I don't come into town from the canyon caves so much these days, so I let cyber contact with the world slide.
During the winter I felt fairly disconnected with the world and spent a lot of time in solitary stillness. But since the spring began I've had a fairly constant influx of visitors. It's been kind of a moneyless tribe all along, but with people coming and going, like a river, no same water moment by moment, but a river nonetheless.
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| It's been raining a lot. Overwhelmed with beauty at our camp. This pic (by Pete Apicella) is from a couple years ago, but looks like these days. |
As I said in the last post, the "tribe" was down to just Daryl and me when we arrived back in Moab from the Rainbow Gathering last mid July. Then we were pleasantly surprised to be joined by my friend of a few years, Julia, a.k.a. Squirrel Girl, a veteran wilderness and wild-edible and medicinal plant expert. She's still with us, off and on, at the cave. Incidentally, we've eaten a lot more squirrel since she arrived with her fall traps.
Here's the latest on the "moneyless tribe", or whatever it is: Tom, the early-20-something wandering non-sectarian-monk-in-Indian-saddhu-garb, had come back after a stint hitch-hiking southwest of here. At about the time he came back, a couple early-20-something dread-locked guys named Benjamin and Nicolas (who also look like another variation of Indian saddhus) showed up, camping in a nearby cave. We call them the saddhus. Then a late-thirty-or-early-40-something guy (who now calls himself Max), who has an MBA in finance, walked away from his high-finance job and showed up to join us. Max immediately made a figure-4 fall trap, which caught us 2 squirrels for our pot-o-stew. A bit later, an early-20-something chap named Sean from northern British Columbia came to stay with us. And, shortly after, Daryl's friend Bayla (who looks early-20-something-but-is-30-something) showed up from New York City. Besides all them, we've had other visitors come in waves. For a few days we had 12 people up there, and I was starting to feel overwhelmed at times, wondering what I'd gotten myself into. For those short moments I feel overwhelmed, I sit with the feeling and it passes, knowing that everything works out. Some days I feel so blessed -- that blessing also overwhelms me.
Now it turns out that most everybody is leaving or has left, except for Daryl and Julia (off and on) and I'm back to learning more about non-attachment and the meaning of community. After Wednesday, it looks like it's back down to just Daryl and me, with Julia still coming and going at our camp.
Daryl and I had a great talk yesterday morning about the nature of community. I am finally learning some new things, how to do this better, thanks to Daryl's observations. I am realizing repeating patterns that have happened since the first "moneyless tribe" was launched last summer in Montana. Time to learn from them.
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| Daryl and me at Dead Horse Point. Pic by Cullen, who took us there to see the sunset. Daryl and Cullen are some of my best of friends. |
Meanwhile, I'm still doing my radio show every Sunday, 9:00PM to 11:00PM MST/MDT on KZMU Moab Community Radio, with help from Daryl and a new radio man, Raven. Julia just joined us last night, and might also be a regular. Other friends often join us at the station, sometimes also on air, but mostly just hanging out. It just gets funner and funner for me, and even better having my friends up there to join in. I comment and philosophize between music, with friends joining in discussion. The music is usually new Indy stuff (rock, nu-folk, electronic, singer-songwriter stuff, and some punk) and an eclectic mix of other things, often world music, indigenous, and sprinkles of classical. Maybe half the shows are recorded, but I still haven't gotten around to compressing them and archiving them online.
For listening online, if www.kzmu.org doesn't work, try http://www.live365.com/
There's much we talk about out there in the canyons, philosophical musings and epiphanies, and I'd love to share them here, but I gotta go for now. Maybe later I can get something together.
