The Shaman Shack

So here I was, having lived in my car for nearly a year and a half... mostly, that is... though I sometimes stopped and crashed at various friends' places for a few days at a time, I would always find myself returning to the vehicle. I didn't want to wear out my welcome anywhere, and besides, the interior of the car was the only space that actually felt like "mine", even if it was a little cramped...

Winter was almost over. During most of the cold months, whenever I wasn't indoors somewhere, working at the office, or meeting someone for a particular reason, I would bundle up in my thermal sleeping bag, recline the seat, smoke a bowl (thus learning the extent to which weed can help make sitations that might otherwise seem intolerable into a cozy, comfy, content place), and surf the web or play on my phone until I went to sleep. When it got especially cold, some nights I would wake up to idle the engine for an hour with the heat on full blast, or drive around in circles until the air inside the car was comfortable again, for a little while anyway.

This lifestyle, to me, seemed preferable to yet another round of the tiresome cycle of meddling landlords, rising rents that had been too high to begin with, hostile neighbors calling the cops to make false reports, and difficult roommates. For a while at least, the car as roving home base felt like a relief.

It couldn't last, I knew this; the vehicle would eventually wear out. If a severe breakdown were to happen at the wrong time, or if I stopped getting enough work to keep putting gas in it, or any situation that could result in the vehicle being towed with all my things in it could be catastrophic.

I found myself sticking more and more to areas where people I already knew were never far away. In Missoula, I had friends near, even if I preferred to hang out in solitude most of the time. I had a place that would hire me to do contract work, so long as they kept getting enough clients whose needs fit my skillset and knowledge. I was mostly getting by, and during months when the income fell a little short of expenses, well.... credit cards filled the gaps.

To celebrate the spring equinox, I returned to a local neopagan temple at the outskirts of town, run by long-time friends. After the ritual, they told me again, "Seriously, anytime you need a place to crash, don't hesitate to come here."

I stayed for a few days. Then it was back to the car, in orbit again. My body rebelled. The degree to which my physical condition had deteriorated became apparent when the simple act of standing up to walk around from a sitting or laying position started becoming painful to my muscles. Movements that would previously have been easy, routine, everyday acts took on a new form of difficulty. Worries about wear and tear on the car were replaced with a realization that the enforced sedentary nature of my physical living environment could be having an even more detrimental effect on a vessel even more basic to my existence: My body.

One night, I started to grow so antsy, both mentally and physically, that simply sitting in the car at this point felt almost unbearable. I knew my body wanted to walk around, but I was also feeling decidedly uneasy about getting out to pace around in public. Nothing felt right, or safe.

I drove straight to the temple. Here, at least, I could park the car and just let it sit for a while, walk around in circles, let my self-conscious awareness go, and nobody would look at me funny or call the cops.

(Flashback: The month before, I had been reminded again that simply moving out of a particular neighborhood didn't preclude obnoxious people from calling the cops for no reason. This time, all I had done was park on a public street for a couple hours during mid-afternoon, surfing the web on my phone from the driver's seat, not even exiting the vehicle once or doing anything else illicit. Nevertheless, an anonymous someone living nearby had called the police to report "suspicious" activity. The officer himself was actually very nice, just doing his job; he politely requested that I move the car, which I did without hesitation. This event, along with the recent election, added to a growing perception of mine that had already been growing in recent times: America's biggest problem, as I now saw it, was no longer bad cops, or crooked politicians, or even sociopathic corporate entities (though these all certainly exist as much as ever).... No, the real problem behind all these things is country where too large a portion the everyday citizenry have become, to put it bluntly, a bunch of assholes. Reinforcing the point, how else could such an wretched figure as 45 find his way to the Whitehouse? Were that many people really turning into malicious neo-fascists? Voting against Hillary, I could totally understand and agree with, but not in favor of someone even worse! Was it all circumstantial cognitive bias on my part? Perhaps so, but the (circumstancial) evidence all around me seemed to support it. Anytime I saw more yard signs showing open support for politicians promoting racist, mysogynist policies, my overall faith in fellow Americans went down another notch.)

Taking refuge at the temple, I contemplated my options. Here were people I knew I could trust. We might not get along perfectly, or be on the same page about everything, but I had spent enough time around them to know that on a basic level, we are in alignment regarding what we are about in the world. More importantly, they had already offered to let me stay whenever I needed at no cost, even going so far as to give me a house key to get in when nobody else happened to be around.

After this huge show of trust and kindness, when I learned that they were again looking for someone to rent a small shack (formerly used as a chicken coop) out near the edge of the property, just for the summer, I thought "why not?", and decided to give it a go, and make it my home base for the season.

As the shack has no electrical or plumbing, we ran a long extension cord from the main house to the shack to power my devices and a water boiler for making tea. For the kitchen, I bought a propane stove with a nice big tank, and most recently, a mini-fridge off of craigslist.

Preparing to put in a small garden, I threw together some old boards that were laying around nearby, arranging them to see what a raised bed configuration might look like. I haven't yet obtained the soil/compost to add, but soon... The earth all around is packed hard and infested with knapweeds and grass, which tend to spread everywhere, so if I am to grow vegetables, it will likely need a good helping of rich topsoil or compost from elsewhere. When the right opportunity arises, I'll find what is needed.

For toilet facilities, showering, and to use the internet I still have to walk up to the main house. One of these days I might try my luck at getting either a wifi repeater, or a really long ethernet cable to reach down there, but so far I've actually found being offline sometimes can be beneficial in some ways. I tend to spent more time at my MIDI keyboard, playing with LMMS, doing creative stuff instead of just refreshing facebook all the time.

In some ways, life in the Shaman Shack is a challenge; there have been moments when I asked myself, "Why should I be living here, in this run-down old shack, with no furniture and few of the modern amenities? Do I really want to live like this?"

Probably not for more than a season, but at this point, it feels like the best overall choice, given the options apparently available. My rent money goes to helping friends who could really use it to pay their mortgage, instead of yet another landlord who meddles and hassles me in return, or alternatively, wasting a similar monthly amount on gas instead of rent to keep the car orbiting endlessly around, as I did last summer. I get to experience a tiny taste of homesteading, a space in which I can move around and try putting a few of my permaculture ideas into practice, make a kitchen of my own, and just loosen up and get creative with the space.

The river nearby bubbles as I play with patterns on the keyboard, drink tea, and contemplate what it's all about. Another temporary home, another season. We make of life what we can with whatever we find available. So begins my summer at the Shaman Shack.