(image via wettropics.gov)
Goooood Morning SuperForest!
It has been five weeks now since Melissa and I left the old Zero One, (which we are now calling Prototype A) and moved over to the new Zero One. I cannot believe my good luck. Truly we have flopped out of the frying pan into a larger and much nicer frying pan.
The principal difference between Prototype A and Zero One is that at Prototype A, everything I did was a compromise of sorts. That’s because I had an outside partner to think of and consider the needs of, and also Augustin and Mea, and later a whole team of people working and living. Here there are Melissa and myself, the chickens, and that’s it. I am free to play and create and prototype my ideas. Bliss.
Since we arrived, we have weeded the majority of the gardens and cleaned out all of the buildings. We brought my old iron bathtub over from Prototype A, set it up on blocks and now we have a “hillbilly hot tub” where we can soak our cares away after another hot sweaty day. I’ve split some bamboo and hung it from the roof of our little house, creating a simple water catchment system. The bamboo is tied beneath the drip line where it funnels water down into a 55 gallon water barrel that we have set up on a big wooden wire spool. It’s perfect for washing your hands.
I’ve also installed a lovely little sink set up in our house, (which didn’t have a sink before,) so now cooking and doing dishes is much easier. We used to have to take our dishes down the hill a ways to the working faucets, and the trips back and forth became no fun rather quickly. Melissa had found a beautiful old sink at the dump, and using some 2 by 4′s as props, I mounted it good and tight to the kitchen wall. Now a 2.5 gallon tank flows down into the sink and then drains into a five gallon bucket below. I take the bucket out at night and use the water on the non-food trees. Simple, but it works.
This is certainly the most rustic life I’ve ever lead. At first we had no electricity, but that was nice in it’s own way. We went to bed early. I read “Through the Looking Glass” to Melissa by candlelight. We would do our cooking over a little propane burner and eat by candlelight. Then the power got turned back on and it was like a miracle. Lights at the flick of a switch! We could use an electric kettle to make hot water! Yay! We could have hot water for dish doing and bucket baths before bed.
Did I mention the bucket baths? lol. For bathing at ZO we have four options: cold-water outdoor shower, dip in the stream, hillbilly hot tub, or bucket bath. At the end of a long day, when I don’t feel like going out in the dark and taking a cold shower or hiking down to the stream, and I’m too tired to gather wood and light the hot tub, a nice bucket bath can make all the difference in the world before sliding into bed. Simply heat a kettle of water, pour into bucket, add dash of Dr. Bronners, then situate yourself nice and comfortable on a towel and wipe off your whole self with a wash cloth. I do face first, then neck and arms, then chest, thighs, and back, then pits, then treasures, then feet. The water in the bucket at the end is well brown, and the plants love it and cry out for sweet infusions of my diluted man-tea. Gross.
We’ve been drinking very strong coffee lately. We ran out of filters. We stopped using them. Now the coffee is so thick and deep and black. I put nothing in it. I like my coffee black and hot and fresh and chunky. Like Mo’nique in a clay mug. Mmmmmm!
The Stream And It’s Delicious Murky Denizens.
Running around an amazing 75% of the land-mass of Zero One is a gorgeous little stream. That’s because we’re on a peninsula. A minor one yes, but still. This stream is an incredible healthy and diverse little ecosystem. The stream is small, only 10-12 feet wide for the mile and a half it winds around the property, and predominantly knee-deep. There are larger pools of deep green water here and there, perfect for splashing into. In the stream live many fish, frogs, and delicious, delicious prawns. The prawns on Kauai are an amazing sort. The males can get quite large, and blue, with long ferocious claws at front. The females look more like shrimp.
One night my pal Dan asked me if I’d ever gone prawning, and I replied that I hadn’t, and he told me that it was easy and great fun, and the tool one needed was deliciously simple. What do we need? says I. Do you have a fork? said he in reply? As it turns out, a fork taped to the end of a bamboo pole is quite an effective prawning implement. I was flabbergasted. Surely it cannot be that easy?
That night, fortified by a large dinner and a splash (perhaps two) of some rotting guts booze-poison, we prawn hunters set out from the base of the stream, armed with our fork-poles, our flashlights, and our slightly dulled but still much larger that the average prawn human intellects, and we weren’t coming home empty handed. The way that one prawns hunts is to work your way slowly upstream, shining the beam of your flashlight into the water, looking for the glint of prawn eyeballs, while doing your best not to slip and fall ass over tea kettle into the water. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
The prawns, seeing the light of your hand torch, react in a myriad of ways, but you can count on one of two things happening: either the prawn will run and hide, or it will come closer to see what the big shiny thing is. The ones that run away do sneaky things like flashing around underwater at great speed, darting here and there, and then perhaps wedging themselves under a rock and staying there forever, or until the big light leaves, whichever comes first. They are jerks and losers and not fun to hunt.
The prawns that come toward you are much easier to catch. You shine your light into their eyes, which dead on has a sort of hypnotizing effect on them, skloosh slowly through the water until you’re right up close, and then jab the fork through them. You only get one shot. That is usually the way nature works and these prawns are no exception; sling an arrow or a spear at something and it usually runs away whether you’ve missed or not. The prawns have a pretty tough armor, which is good at repelling poorly-aimed fork thrusts.
Since that first night I have been out “prawning” perhaps five times? Once more with Dan, and then four times alone in the lovely, loud, dark Kauai night. I have had a few interesting misadventures and learned a lot about effective prawn hunting. Once, I spied a prawn below me in a pool and speared him. I could see his little claws sticking out from beneath the tine of my fork, and the rest was swirls of mud. Reaching down, I found that the prawn was gone, but his little arms were still there! :( I need to wiki the prawns to see if they re-grow severed limbs.
Another night I speared a prawn and could still see his tail, and reaching down found that in spearing him, I’d cut him in half! His front end was gone and I still had his tail. This is not a bad thing, as the tail is the bit that’s nicest to eat. I’ll eat the whole thing, but the tail is truly gourmet. Anyway, I’m standing on a rock admiring the large prawn tail in my hand when it gives a big twitch and jumps up, up, and out, falling right into the sparkling rapids and gone. Lost forever. I felt very badly about that one.
Melissa and I took a trip to the hardware store. On the wall: fish spear tip. Three tines. Barbed. $5.00. Heck yes, says I. At home, I unwrapped all that silly tape, (and pushed it into a soda bottle) removed the fork, and attached the new tip. A proper spear now, no more cutlery cobbled together silliness for me. Before I went out, we sat, m’lady and I, and had a proper feed of left over cheeseburgers to fill the belly and ease the mind. A quick shot of an unspecified liquid courage-tonic and off I went, new spear in hand, ready to face my destiny.
As I walk down the hill to the stream I think out to the Universe. Hello universe, I am going out hunting. Thank you for the opportunity to do so. Thank you for good health and sound limbs. Please send any prawns my way that wish to be caught. Thank you, Universe.
Last night I caught four big prawns. A personal best. I caught three with the spear and one in a trap I’d set earlier and baited with horrible smelling horseradish cheese. Three females and one big male. An hour spent alone in the sweetness of the dark woods and stream, walking upstream in silence, not singing or whistling, just listening and looking with an unblinking intensity. The moon is very full now, and it’s brightness was such that it made a glare on the water, making it hard to see. The moon was so bright in fact that I once turned quickly to see who was approaching, thinking that someone was behind me with a flashlight.
Back up the hill I walked through the bright night, where the house was lit by one small lamp, on loan from an Auntie, and that was Melissa in bed reading. The prawns went into the fridge, where they chilled (ha!) until the morning, when I cleaned them, boiled them, shelled them, and them sauteed them in coconut oil with garlic, spicy red paprika, and sea salt. The prawn chunks sizzled in the pan over the propane stove as I beat five fresh eggs from our chicken flock. A fine prawn omelet! A meal fit for a prince and princess! And most of it from the land, from the sweat of our brow. A beautiful breakfast.
The White Goat On the Hill
I am spending as much time engaged in activities like this. Learning, growing. Making new muscles. Making new friends. Putting the pieces of the puzzle together. I feel strong and healthy. I sleep like a slab of marble. Kauai is coming alive. New people come into our lives and they tell us that the world outside is changing. Some say it is good and that they are very excited. Some say that it is bad, and hopeless, and will probably end any day. I am listening to the excited ones. That is because I know how exactly how they feel!
I hunt for prawn and I feel excited. When I walk out to the chicken coop and see that the nesting box is filled with eggs, that still excites me. When our little hen that we’d raised from a speck of fluff suddenly walks across the lawn trailing nine fresh baby chicks, a miracle! The cat eats four of them the first day. Amazing! The cat eats the chicks. The cat also eats the rats. We eat the prawns. the chickens eat the prawns shells. The chickens give us eggs and give birth to new chickens. Across the valley we can see a white goat standing on a cliff. We see him every day. How this goat evades hunters is beyond me. It is bright white! Seeing the goat every day excites me.
As I climb the tree of bliss, I keep in mind that out in the world beyond the shores of my magical island home, there are others just like me. Everywhere. The world of permaculture and the new game we are all playing is coming to life. It is beyond simply living sustainably. It is all about living generatively. Abundance model mind set. 1+1+3. I know in my heart that I am not alone. That the world I treasure and cherish is coming to life. I know that there are others like me who value what I value and celebrate what I celebrate. We dreamers are coming together it seems. A dream is only a dream if it’s in one persons head. If a dream can be shared by two people then it is no longer a dream: it is a brand new world.
I am skilling up. And learning and growing. A growing body of knowledge about successfully navigating a very complex ecosystem. This knowledge is invaluable. I wish to play a part in the creation of this new world, and the more I know about myself and how to maneuver my avatar through the world, the better the chances that I’ll be able to play the game on as high a level as I would like. Life feels more like a game than ever.
In closing, I would like to send a message of love and gratitude. Thank you. I love you.
If you want to come and see Zero One, and you want to learn what I know, I will be happy to have you as a guest. If you don’t want to, then you’d better stay home! Ha ha ha! No, seriously, if you’re interested in the things I’m talking about or why I’m talking about the things I’m talking about or you just need a breath of fresh air, then get in touch with me, and we’ll make it happen. I must warn you though: I am very hard to get in touch with. The best way is to show up at Zero One with hot coffee, and donuts, and a smile and an open mind. Or facebook Melissa. That would actually work.
Much love to All. I’ve been missing you.
-Jackson
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