As we celebrate the return of the light this solstice, our thoughts always turn to friends and family who bring so much light to our world, especially during these turbulent times on this planet. This year was filled with so much change we figured our annual “card” should reflect it. While the format of our reflection has evolved, our desire to be in touch with you remains the same.
The beginning of 2019 looks almost unrecognizable from the the end of it. All these changes were made possible by the confluence of several major events:
In February, we said goodbye to Kihei. Our “first daughter” gave us 12 years full of fun and fur.
In June, Taylor finished 5th grade and graduated out of her beloved Opal School.
In July, Mark transitioned out of his role with KCB after 7 years of learning, growth and change.
As many of you know, we have long dreamed of traveling the world as a family, following our interests and curiosities about this incredible planet we call home. The confluence of the life changes and dreams inspired us to make some radical choices. This summer we purchased an RV, let go of our Portland home and most of our possessions, became Washington State residents, registered as homeschoolers, and have been living nomadically since the fall.
The girls are loving this new lifestyle where everyday is a field trip, and each week brings lessons ranging from geology to American history to animal husbandry. They really miss seeing Dude and Babe (Kendall’s parents) at least once a week, but they’re thrilled with the new adventure each day brings.
Kendall is putting her research and curation skills to work on a daily basis — discovering the best places to stay, things to do, and even basic details like where to do the laundry and what soaps are best to travel with. She is grateful for more time in nature and more time as a family. We are creating priceless memories and she is thankful everyday we have the opportunity to have this adventure together.
Mark feels so much more connected to the family than he has been over the last few years with his constant work travel. He is appreciating the chance to slow down and focus on depth of connections instead of breadth, and is incorporating this into “Cross Pollinate” the non-profit business association he started. He continues to be a connector of people and is grateful he gets to introduce his family to his business friends and colleagues as we travel.
As with any major life change, this one has allowed us to have a lot of deep reflection about what we have to learn, what we do and don’t want in our lives, and what is important to us to have in our life and to teach our children. We are seeing the importance of slowing down, being connected to the Earth and all its inhabitants, and feeling the power of prioritizing connection.
Highlights of our travels are too numerous to list, but it is safe to say our favorite times have been with friends, family, colleagues, and new acquaintances. Connection with people and places was the priority from the inception and it continues to be something we cherish.
The movie made by the girls gives you an overview of our adventures this past year. If you want to follow along more closely, you can subscribe to our blog (www.schoolforyoungblood.com) or follow us on instagram (@schoolforyoungblood).
And should you be sending paper cards to us this year, please use our new mailing address:
1037 NE 65th St. #81429
Seattle, WA 98115
(And if you sent a card to the old address, hopefully it was forwarded!)
We hope this note finds you happy, healthy, and thriving.
Someone told us that without routines, time moves at a different pace.
I don’t know that we realized how different our gauge of time would be until we hopped off the hamster wheel that was our life. Writing a summary of where we’ve been and what we’ve done seems near impossible even when we can look back and see the almost daily pictures we have posted on Instagram (@schoolforyoungblood).
With our new lifestyle, each day (even when we don’t go anywhere) feels like a week. Each week feels like a month… I can only assume that we will look back at our months in different locals as different lives.
While we intend to use this blog mostly for sharing our story and thoughts beyond our pictures and locations, we thought it is helpful to summarize where we have been and what we have done.
November was our first full month on the road and during it we’ve visited: Crater Lake, Klamath Falls, Lava Beds National Monument, Lake Tahoe, Reno, Incline Village, Santa Rosa, Tiburon, Larkspur, Petaluma, San Mateo, Half Moon Bay, Yosemite, Bodie Ghost Town, Mammoth Lakes, Bishop, Mono Lake, Death Valley, Las Vegas, Joshua Tree, Palm Desert, Palm Springs, Portland, and Boulder City.
We’ve been to amazing museums covering natural history, cultural history and science: Stewart Indian School, Donner Party Museum, The Discovery Museum in Reno, Manzanar War Relocation Center, and had amazing nature experiences at Crater Lake, Lava Beds, Yosemite, Bodie State Historic Park, Mono Lake, and Death Valley.
We’ve seen so many animals. From the domestic (cats, kittens, dogs, puppies, horses, pigs, goats, bunnies and more) to the wild including road runner, javelina, coyote and bear.
We harvested olives, rode bikes, soaked in hot springs, watched sun sets, saw the Milky Way, explored caves, hiked around lakes, played in the snow, played in the sun, played in pools, and watched a parade of couches at night.
Despite all the fun and games, we’ve also managed to figure out the puzzles involved with life in an RV including: cooking lots of meals, doing heaps of laundry, cleaning inside and out, restocking with water, gas and propane, emptying our tanks, finding campgrounds (and a few times, not finding campgrounds), following directions, all while putting close to 5,000 miles on the van.
The cooler weather kept us in the van more than we would like. We relish warmer days and nights when we can cook and eat outside. The early sunsets are also difficult. We often have to wrap up our day by 3 or 4 pm, so we can camp for the night before it gets dark. Fortunately, the van is warm and cozy and it’s easy to be comfortable even when it’s pouring rain or there is over a foot of snow outside.
We’re not fitting in yoga as much as we’d like. Most days we’re getting good walking mileage in, but we could use some more workouts too. We’re eating well and taking care of ourselves with mostly the same standards we did in a static home, although we’re really missing our daily hot tub sessions.
The schooling part of this journey is well underway too. We’re enjoying reading the book “Marten Martin” out loud as a family at bedtime (thank you for the gift Joy and Thunder). The girls have their own books they’re reading during the day, and they are working on their math app, typing practice (now that we have their iPad keyboards), and they’ve made a few movies about some of the places we’ve visited. They send postcards back to friends and their class at school with highlights from some of our adventures. The experiential part of their education is pretty incredible — in a single day we can learn about geology at hot springs, American History in a gold mining town, and biology, geology and Native American history at Mono Lake.
Through it all we’ve had the chance to visit with friends, family, and colleagues. Each of them on their own could have been the highlight of the month, but collectively it has been extraordinary!
The girls spent a week in Portland before Thanksgiving with Kendall’s parents. Everyone loved the arrangement. They spent the week baking, playing, seeing movies, reading, and playing “school” with Dude and Babe. Mark and I enjoyed some quiet in the van that feels so much more spacious with two, rather than four, people. We enjoyed some self-care in Vegas and long hikes in Joshua Tree.
Most days there is at least one moment, where we stop and look around and have to remind ourselves that “this is our life!” A long-time dream being realized. We’re watching the girls grow and mature and evolve right before our eyes, and we see so many changes, despite the front row seat. They will often spontaneously report, “I love my life!” And I couldn’t agree more.
We’ve been revisiting our post on schooling as we try to synthesize and integrate the many life lessons that are offered to us daily. Here are some of our current ponderings based on the quotes that have inspired our thinking… hardly complete and concise, but imperfectly curious:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
– Mary Oliver
In looking back over the last month, we’ve realized that we kept our prior pace, which is no longer compatible with our new life. Our “go-go-go” has been interspersed with the rare day of staying put and integrating. We realized “recharge” days are more important than anything we have “done”. In long distance swimming you realize the importance of gliding, the efficient and most elegant part of the stroke, is what takes you efficiently to your destination. How we do we glide more through this precious life?
“The word school is derived from the Greek word schole, meaning “leisure.””
– Greg Mckeown
Checking off National Parks and Wonders of World now seems more like checking items of a shopping list and feels like the antithesis of unschooling our kids and unconditioning selves. Is it really a “wonder” if we don’t have time to be ponder it?
We’re feeling the conflict of our culture’s fascinations with the “7 Wonders of the World,” while it also trivializes the small, everyday wonders that are all around us but are increasingly difficult to experience. As we leave a rainy northwest city, we find magic in the heavenly canopy that both lights our way home in the desert, and soothes us to sleep as it carries water to earth to support all life. We have increasingly separated ourselves from these small wonders in the name of comfort and convenience only to add them back synthetically. Our hearts and heads hurt as we think about how much damage has been done to this beautiful planet in the name of comfort and convenience, by us individually as well as by the collective. How do we relax into wonder in the everyday, giving ourselves the time to have leisure and play, and release the drive to see all the “best” places or do all the “coolest” then?
“To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day.” – Lao-tzu
We spent a lot of time and energy building wealth and passive income so we would have total freedom, but we didn’t leave time to figure out what we want to do with that freedom or how to best utilize it.
It was easy to see in our own, and our children’s schooling that you don’t “learn” anything when you just study for a test. But even “experiential” learning doesn’t work if we are trying to cram in lots of experiences and only have surface-level, cocktail-party talk with people we meet. There is no depth in seeing the grand canyon by helicopter on a layover between flights. We notice a different relationship with the earth when we see a jackrabbit’s prints in the snow and sit and watch birds fly across the canyon rim while worrying our kids’ snowball fight might end with one of them falling past millions of years of geologic history and ancient sea beds.
These are all questions we are contemplating as we explore this new pace and way of life.
