A lot has happened since My last posting in Winston at Oh My Gato farm. A lot.
Anthony from Oh My Gato has a friend named Keith who lives a bit north from Winston. Keith injured his back and needed some help in his garden. Michelle and i spent 2 days at Keith's. We did some weeding and mowing around the garden. We set up our tent in the garden. His garden was set up really beautifully. The raspberries were perfectly ripe and the peas tasted so nice right from the vine. Keith is a bread baker and has a clay bread oven that he and his wife built. One of our nights there we baked a few loaves of natural risen sour dough bread and pizza. Keith's wife and son live in Germany and they come to visit every so often.
From Keith's house we went north to a community called Aprovecho in cottage grove. Keith gave us a ride there. Michelle and I were wondering around Aprovecho and we met a really nice young couple named Brad and Heather. We ended up having lunch with them. They cooked on something called a rocket stove, which I plan to make when I get back to the east coast. Its a super efficient way of cooking that uses very little wood. After our lunch we set up our tent and then met back up with Brad, Heather and a couple of their friends and we went for a long, long hike through the woods. My words and pictures can't describe how beautiful it was out there. We saw big bear tracks on the paths we were walking.
The next morning we packed up early and wondered how we were going to get a ride into Dexter were Lost Valley education center is. I was sitting outside on a bench and I saw someone driving down the hill and I went running down as fast as I could and waved my arms to stop them. I caught them just in time and asked him if he could bring us into town . I think his name was Chris. He waited for Michelle and I to get our things and he brought us into town and dropped us off by the on ramp.
Michelle went into a cardboard dumpster because we wanted to make a sign saying Eugene which was close to Dexter. After she spent all that time sitting there making the sign we didn't even have to use it, because when we were walking back to our spot by the off ramp i stuck out my thumb and the first car to drive by picked us up.
We spent most of the day at Lost Valley. They have a lot of permaculture courses there and do a lot of other teachings. The plan was to pitch a tent there and go to Eugene the next day, but they charge money to pitch a tent even though they have 90 acres of land so we decided to hitch a ride into Eugene. We called a friend of a friend and asked if we could spend the night there. They gave us directions to there house but we ended up getting confused and getting dropped off to far away from there house, luckily Brad, a really nice guy picked us up and gave us a ride all the way to the house. Brad was going way out of his way for us, we told him he didn't have to but he said that if his he didn't bring us to where we needed to go his grandfather would come out of the grave and smack him. If we had to walk it would have taken over 2 hours and that would be no fun with our heavy bags.
We got to the house in Eugene and met with all the 6 or 7 people that live in that house, nice people. We ended up spending a week in Eugene. The first couple days we did a lot of walking around. We spent 2 nights at an Eco village right in the city called Matreya. Matreya is located on 5 lots, a little less than an acre. a few different family's live there and share the land. It was beautiful, they have many natural buildings and every spare part of their property is filled up by gardens. They let us stay in a cob cottage.
We went back to stay with the people we stayed with those first few nights and a bunch of us ended up going to the cougar hot springs. We all got naked and hopped in the hot hot hot water. The hike through the woods to the hot springs was a mile long, there were 5 separate pools, one below the other each getting a bit cooler as they went down. It felt so nice to sit in them and watch the sky and the trees. We ended up staying at the hot springs until 2:30 in the morning before we went back to the camp site.
From Eugene we went to Corvallis, where we met with my Americorps friend Stephanie. She's awesome. We stayed with her for 3 nights. We went swimming in the lake one day, another day when it was so hot we drove to the coast with her and 2 of her friends. When we got to the coast the temperature dropped. We were all in shorts and short sleeve shorts and everyone else there had on coats. it was so cold, but Stephanie went in anyway. I went in up to my ankles and that was good enough. Across the street from the beach there was a candy shop. They were closing up and gave us a bunch of fudge and popcorn for free. There was a sign that said you can sample the taffy but just one per customer. I thought it meant 1 of each flavor.
Michelle and I planned to go to Portland and Stephanie said she was going up to see some friends so we were able to get a ride with her. We stayed with her friends India and Julian. They are such nice people, it would be nice to see them some other time. They have an apartment and concrete for a back yard so they made these really cool bamboo pot holders and filled them with potting soil. India, Julian, Stephanie, Michelle and I all went to India's parents house for a party. Stephanie and Julian played piano and we all played scatagories.
Now we are at a farm called Pendarvis just outside of the city visiting my friend Brooke who I met in Americorps. This place is very open to creativity, they have so many instruments and art everywhere you look. Tomorrow or the next day we will go back into the city and hang out for a few days ( if we can find a place to stay. We are looking on couch surfing)
A lot more has gone on but I am so sick of writing. I'll try to get some pictures up soon.
Michelle and I finally got to play ping pong.
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