Just shy of 30, and I'm living in what was once a storage closet in my sister's apartment.
When she caught wind that I needed to hibernate for the winter season,
she began clearing it out for me and made way for a makeshift bed of plywood stacked upon milk crates, with my trusty sleeping bag and a goose-down duvet cover.
Not much else can fit, but then, I don't have much to begin with.
Just a big, nearly empty backpack, little mementos, herbs and smudge I had harvested, an array of hole-spotted clothes from across North America, and my four-legged pal Doodle, who unexpectedly came into my life on solstice last year at a resistance camp in North Dakota.
Is this the introduction of a failure-at-life? For some it definitely it is. I mean, storage closet? 29 years old? WHAT. Well, let me explain a wee bit about myself, and how I hope to add value to the Steemit community.
I've lived a semi-nomadic life since I had a critical awakening at the age of 22, which resulted in me leaving my well-paying job at a start-up tech company, purging nearly all of my belongings (much of which ended up in the back alley of my apartment for the local scavengers of Vancouver BC), and set out on the open road on a bicycle.
It took my sister and I three months to camp and bicycle our way across Canada to Montreal. A story unto itself but still just a blip on the radar, and my first real sip of what life could offer should I dare pursue my Truth.
Since then, I've put thousands upon thousands of miles on a bicycle, from Vancouver to San Diego, all throughout California, and this year a midwest journey from South Dakota to Oregon.
I know the value in slow travel, and the incredible encounters one can experience if they're patient enough to travel just for the journey alone.
I've slept in tents and out under the stars, in tipi's, cob/straw cabins, tree forts high above in the Redwoods, on beaches, under bridges, in underground homes, in ditches stealthily and secretly, and out in the open with campfire blazing. Forests, mountains, prairies, ocean side, and urban bushes, through wind and snow, sunshine and heat ... well, you know.
I've spent months, adding up to years, learning to farm and grow food all over western North America, living off-grid, and learning the way of the homesteader. I've worked on a few different permaculture projects, from earthworks, food-forest planting, and helping build houses from fallen trees, clay, and straw. I've learned the ins-and-outs of cannabis cultivation, harvesting wild and domestic foods for medicine and food, and know how to make awesome food in a dutch oven over wood stoves and open flames.
In the past year, I've been learning what it is to be an ally for the Indigenous Uprising, and have been gifted with teachings and tradition, while learning of the struggles the descendants of the original people of Turtle Island face. Spending the winter on the Standing Rock reservation proved to be a catalyst for another pivotal point in my life, and I am learning what role, if any, I have in supporting the uprising.
I tend to volunteer my energies in exchange for knowledge and experience, food and lodging, and so you might imagine I rarely hang on to dollar bills for long. The Steemit platform inspires and intrigues me, as it offers this opportunity to spread and share each others messages without the hindrance of so much structure and red-tape. For someone whose dream in life is to live simply and help others, this could very well help support that.
Having just hung up my travel-boots as of a few weeks ago, I'm currently working from home doing transcription work while I work out the kinks. So blessed to have this chance to hibernate and help bring clarity to the next stage of my life ~ my thirties.
I already have many ideas brewing when it comes to the writings of astrology, poetry and prose, health and nutrition, alternative living, and of course much in the way of bicycle traveling, nomadism, and ways to keep the faith in a time where it seems everything one does hinders the wellbeing of Unci Maka, mama earth.
Dreaming of the forward growth with this digital community.
-- Carol-Anne
