Home (noun, adjective, verb)

We are "home". Settling back into the bay area. Getting back on the west coast was a sigh of relief. My body recognizes the pacific ocean breeze as home. Seeing faces of loved ones I haven't seen in 3 months. And all of it is in the surreal realm of time - like none has passed but all the time in the world has gone by...like, it feels like we never left, but it feels like forever ago that we were here...that whole thing. As much as I feel overwhelmed by all the transition, I also have overwhelming feelings of gratitude, hope, and connection!

We set out on this journey 3 months ago with the intention of 1. learning about different models for collective rural living, community, and queer land projects 2. visiting national parks 3. getting out of the bubble of the bay area 4. doing political presentations and organizing in different cities around the country 5. working on an interview project on the subject of home 6. seeing people we love 7. having a ton of fun. Check, check, check, check, check, check AND CHECK!!!!!!! It is so amazing to look back over our time and really begin to integrate what I have learned. It was a lot of hard work with struggles along the way and I can already see the ways our dedication and perseverance is allowing for more possibilities.

Another thing this trip required of us was a deep trust and surrender to not knowing what our next step would be after we returned. Along the way we had different musings about what kind of life and home we might be able to create together, in community. And on our very last stop, one of those musings came to life. We had been in conversation with a couple of our friends about moving out to their farm to live, work, play and dream. When we arrived there, after driving in a circle 11,000 miles around the country, just 3 hours north of where we started, we found home. Yes, HOME! I could feel my body settle in as we laughed and talked, my mouth water as I looked out at the peach orchard, and my jaw drop as I realized we had finally landed in a place we can call home.

So, the journey we have been on has come to a close in certain ways, and now we are turning to face a new life in Oroville, California where I hope to create a space that invites learning, encourages healing and builds power.

Thanks to everyone for all your support along the way!

With Love and Care,

Eliana

BTW - we returned just in time to celebrate my birthday...at the beach in Half Moon Bay, CA

And at a BEYONCE show on my B-DAY!!!

Making our way home

Spoiler alert: I am writing this blog entry from Eli's folks house in the North Bay! So, been transitioning out of road trip mode for two days, but I will pick up where Eli left off...

From Olympia we had an easy-breezy drive to arrive in my hometown, Portland. I took Eli on a "high school date" to the roller rink at Oaks Park, which was a total blast. Neither of us learned any tricks, but neither of us wiped out either.

We were in Portland for a few short days, and got to spend some time with most of my family (family of origin and chosen family) who is there, including my dad and stepmother Therese, my mom, my best friend Felecia, and my (third) mother Susan. Somehow I managed to get pictures of mostly the dogs and not of my human family, but it was quality time nonetheless. Eli and I also spent some one-on-one time with other friends, and convened again to eat ice cream at what turned out to be the gayest ice creamery in town, Ruby Jewel Scoops (nothing personal, Salt n Straw). We also got to have a quick breakfast with my sister Anna in Eugene on our way out of Portland. 

sadie & colby (we are all missing my sister elise, who is in london)

my sister anna

susan with rugby, whose howls accompanied susan's husband scott on the cello

felecia, my beloved friend of many years now

With the end of our journey in sight and the thought of our comfy bed in mind, we ended up cutting a few stops out of our journey -- we'll be back for Sisters, Oregon to visit a memorial for my best friend in high school, and faerie sanctuaries Wolf Creek in Southern Oregon and Groundswell in Mendocino county. Our second to last stop was Fancyland, a land project about 20 miles outside of Arcata, California. Oh yeah -- we made it to California!

 

I'll leave much of the the land project sharing to Eli, as that is primarily their area of interest, but I will say it was a peaceful and necessary place for us to slow down, take a breath, and reflect a bit on our coming home to the Bay. We hung out with Sacha, the primary founder and caretaker of the land, and also had significant time to ourselves. We stayed in a sweet cabin called the Parlor and slept deeply in the pitch black night sheltered by trees and tons of greenery.

fog on the hills ( a view from fancyland ) 

Finally, we headed to our very last stop of the trip -- our friends Danny and Drew's newly acquired fruit farm just outside of Oroville, California. They'd purchased the farm in whirlwind in the fall and we'd visited them just a week or two before we left for the trip, and it was amazing to see the orchards fruiting, the greenery lush, and the land slowly but dramatically waking up from a wet California winter. We spent time thinning the pluot trees, hanging out with Trousers the bunny, acclimating Danny & Drew's new feral cats Frog & Toad to their life on the farm (though... it was a bit of a rough start), exploring the land, and even making it to Chico for dinner with some new friends. It's always a treat to spend time with Danny and Drew and it's so exciting to see and hear about the work and care they are putting into this project!

danny and trousers

cherries almost ripe...!

frog and toad... skeptical.

And on Friday, May 6th, in the early afternoon, we made it back to where we began -- Eli's folks' house in Tam Valley. We clocked 11,043 miles and just about 12 weeks on the road, and have almost three weeks to be here before heading to Eli's sister Sadie's wedding in Richmond (via airplane) believe it or not! In that time we will celebrate Eli's birthday, see Beyonce, root for the Warriors, sleep a whole heck of a lot, and prepare for the next steps in June... which are underway and a dream come true and to be announced :)

Thank you for following along on our trip and I can't wait to see many of your faces soon! Also, I loved blogging on the road and plan on starting one of my own when I have time for that creative project... til then!

xoxo freddie

Pesach

We had the first night of Passover in Chicago with Navah and Freddie's sister, Coco. We made a spontaneously beautiful dinner, said a few blessings and hung out around the table together. It was precious and meant a lot to me to share this tradition with everyone. Earlier in the day we had a hilarious experience at Russian tea time...basically we realized we could just order a few items "a la carte" rather than overpaying at $30/person for the "tea service". Totally fair for us to do, right? Well, our old school Russian waiter man didn't seem to like it (or maybe he just didn't like us) so he provided us not just with bad service, but with overtly rude comments and literally mocking us. We were having a blast and didn't want to let him get in the way of that...so we got our tea and snack tower and took it in stride :-)

 From Chicago, we continued west on 90 to Minneapolis. As we were arriving we decided to track down my sister, Sadie, who was visiting there to search for housing with her partner Leo because they just "placed" there for his medical residency! It was a treat to get to see them again on this trip and in a new place. So much sister time! Yayyy! So yeah, we surprised them walking around the lake, had a nice dinner and then had an interlude so we could watch the premiere of Lemonade, Beyonce's new video album...not sure I can even get into that amazing piece of art right now...I'll just say, I love Beyonce, and I love what she is doing for art, music and political spheres. She is queen! Anyyywayyyz, we got to hang out with them the next morning and then headed back to the house we were staying at for a queer radical passover seder. It was one of the best seders I have ever been to. It was such a powerful intersection of community, ritual, and political engagement. And it was so sweet to be invited into Jo's home and seder even though we had only conversed over email through shared community. So much generosity and warmth. I truly loved Minneapolis and am excited to visit Sadie and Leo and new friends there!

Lake Calhoun with Sadie

Seder at Jo's

From Minneapolis, we began the first of a three day haul from Minnesota to Washington. We knew it would be a long drive, but the torrential downpour didn't help. After about 8 hours, we made it to the Badlands in South Dakota where we wandered around and relaxed in the sunshine.

The following morning, we got an early start and headed toward Montana. We listened to Beyonce as we drove through the Badlands and it felt like we were on a different planet. Clouds of mist suspended over crumbling canyons, all with the soundtrack of Lemonade. It was a little rainy, but that was fine...until the rain got cold and became hail, and then snow. Ah, the snow. The one thing I knew I did not want to do on this trip was drive through the snow, but there we were, on a day that was already going to be our longest drive of our entire trip...so we persevered. Freddie drove for several hours while I was stress eating Matzah (unleavened bread for passover that tastes like cardboard). Finally the snow dissipated, so we pulled over and I got myself pumped up to drive. We were both exhausted, and I knew it was my turn to come through. So I drank my organic sparkling water energy drink (lol) and beasted it across the country. I drove for over 5 hours with only one stop to pee on the side of the road. I just let some other part of myself kick in and there was only me, the car, the road, and our destination. By the time we made it to Missoula, a 10 hour drive made 14 hours, I was spinning. We got to our motel and I was chatting with the owner while they checked us in, she asked where I had come from that day...I paused, started to laugh and said, I actually cannot remember right now...moments passed...and I still had no idea where I had been that morning...as I was about to walk out I turned to her and said, "the Badlands! that's where I drove from today". We grabbed some food, got in bed and passed out hard. Just to wake up the next day and drive another 8 hours which is when we got our first speeding ticket of the trip. Such a bummer to have made it around the entire country - over 10,000 miles - and then get a ticket back on the west coast. Oh well. We then realized that Seattle is North (not South) of Olympia (whoops) so we made a quick stop there to see Freddie's grandpa and headed to Olympia as planned (skipping the overnight in Seattle since neither of us could imagine backtracking even if it would have been just a few hours). Haha. Definitely a time of unraveling, sillyness and overcoming obstacles.

Oh and we stopped in the famous town of Wall, SD at Wall Drug to get in a photo booth session of course.

 

Passover matzah on the road (not my favorite road snack)

You might remember our companions from earlier posts...they got a little wild on the drive

Alas, we made it to Olympia where we stayed with my friend Sarah. It was so lush and dreamy and I felt soooo relieved to be back on the West Coast! I loved so many of the places we went on this trip, but I really am a west coaster, born and raised, and still committed to the Pacific ocean.

Now we are in Portland visiting friends and Freddie's family, with just a few more stops before we are back in the Bay Area.

Thanks for reading,

Eli

On the Up and Up

View from the look out at Watershed Retreat Center

Bash Bish Falls adventure with Lissa and Margot

I had such an amazing time in upstate NY - lots of fun, sillyness, learning, reflecting and connection. We started off our time staying with a mutual friend, Margot, at the Round House in Millerton.

Lissa and Eli

Another jewish queer radical....we hit it off :-) It was nice staying there and talking with her and her housemate Adin about their farming ventures, jewishness, and anti-Zionism. (And watching Beyonce in the bathtub while eating chocolate ice cream). They both used to live at the Isabella Friedman Retreat Center so we got to hear some of their reflections from being there, and of course there was the visit with the baby goats (pictured in previous post). Also, they are starting a farm called Linke Fligl, meaning Left Wing in Yiddish. So cute. They are doing that project on one of the parcels at Wildseed. Wildseed is a budding POC land project that is getting started by some people from Harriet's Apothecary and other folks doing inspiring and transformative work. I am excited to see what ends up being created there and how the different dynamics work out. It is a unique model and they have a lot of potential to do something amazing on that land. Moving along just across the road there is Watershed Retreat Center where my dear friend Lissa works. We stayed there a couple nights and it was great to connect with Lissa - she was a good friend of mine in the Bay Area and I have really missed her. She lives part time in Brooklyn and works at Watershed which seems like an intense but interesting way of having connection to both urban and rural living. She is also involved with the White Noise Collective in NYC, which I am a part of in the Bay Area. Anyways, she had so much insight about the different land projects in the area and how they function, and what is challenging. She also used to work at Soul Fire Farm which is just North of there in Petersburg, NY.

Potluck after Workday at Soul Fire

We went up to Soul Fire for their workday and got to help out with some mulching and hang out with a bunch of folks - they had 40 people show up to their workday from surrounding areas and NYC! Pretty amazing to see their reach. After the work part of the day, Leah Penniman the owner/manager of Soul Fire (who also happens to be the sister of one of the Wildseed folks) gave a talk about Soul Fire and food justice. She began by talking about the history of black people in the U.S. through the lens of slavery to share cropping to farming to land trusts. She spoke about their relationship to the food justice movement and talked about how we can address what are commonly called "food deserts":  geographic areas where residents’ (typically people of color and low income folks) access to affordable, healthy food options is restricted or nonexistent. She proposed we call them "food apartheid" areas instead of food deserts because as she points out, these are not a natural phenomena, they are the result of structural racism. The way she talked about food sovereignty, environmental justice, and imperial colonialism was so on point and so clearly connected these politics directly into practice and action. Soul Fire does a lot of different programming including artist and activist retreats, Black and Latino Farmers Immersion, International Solidarity, and farming apprenticeships. They have become a model and a leader in the food justice movement in New York.

Self explanatory, right?

"Treyfe" Band Photo (see Freddie's post)

So yeah, our time in this area was pretty epic. It was great to stay there for close to a week and get a sense of the magnitude and myriad of projects happening in that part of the Hudson Valley. As we drove away, I found myself gazing out the window dreaming and visioning about all the ways queers and people of color are fighting for liberation through land sovereignty...

More soon,

Eli

catching up: boston --> upstate new york --> cleveland

we started heading west today, and it feels so good! with under three weeks to go before we make it back to the bay, we still have 11 more places we'll be sleeping in before then. i'm currently writing from a motel in cleveland, ohio, where eli and i are gratefully crashing after a VERY stimulating cleveland cavaliers playoff game we attended. i know, we're a long ways off from the woods.

and now...
a recap of the past two weeks!

boston was hard and beautiful and heart-achey for me! eli was sick the whole time we were there, like, entirely out of commission, which was a big bummer for many reasons. i'm so grateful we have the resources and support to have taken the space we need (which in this case looked like a private airbnb in my old neighborhood) for eli to rest and for both of us to take refuge.

so to follow up my last post, i ended up slowing down in an unforeseen and forced way, but still managed to see many loved ones, friends, and special places i've missed since leaving for the bay in january 2014. it felt good to be in boston in that it's familiar and i feel pretty constantly nostalgic for it, but i also felt pretty raw and like i was really grieving what was my home there (specifically, "the fort," the collective house i used to live in). housing has been really unstable for me since moving to the bay -- i've lived in four different situations in just over two years, and am gearing up to figure out what the next one is. and being in boston now, i was able to experience visceral memories of what it felt like to turn the corner and look up and see my house and feel like i was really coming home. and how it's not my home anymore, and nor do i wish it was... but how deeply i crave being in the right space to lay down some roots and stay a while.

i've found home in so many of the amorphous senses, and am so fortunate in that regard. but, i am really hoping to find a geographic location to call home in a more permanent sense sooner rather than later.

Jamaica Pond, in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston where I used to live

 

anyway, i cried a lot in boston, and i cried a lot driving out of boston, and it was good, you know? and as soon as we were on our way outta massachusetts, eli started finally feeling better, and that was good too.

after boston, we spent almost a whole week in upstate new york, mostly in a tiny town called millerton. we spent time between several retreat centers, farms, and land projects i'll let eli share, and  additionally had lots of fun endeavors and adventures with friends including but not limited to:

• me and margot (one of our hosts) spontaneously starting a band called TREYFE: having band practice on a sunny wooded trail, and even having a delightful and ridiculously fun "concert" with our three year old friend lev guesting on the xylaphone
• watching beyonce music videos in a giant bathtub, i mean hello.
•  a sort of failed but still really fun water balloon "fight" (before we get back to the drought, you know?)
• watching "the jungle book" at the drive in movie theater in adin's (another host) new/old bright blue pickup truck!

there was lots more, but again, i'll let eli share their thoughts and reflections on the different projects we had the opportunity to visit.

the treyfe "concert" (recordings to come! really!)

finally, we spent a night in niagra falls, which honestly and somewhat confusingly was one of the most depressing places i think i've ever been. the falls themselves are so beautiful, and i was warned that the surrounding area was a huge tourist trap... but i think i was picturing, like, a tacky gift shop (something i secretly love). and what is actually there is so much more intense -- planet hollywoods on top of hard rock cafes on top of arcades on top of "dinosaur adventure golf" on top of like, five wax museums. like if fisherman's wharf and the jersey shore and times square had a baby, and it barfed up all that plus a colonial nation-state border. it's just kind of amazing/terrible how something so intrinsically beautiful and incredible could be exploited and profiteered to such an extreme. anyyyyway... i don't think eli and i were the target audience for all that. but, we rode the ferris wheel, and felt the mist of horseshoe falls on our faces, and that was nice.

the wackness of niagra falls. we did get to walk to canada (pictured here) and back without a hitch, pretty wild (but unsurprising) compared to our border patrol experience in texas...

!!!!!!!!!

tomorrow, we head to chicago! and all that jazz...

til next time,
xo freddie

Concrete Jungle

We are just coming off of a string of time in the big cities of the east coast: DC, Philly, New York and Boston, oh my! There are some posts below about our time in these places so I just wanted to add a couple updates.

First off, we went to my sister Rachel's kindergarten class in Manhattan which was ridiculously cute...

Unfortunately, I started my period on the subway ride over to class so wasn't feeling so great...I ended up leaving and spending the day in bed. And then continued to spend the subsequent 5 days feeling terribly ill. It was really rough, physically and emotionally, and there is so much to say about it, but I'm moving on, and feeling stronger every day.

Now, we are in Millerton in upstate NY which has been a sweet relief of sunshine and fresh mountain air. We are staying at the Round House with a friend who is a radical queer Jewish organizer. We went to visit the newborn baby goats at Isabella Friedman Retreat Center as well as Wildseed. Today we are headed over to Watershed and will write more about our experience at these different land projects soon.

Xo,
Eli