We arrived in East Texas October 7, 2021, after the 30-day road trip from hell. It is now August 2022 and it’s hard to believe we’ve been here almost a year!
I admit that I have been homesick many times for Oregon. I miss the beauty and perspective of the Pacific Northwest rocky shore. Mostly, though, I miss my precious friends in Oregon, my powerful sisters Leah, Angie, Patsy, Calli, Danette, Debbie, Kristie and many others. I am so blessed to have been surrounded by courageous, intelligent, competent women and I miss them so much! More than I can put words to.
When we meet people in Texas, I say we are political refugees from Oregon, and they seem to instantly understand and accept us. We have made wonderful friendships in Texas, most significantly our friends and hosts Cheryl and Ken, who have adopted us as family and have been beyond generous and supportive. When they invited us to build our bus at their place in Texas, I warned Cheryl, “Be careful what you wish for! You may not be able to get rid of us!” I didn’t have a year of building in mind but knew from experience that it would take us longer than planned, because LIFE. To their credit, and our blessing, this wonderful couple are not just friends, they are truly family, and I have loved being the “sister in the backyard”.
While in Texas, we have experienced two of the coldest winters on record, and now one of the hottest and driest summers, and we are still loving it. As I’ve often said, I wish Americans loved America like Texans love Texas.
Although building the bus has been our primary focus, it’s not all we’ve been doing. We have traveled around the state, most recently the eastern Piney Woods region from Oklahoma to Austin, learned about the history and geology of the state (did you know that Rockwall, TX is actually named for an ancient rock wall from an early North American civilization? <geek>), frequented farmers markets, made friends with local ranchers (best Angus in the country in our freezers!), attended plays and art fairs, and sampled Texas whiskey and BBQ.
One activity we’ve invested significant time in is learning to Square Dance! We now faithfully dance with dozens of other square dance aficionados at least once a week and it’s an absolute blast. (Truth be told, I had to drag Calvin to classes at first, but now he enjoys it even more than I do!)
We have loved being in Texas so much that we’ve decided to make it our permanent home base, going so far as to purchase several acres of Texas Piney Woods for our own. We’ve spent several days on the property mowing grass in a clearing and creating a road in (It’s August in Texas, so we’re taking it easy in the heat!). Our intent is to off-grid homestead, making NE Texas our anchor point as we continue our nomad adventure once the bus is done. We’ll share our homesteading adventures later, but we think our light-on-the land approach will marry nicely with our leave-no-trace nomad ethos. We’ll see how well we balance Nomad life with Homestead life.
For many years the phrase “May you live in interesting times” has been my go-to slogan. It has certainly come true; we live in very interesting times. And as such, we have made preparations to weather whatever storms might come our way.
I was sharing recently some lessons I’ve learned in the last decade plus. One of the biggest has been, That which has the power to destroy you also has the power to recreate you. This season of freedom, travel, constant adaptation, and nomadic life has been so very powerful and transformative. Calvin and I are grateful to be living this life of freedom and limitless options, and we’re excited to see where the journey continues to take us.
In the meantime, to our friends, we love you deeply and anything we can do to encourage your freedom, we are all over that! And to those friends we’ve not met yet, we’ll see you down the road.
Love,
JoDana