(Re)Introducing: The $70K Soufflé

This time it's more expensive

It’s June 21st, 8 pm, and I’m camping in the woods with my friends.

Actually, we’re glamping. We didn’t hike in to our site — we drove right up to this clearing in the forest a few days ago, following mostly class IV roads. The last 10 miles were off-road and our electric truck handled the rugged terrain beautifully.

There was no preexisting infrastructure at our remote site, but we brought all the amenities. For example, we have a hot shower. It’s powered by a 6 kilowatt (kW) on-demand hot water heater that runs off the truck’s battery. The showerhead and pump provide a low-flow 1.5 gallons per minute, but out here it feels luxurious. There’s nothing like taking a hot shower in the woods, looking up at the stars, after an invigorating dip in a mountain-fed river. That’s been the vibe around here.

Not that we would, but we could run that shower for 12 hours straight (total energy cost: 12 x 6 = 72 kilowatt-hours, or kWh) and still have plenty of juice to drive back home. What I’m saying is, our truck has an absolutely massive battery: 131 kWh. That’s equivalent to ten Tesla Powerwalls, enough to power an entire energy-guzzling typical American household for several days.

Today was the summer solstice, and — sun-worshippers that we are — we’re celebrating with a homemade Solstice Soufflé. It won’t surprise you to hear that our off-grid kitchen is quite elaborate, with induction burners, an oven, and a fridge/freezer. Our solar soufflé is a massive Red Giant, due to a special ingredient: pureed alpine strawberries, foraged during yesterday’s big hike. (Stars like our sun eventually turn red and swell in size when they run out of hydrogen to burn in their cores.)

Endless hot showers, soufflé for dessert — like I said, we’re glamping. We’ve all been glamping before, but this level of luxury in the woods usually means there’s a noisy generator somewhere nearby, burning fossil fuels and spewing out carbon dioxide and other pollutants. Not so in our case. We charged up the truck for this trip using the 7 kW solar array we built back at our farm, so all the energy we’re using — including the energy it took to transport us here — is clean as a sunbeam. This fact is surprisingly liberating. It’s enabling a true abundance mindset out here when it comes to energy. No one’s gonna shame me for my long shower, because there’s plenty of sunshine to refill our tanks. There’s plenty of water in the river, and plenty of room for all of us in these beautiful infinite woods.

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OK, fantasy over. I hope my day-one fans enjoyed that callback to my first post. Alas, it’s not the summer solstice. But it is the spring equinox (or it was, a few days ago), which I honor as a time of transition from darkness to light.

This equinox post is timely, because I’ve been thinking about transition a lot lately. I’ve been going through some big changes in my relationship to my academic work, and I want to open up about something that has been lurking under the surface of this blog all along.

Specifically: I have fallen out of love with doing climate science research.

This is hard to admit. But I’d like to use this platform to process some of these feelings, even though it is scary to do so, because this blog has always been about my personal quest for sustainability. And the way I’ve been working on the climate issue — A.K.A., mainly by writing research papers about the physics of clouds and climate — has become personally unsustainable.

Oof. That still hurts to say. I really used to love my job.

So, how should one deal with the loss of vocational passion? Many people go through something like this at some point in their working lives, and it can be very isolating. It’s a dissociative experience to be surrounded by colleagues who are still feeling the love, but not feeling that connection oneself.

But I’m determined to find a new way to work on climate and environmental issues that is both financially and emotionally sustainable. I’m not exactly sure what the next phase of my working life will look like, but I hope that by writing about my wandering, I will help other wanderers feel less alone.

Oh, and while that solstice camping trip was a fantasy, the electric truck is very, very real. Here’s the truck, charging at 6.5 kW while I work at the Newton library:

I guess I’m a trucker now.

Big news, I know. (I’m sorry if you feel I buried the lede.) I’ll definitely be writing about my adventures with the truck on this ol’ blog.

Anyway, readers, I’ve missed you. Did you miss me in your inbox? Did you celebrate the equinox? What should I name the truck? As always, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

—Jake