It started to become unbearable on a drive home from Dusthaven to Mammoth Lakes. For two years I’d been dealing with on and off pain in my right hip. The pain was intermittent and random. I could be balancing on my right leg to pull on my pants or my socks and my hip would give out and I'd tumble against the bed or I’d pivot to the side to reach for something and a searing pain would shoot through my right hip. I tried to ignore it because it wasn’t consistent and because images of my mother and her struggles with hip pain and surgery made me put my head in the sand and ignore it. Not me too, I’d think to myself. And then more confidently I’d assure myself, no, not you too.

On the drive back from Dusthaven though I couldn’t ignore it. The pain bloomed like a desert flower after a rainstorm, bright and pulsing the voice inside my head switched refrains to, oh yes, you too. I walked with a rocking motion, dragging my right leg behind my left. There was a series of meetings with an orthopedic doctor. X Rays. An MRI with contrast. I brought Eric with me to the appointment where the doctor would explain all the results. They thought I had a torn labrum. It could be fixed with arthroscopic surgery. The doctor explained that I’d start to feel like myself again after three months but that it would take 4-6 months to fully recover. These times, I’d later learn, would be estimates.

I didn’t want the surgery. I didn’t want the injury. I wanted none of it at all. This past summer I had big plans. After renovating the girls’ room in the fall of 2021 we planned to renovate our bedroom over the summer months of 2022. There would be old carpet to pull up and new flooring to install. There would be painting, new bookshelves, and furniture to assemble. But no. No, instead the surgery was scheduled for June 1st.

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When I woke up from the surgery I remember the doctor’s face and that he was speaking to me. I heard snippets of words like, “orange peel” and “bomb” and “hip” but was too fuzzy from meds to remember what he said to me. I went home the same day as the procedure to recover. 

The experience of a first bowel movement after surgery, or maybe it was due to the constipation induced from pain meds - is truly a special kind of hell. There was cold sweats and vomiting until I could finally do the deed. I remember the pain of the passing more than I remember the post surgery pain. 

The doctor called while I was deep in a bout of stomach spasms trying to poop. Unable to talk I handed the phone to Eric. This is where I learned my diagnosis. I had a torn labrum, which they repaired. I had hip impingement (the hip bone protruded out, hence causing the torn labrum), and the cartilage in my hip had peeled away like an orange peel. It “looked like a bomb went off” according to what Eric recited from the call with the doc. They replaced the cartilage with cadaver cartilage. I had two metal anchors put in which made me wonder if I’d henceforth beep going through airport security.

Cadaver cartilage. It felt a bit violating to be told that they’d used the tissue of another person in my body without some forewarning. I hadn’t been prepped for that as a possibility so I hadn’t had time to wrap my head around it either. Who was the person? Would we have been friends in real life? Would that have mattered? It feels like it might matter a bit in the connection of their tissue to mine.  

I hope admitting this doesn’t make me appear ungrateful, because I am indeed grateful to the donor. (I’m signed up as a donor myself!) I also want to be honest and explain how I came to terms with the surprise of waking up from surgery with a part of a different person inside of me. I needed time to sort it out and I have and I’m grateful. If this ever happens to you too, you’re allowed to take some time to accept the new you and how your body works as a result of a gift from another human being. I have conversations now with my right hip, welcoming the new tissue, telling it to feel at home, to move, to stretch to feel at ease. Let’s move forward together, I say to it and what shall we get up to today? I ask of it.

There are no photos of me using two crutches, then one crutch, and then a hiking stick. I didn’t want to focus on those steps, instead I was laser focused on walking unassisted without a limp. It took about three months to not have an obvious circumduction in my gait. Over a period of six months I graduated from going to physical therapy twice a week, to once a week, and then every other week. At six months post-surgery I graduated out of physical therapy and into working out on my own.

It sounds so simple and straightforward to write it out like that. “After six months I was done with physical therapy” but today, at 10.5 months post surgery, my flexibility and strength are nowhere near a full recovery. While I walk now without an obvious limp, I can’t sit in a criss-cross applesauce position without my right knee higher than my left. In barre class I can’t lift my right leg as high as my left, but I’m getting there. It’s one day at a time.

The patience needed for this recovery reminded me of making taffy, just long bouts of pulling and pulling my patience and my focus. I told myself and the extra-person-friend in my hip that I would recover from this - and that’s what I think I’m most afraid of, that instead of recovering from this surgery that I’ll never quite be where I was again. What if I’ve already reached a high water mark of mobility and am never quite as mobile, flexible, or bendable as I once was? But I’m only 43! It can’t be. 

So I focused, I did physical therapy exercises in the evenings as the family moved around me in the living room. And I timed myself with my walking increasing from six minutes to seven minutes all the way up to an hour and a half of carefully timed and managed walking. On trail. Off trail. Through aches and pains and twinges and the tight feeling of muscles and tendons trying to recover. 

At five months post surgery they cleared me to start a very gradual running program. By running I mean I was allowed to do 15 second sprints interspersed with 15 minutes of light jogging. I could try that twice a week. If it worked without pain, I could go up to three times a week. And if that worked, I could try a couch to 5k program that progressed over 9 weeks.

I’ve completed the couch to 5k. I can cross country ski. I’m starting to lift weights and work out at the gym again. And I’m working on my flexibility. I’m grateful for my doctor, his care team, and the physical therapists I got to work with. I’m grateful to my team at work who were very patient with the many appointments I attended post surgery. And I’m grateful to my friends and family who went on so many truncated walks with me while I recovered. 

Maybe I’ll never quite be quite where I was before, but I’m here, I’m mobile, and I’m not in pain! It’s springtime in Mammoth which means soon the snow will melt and we can renovate our bedroom like we had planned to last summer. 

I’m moving forward past the hip surgery and on to new adventures. What about you? Have you ever had a surgery you hadn’t anticipated? One that took a long time to recover from? Have you been the recipient of donor tissue or body parts? What was that experience like for you?

#hiparthroscopy #FAI #hipimpingment #hipsurgery #tornlabrum #physicaltherapy

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In the beginning there was going to be an earthbag dome. But we thought on that for a long while and have since changed our minds. The first off grid building we build will be a traditional, stick-built house. There is plenty of space at Dusthaven and room for earthbag domes in the future.

We will do most of the build ourselves but we’re working with a contractor to build and dry in the frame.

Before the snows came last fall our contractor moved in some heavy equipment and began excavating the foundation hole. There were many rocks to be moved. In fact, while we ended up with the name Dusthaven, Rockhaven was a runner up for the project name too.

Rocks. Let me show you them.

Still don’t believe me? How about these? All pulled from the hole in the ground the contractor was digging.

This winter was the snowiest winter on record in the Eastern Sierra and that winter spilled right over into the eastern side of the White Mountains in Nevada where we’re building.

Now that it’s April and winter has finally chilled out a bit, we’re able to move some of the snow out of the way and get back to work. Here’s Eric using the little-Kubota-that-could to remove a patch of snow from our layout yard.

And here’s the newly widened excavation hole getting ready for the footings to get started.

Looking northeast.

Looking west southwest (Eric for scale).

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While we don’t have a building yet, we’re thinking ahead and ordered our windows. This involved a three hour drive to the Home Depot in Pahrump, Nevada to pick them up.

After another three hour drive back, Eric navigated eight miles of unpaved roads going as slowly as he could so nothing would break. This was the nailbiter of the trip. It took an hour to go those eight miles.

Once he pulled in we opened each box one by one to see if anything broke. It was our very own Dusthaven Easter surprise waiting to see if any would be broken. Unbelievably, every window made it intact. Andersen 100s for the win!

Speaking of Easter, we’re trying to get to know folks in the community more so I volunteered with the Dorcas Women’s Club in Fish Lake Valley and helped them host their Easter event this weekend.

Turns out they needed someone to be the Easter bunny and Eric was the man for the job.

Gratuitous bunny butt pic:

It was really cool to meet other people with kids in the valley and to escape from the snow in Mammoth and play in grass and dirt.

Happy Easter!

Image: A large brown bear sits, human-like, at a picnic table appearing to feast on the food left on the table. People stand close by watching the bear.

There was a bear in our kitchen the other day. It came up the deck stairs and pulled the screen off of the open window. It stood on the deck chairs and then climbed through the window, stepping into a sink full of dishes (miraculously none broke) and then stepping down into the kitchen.

C, age 12, was the only person upstairs at the time and she heard the intruder, stood up, saw the bear clambering through the window and she screamed. I heard her scream from downstairs at my desk and as soon as I heard the piercing tone of her scream I knew it was a bear. 

Now - I figured the bear was outside on the deck and C had just been surprised to see a bulky wild animal moving around through the deck doors. I jumped up, no small feat to do as I had hip surgery a few months ago (a tale for another blog post?) And ran to the stairs, meeting C on the landing.

“A bear, a bear!” she rushed.

“Okay, okay,” I responded. “Out on the deck?”

“In the house! In the kitchen!”

It was a lot to process. This child was telling me that in broad daylight a bear had just entered our home and was, I assumed, currently fixing itself a snack? 

I pounded on Eric’s office door yelling through it that there was a bear in the house. I could hear him tell someone on a Zoom call that he had to go and he opened the door. By that point, L, age 9, had opened her bedroom door and we all convened in the downstairs hallway to figure out a plan.

First things first - get the kids out of the house. We sent them out through a lower deck door to our neighbor’s house. Then Eric and I turned our attention to somehow getting a bear out of the house when our only can of bear spray was, you guessed it, upstairs on the kitchen counter. 

Not that we wanted to spray bear spray in our house - what a mess that would be - but it was our only defense to a bear ranging around the upstairs and turning our kitchen into an all you can eat buffet.

We started advancing up the stairs yelling ‘bad bear’ at the top of our lungs. On the landing I decided I would try to go outside and see if it had exited or was in the process of exiting so back downstairs and out through the lower deck door I went.

Eric meanwhile advanced all the way upstairs with the idea of opening the front door wide enough to give the bear a path to escape from. 

We rendezvoused outside, me out on the street looking up at the door and Eric on the deck looking down at me. In the time it took Eric to get all the way upstairs the bear had gone back out the kitchen window and down the deck stairs to the yard.

What we didn’t know was that as the girls were hustling to the neighbor’s house they looked up the deck stairs and saw the bear coming down carrying something in its mouth. The bear then followed their path perpendicularly for awhile until it veered off into the canyon below our house and they got safely to our neighbor’s where they told him all about the interloper. 

At this point, you may be asking yourself, ‘what about your dog? Why not send the dog upstairs to get the bear?’ If you’re thinking that, I ask you to really think about the reality of sending a dog up against a big bear inside your home. Would you really want your dog to get swiped, attacked, or bit by a bear? Call me a softy, but I didn’t want Dash, our pandemic puppy, to get hurt, so we kept him in Eric’s office while we tried to sort out how to get the bear out of the house without anyone (or any pet) getting hurt.

Whew. And that isn’t the end of the tale. We called the girls back home and they came bursting in talking about seeing the bear carrying something away and how it followed their path as they ran barefoot down the street to our neighbor’s house.

In the kitchen, unbelievably, all looked okay. The bear could have broken dishes, opened the fridge, or eaten the cake on the counter or the fresh pot of beans on the stove but other than a destroyed window screen nothing seemed awry. 

“It took one of our containers!” L insisted. And sure enough, when we looked, the bear had opened a cabinet (leaving no scratches) and taken out a plastic Lock & Lock container filled with Trader Joe’s sesame sticks. 

Wondering whether or not the bear had been able to open the container I looked out the kitchen window to the canyon behind our house and there was the culprit. She was a large, cinnamon-colored black bear with a white triangle on her chest. She had popped open the lid and was scooping out sesame sticks and handing them to her tiny, cinnamon-colored cub. It was a rather adorable scene however one that could not stand. The last thing we wanted was a mama bear thinking our house was a 7-11. 

So Eric headed out to the canyon with Dash and a can of bear spray. Using Dash to our advantage outside versus in an enclosed space, made more sense. Bears hate dogs and their barking. Dash is a half mutt, half Australian Cattle Dog we got from a rescue in Los Angeles. Like a good herding dog he charged the bear and then circled back to Eric, barking and causing the bear to back up from the snacks. The cub bolted up the canyon at the first sign of Eric and Dash. The mama bear didn’t want to let the snacks go, but after more charges from Dash and a few sprays of bear spray in her direction, she went up the other side of the canyon and Eric darted down to where they’d been feasting and grabbed the cracked container. 

If you’re thinking ‘why did you spray the bear with bear spray? Why not yell at it, bang things loudly? Etc’ I’m here to remind you that bears that eat human food and break into people’s homes often end up dead. Bears need to find encounters with humans uncomfortable so they don’t think that breaking into people’s homes is a way to get food - bears that do that often end up killed by officials because they become a danger to humans (and hence a danger to themselves.)

Image: a window screen with a large tear caused by bear claws

Living with bears is just another part of living in Mammoth Lakes. We’ve already had a bear destroy one of our cars (a story I’ll re-share soon), and another tried to claw its way through the siding of our house. There have been bears on our decks many times looking for a way inside. You could say that having a bear in our house was like checking off the last box on a living-in-Mammoth Lakes bingo card. Most of our neighbors have already had bears in their homes, we knew it would happen eventually to us too.

Bears up here rip up packages left outside, tear through screens to try to get in open windows, and will absolutely open doors if the handles are ones they can maneuver. It’s a strange reality to live in but the bears were here before us and I wouldn’t trade living in Mammoth for anything so here we, and the bears, remain.

It’s taken me three days and about fifteen attempts to write this short post. I’ve been in a down slump and it’s been incredibly hard to access and tap into any type of creative communication and apparently, I’m not alone. I’ve been reading many articles lately on the collective burnout that many of us are experiencing in this stage of the Pandemic. There’s this one in The Lily on why burnout is hitting us now and this one in the New York Times that described the term ‘languishing’ and why we’re hovering there this year. I also really appreciated Toni Cowan-Brown’s latest post in her Idée Fixe newsletter on creator and consumer fatigue.

I’m not just seeing this in news articles either. My friends in the following careers - therapy, mental health, teaching, childcare, and the medical fields are all telling me that they’re beyond exhausted. What’s so interesting about this burnout is that it’s hitting even harder now, when things are (at least for lots of folks in the USA) more stable than they’ve ever been during this Pandemic’s timeline and that is part of the point - now that things are a little more stable we’ve got some breathing room and the result is a collective mind f*ck as we start to evaluate and analyze just what in the hell happened over this last year.

“I think people have been in shock, powering through and not stopping to think of what has happened. Now I see women beginning to come out of that and starting to grasp the full extent of this pandemic on their lives,” said Boston-based psychiatrist Maureen Sayres Van Niel. [From Soo Youn’s recent article on Burnout in The Lily.]

I’m trying to allow myself some grace in what feels like a total creativity vacuum right now too because things have been hard. A month before the WHO announced the Pandemic last March our daughter became chronically ill and we’re still supporting her through that long term illness. The start of her illness will be forever intertwined with the anxiety of the Pandemic - dual threads of pain and difficulty that began at the same time.

It’s been hard enough to do my day job while pandemic schooling our daughters at home while one daughter was also chronically ill so I shouldn’t really be surprised that lately it’s been almost impossible to channel a creative muse and write a blog, or write an essay, or work on a manuscript proposal. My mind feels like it’s running on empty.

“We’ve heard of consumer fatigue - specifically recently in the wake of the newsletter boom. But I do believe we will start to see increasingly more creator fatigue as well.” [From Toni Cowan-Brown’s recent article on creator and consumer fatigue in Idée Fixe.]

I’m using words like ‘burn out’ and ‘languishing’ but I’m not sure if that’s what really going on. To that end, my therapist has me working on the goal of better naming my emotions. I tend to lump everything under ‘anxiety’ and her task for me recently has been to try to identify trigger thoughts and then > name the emotions they make me feel > so that I can realize the behavior/reaction that result from them. A tool she recommended for better naming emotions is the Mood Meter App. Have you heard of it? (It’s also a great tool for kids to help them identify what they’re feeling.)

It divides moods into four quadrants: high energy unpleasant, high energy pleasant, low energy unpleasant, and low energy pleasant. First you pick one of those four quadrants and then you’re taken to a larger chart to hone in more specifically on the mood.

I do wish I could program in a few more words because the options don’t include ‘overwhelmed’ or ‘burned out’ - two feelings I’ve been feeling a lot lately. The closest I can find on the chart to how I describe an overwhelmed feeling is somewhere between anxious, apprehensive, and frightened - these all fit in the high energy unpleasant quadrant. And then there’s burned out and the closest I can find on the chart to that feeling is a mix of exhausted, spent, and drained - these all sit in the low energy unpleasant quadrant.

One thing I keep thinking about is how much more I used to accomplish pre-Pandemic and how much less I accomplish now - and I don’t think that’s actually a bad thing. The Pandemic made most of us slow down and it’s helped me to realize that I was doing too much before. Part of this feeling of overwhelm is the old work trying to regain a foothold and put me back on a path of doing what was already too much to begin with. There’s an inherent push back from me now that might not actually be burnout so much as the beginnings of acceptance - acceptance that all the things will not get done, at least not on the same timeline that they used to be done in. This reality is so new to me that it’s going to take some getting used to. This is one of the reasons I love our very slow timeline at Dusthaven. It’s an enforced step by step project - something we can fit into our newly slowed down pace of life.

This post is a bit disjointed and that’s okay - it’s a mirror to how everything feels right now and will be a good reminder to look back on years from now and remember this phase of life in the world of Covid19.

How are you doing? Are you feeling overwhelmed or burned out too? You’re not alone if so. Hang in there.

Much love,
Charlotte

Originally published in September of 2019, HuffPost just re-shared my article on the experience of being parent-shamed when we were rescued at sea. If you haven’t had a chance to read it and are curious about what happened, I explain what went down in the piece.

HuffPost shared the article by reposting it on Facebook here. I know, you’re never supposed to read the comments but I peeked for a bit and there is a familiar refrain of judgement within the comment thread that I’ve seen before. The thing is, I get it - I’m guilty of judging others too. The experience of being rescued at sea and having such an intense media/social media focus on me and my family during that period has taught me is to stop and identify that I'm leaning toward judging someone and then try to ask myself why. In that process of reflection I’ve learned a lot about fear, about preconceived notions and expectations, and about how much of life is gray and not black and white. - I feel like there’s an essay there, another one, burbling up. If I write it, I’ll share it too.

Hope you’re having a great weekend.

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Image: a woman, her arms outstretched, standing in a flat, freshly plowed construction pad about 70’x60’ big. In the distance behind are the snowcapped White Mountains and two closer hillsides winging to her sides.

This post was originally shared on my Instagram: @charlottesails

Sometimes I meet friends in town and they ask how things are going on the build. There’s an expectant glow in their eye like we may already be hoisting walls or installing tile. I always feel a little bad when I try to explain just how slowly things move when you’re starting from the ground up, when you’re working on weekends, when there is no power, no water, when you’re building on your own.

Dusthaven is less of a movement and more of a meditation - of what we can do in the extra moments, to keep our hands and our minds thinking forward on the future. It’s driving two hours away from a hardware store and arriving to find you have only ¾ of the parts you need for the next tiny step forward. It’s knowing you won’t be able to make it to the hardware store and back to the land again for another week.

It’s being entirely okay with the glacial pace of your progress – because Dusthaven is also being in the moment too. It’s hikes and long talks with the kids, it’s burgers on the grill, it’s the dog rolling in the dirt, the sun setting westward into the mountains.

This morning Eric had me walk out into the middle of the newly finished pad for the carport. The carport is where we’ll perch the solar panels which will provide us power for everything we plan to do.

“Stretch your arms out as big as they will go,” he said. I would stretch my arms out to eternity for him.

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Sometimes my phone rings and it’s the kids calling to say that the dog is puking, or can I pick up some oranges, or ‘when are you coming home, mommy?’ I tell them I’ll be on my way in a few minutes and remind them to use the yellow cleaning rags to tackle any dog puke until I can get back.

Sometimes I finish listening to a Brené Brown podcast, or I call a friend, but most of the time I just stare at the Sherwins and sip my coffee in silence. In the groundhog’s day of Pandemic-land, quiet moments alone are my self-care.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately - which is nothing new. Reading has always been my number one hobby and form of self-care. My mom said I taught myself how to read when I was three years old, she thinks from reading newspaper comics. In reading I can immerse myself in another world, in another life, and in the endless what-if’s and what-would-you-do’s of fictional and real life narratives.

This year I’ve decided to embrace video in social media as well as text so I’ve started sharing book review videos on Instagram (and re-shared on my Facebook page). In the reviews I point the camera at myself and talk like I’m talking to a friend who devours books like I do.

You can watch all of them following the link here or pick and choose from the current ones below.

• Annie and the Wolves, by Andromeda Romano-Lax

• Agatha Arch is Afraid of Everything, by Kristin Bair

• Breath, by James Nestor

• The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern

• Keep Moving, by Maggie Smith

Not a video person? I’ve got my recs listed on Bookshop too. Do you know about Bookshop.org yet? They support independent bookstores through affiliate sales. If you aren’t already getting your books at your local indie bookstore (you should!) and you can support bookstores by shopping online at Bookshop too.

At first I felt nervous opening up to the camera but now I whip that screen up as soon as I’ve finished reading and get out all my thoughts at once. Upcoming reviews will include Euphoria, by Lily King, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, by Blair Braverman, and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by V.E. Schwab.

I’m toying with the idea of an online book club but not sure how I’d work that out quite yet. I’d also like to interview authors but haven’t been able to figure out if a Zoom format would be best or just going live on social media instead. I think it would be easier to have people ask questions and engage in the discussion on Zoom, but Zoom would entail a monthly cost. Social media is free, but harder to get questions on a small screen and pull in people to talk and participate. Maybe, and I’m just working this out as I type (I do all my good thinking while typing) - maybe I keep the Zoom interviews short on purpose - under that 40 minute free Zoom limit? Any thoughts on a format you’d be interested in attending/engaging with?

In Dusthaven news, I got these samples of Sunbrella fabric for the cushions and pillows for the dinette in the travel trailer out there. Leaning towards stripes and that geometric looking fabric at right, but haven’t quite decided. Think I’ll use the Tetris-y fabric for new curtains. I’ll share before pics as soon as I can get some good ones. Right now picture dark, brown, and corduroy.

: shudder:

I wish you all your own quiet moments of pandemic self-care, be they in empty parking lots, or your bathroom, or through escaping into the stories in books.

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We packed our own food and ate on some rocks buffeted by high winds.

If you’ve followed our adventures for awhile now then you know our story but if you’re new here, I’ll give you a short recap.

Eric and I met and fell in love and during the falling-in-love process we decided we’d buy a boat and raise our family aboard it while we sailed around the world. We lived aboard for seven years and brought both our daughters home to the boat where they spent their first years as boat babies in our floating home.

Seven years into sailing life we set sail from Mexico to the South Pacific. During the passage our youngest daughter, Lyra, who was 13 months old, became sick and 1,000 miles into the passage we called for a rescue at sea to get her care. Our rescue at sea became a big news story and the media/social media narrative was very much one of us being bad parents for sailing with kids. As you might imagine, we disagreed with that narrative and thought (and still think) that we were good parents for sailing with our kids and for getting Lyra care when she needed it.

You can listen to our only media interview during that time on This American Life’s episode 525, Call for Help. A few years later we were interviewed by Kevin Grange for the The Journal of Emergency Medicine, and in 2019 I wrote this piece in HuffPost about our experience being parent shamed during and after the rescue at sea.

After the rescue and losing our boat, which was our home and held all of our worldly belongings, we found ourselves back in San Diego, the city where we’d originally sailed away from and starting over. It took us two years in San Diego to get our feet back under us. Once we did, we swapped adventures at sea for the mountains and moved our family to Mammoth Lakes, California, a town at almost 8,000ft altitude in the Eastern Sierra. We’ve now lived in Mammoth for four and a half years.

~ End life recap. ~

Eric has wanted to do three things since I’ve known him. The first thing he told me about on our second date - that was to sail around the world. We tried that.

The next thing was to walk the Pacific Coast Trail but he hurt his knee in his twenties and couldn’t do it. After his years of living on a boat, and four years now of volunteering with Mono County Search and Rescue Team in the Eastern Sierra, it’s possible he’s scratched that outdoor adventure itch enough, but you’d have to ask him to be sure.

The third thing he’s always wanted to do was an off grid, sustainable build in a remote plot of land. One thing about alternative building - you need to do it in places that either:

a) Are zoned for alternative building (many of which, in California at least, were out of our price range.
b) Find places where there aren’t any/many building codes against it.

Enter Nevada. In the county where we were looking there are no building codes against alternative building, there are barely any building codes at all.

Sometimes I think their state motto should be:

‘Nevada - You Can Do That Here.’

Eric’s interested in doing something called Earthbag construction, or Earthbag building, or Superadobe. This type of construction is not an earthship but earthships are cool. Here’s a recent article in USA Today about earthbag homes and here’s a video of the four of us talking about what Earthbag building is.

I've talked a lot about what Eric wants to do with his life but what me?

I want to live close to nature. I want to read, and write, and create beautiful things with my hands and do all that surrounded by my loved ones and friends. Turns out the things I want to do are very compatible with Eric's dreams too.

The area in Nevada we were looking at is about two and half hours southeast of our home in Mammoth, California. Over the course of the next few months we made a few more socially distanced trips out that way to check out possible spots. Eric took things into account like building codes as mentioned above, terrain and grading, aesthetics, whether it was south facing (sun angle), and surface and ground water. Then he looked up the owners of the lots he was interested in and hand wrote ten of them letters asking if they were interested in selling. Two wrote back.

About a month later, after talking with each person and checking out both options, we went into escrow and purchased from one of them. We bought 10 acres on the eastern side of the White Mountains in Fish Lake Valley, Nevada. The location is about an hour east of Bishop, California around 7,000ft (2,133m) elevation. We acknowledge that the Paiute and Shoshone tribes were the first peoples in this region and are still there today.

After much family deliberation, we’ve decided to call the place Dusthaven. Welcome to our new adventure. We created a Facebook page and an Instagram and I’m not sure how much we’ll post on either, but they’re there if you’d like to follow along.

Dusthaven is open range and undeveloped. The 10 acres have no well or county water, no power, and no driveway or construction of any kind. After much walking, talking, and thinking, we staked out where a road would go and some initial pads for building.

Then Eric bought a tractor and started building a road.

Next we searched for a used travel trailer. Turns out everyone and their mother was also searching for used RVs and travel trailers to escape the confines of the pandemic. Hats off to Eric who kept diligently searching until he found one for sale in Las Vegas that met our parameters. He was driving to pick it up an hour after talking to the owner on the phone.

We got a used 2012 Forest River Stealth Evo 26 T2150. It’s about 25ft long and has decorated corduroy window valances and brown curtains - items I’m taking out and replacing pronto. I’ll also be redoing the cushions in the dinette, but that will be a topic for another post.

It’s a got a queen bed for us and bunks for the girls and I’ve already started sewing custom bedding for everyone’s “berths.”

Side note: I keep using nautical terms to reference everything in the trailer. The kitchen is the galley, the bathroom is the head, the beds and bunks are berths, and the cabinets are lockers. Old habits die hard.

Our goal with the trailer was that it would be better than staying in a tent and we’ve met that goal and then some but we’re still roughing it as we get things going.

Some may say I’m pretty adventurous but at 41 years old there was only so many times I was cool with digging a hole and squatting to go to the bathroom while we were out there. Say hello to our rented ported potty. It costs a pretty monthly penny and we’re very happy to have it join our build.

Like the porta potty for toilet needs, there is also still no running water. We’re packing water in for now but we’re on the list with a local well company. They should be out to Dusthaven in the next few weeks.

Which leads me to power. Eric’s plans are to be fully off grid so we’re already utilizing some solar panels for current power needs with plans for a carport that will house many more panels to come. We’re also looking forward to utilizing Starlink once it’s available but until then we’re using a Verizon hotspot in a Ziploc hoisted 16' up on a 2x4, with a 20' usb power cable supplied by a 12v to 5v dc step down. It ain’t fancy but we don’t need fancy.

Dusthaven is about seven miles off the main road through the sparsely populated region of Fish Lake Valley so when I say it’s quiet, I mean it’s really, blissfully quiet.

Here are some scenes from recent trips out to the land.

In this one I’m disassembling the horrid window valances. I’ll be replacing the brown curtains with custom white Sunbrella ones. Also, check out the view from that window.

I made the girls custom pillows for their berths. They each got to pick their fabric. This is L showing off hers.

Dusty boots on an impromptu boot rack. We don’t call it Dusthaven for nothing.

Eric grilling on a DIY grill. Best burgers ever.

The view looking northwest, away from the Whites.

We don’t plan on leaving Mammoth Lakes, not yet at least. We’ll travel back and forth while we’re working on Dusthaven, staying in the travel trailer until we get the earthbag house built. That will all take time and we’re not in a hurry.

Things you can expect from this blog in the months to come include:

• Progress on our build at Dusthaven.

• Updates on writing my book about our adventures and the loss of Rebel Heart.

• Posts on writing, reading, parenting, adventuring, sustainable building, and sailing.

• I’m the founder of Women Who Sail, the largest online community of women sailors in the world - so expect updates about Women Who Sail even while I’m high up in the mountains working on Dusthaven.

Thanks for being here. More to come soon.

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*In my Women Who Sail group a young woman in her twenties asked for some life advice. Her question caused me to reflect and this answer poured out. I’ve edited some and added further reflections at the end.

When I was 21 and 22 I was living in France and working as an English assistant. I fucking loved my life for that year. I had such good friends there. I loved the tiny town I lived in (Rouen in Normandy). My employment contract was about to run out close to my 22nd birthday and one of my younger sisters needed to leave home and live with me (lots of reasons, but we had grade A dysfunction in our family home and she needed a safe place to go.) I used these two reasons (contract ending & my sister needing to come live with me) as a reason to not try harder to find another job/a way to keep living and working in France.

I wish I had tried harder.

I wish I had made it work to find a job that would have allowed me to stay and a way for her to come live with me there. Maybe I wouldn't have been able to but I wish I had tried harder.

I think a lot about that life thread, of how much I loved living in France and the friends I had there. I think about where my life would have led if I had found a way to make that thread work.

I didn't. I came back home (to San Diego) and got a job that paid enough to cover rent and amenities for us and worked for years in a profession that didn’t fulfill me (real estate development).

I eventually found a new life thread and my current life would not be what it was without the choices I made by going back to San Diego. I wouldn't have met my husband. I wouldn't have had my two daughters. I wouldn't have become a sailor and a liveaboard. I wouldn't have founded Women Who Sail! I can follow each step and see that where they landed me ended up really good...but.

But I think back a lot to that age and wonder what would have happened if I'd chosen a different path. I think the thing that trips me up the most is how happy I was to have a place, a job, and friends I liked, and how I left them. It's like dreaming about an alternate reality and I can get lost forever in the 'what ifs.'

How would life have been different if a trusted friend, or older/wiser person in my life had asked me what I really wanted to do at that juncture? Or challenged me to keep pursuing a path that I loved? I don't know. I'll never know!

This solstice I’ve been thinking about life threads and where I’m weaving myself towards next. I’m 41. What do I want to do for the next year? The next five years? The next twenty? In about a decade, my girls will be adults. I don’t want to be scrambling for new things and fresh starts once my kids are grown when I can reach for and plant seeds for those new things now.  

And just what are those new things?

I’m reflecting on these questions this solstice and with this Great Conjunction. If the juncture I faced back in my twenties is happening again, what advice would I give myself right now? In which direction should I start to weave my life tapestry? What would I tell myself to try harder for? What should I tell myself to set down?

I hear similar wonderings from friends and acquaintances. The Covid19 Pandemic has also been called the Great Pause and it’s left many pondering their life and how they want to live it.

Are you wondering and reevaluating? Are you planting seeds for a future with a vaccine in the world and where you will you go from there? I wish you luck in this period of winter (for those of us in the northern hemisphere) hibernation and look forward to what we all start growing come spring and summer.

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A Note to Readers

The Rebel Heart crew has a new adventure - we’re calling it Dusthaven. Dusthaven will be an off-grid, sustainable homestead in Nevada on the eastern side of the White Mountains. You can follow our progress on Instagram and Facebook.

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Kristine, Charlotte, Erin. November 2008 on Catalina Island for my wedding. Kristine was my maid of honor.

A few friends have reached out over the past few weeks because I've been quiet and usually when I'm quiet, I'm not doing good, but I'm okay! At least, now I am. I've reached an equilibrium from the med change at the beginning of January and with that equilibrium, I've been able to focus on some deep work - work on the next draft of the Rebel Heart book, and work on Women Who Sail (we're about to release new burgees, new stickers, and an email newsletter.)

Charlotte, Kristine, Ryan, and Eric on Rebel Heart. New Year’s Eve 2007.

In addition to that, the home front has us dealing with my husband, Eric's, torn rotator cuff, and the usual cyclings of wintertime colds and sore throats. Through this all I've had a deep sense of gratitude. We're dealing with his injury, I went through another med change, Eric and I are pushing hard in our day jobs and with our passions, and through it all - we've been okay. I'm grateful we have good health insurance when so many don't. I'm grateful that even though Eric is injured and the kids have been sick, these are things we can recover from. We're here. We're together. And these things count, injured, sick, or not. 

Kristine and her husband dancing at their wedding. Eric dancing with Cora at right. San Diego, June 2013.

A few days ago I was updating my list for the Valentines I send out each year and when I got to the names that start with 'K' - there was my friend Kristine's name. Kristine who died last July. Kristine who had been my friend for almost 20 years. Kristine who was only 40 when she passed, who left behind a husband, a 5 year old son, and gigantic holes in our hearts. She died four weeks after being diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and no, she wasn't a smoker.

Lyra, me, Kristine, and Cora. At Kristine’s baby shower. San Diego, July 2014.

This sense of gratitude that has been with me lately, it held me tighter when I saw her name on the list, and it wrapped its arms around me as I deleted her name, and typed in her husband and her son's names instead. Gratitude was there while the waves of grief at her loss crashed down around me too, not gratitude that she was gone, but gratitude that I'm still here. That all of my family is here, and healthy-enough, and we're okay, and it could be different. Kristine was a reminder of that - that we can all go at anytime. Such an acute reminder.

Kristine’s husband, son, and Kristine. At Baby Got Bach music hour. San Diego, 2015.

I hope I can write those feelings out more eloquently one day. For now, I carry my grief and my gratitude, and I keep moving. Deep work. Deep love. Deep passion. Deep loss. Deep, deep, deep. So deep it can all get a little damn heavy. But there is Valentine's and there is Galentine's and there is our daughter's 7th birthday tomorrow, and the cyclical promise of spring on the horizon.

How is your February going? What is on your horizon?

Much love,
Charlotte

PS - Hold on to each other tightly.

Kristine and Charlotte, San Diego, 2016.

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What music do you listen to when doing generative work?

As a writer, generative work for me means writing, though my creativity can also flow in certain parts of sewing (like free motion quilting). Generative work means creating a brand new something - in my case writing, but for you it could be wood working, painting, carving, baking, dancing, etc.

When I’m creating new work, I lean hard on electronica, trance type music: same type of beat, very little words, not too hard, nor too slow, nothing that will distract me from what's pouring out onto the page. 

Sometimes tapping into emotion is a good way to keep the story flowing.

This Spotify playlist has been my soundtrack for a few years now while writing the Rebel Heart book. There are four or five songs on here (I think) that don't fall into the electronica/trance genre, but they mean something to me in relation to the Rebel Heart story. I think of them as 'break' songs - songs that signal to take a break, or sit back and get lost in waves of emotions, be they peaks or valleys. Sometimes tapping into emotion is a good way to keep the story flowing.

My husband, Eric, turned me onto this type of music. He said a lot of coders listen to similar music coding.  I'm not a coder, but this sure does it for me when generating new work. Would love to know what you listen to when creating. What type of music? Or do you prefer podcasts? TV show reruns? The background noise of a cafe or public space? Or maybe you prefer sweet, sweet silence.

Here’s the link again to the Spotify playlist. If you like my list, feel free to copy it in Spotify and make it your own, or just follow and listen along as I add new songs.

All the best,
Charlotte

#RebelHeartBook #WomenWhoSail #KidsOnBoats

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Get a complete list of all these books here.

As the new year loomed, I began reflecting on the books I read and loved in 2019 and I’m here to share them with you.

A few notes on this end-of-year list:

• These are not solely books that were published in 2019, they are books I read in 2019.

• I make no distinction between listening to an audiobook or reading an e-book or hard copy, it’s all reading to me.

• I read, and liked, more books than this. I can’t include them all. This is a roundup where I can talk about my favorites and those that stood out for specific reasons.

Top Three Books I Read in 2019

Mother Winter, a Feminist Memoir, by Sophia Shalmiyev.

Shalmiyev’s Mother Winter is a stunning work of art. Her intertwining of the sharp and the biting, of the beauty and the banality of everyday life, leaves you wanting to grab a passerby and say, “Here look, at this passage!” — so you can experience it in tandem. This was not a book I read in one sitting. Instead, I waited until I had alone time to savor it in pieces. I often felt like I was walking into a museum to sit in front of a masterpiece. This is a book I will re-read for the rest of my life.

The Patternist Series, by Octavia Butler.

I started reading Butler’s work in 2016 when I discovered the Parable of the Sower. Since then, I’ve almost completed reading the entire Butler canon (with only Fledgling and her short stories remaining.) Since discovering her work, Octavia Butler has become my favorite author of all time — I cannot recommend her work enough. The Patternist series will leave you forever changed (as will all her books.) If you need further encouragement Viola Davis and Julius Tennon’s JuVee Productions is developing the series for Amazon Prime Video, with Nnedi Okorafor and Wanuri Kahiu to co-write the series. More here.

“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.” ~ Mary Karr, The Liars’ Club.

Every Single Book by Mary Karr

Once I picked up Karr’s first book, The Liars’ Club, I couldn’t stop. I proceeded forward with Cherry, then Lit, and finished with her incredible, The Art of Memoir. In 2019, I soaked myself in all things Mary Karr and now I constantly hear her voice in my head as if she’s narrating my own life. If you enjoy non-boring memoir, read Mary Karr. I also highly encourage you to listen to her audiobooks because she narrates them herself so you get the full effect with her west Texas drawl.

Authors I Fell in Love With

Pam Houston

Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, is the first book I’ve read of Pam Houston’s and it won’t be the last. I love a memoir with layers, and Deep Creek is exactly that. It’s not just a book about the 2013 West Fork Fire that almost burned down her ranch (a ranch she bought at 31 years old, with no previous ranching experiencing, and with only 5% down), nor is it just a memoir about land and how it can heal a person. Deep Creek contains many threads — this is a story about her as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and her conflicted relationship with her parents. It’s both an anthem and guidebook of hope for survivors as well as a beautiful and painful ode to the loss of the natural world — all themes I can relate to on a deeply personal level.

Sexism, Racism, and the Way Forward

Over and over again, I’m drawn to books on these topics. Here are four I read this year and recommend:

• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, by Reni Eddo-Lodge.

• Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward, by Gemma Hartley.

• Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters, by Rebecca Solnit.

• The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison.

Books that Soothe the Survivalist Streak in Me

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes — and Why, by Amanda Ripley. I was riveted to Ripley’s analysis of how humans respond to disasters and how we can respond better when disaster befalls us. As someone who survived being rescued at sea, I gained so much insight into my own responses during and after the rescue. If you want to know a better way to handle anything horrible scenario that may happen to you, read this book.

Books That Inspired Me

In life, we’re always closer to the edge than we care to admit, never guaranteed our next breath, never sure of what will follow this moment. ~ Caroline Van Hemert, The Sun is a Compass.

The Sun is a Compass: A 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds, by Caroline Van Hemert. In this book Van Hemert describes the adventures, perils, and exhilaration of trekking, paddling, swimming, skiing and other human-powered methods, of crossing 4,000 miles of Alaskan wilderness. Readers looking for an inspiring adventure story need look no further than this book. The Sun is a Compass also just won the 2019 Banff Adventure Travel Award.

Big Magic: Creative Living beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert. Yes, Big Magic came out in 2015 and yes, it took me until 2019 to read it. Gilbert’s book on her take of the creative process and how to kindle it will absolutely motivate you to get creating too.

Erotica

The Hungry Jungle: A Witch Planet! Picaresque,by Sheridan Goodluck (alias). If you haven’t started reading erotica yet, it’s time you started. I haven’t giggled this hard while also being turned on in a long time. And good news, book two, The Lion, The Witch, and the Woodsman, was just released!

Thrillers

The Nowhere Child,by Christian White and The Butterfly Girl,by Rene Denfeld.

Both White and Denfelds’s books are suspenseful, dark, and gripping and they deftly avoid the sometimes voyeuristic feel that can happen in crime story novels.

Authors I Follow

Brené Brown.I read all of Brown’s books. You should too. Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts, came out this year and was wonderful.

Rebecca Solnit (mentioned above). Solnit’s most recent book, Whose Story Is This? Old Conflicts, New Chapters, came out this year, but make sure you check out her complete canon — Haymarket Books has a Rebecca Solnit collection here. She is the author of Men Explain Things to Me, among other amazing books as well.

I Read Poetry and You Should Too

The Breath Between, an Invitation to Mystery and Joy,by Bethany Lee. While I’m not a massive poetry consumer, I read and loved Lee’s book. Her words envelop you like a beautiful, healing hug. I immediately re-read it once I got to the end to soak it in again.

I LOVE Y.A.

Akata Witch, by Nnedi Okorafor.

Children of Blood and Bone, book 1 of the Legacy of Orisha series, by Tomi Adeyami.

Loved them both! Looking forward to reading the next books in each series.

Books for Writers

The Byline Bible: Get Published in Five Weeks, by Susan Shapiro. I read Shapiro’s book, used her suggestions, and six weeks later (not quite five!) I was published in HuffPost with this piece.

Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need, by Blake Snyder.

Get a complete list of all these books here.

What Books Did You Love This Year?

I’d love to hear the books that rocked your world in 2019. Tell me your recommendations.

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