The sun had not yet risen, but the intense gold and rose light diffracting/reflecting through the clouds was enough to wake me. I went outsied, built a fire in the fire ring, and put on a kettle of water to make coffee.
I am extrememly strained and psychically exhausted from city living. I have lived in San Francisco and Portland for much of the last decade. Briefly, I have been crowded and pressured beyond endurance, and I’ve had enough. Enoughh of the people, their rules and regulations, and people asking me to do things for them all the time.
Thus, during the last few months, I have left my job, sold many of my belongings and put what I couldn’t sell or wanted to keep into a storage space in a town on the edge of the desert. All of my mail is being forwared to a P.O. Box at hte post office in the same town.
I am staying (practically squatting) at a cabin on a ranch in the high desert in eastern Oregon. The only sounds that reach me in the space whre I type are the lowing of cattle in the distance, the wind hissing through the window screen, and thehum of my laptop. The ranch is off the grid. Meaning there is no commercially provided electricity or running water. The only way to cook is over an open fire or on a samll wood stove inside the cabin. The cabin is around 30 miles from the nearest town. For transportation, I have a bicycle, and I have an old horse named Shotgun that I might ride. However, I am reluctant to ride him far on account of his being a bit sway-backed.
The power source is a small solar panel mounted on the rooftop. The sunshine is intense here. It is so bright in fact that I have a headache from when I went outside this morning to read a week old copy of the Oregonian newspaper.
The solar panel charges a bank of car batteries. These in turn are attached to a power inverter that provides 110 volts AC. There is no phone coverage (cell or land line) out here.
IInternet is through a modem that transmits and receives data from a satellite connection.
I am writing this from a laptop which, sadly, is dying. I spent some time diagnnosing itlast night and have narrowed it down to 2 most likely causes: bad screen, or more likely a bad inverter (a part that is similar to the ballast found in ordinary fluorescent lights. Replacement cost is $39 and teh repair requires removing about 40 tiny screws, but I don’t know if FEDEX will deliver out here. I don’t even get mail.) I didn’t find this out until after I arrived here. The screen works only on the dimmest setting. It is too dim to read in normal light. I have set it up in a closet with the door closed to keep out the light.
This done, it is still difficult to read. It is difficult ot make out punctuation and spelling, much less proof read, edit, revise or correct it. I am usually very careful about htese thigns, but I can't do much about it in my current situation. Squinting at the screen is even harder given my previous eye strain from reaing the paper in the intense morning sunlight.. I hope this entry isn't too tiresome or obnoxious for anyone who might see it . Also, every time the screen blacks out (failing inverter), I have to take a flashlight, shine it on the screen at an angle in a specific direction so I can make out enough of the screen, and reboot. Despite that, for the foreseeable future, I thought I would use this space as my journal.
I am extrememly strained and psychically exhausted from city living. I have lived in San Francisco and Portland for much of the last decade. Briefly, I have been crowded and pressured beyond endurance, and I’ve had enough. Enoughh of the people, their rules and regulations, and people asking me to do things for them all the time.
Thus, during the last few months, I have left my job, sold many of my belongings and put what I couldn’t sell or wanted to keep into a storage space in a town on the edge of the desert. All of my mail is being forwared to a P.O. Box at hte post office in the same town.
I am staying (practically squatting) at a cabin on a ranch in the high desert in eastern Oregon. The only sounds that reach me in the space whre I type are the lowing of cattle in the distance, the wind hissing through the window screen, and thehum of my laptop. The ranch is off the grid. Meaning there is no commercially provided electricity or running water. The only way to cook is over an open fire or on a samll wood stove inside the cabin. The cabin is around 30 miles from the nearest town. For transportation, I have a bicycle, and I have an old horse named Shotgun that I might ride. However, I am reluctant to ride him far on account of his being a bit sway-backed.
The power source is a small solar panel mounted on the rooftop. The sunshine is intense here. It is so bright in fact that I have a headache from when I went outside this morning to read a week old copy of the Oregonian newspaper.
The solar panel charges a bank of car batteries. These in turn are attached to a power inverter that provides 110 volts AC. There is no phone coverage (cell or land line) out here.
IInternet is through a modem that transmits and receives data from a satellite connection.
I am writing this from a laptop which, sadly, is dying. I spent some time diagnnosing itlast night and have narrowed it down to 2 most likely causes: bad screen, or more likely a bad inverter (a part that is similar to the ballast found in ordinary fluorescent lights. Replacement cost is $39 and teh repair requires removing about 40 tiny screws, but I don’t know if FEDEX will deliver out here. I don’t even get mail.) I didn’t find this out until after I arrived here. The screen works only on the dimmest setting. It is too dim to read in normal light. I have set it up in a closet with the door closed to keep out the light.
This done, it is still difficult to read. It is difficult ot make out punctuation and spelling, much less proof read, edit, revise or correct it. I am usually very careful about htese thigns, but I can't do much about it in my current situation. Squinting at the screen is even harder given my previous eye strain from reaing the paper in the intense morning sunlight.. I hope this entry isn't too tiresome or obnoxious for anyone who might see it . Also, every time the screen blacks out (failing inverter), I have to take a flashlight, shine it on the screen at an angle in a specific direction so I can make out enough of the screen, and reboot. Despite that, for the foreseeable future, I thought I would use this space as my journal.
