Technically, the moon shining down on Smudge and me at 3am was a waxing gibbous — we don’t get our full moon ’til tonight. But it was so bright, so positively supernatural, and the sky was crystal-clear.
Stars sparkled. The night air crackled. It was a pleasure to be up at that hour.
Please don’t misunderstand, I gladly would’ve taken another couple of hours’ shuteye. That’s not my role in this American Life of ours, however — Smudge yips, I stir, Deb sleeps. I can either piss and complain about that or I can accept it.
I choose acceptance. It opens my eyes.
Nature placed that brilliant moon in the morning sky whether I saw it or not. Because I wasn’t mired in misery over being awake at 3am, I looked up.
The reward is the lesson.
“And the full moon in the last week brings a fullness to this earth”
Michael Martin Murphey, “Carolina in the Pines”
The rhythm of the natural world complements the tumult of our lives. Its constants offer refuge from chaos of our own making. Even its storms, which mock man’s attempts to predict them, carry a sense of certainty — power, scale, consequence.
Over the last two years, Deb and I have been in ongoing negotiations with a Force of Nature we call The Mountain. We turned our dreams into plans and came to this patch of land, meaning to bring them to life.
What we learned is that The Mountain always has the last word. We tell The Mountain what we want to take, and The Mountain tells us what we may have.
It’s at once unforgiving and generous. Which side we see depends on our willingness to be humble — and humbled.
The last 12 months have seen us struggle, stumble and fall. We made foolish choices. At times we betrayed ourselves by straying from our vision. In the end, we pulled ourselves upright, took a more honest bearing and pressed on, wiser.
And humbled.
Tomorrow will mark six months of living on The Mountain. As we embrace our place, our rightful place in the order of things, we no longer struggle — we strive.
Here we stand. It’s good to be Home.
“Luck don’t live out here. Luck lives in the city.”
“Out here, you survive or you surrender. Period. That’s determined by your strength and bear spirit.
“Wolves don’t kill unlucky deer. They kill the weak ones.”
wildlife officer Cory Lambert, “Wind River” (2017)
The same things that made our fifth-wheel a challenge to keep cool in the summer have become advantages in the winter. Its main living space, thin-skinned with windows facing all four directions, is something of a “greenhouse” — once the sun hits it, as long as winds are light and the outside temp is above 25°F, we can turn the heat off ’til late afternoon.
The way the camper is situated, of course, that so-called “passive solar” effect doesn’t begin until maybe 10am. It has to be a clear morning. And by 4:30pm or so this time of year, the sun is too low in the western sky to do any good.
But hey, if we can go four or five hours a few days a week without pulling electric or burning propane, I’ll call that a win.
As for our array of solar exterior lighting, those fixtures are showing their weakness — they charge just fine whenever the sun’s out, but these short days don’t allow them to take a full charge. At best, our stake and string lights shine only for an hour or two after dark.
Motion-activated lights usually are there for me in the morning, but even those are hit-or-miss.
And that’s what you get with solar, especially when placement of PV panels is less than ideal. We fill the gap with the RV’s 12VDC “scare lights” and our headlamps.
Looking ahead, the cabin won’t have nearly the passive-solar potential of the fifth-wheel — less glass, much better insulation. And while we’re open to considering solar power, either as a supplement or a backup, that’s still a ways down the road.
A lot of what I just said (and likely will continue to say over the next few days) owes to an end-of-year mindset. I don’t make silly resolutions, but it seems like the right time to take stock of things.
As usual, I make no apologies.
I know that this will be a great year for Deb and me. The Life we’ve imagined will keep building, keep growing, keep surprising us with twists and dips. I’m confident that we’ll look back a year from now and marvel at the progress we made.
At the same time, I’m equally sure that 2024 will be wrenching for our country and culture. It’s my opinion that America already has fallen past the point of salvation, and the next 12 months will be marked by convulsions and collapse. It’ll be grinding, awful.
Truly, I’d like to be wrong. Long-time readers of Ubi Libertas Blog can testify, however, that I have a history of being right about such things.
I may go into specifics later. Or I might not.
Even if I say nothing more on the subject, you know what to do — put your affairs in order.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB