For the last 3 years I’ve had the opportunity to travel with fantastic like-minded people to a very unique and special place in the high desert of New Mexico where we learn how to upcycle man-made discarded materials in order to incorporate these materials into amazingly crafted self-sustainable homes known as Earthships@earthships.  

This year on my journey, I was on my way to meet up with an awesome group of 19 people from the Pacific Northwest who accepted our Facebook invitation to visit Earthships@images in the Greater World Earthship Community and learn about the Earthship Biotecture Academy@EBA.  Some people drove from the Tacoma/Seattle area and some flew from Portland, all headed to the same destination.

It was 5am and I and a new “Earthshiper”, the term Charles gave himself, shared a taxi to PDX International Airport to meet Jennifer and Patrick.

Months before our departure, Jennifer and I introduced ourselves over email and agreed to travel together and share in the expenses of the Airbnb and car rental once in New Mexico. We had never met in person. So, that morning we sent pictures of ourselves to each other so we could be identified at the departure gate. 

Once we landed in Albuquerque, we picked up the rental, a Chevy Suburban and headed to our Airbnb an hour drive away in Santa Fe called the Luna Encantada. If you ever find yourselves going to Santa Fe, reserve this cozy Airbnb and enjoy your stay. It was close to stores, restaurants and hiking trails.  It’s a nice place to stay.

The next morning, Thursday, we checked out of Airbnb to complete our journey. It was a 2 hour drive with a mixture of rain, snow and sunshine. We had a lot of fun as we took our time stopping at different venues along the way. One stop we made was at a Casino.  

As we were walking up to the Casino doors, me and Jennifer hearing music overhead started dancing in front of the mirrored entry doors happy to give a couple of bucks to the establishment. What we didn’t know was there were people who could see us on the other side. As the door opened, people were laughing at us as we walked in. It was a funny moment, a bit embarrassing and lots of giggling.  So we decided to try our luck at the Roulette table but to our surprise all of the machines were digital. There were no human dealers in the place. It was crazy! The machines were talking to us, “Place your bets please.”  That freaked us out and took all of the fun out of gambling so we left the building to dance in the parking lot and continued our drive.  We made it to Taos and did some shopping at Cids Grocery store. It was the closest store to the community and we still had about a half hour drive to go. On the way, we crossed the Rio Grande.

The Rio Grande canyon is 12,000 feet above sea level and the river is about 1900 miles long. We were told that the bridge we were standing on was 680 feet above the river. It was very windy and cold. My travel companions walked to the middle of the bridge to take some pictures. But, I could not due to Vertigo so I sat in the car.  

We finally made it safely to our destination. Everyone who had arrived on Thursday was all checked in.  We reserved The Phoenix, Waybee, Lemuria and rented the Picuris pictured below.

That evening, we all met at Taos Mesa Brewing for some brews and music.

Friday afternoon was The big day for me because I had paid for a private consultation with Mr. Michael Reynolds, founder/owner of Earthship Biotecture.

GARBAGE WARRIOR, Michael Reynolds, 2007. ©The Works International

 During the consultation, I mentioned to Mr. Reynolds that I have a vision to build Earthships@architecture like he has done there.  I proceeded to tell him about the parcels where I would like to establish the first Earthship Community in the Pacific Northwest.  During that conversation, Mr. Reynolds put forward and offered a plan for me to host a Earthship Biotecture Academy@FB build on the property in July/August 2018.  I almost fell off my seat and graciously accepted his offer to be a Hostess.  

This was a wonderful blessing, because what I had planned to be my 10 year plan to build has turned into a 1 year plan, WOW!  Now, I am rearranging my priorities and focusing on the build and make of this work.   I’m crossing my fingers that everything goes as planned.