Back to basics

Somatic Season has arrived

[Taps mic] Is this thing still on?

It’s been awfully quiet around here! Suspiciously silent, one might even say. What gives?

When I started writing, way back in January, I had the simple goal of documenting my cross-country ebike/Amtrak trip. I didn’t give much thought to what would happen beyond that roughly two-week period.

But I had so much fun writing The $7K Omelette that, when the trip ended, I wanted to keep the train movin’ somehow. And some of you wanted to keep hearing from me, which I found highly motivating! So, to keep things lively and on-brand, I began to transition this blog into a chronicle of my climate-focused community-building effort, codenamed “Infinite Woods.”

That was in March, when I put up my last post¹. Now it’s November, and — at least where I am — there’s snow on the ground and the sun is tucked in by 4:30 pm. So I’d understand if, over the past many months of spring, summer, and fall, you’ve wondered:

What the heck is Jake up to?

Well, my radio silence has not been due to a lack of progress on Infinite Woods. We actually made a ton of progress on that front — more than I could have hoped to achieve in such a short amount of time.

Unfortunately for you curious cats, I’m not yet ready to write in detail about those experiences here.

For now, you’ll have to accept a very abridged version: During the first Infinite Woods Build Weekend, which took place July 21-23 in Vermont, we built a 10’ x 10’ tent platform (pictured below).

Two details that make this platform extra special: the wavy front lip, and the handmade ceramic tiles courtesy of Charlie’s dad.

The fine folks on that purty platform are the courageous climate crew that camped with us for the inaugural build weekend. Our main objective was to construct that platform out of hemlock lumber that we had previously harvested and milled ourselves, with the neighbors’ help. (If a tree falls in Infinite Woods and no one blogs about it, does it make a sound?)

Even better, the entire weekend of construction, cooking, and camping was 100% solar-powered, supported by our custom off-grid wood shop and kitchen, which Charlie and I had assembled before the crew arrived. Let me tell you, it’s a great feeling to turn on a table saw and know that the kinetic energy of the spinning blade was, only 8 minutes ago, riding on a particle of light as it left the surface of the Sun². It’s a great feeling to cook pancakes in the woods with friends, and know that the sizzle in the griddle is just yesterday’s concentrated sunshine.

It was an emotional experience for me, not least because we had overcome the Great Vermont Flood of July 10-11. My pose in that picture says it all: hands on cheeks (😱), in disbelief that we actually pulled it off. Blissful summer in Vermont.

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One big reason that experience was so emotional for me is that it felt like I had found “a calling” of sorts.

Building infrastructure to support environmental community resonated with me on a deep level.

I knew I wanted more of it, and that brought me to Burning Man for the first time. On my first trip to the “playa”, I helped design and build a solar-powered ice factory for the punny camp known as Ice Ice Maybe.

Dun dun dun dundundun dun.

We handed out tons of free ice and smoothies (a big hit in the desert, as you can imagine), and we also generated enough power to run all the camp’s lights and other electrical equipment — meaning the camp had no need for its fossil-fuel-burning generator!

I had a great time for the first 5 or so days of Burning Man, and then came the second flood of my summer. (Am I a cursed climate scientist, bringing weather disasters wherever I go?) An inch of rain fell from the sky, and the ancient lakebed on which Burning Man takes place turned into a giant puddle of clay. Things got slippery and heavy real fast. My camp got out of there as soon as we could, but we were pretty miserable for a few days.

The clay on my crocs had me growing taller by the minute.

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Despite the muddy ending, my experience at Burning Man confirmed my passion for building infrastructure. After two consecutive successful solar building experiences, I started to wonder:

Am I meant to be a solar builder?

Well, I’m pretty positive that I’m meant to be solar-powered. Everyone knows I get real stoked about solar-powered stuff; that much has been pretty clear since day one on this blog. But am I really meant to be a builder? Building that tent platform was a ton of fun, but it was a pretty simple structure. If I’m really meant to be a builder, I need to like building more complicated things. Things that people would actually pay decent money for.

So, to get some more experience, I asked my family if they would let me build a sauna and a cabin at our vacation house in New Hampshire. And they said yes! (I’m very lucky to have access to this place, and to have a family that supports my dreams.) With the seal of Seeley approval, I took two construction classes — one in upstate New York, and one in Vermont — that focused on sauna design/build and framing, respectively.

I learned a ton, and now I’m excited to put it into practice. I arrived in New Hampshire yesterday, and started working in earnest today. Here’s the lakeside spot where the sauna will be built:

When I found this spot, I felt that it had a sense of place already. I liked the little cove with the protruding rock, and the view to the lake framed by the two evergreen trees.

So, it’s time to get back to basics. It’s somatic season: cold water, hot sauna.

Time to get building!

—Jake

1. No posts since March — that’s not quite true! Superfans will remember the “false start” at the end of May, when I tried to write on here about my climate outreach efforts with the group Climate Up Close. I put up a few posts during that tour, but I actually ended up taking them down shortly after the tour concluded. Yep, those Climate Up Close posts (if you remember them) are not there anymore, and it’s awkward if I don’t offer some explanation. Basically — and this was not a Big Deal at the time — it turned out that our group didn’t have clarity on how Climate Up Close content should be presented on this, my personal blog. That applies to both the content of our outreach talk itself, and the behind-the-scenes views of life on tour that I hoped to capture. We had great discussions about issues such as privacy, consent, attribution, and no one in the group told me to take the posts down, exactly. But in the end, I felt it was better to do so. Now you know!

2. This is only true if you turn on the table saw when the solar panels are producing enough power to instantaneously match the power draw of the saw. (What we call “direct drive” mode.) Otherwise, pulling juice from the battery means there’s a longer time interval between the energy leaving the sun and entering the saw.