portal theory is this: from a quantum perspective, matter doesn't really exist and instead everything we observe as solid and "real" is just a wave function, which collapses into totality to become a "thing" (a cup, your car, a building, your wife, etc.) only upon observation. Knowing that this is true of quantum mechanics, and therefore true in reality, I wondered if it's possible that somehow the quantum world is related to people getting absorbed into portals? Maybe when being observed, a person cannot enter into a portal, which is why it only happens when people are alone. There are no cases of someone watching another person disappear altogether into thin air, and my theory is that that's because a totality cannot go into a portal, only a wave function can.
Does that make sense? I'm going to think on it a lot more.
This morning, I treated myself to a solitary breakfast at my favorite (and one of the only) breakfast places. There was only one other customer- Ralph, a long-time Republic resident. Ralph was probably in his 70's and wore rainbow-striped suspenders and sat alone, having obvious difficulty breathing, which he seemed to take in stride without much anxiety or fuss.
The server's name was Tiffany, so there were two Tiffanys and one Ralph in the room.
Ralph asked server-Tiffany if she had a boyfriend. Server-Tiffany laughingly said Yes, yes she did, while Tiffany-me looked down bashfully at her plate of food and chewed behind a wide grin.
Then, Ralph saw Gracie (there's a little store attached to the restaurant, with people coming and going) and Gracie wondered if Ralph would be at the fair. Ralph wouldn't miss it.
Last of all was Harvey, who Ralph implored could he mooch a cigarette? Harvey was who cooked our breakfasts. Harvey handed over the cigarette with a "You bet!" to match Ralph's gratitude, and was on his way.
By then, I had read several chapters of Little House on the Prairie and was full of hashbrowns, bacon, eggs, toast, and strawberry jam, so with a final swig of coffee, I made my way to the cashier. As I walked past Ralph, he told me that today's special was The Ralph. I told him I'd have to get it next time, he said he gets it every time.
Then, I got into my sun-warmed vehicle and drove off over the mountain pass to the nearest town with large department stores to stock up on some meats and vegetables for the freezer. It's possible that Season 2 of The Coof is incoming and we could get locked down again, so I figured better go on now rather than wait.
We got an offer on our land today. I countered and they accepted that, so it looks like maybe we've sold the land! That road was going to be tens of thousands of dollars to repair, and without widening and working on the grade, access to the property in winter was going to be mostly impossible.
Living off-grid and homesteading are not simple lifestyles like some people might imagine them to be. Especially in the mountains. I think most folks see people living in a small cabin or a house they built themselves, and imagine things must be so easy.
Here are some numbers to think about:
Our raw piece of land was $50,000. Road repair was going to be $10-20,000. Installing a well was quoted at $17,000 (and even then you aren't guaranteed to hit water!). A minimal solar array about $15,000. So you're already close to six figures and still have no house!
You could, of course, get land with power and water already on it, but that isn't "off-grid" and besides, your land cost would just increase.
Maybe taking on a mortgage isn't such a terrible idea after all, as long as you work to pay it off as soon as possible. Stretching it out for 30 or even 15 years seems like a pretty big gamble to me. Life can change a lot over such a span of time. I don't like debt, I like freedom and the two do not go well together. A man who owes is not a free man.
Things to think about.
Another Ayurveda-filled day. Body is achy from too much sitting! Nothing special to report- just lots of online school garnished with domestic chores, a quick trip to the gym mid-day, dinner just a bit ago, and now settling in with my evening cacao to read and knit. Finished another knit hat today and hung some of my embroideries and wall sconces with beeswax candles up, so the feeling inside is even cozier now. I need to finish handsewing curtains soon and get those hung, and I need to apply the second coat of paint to the cabinets, but already the camper has gone from standard camper aesthetic, which I abhor, to rustic and inspiring and forest-y. Generic neutrals have been replaced with mossy greens, deep burgundies, mustard, and terra cottas. 80's splash patterns are covered now with handwoven textures and William Morris prints. We're getting there. One day, when I don't live in this camper, but in a home built into the actual ground, rooted, I'll probably offer this camper as an AirBnB because it is just so snug and imaginative inside. Alrighty, I'm off to begin that cacao, reading, and knitting ritual now. Night, night.
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| Our neighbor, Kerri, and her little girl, Revvie |
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| Kerri, Eric, and Kerri's son, Rhett, leading the way. |
Revvie, two years old, insisted the entire hike that I hold her- "I wanna hold Tiffy!" she would cry. To which I obliged, of course. It was a good workout, that's for sure. We hiked right past a cave that was accompanied by a very pungent odor in the general area- maybe a bear home. I've seen five bears in the last two weeks. Not sure if the inhabitant was inside, but after a couple of minutes observing, we went on our way so as not to try anybody's patience.
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| The "bear cave" at Beth Lake, Okanogan National Forest |
On the drive home, the light was heavenly, pouring across sections of the landscape, illuminating strips of forest and high blonde highlands.
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| Corkscrew Mountain, seen from Toroda Creek Rd. |
This weekend is my once monthly 20-hour Ayurvedic intensive, so I've been indoors most of the day, attending that. Soon I'll be officially certified as an Ayurvedic Wellness Counselor.
I worked on some knitting- a hat for little Revvie. In a bit, I'll cast on my next project- a hat for Kerri. I plan to make the whole family a hat for their going away gifts, as they leave next week for Idaho. One hat down, three to go!
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| Revvie's hat, from Tiffy |
Having recently gotten back into Dick Proenneke, I've decided to give daily journaling a go for a few weeks and see if it's something I'd like to make a habit of.
I didn't get the best night of sleep last night, so it's a bit of a puffy-eyed glasses-wearing day, but I'm shaking it off hour by hour. Spoke with a gentleman this morning, in regard to becoming a volunteer EMT in the county here, and it was surprisingly refreshing when he said, "While I myself am pro-vaccine, I'm also pro-choice, so I don't need to know if you are or aren't [vaccinated]." It feels like such simple reason has largely left the stage on a societal level, so I appreciated his stance.
This goes well along with a wonderful conversation I had with one of the local Deputy Sheriffs at the gym last week- not only was he into bizarre esoteric topics like myself, but he was very firm in his position about the nonsensical nature of all that is going on in the world at large right now. It made me feel better somehow just knowing that someone like him is in a position of law and order here in our small little mountain town.
I'm heating a pot of water on the stove now, preparing to go for a hike with my husband when he gets in from work. We'll be going to an emerald green lake with a trail around it and a little cave right off the trail that we've been curious about. Hoping for the audacity to go up to the mouth of it to inspect the tracks leading inside and figure out who is calling that place home.
A scene from yesterday's drive to the bank, which always turns into an adventure when you have to cover such distance just to get to the bank:
