Truth Love and Free Food Tour 2010

After a month of no internet access, we are back in the world of technology (at the Hostel in the Forest, of all places to be reintroduced to the interwebs). Much more news to follow. For now know that we are well and the road is long and winding. If I start any story I’ll be here for hours, so for now I go. More to come. Thanks for your patience. So much love to all of you.

As you probably already know, one aspect of this journey is learning to live without dollars. The reasons for this are many and varied, and may be the topic of another post. For now suffice to say that we pay for nothing except gasoline, propane (stove, fridge and freezer), road tolls and occasionally alcohol or tobacco. We find ways to avoid dollar transactions for food, shelter, clothing, going to music shows, emptying Bethany’s grey- and black-water tanks, and pretty much anything else you can think of. Even so, our dollars are dwindling rapidly. On the road we’ve been earning some dollars through selling glass pendants (which were repayment on a micro-loan I made to some emerging artists in Atlanta before I hit the road), doing some body work, etc. Right now it looks like we’re still several hundred dollars short of making it back to Anahata Bio-Community in mid-October. At that point we’ll be parked for a while and will have an opportunity to figure out a source of dollar income. So for now we’re figuring out how to pay for getting there. A couple of weeks ago I was discussing all this over the phone with a dear friend from the Forest who asked if it was possible to donate to us through the blog. As of yet, no. I’m figuring out how to make it possible for you to donate to our Paypal account, and so far am not successful. If you would like to donate some gas money to us, you can leave us your email address and the amount you’d like to donate (through “Ask Me”) and I can send you a request from Paypal. A little complex, I know, and it’s what we have to work with right now. 

It looks like it will cost about $840 in gas $ to get us back to Anahata. We currently have about $500, which leaves us about $340 short on gas money (plus about another $100 in propane). Any amount you can spare would help us greatly in our cause. If you believe in what we’re doing, please help us continue doing it. Hit “Ask Me” near the top center of this page and send us your email address and amount you’d like to donate so we can send you a request through PayPal. Thank you so much for your love and support. We appreciate all the prayers and encouraging words. Thank you thank you thank you.

  —chuck

    A few weeks ago, on our last day in Asheville, we arrived at the used book store (where Critter has bookoo credit) exactly 5 minutes before they closed. A quick glance around the store led me to the spirituality section, and a review of their Taoist selection left me wanting. When Amanda called out that we had one minute left before closing time, I pulled a book from the shelf I’d never heard of and was inspired by the page I opened to. With Critter’s credit a few quick moments, a book had made its way into my life: “Swallowing the River Ganges: A Practice Guide to the Path of Purification.”
    So far this book has been such a blessing. It’s a straightforward, concise presentation of some of the Buddha’s major discourses on morality, meditation, mindfulness, and many other topics that may or may not begin with the letter ‘M’. The author has a way of constructing sentences that we could meditate on for weeks. Here are some gems from the first few chapters:

“All dichotomies, including ‘delusion’ versus ‘enlightenment,’ are merely theoretical constructs that have no basis in reality.”

“The purpose of ‘Swallowing the River Ganges’ is to enable those who are dedicated to experiencing these universal truths to directly realize that there is no separation between themselves and the very truths they are seeking.”

“The purity to be attained at each stage of purification is manifested when we eradicate the unwholesome mental factors that oppose its arising.”

“It is only when the pain of perpetuating old behavior patterns is perceived to be greater than the pain brought about by trying to change those patterns that we are able to effect and sustain significant psychological and behavioral modifications.”

“Nirvana itself is not the result of anything, since it is an unconditioned reality.”

“To reach the pinnacle of spiritual realization, we must align every aspect of our lives with that goal.”

“When there is no separation between our practice and our day-to-day lives, our spiritual progress is accelerated.”

    So, yeah, it’s an intense read. I’ve read and reread the first few chapters, only moving on when I feel that I am truly practicing the lessons taught in each section. It is my intention to use this as a practice guide, rather than simply reading it as a book. The first exercise directly suggested in the book is in the section on cultivating generosity.

    “The following exercise will help to uncover any personal barriers to expressing generosity: make a determination to give away one of your most cherished possessions … After you make the decision about what to give away, watch for signs of resistance. Listen for subtle justifications for not completing the exercise. Finally, carefully observe any grief that may arise as a consequence of no longer having the possession to which you were attached. The experience of resistance, justification, and grief are the mind states that need to be countered in order to increase our capacity to express generosity.”

    So what can I give away, around which I will experience resistance, justification and grief? The first possession that came to mind was Bethany the RV. Maybe it’s attachment, resistance and justification masquerading as logic, but I feel that, at least at this point, it is of more use to the greater whole for the RV to be in my possession. I also intend to live for years off the dollars gained when I eventually sell the RV, so perhaps I’m attached to those future dollars as well. All that being said, I’m not giving away the RV.
    The second thing that came to mind was my Camelbak. For those of you who don’t know (or have only seen me in the Forest, where the Camelbak is far less useful), I am very attached, literally and metaphorically, to my Camelbak. I wear that thing everywhere I go, and when I take it off, I set it down within sight. It carries everything I need to get by in pretty much any situation I can think of. I know that when I leave the house, all I have to do is grab the Camelbak and I’m prepared for being away from the RV for days. And because I bought it at REI, it has a lifetime guarantee: they will replace the pack or the bladder even if I’ve obviously used them for years and then slashed them with a knife. Like the unnamed protagonist in Fight Club, I knew the Camelbak issue was solved for life. I simply didn’t have to think about it anymore.
    So of course I experienced resistance to giving away the Camelbak, and, as predicted, one of my main justifications was that no one else would use and appreciate it as much as I did. Then, while at a communal house in Cleveland, a woman exclaimed, “Oh, I love your Camelbak! I’ve been looking at getting one of these.” Okay, universe, I hear you.
    “Do you want this one?”
    “What? Really?”
    “Yeah. See, I’m reading this book called ‘Swallowing the River Ganges’ …”
    So we sat together and looked through all the things in the pack. I kept the plastic bits with imaginary numbers on them, my prescription sunglasses, a lens-cleaning cloth (she doesn’t wear glasses), a jump drive (it contained some files I’m still attached to) and a headlamp (she doesn’t Dumspter dive). I gave away the pack itself (which I’ve carried for two years since buying it in preparation for Burning Man ‘08), a pocket knife (a gift from a friend in the Forest), a Swiss Army knife (a gift from my parents from Switzerland with my name engraved on the handle), a deck of playing cards I’d carried for years, a hex key (or “Allen wrench,” which fits most bolts on most bicycles), an adjustable wrench (which fits almost all bike bolts the hex key doesn’t), a box of tea tree toothpicks, an empty box of toothpicks (handy little carrying case for batteries, etc.), a few good pens, an empty bread bag (which came with the responsibility of continuing to fill it with other people’s trash) … I told her the stories behind each item in the pack and all the buttons on it. I verbalized my hope that these things would be as useful to her as they had been to me. And I cut my attachment.
    In the process of giving all those things away, and in the time since then, I’ve gained a whole new perspective on stuff, and my attachment to it. Since I started preparing for my departure from Babylon a little over a year ago, I’ve been getting rid of a lot of stuff. Giving it away, selling it, trading it, landfilling it … I thought of myself as someone who didn’t care for stuff. Turns out that I’ve been concentrating my attachment on the few things I’m choosing to keep. I’ve been keeping and acquiring items that are truly useful, and depending on them for my sense of security. The Camelbak helped me feel safe because I knew the things in it could get me through just about any situation in which I could find myself. Now I’m developing a trust in the universe that any situation will come with the tools to get me through it. If I don’t have exactly the tool I want, I can either make a makeshift version or do without. As someone said to me at the Rainbow Gathering, “When we don’t have stuff is when we learn how to improvise. And then we need less stuff.” It’s an upward spiral.
    I’ve also realized that I already had duplicates of some of the most useful items. I knew I had an extra bladder (you may have read in a previous post that I found one in a Dumpster in Nashville) and I’ve begun carrying that in a spare backpack (which I’ve had since middle school). I got another hex key out of the tool case and found another adjustable wrench I didn’t know existed. You may be asking yourself, “Are you really accomplishing anything if you’re just replacing all the items you gave away?” Well, yes. I’m learning that it’s not the having or not having of stuff that prevents the cultivation of generosity, but our attachment to that stuff.
    I no longer view my backpack with a bladder in it as the ultimate lifetime solution for carrying water and stuff, and I am no longer dependent on the things in that bag for my sense of security. Giving away two folding knives I rarely used has created space for a full-tang knife to carry on my hip. I now actively look in my bag and figure out what I want to carry on each particular outing, rather than carrying a bunch of generically useful stuff for any and all situations. I am more actively engaged with my bag of water and stuff, which helps me to be more fully present in each moment.
    And all of these lessons apply to the other items currently in my possession, as well. Nothing I currently have with me is the ultimate lifetime solution to anything. I am not dependent on the items around me for my sense of security. The more I open myself up and allow the energy and items around me to flow out, the more will be able to flow in. Things come and go, and there’s no reason to develop attachment to any of it.

      —chuck

This is the most helpless I’ve felt in a long time.
    Two days ago I was hanging out at Ithaca Falls (one of many amazing waterfalls in and around Ithaca, NY) and decided to scale a 10 - 12 foot wall of shale. About four feet up the wall, my footing slipped and I fell to the slippery rocks below. I half-ran, half-fell a few awkward steps down the sloping shale, skinning my left knee, bruising and scraping the heel of my right hand and spraining my right ankle. My ankle immediately swelled and only the endorphins kept the stabbing pain away. For a few minutes I sat and breathed into and out of the ankle. I put one hand on each side of it and did the nine-breath, a powerful breath technique that channels an extraordinary amount of energy. As I exhaled the ninth breath, I could feel the swelling in my ankle subside. I hobbled down the rocks and up the trail, then about a block to a nearby bar, where Kristen (one of two new crew members; you’ll hear more about them in another post) got a bag of ice from the bartender. After elevating and icing the ankle in the grass in front of the bar, we began the tedious and painful walk down the hill. A few steps in, I commented that this was going to take longer and hurt more than I thought it would. Just then a car pulled up and rolled down the window closest to us; turns out it was someone who’d seen me fall at the waterfall. He offered to drive us the 8 blocks to the RV, for which I am eternally grateful.
    Everyone has had their help to offer: quantum touch, herbs, essential oils, ice, an applied Ace bandage and a diagnosis: a torn flexor retinaculum. The treatment plan is intuitive: ice, elevation, a tightly-wrapped Ace bandage and lots of rest. Textbook recovery time is 3 to 6 months, depending on how well I take care of it. Considering the healing touch, herbs, essential oils, etc., I expect to be jumping in Dumpsters and climbing trees in about half that. I’ll be walking (with the aid of a crutch that someone in the neighborhood gifted us) in just a few days. Until then, I’m thankful for the opportunity to read so many of the books I’ve been longing for and to write all these posts I’ve had rolling around in my head. The rest of the crew is being more than kind, waiting on me hand and foot with water, food, books, the laptop … pretty much anything I can’t reach from this spot on the couch-bed in the living room. I’ll keep you posted on the developing prognosis and the speedy recovery.

Some things I’m taking to help with the ankle:

Reishi mushrooms (tea): This “mushroom of immortality” is beneficial to the body in so many ways they haven’t yet catalogued all of them. One of the many things it helps with is that it speeds injury recovery time.
White Birch Bark (tea): Reduces pain and swelling
Wintergreen (tea): Reduces pain and swelling
Arnica (tincture): reduces swelling, speeds recovery
Ganja (smoke): reduces the pain from stabbing, shooting and almost overwhelming to a dull, throbbing ache
Skullcap (smoke and tincture): muscle relaxant and sleep aid

We’ll see what other plant medicines make themselves available in the coming days and weeks.

      —chuck

Yes, we get food out of Dumpsters and then eat it.
Rescuing food from the waste stream is one of the things I’m most passionate about at this point in my life. Almost exactly half of the food stream in this country ends up in the trash, which is an incredible waste of energy, resources and dollars. 14% of the food that arrives at grocery stores goes in the metal box in the back parking lot. (12% of crops are never harvested, and another 14% of food brought into homes goes in the trash due to overstocking. Add in the 10% of the food stream that restaurants waste, and almost exactly half of the U.S. food stream is being wasted.) Those metal boxes are emptied every day except Sunday, so you know the stuff in there has only been off the shelf for a few hours. Most of it is still cold. Stores throw out items that are past their “sell by” date, which is a mostly arbitrary date. Some processed foods are still edible for months or even years past that date (http://tinyurl.com/podehn).
As with all foods, whether fresh out of the ground, from a just-opened packaged or the middle of a pile of rotting Dumpster food, trust your body. Smell it, and if you’re nose says not to eat it, don’t eat it. If your nose says it’s clean, take a small bite and really taste it. If your mouth says not to eat it, spit it out. If your mouth trusts it, swallow it. If you swallow it and your stomach says not to eat anymore, don’t. If you’re stomach welcomes it, eat more. And enjoy!
Store employees throw away any produce that has the slightest bruise or blemish. Produce managers also want to minimize the fruit fly population. Since flies are attracted to ripe fruit, when the fruit on the shelves approaches ripeness, it’s time to throw it out. Which means the produce in the Dumpster is often more ripe and ready to eat than what’s on the shelf. Ready-to-eat items are usually only kept on the shelf for a day, so most of the pre-cut, pre-sliced veggies on styrofoam wrapped in plastic end up in the Dumpster. Pizza delivery places throw away whole pizzas for a wide variety of reasons. Closing time at a pizza shop is a great time to score.
You can also ask the employees at closing pizza shops for whatever they’re about to throw away, which may or may not result in pre-Dumpster pizzas. Many locally-owned stores or co-ops will give you boxes of produce if you ask them for what they’re about to throw away. You may have to wait or come back in a couple of hours when they’re actually taking a load out, but it’s well worth the wait for clean, free food. Our egos do play strange games with us sometimes. In April I discovered that even though I’ve asked grocery stores for blemished produce donations on behalf of the Hostel in the Forest, I felt self-conscious when faced with the opportunity to ask pizza joint employees for end-of-the-night extras for us to take to Preheat. I guess maybe I felt like the reason for asking didn’t merit it or something. Or perhaps I was simply choosing Fear instead of Love.
The few employees I’ve run into while Dumpster diving have mostly been friendly, offering us what they’re bringing out before it hits the waste bins. Only once have we been asked to leave, at which point we simply left with the box of food we’d already pulled out. Later that night we went back to finish the rich score.
Even if someone wants to harass you, the law is on your side. A parking lot is considered semi-public property, so it’s not trespassing until someone asks you to leave. If you leave when asked, you haven’t done anything illegal. And in the U.S., when an item hits a trash receptacle it’s no longer considered private property. Items in a recycling bin are considered to still have monetary value, and are therefore private property, but anything in a Dumpster is fair game. Anything you’ve pulled out of the Dumpster is by law now your property, Yeah, loopholes for the little guys! Legal disclaimer: do not take these words to be legal counsel. ;)
Different Dumpsters offer varying levels of cleanliness and food-availabilty. Usually the food from restaurants and households is mostly leftovers from plates, scraped into bags and thrown into Dumpsters. It’s half-eaten, mixed with all kinds of other trash, and possible smells (household dumpsters usually only being emptied once a week). Food from grocery stores is usually still in its original packaging, sealed off from any mold or juices from the other food in the metal box. Sometimes tomatoes or eggs on top of the pile will break and get goo on lots of other stuff, and all that just rinses off the plastic packaging or the un-packaged produce. I’d rather eat a little raw egg or rotten tomato than the herbicides and pesticides that are crop-dusted onto most commercially grown produce, so hopefully you’re already washing the produce you eat. Again, commercial dumpsters are emptied every day except Sunday, so it’s not usually a metal box full of rotting food. It’s full of food in its packaging that came off the shelves just a few hours ago. 
Dumpster diving is not necessary for my survival, as it is for some. I choose not to pay dollars for food for a number of reasons.
One, we vote with our dollars: when purchase something, we are telling that company: “I believe in what you do, and I want you to keep doing it. If you keep doing it, I and other people like me will continue to purchase your products.” At this point I’m not willing to say that to any company that grows and makes any of the food we see in our grocery stores. We’re taking the boycott beyond Starbucks and Wal-Mart. We’re boycotting the whole damn system.
Two, I don’t want to contribute to the pollution and waste caused by the consumer cycle, and thus choose to live off of what others are discarding. Yes, food, as well as clothes, furniture, books, CDs … anything we could possibly want to purchase, someone else is throwing away.
Three, it saves us a vast amount of dollars. Choosing to acquire free food (not just Dumpster diving, but also wild-harvesting, work-exchanging in gardens, road-kill scavenging and general freeganism) enables us to live the lifestyle that we want to live without being tied to a source of dollar income. It’s incredibly liberating and empowering to know that we will never starve. That we can travel the country and find enough free food to feed, not only the community we travel with, but the communities that we visit and anyone we cross paths with along the way. 
Yes, I am jobless and, by a traditional definition, “homeless.” And we take our home with us everywhere we go. We don’t have a source of income, and we are figuring out how to live without one. Dumpster diving is easier, more fun, more rewarding and more closely aligned with our values than getting a job.
I acknowledge that forms of opportunistic acquisition that depend on the crumbs of Babylon are only temporary solutions, viable only as long as the system we seek to live outside still exists. If we truly want to live outside the system built on petroleum, greed and fear, we will learn to live in harmony with the plants and animals that surround us and find and create spaces that allow us to do so. I hope you will share some time in a rural land-based community near you and see how others are creating a system built on trust, acceptance, balance and love.

The three guiding principles of Dumspter diving apply to many other facets of life:
1) Only take what you know you will use.

2) Leave no trace or enhance the space.
3) Be as kind as possible to everyone you meet.

  —chuck

Community is a way of being.

        When we began this journey, this tour of communities, I thought of community as a physical place where several people lived, shared resources and responsibilities, etc. After traveling through about 18 different communities of varying shapes, sizes and styles, my perspective has truly shifted. At this point I now feel that “community” refers more to a heart space than a living space. Community is based on sharing: love, resources, truth, skills, knowledge, responsibilities, wisdom … Community is rooted in the concept that we as individuals own little and have little to contribute; we as a collective own much and have much to contribute. Very little is “mine;” almost everything is “ours.” Community means openly sharing resources and responsibilities. It entails honest and loving communication. It involves working together to move toward our common goals as individuals and as a collective. It includes being mindful and respectful of all others in the community. In a healthy, funtioning community, the well-being of the whole is manifest by the well-being of the individuals.
           I now feel that, no matter where I am physically located, if I am living with an open heart, I am living in community. We’ve been living in community at least since the Hostel in the Forest, if not well before then. In the Forest, in the RV, at friends’ houses, on the street and in all of the “communities” we’ve visited; we’ve always shared freely what we have to offer and enjoyed what others have to share. We throw down on communal projects, we cook communal meals, we share the abundance of food we find, we offer listening ears and words of wisdom, we make music with those around us … and we’re rewarded with places to park, warm smiles, hot showers, close hugs, communal food, laundry facilities, CDs, listening ears, words of wisdom, books, deep laughter, and above all else, being at home everywhere we go.
    I choose to continue living in community for many reasons. I feel that living the way I want to live (growing, cooking and eating delicious and healthy food; minimizing our impact on the planet; communicating about our innermost thoughts and feelings; devoting time to our individual paths; keeping the space clean, organized and flowing; etc.) is simply more than one person can do alone. I want to live with like-hearted individuals so that we can share our resources and responsibilities, collectively co-creating a reality that meets all of our wants. I also believe that property is theft, and I want to share with others in the abundance with which the universe continually blesses us. I seek to learn and teach in every moment, and I want to share space with others who seek the same. Perhaps on a more basic level, it’s what we’re built to do. Humans evolved living in small groups, and then developed a tribal system that functioned well for thousands of years before the agricultural revolution and the ensuing creation of city-states, capitalism, codes of law, etc. I want to continue co-creating a neo-tribal reality, in which we look to the small group we live with, and the many small groups who live around us, for everything.

  —chuck

Anahata Bio-Community is on 37 acres of upland plateau in the heart of Floyd Co, VA. The land includes sunny fields and gardens, shady woods and the Little River flowing along one border. Two houses and a tent are home to about 10 adults right now, with space for about 10 more (including an Airstream trailer and the four earth berms under construction). There are also 4 dogs and a 4-year-old girl, all of whom are just brimming with love. It is in the middle of about 2,000 contiguous acres comprised of about 2 dozen tracts, including multi-generation families and intentional communities. The surrounding neighborhood of communities forms a close-knit group sharing skills, knowledge, resources, responsibilities, wisdom, love, land and time. All of these communities also share a symbiotic relationship with the local farming community, who taught the hippies how to live off the land when they moved to Floyd in the ’70s. Anahata’s main focus seems to be on the Path: it is a requirement of living there that we are each actively and openly working through our communications and our feelings, leading us all further along our respective and collective paths. All decisions that affect anyone besides the person or couple involved are by consensus. There is communal dinner every night and usually breakfast and lunch are shared as well. There are regular workshops on compassionate communication, meditations, yoga, etc. You can see lots more info about the community, including what kinds of events they’ve held in the past and what events are upcoming, at the website: www.anahataeducationcenter.org I think what I’m drawn to most about the community is that, because everyone is openly communicating about their feelings and working on their issues, the whole community feels more loving, healthy and vibrant than any other we’ve visited so far. I also love love love being interconnected with surrounding communities. At this point it seems that I will return to Anahata in mid-October and be there until at least the Spring. So much could happen between now and then. Only time will tell.

  —chuck