This thursday I will have been on aquarius ranch for 2 weeks although it seems much longer. The ranch is in Hinkley California, a small town northeast of los angelas in the mojave desert, the ranch is a oasis of sustainable living in a meth lab riddled town. We have one neighbor, besides that you can turn around and see miles and miles of desert framed by distant moutnains. I've never seen so much sky. Everything that the landscape lacks in diversity it makes up for 10 fold in vastness and overwhelming beauty.
The ranch welcomes you with half of a giant boat left here by previous owners with a beautiful mural done by past wwoofers. There are 9 dogs here, one of them added since I've been here picked up from the side of the road. I've never seen how dogs socialize in a pack and I'm learning a lot. There is a hierarchy, the dogs are still wary of accepting the new dog and the puppies are often dominated by the other dogs to show them who is control. I find it fascinating watching the interatctions, the cats as well which there are 10 of. There are 4 horses and a bunch of chickens geese and ducks.
The interns are housed in various trailers around the property, I'm rooming with one who arrived 2 days ago, coincedentally he is also 20, in the middle of a long distance bike trip, and brought his mandolin. One intern left today putting it down to 4 of us, everyone is very laid back, friendly, open, and interesting. I'm learning much more here than I ever felt I have in 2 weeks of school.
The owner of the ranch is a 65 year old very spiritual woman named Penny Harper, shes very hard of hearing and can be slightly spacy but is an amazing woman over all. She is a firm believer in aliens, more specifically andromedans who she claims to have regular contact with.
We spent the first week of my time here working on a sand bag dome, which is exactle what it sounds like, a dome made of coiled sand bags mixed with some cement and fitted together with barbed wire in between bags. The technology is simple but the outcome is a bullet proof, earthquake proof, weather proof dome that lasts forever, Penny hopes to have as many built as possible for whatever may happen in 2012 (her belief being that the current system will fall apart, people will be deprived of energy for some time until the andromedans share there free energy machines and we enter into a new paradigm of peace and love). Our sandbag consultant intern has taken a 2 week holiday though so we've been doing basic gardening and ranch maintenance the past few days.
There's so much more I could go on about but I've probably already lost the attention of the few people that might actually read this.
I miss the cape but felt I was getting into a real funk and feeling very stagnant, staying on the ranch has rejuvinated me in so many ways, and has given me a very good feeling about the rest of my trip. I am on the ranch until January, then I head south for L.A., after that who knows.
I'm going to try to write in this atleast once a week
