PP #36: Valor: Some Gave All
Project: Pioneer #36, May 25, 2024 Saturday 9am
Weeks of rain finally stopped, and in the last few days, everything we’ve been waiting for blossomed into fruition. The sun is out, everything is green, everything smells amazing at our Pioneer enclave. The air is clean and fragrant with fern, lavender, and honeysuckle. It’s what’s happening everywhere else that smells foul.
Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Most posts are free, more personal posts are to reward our loyal paid subscribers. You can listen to and subscribe to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, and Spotify).
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In this journal post:
RV Life Updates: Beauty Everywhere
Valor: Some Gave All (Memorial)
Upping Our Game (Prepping)
What’s Next?
RV Life Updates: Beauty Everywhere
From the moment we wake, as we work and go about our day, we’re serenaded by nature. The soothing rush of the wind through the trees, birds calling to one another until daylight blends into dusk. Then the evening shift takes over, with the forest critters croaking and chirping. The aroma of sizzling meats wafts through the air, mixed with primal campfires.
These are the sounds you might pay for in a calming app, but they’re the real deal, and there’s nothing better. This is what makes the sometimes-difficult pioneer lifestyle worthwhile. We see it in the faces of the weekenders as they’re packing up to go home after the weekend, and we feel bad for them. See my last post about the hamster-wheel life that’s forced upon us to keep our head above water.
Our valley and mountain range beyond have quickly gone from winter’s bare gray sticks and gloom to lush every-possible-color-of-green. The valley’s colors are bright again, it is reborn.
I hit the first free open-air concert this week. I had passed by that frozen lawn and beautiful outdoor stage countless times over the winter, waiting. Now it’s real. We put up a brand-new flag for this Memorial Day weekend, more on that later. So far, White House, being white and all, has stayed very cool in the few very hot days we’ve had, without using the air conditioning.
And hey, I did grab a jump starter/compressor for Henrik! That gap in our preparedness is plugged.
Valor: Some Gave All (Memorial)
Monday is Memorial Day. Please remember the purpose of the day, to think of and honor those who fought and died for our 250-year old democracy and beautiful country. Here are just a few out of countless stories to keep in mind on Monday.
Angel Mendez, US Marine Corps. When his platoon Commander was wounded during a battle in Vietnam, Angel shielded him with his own body and carried him to safety, shot numerous times and mortally wounded.
Leslie Sabo Jr, US Army, ran into an open field to provide cover so his injured friends could be loaded onto a medivac helicopter, and gave his life in the process.
Those are just two stories of immigrants who gave all for a country that wasn’t even theirs—our country. There are countless other examples, especially of the Dreamers, children of immigrants who were born here, have never known another home, proudly serve, and yet cannot enjoy our country as others do. This includes those who served with my son and son-in-law with the Marine Corps in Afghanistan, and never came home.
Of the more than 3,400 Medals of Honor awarded since the Civil War, 22% have gone to immigrants. Over 80,000 immigrants are serving in the U.S. military, and about 1.5 million veterans are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Each year, approximately 5,000-7,000 non-citizens join the armed forces, willing to fight and die for this country that treats them so badly. It’s a path to citizenship, and a damn righteous one. Trump made it much harder for these brave warriors to become citizens. Meanwhile, back home, some Bubba snowflake who never served is getting his panties all in a bunch because he overheard their mothers speaking Spanish in the checkout line at Walmart.
Those six men that died on the Key bridge recently in Baltimore were all undocumented. They came here to do that hard work at an unGodly hour of the morning, fixing potholes so that some golf-shirt wearing bro in his Beemer won’t get his coffee spilled and phone knocked out of his hands driving to his mid-six level salary job, while listening to hate radio. They came because we don’t have enough workers. They came so their families could have a better life, like your ancestors did. They died for it, too. That lead-in picture at the top of this journal isn’t folks at the local VFW celebrating July 4 or even Memorial Day. It’s proud, happy immigrants receiving their citizenship. And by the way, most of you would fail the citizenship test they passed to get there.
Upping Our Game (Prepping)
Spring and summer bring the bugs. We live in the woods, with all the aforementioned benefits. But, there are bugs. Giavana isn’t a bug person. While I’m prone to stay calm and observe a spider that may have found its way onto my arm prior to releasing it back to the wild, she’s more likely to shriek and bash to smithereens. We’re working on that.
We’ve had to up our bug prevention game with citronella candles and the best other stuff we can find that’s environmentally and human safe. It doesn’t feel fair, since we’re intruding on their domain. Let’s see how that goes, it’s early!
Speaking of upping our game, the violent sudden thunderstorm we had this week knocked power out again. With the hurricane forecast, it was a warning. There are tornadoes, appearing out of nowhere with no warning, destroying entire towns and communities across America. The Thwaites “Doomsday” glacier is melting way faster than anticipated, and the oceans are far, far hotter than ever anticipated at this stage of the game. It’s all a recipe for environmental disaster and forced off-grid living for an extended period. Are you ready? Are you prepared?
When you hear updates like this week’s NOAA hurricane forecast, and you live in an RV, you pay attention. Even if you don’t live in a hurricane-prone area, you should pay attention too. Lots of folks in the northeast got a wake-up call with Sandy hit. Power was out for a prolonged period, there was no gas to be found, stores were closed, hotels were booked solid immediately, roads were closed due to down trees and power lines. You either had what you needed at home, or you did without.
I keep mentioning that we need to up our solar game, to add it to the off-grid capabilities already built into our RV pioneer home and the dual-fuel generator we have for backup. We also need to up our water game. We have tanks built into the RV, and a well-based fresh-water spigot on our site. But groundwater can become contaminated, due to terrorism, pollution, or weather disasters emptying sewage into it. We need to set up some kind of rainwater collection system with hard-core filtration. Another item on the list, ugh.
These decisions are difficult, as there’s so much uncertainty around us as far as what’s going to happen, and what we will do in the coming months. We have levels of escape:
We’re minimalists. We live in an RV full-time, so we’re flexible AF by design.
If there’s an immediate GTF-out-of-here-this-second issue (aside from if roads blocked, in that case perhaps we go off-road in our 4x4): We have our bins of essential prepper gear ready to put in the bed of the pickup, and leave RV and all else behind.
If something is brewing that allows time (hurricane warning, etc) and there are evacuation orders, we hook up the White House to Henrik and take our home with us to greener pastures.
If there’s a societal issue that means we need to hide and/or isolate (pandemic, civil war) we can live off-grid with our dual fuel generator, tanks for fresh water, grey, black water. We have life straws, portable solar blankets, and so forth but as stated earlier, we need to up our solar and rainwater collection game. I linked to where you can buy a lot of this stuff in my earlier posts on prepping.
If it looks like our long democracy will die and authoritarianism will take over this November, we can hook up our rig and head to Canada or Mexico and ask for asylum. We imagine there will be a floodgate of folks attempting the same, and one thing authoritarians do right off the bat is close the borders to those trying to leave, so those tax dollars and wealth don’t evaporate. Next, they take the guns. You 2nd amendment folks best keep that in mind. No authoritarian allows guns.
Because of that, we’re rushing our dual citizenship applications through and may well spend election day safely out of the country, to beat the rush, perhaps to stay. Why election day instead of inauguration day? Because if Biden wins, the violence, civil war, and overthrow will likely begin immediately.
That said, part of me wants to stay and fight. I enlisted in the military to fight but never got my fight. I always felt some level of shame about my service. I was subordinate, got drunk a lot, and always wished I had it all to do over and serve with honor, as my son did. Maybe this is my chance to give all for my country. I have premonitions and dreams about it, increasingly so, perhaps because all this is top of mind lately. Why not, my colors are no longer bright. I’m old and not well. My sun-bleached beach blond hair has faded to gray, and unlike the valley we live in, will not renew until I’m with that growing list of people I miss in the true paradise that comes after, as long as we earn it. I can’t think of a better way to get there.
But, I’m not a “me,” I’m a “we.” I have a responsibility to my beloved Giavana, and for now that’s how we’re gonna roll. We’ll fight like hell until November—canvassing, letter writing, registering voters, and see what happens after that.
You heard some incredible stories of valor in this post. If you want to be a person of valor, you don’t have to wait for big moments. Act with valor in all the little ones. Help someone less fortunate than yourself. Help someone who needs help. Don’t worry about getting credit. You’ll get credit, because God is watching.
What’s Next?
We’re going to enjoy the rest of this holiday weekend, and bring our voter registration cards and other materials everywhere we go. Because—we love this country. We hope you’ll head to Vote Forward and maybe do some work yourself, especially if the weather isn’t good. Sit home and print off some of those pre-formatted letters and get them off to voters in critical swing states. Fight!
I’m still working up that historical post, e.g. what would things be like if JFK, RFK, MLK, and others hadn’t been killed. Also one about jumping to conclusions versus giving the benefit of the doubt (something we rarely do today it seems), and musing about who Jesus may actually have been, as far as the spirituality aspect of this humble journal.
This pioneer journey continues… Don’t forget, commenting is now turned on for everyone on these free posts. Let’s interact!
Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld
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