Gooooooood Morning SuperForest!
As many of you may know, in April I moved from New York (via Los Angeles) to Kauai to start Zero One, a positivity teaching center. Zero One is essentially a SuperForest in the physical world, a place that embodies all of the goodness, energy, growth, and enthusiasm of the site.
Since I moved here and began really amping up the positive growth aspect of my life, I’ve enjoyed observing the way that coincidences seem to be mounting. There is a sense of everything being exactly in it’s right place, at exactly the right time. Here on Kauai I’ve found time and time again that by simply relaxing, being in the moment, and concentrating on love energy, my schedules and interactions with fellow human beings all come together effortlessly.
This week, an event came to pass that makes me think that the good karma energy has shifted upward to an even more exciting level.
It all began in bed last Thursday morning…
Melissa and I were lying in bed at Zero One, up in the little window nest where great morning light comes in, and we were talking about guests. You see, since the Zero One project began, since day one, it has attracted many guests. There has been a near-constant flow of guests through the land since April, and as the whole point of Zero One is to teach about positivity, permaculture, and patronage (aka the gift economy) each guest has been an integral part of the evolution of the project as we teach and in turn are taught.
But the flow of guests and the hosting and cleaning work that accompanies them has made trying to be alone with each other, or get work done, or even just put something down and know that it will be there later, a challenge.
So, we were laying in bed last Thursday AM sipping coffee and eating the first cantaloupe from the land and talking about how nice it would be to have our own little space. There were so many options to choose from! We could get a hoop house and half of it could be a greenhouse and the other half a live/work space. We could build an eco-dome, or a pallet house, or a large papier-mache sculpture! We could buy a yurt! We could build a tent/bamboo hut!
We discussed each option excitedly, and then one of us said: Airstream?
An Airstream! Yes! That would solve so many problems at once! If we could find one, we could live and work in it immediately without having to build anything. It would look lovely, as Airstreams are works of art. And unlike a yurt, it would be easy to sell it or gift it along once we no longer needed it. An Airstream could in one fail swoop answer all of our issues and let us proceed with the work of making Zero One an oasis of awesomeness and sharing that process with the world.
We checked craigslist. There was an Airstream on Oahu! Glee! A 1969 Airstream Globetrotter, with a refinished interior, looking cute as the dickens, sat like a gleaming metal potato on Melissa’s ‘puter screen, saying to us, Yes monkeys, come and get me.
How fab it could be if we could have it! Let us think about it, we agreed. We would ponder it.
Then things started to speed up. That’s the way stories like this go.
Melissa called Mr. Dale Hope, the Airstream’s seller, and inquired about the trailer, just so we’d know what the story was. I called Mr. Jesse Carmichael to discuss with him the stunning new relationship I was currently enjoying with Melissa, the growth of Zero One and Melissa’s joining of the project, and how we felt like our own living space would help us be more productive and free up the main house for guests entirely, which had been the idea all along.
Two days later, Melissa is getting shipping quotes while Jesse and I discuss possible living situations, running again through the list of potential structures that we could build or purchase, and all of their pros and cons. At Zero One we discuss every possible step a great deal before acting. Or we don’t. The things that need talking about get talked about until the talking is done, I suppose. It is a great system. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
Jesse said: What about an Airstream?
I said: We’ve found one on craigslist. It’s on Oahu.
Send me more info, said Jesse.
We called Dale, he took more pictures of the Airstream, sent them to us. We sent them to Jesse in Paris. We all liked what we saw. It looked homey and comfortable, sleek and cool all at once. We should go and see it, we agreed.
Tuesday found Melissa and I on a flight to Oahu, where we touched down, and took a cab over to my lovely Auntie and Uncle Kandell’s house. The Kandells, (SuperForesters Aaron and Jordan’s mum and dad) invited us in, made us drinks, and shared the aloha, and lent us their amazing ancient blue Volvo station wagon. I had a moment of worry. Are we running late? Should we go?
All is well. “Dale will show us the Airstream as the sun sets and we will have beers” was the calm message my heart sent my brain. Relax, brah.
We visited with Auntie and Uncle, then jumped in the Volvo and drove up to Dale’s house. He had kindly agreed to let us spend the night in the Airstream to try it out. What would it be like?
Up, up, up, an unfamiliar road, with an amazing setting sun behind us and mountains glowing before us. Suddenly, on our right, the Airstream!
It sat in a little lot beside the road, parked among avocados and papayas, where it sparkled in the golden sun. Space potato, thought I. Perfection.
We had missed Dale’s house, so we turned around and drove back to his driveway. Dale himself popped out and amidst the barking and leaping of his playfully huge dogs he offered us welcome beers and a wave of aloha hospitality. He would give us a quick tour and then he had to prepare for dinner guests. Fine, we said.
Inside, the Airstream smelled amazing. That was the first thing I noticed. Dale and his wife Annie had readied the interior for our arrival with fresh ginger flowers, candles, towels, ionized drinking water. It was home. Melissa and I both felt it immediately upon entering. We had found it. It was our home.
The interior was rough and unfinished, but the bones of it were strong. It was perfect. It was done enough to be strong and waterproof, warm and dry, but not so done as to be fussy or to not need our energy. The ideal amount of “fixer-upper” for handipeeps like Mel and myself. We put our stuff inside and followed Dale back to his house, where he invited us in, gave us fresh beers, and introduced us to his daughter and dinner guests. Melissa and I sat in the porch swing while Annie made us dinner reservations.
This is all working out too easily. It’s too perfect. In less than a week, we had gone from saying to the Universe that we’d like an Airstream to live in, to standing in the home of our new friends, who wanted to sell us theirs.
Over dinner, Melissa and I discussed how it felt like we’d found our way into this amazing new current of energy. One where work and struggle are not necessary. In this mode, all was fun and play. Sure, there were phone calls to make, and hurdles to jump, but it was all in a direction that made us laugh and made our hearts glad. It was easy.
That night, in the snug of the Space Potato, with candles lit, we laughed and laughed at our good fortune, and our laughter rang through the valley and into the ears of sleepers for miles.
In the morning, I awoke feeling grand. A few mosquitoes during the night were all that disturbed an otherwise sound sleep. All felt right with the world. Everything in its right place. I texted Jesse to say that we loved the trailer and with his kind permission I’d like to begin negotiations with Mr. Dale Hope for its purchase. I didn’t find this out until later, but at 4:30 AM that morning I’d received an email from him saying that he’d awoken from a dream and felt that the Airstream was the right move and to proceed if I felt good about it.
Back at the Hope house, Annie made us coffees and we drank them out in the garden. We waited for Dale to get back from dropping their daughter off at school. Dale returned and we told him that we loved the trailer, had slept amazingly well, and thank you so much. Dale suggested that Melissa and I should go to the DMV to check on the logistics of selling the trailer. He said this in a way that made it seem like he had already sold it to us, which I took as a good sign.
All went smoothly at the DMV. All it would take to get the trailer from Oahu to Kauai was to drop it off at the port. Now, all there was left to do was make an offer and write a check.
The incredibly generous Mr. Carmichael had asked us to see if we could get the trailer bought, shipped, taxes paid, registered, all done and safe at Zero One, for a particular mystical amount. Melissa and I then spent an hour discussing all of the variables we faced, the costs of each, and how much exactly we could offer Mr. Hope and still get everything else paid for and have it all total this perfect amount that Jesse had prescribed. Math Mastermind Melissa came up with an equation and I began casting the IChing, asking it to consider dueling amounts we could offer.
We arrived at a number and called Dale.
Mr. Hope said yes! He agreed to the number we proposed! All we had to do was drive over and write a check, so we jumped back into the Volvo and sputtered up to Casa de Hope.
Here’s where things get funny.
So Dale, Melissa and I are sitting on a picnic bench, beers in hand, watching the sun begin to set. I’ve just written Dale a check and the transfer of title forms are being filled out.
Dale says: Some of my happiest and most magical memories are of Kauai.
I say: Oh?
Yes, he says, when I was a teenager, a friend and I went over there for a canoe race, and we amazingly met up with a friend of mine from elementary school, who invited us to stay with her and her family. We stayed for weeks. Auntie would take us in her old station wagon and drive us to the top of the Wainiha river, where we’d inner-tube to the bottom, bumping our heads on the rocks the whole way.
I said, I know the Wainiha river very well. I grew up on that river.
Oh? says Dale. I’ll never forget, he says, going up to my friend’s house and seeing his property in the Wainiha valley. His land and his set up inspired this house and this set up. I’ll never forget it. He was the one who showed me that you could be a surfer and a water guy, AND be a businessman and have a place like this.
I looked around at Dale’s heavenly property, which oozed love and aloha like shampoo ginger drips shampoo.
What was your friend’s name? I asked.
Joey Cabell, Dale replied.
Lady and Gentlemen SuperForesters, in 1977 my father and mother bought a little piece of property on the North shore of Kauai. They bought it from a man named Joey Cabell. The land Dale was describing was Camp Nash, my childhood home.
I know that land, I said to Dale. I grew up on that land. That is my home. My parents are Graham and Susan Nash, who bought the land from Joey Cabell.
Goosebumps all around.
When Dale was a teenager, he met a man who’s land and plan inspired him to strive for something similar. Shortly thereafter, my parents bought that very piece of land and soon after that I was born. Thirty two years later, Melissa and I are sipping coffee on a Thursday morning, and a posting on craigslist inspires a journey. To proceed, the next step of my life would include a journey to the very beginning. That which inspired me was based on what inspired Dale, which inspired my parents, and had all begun with some magical force inspiring Joey Cabell. We were all a part of it. Jesse, Melissa, me, my parents, my siblings, you reading this at home, all of us.
Dale, Melissa, and I sat together, marveling at the way the past and present can collide. All through sheer, utter, jaw-dropping coincidence.
I had earlier explained to Dale how this trailer was going to set Melissa and I free to really contribute to Zero One and what a difference this would make in our lives at this early stage of growth.
It all comes full circle. You truly reap what you sow. If yours is the way of inspiration and generosity, then inspiration and generosity will be your reward, in greater and greater amounts.
Mucho green grateful energy to Jesse, Melissa, Dale, Annie, Ollie, Lloyd, Sherri, Jordan, Aaron and all for making this possible. Thank you all so much. And an especial shout out to the energetic guru, Mr. Joey Cabell.
The Airstream arrives on Tuesday.
All my love and aloha to you, all over the world.
-Jackson
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