The end of my time at the farm, 4th of Juplaya, back in San Francisco, and summiting Mt. Rainier
Wow, it’s been two months since I last published an update. Time flies when your days are full and varied.
When I wrote my last post, I was still living on the farm. The end of my time there was largely unremarkable (weeding, dealing with the chickens, and, as always, brushing) with a few exceptions.
For one, I helped to net the cherry trees so that the birds wouldn’t come and eat the cherries before humans could get to them.
Also, we had this absolutely delicious pancetta.
Lastly, just before leaving the farm, I helped with the harvesting and butchering of a hog. I’ve attached a photo from the process at the very end of the post, so that you can choose not to look at it.
I didn’t actually do the killing but this experience did contribute to my confidence that I’d be willing to kill an animal for its meat. This has been a big moral question for me for years so I’m glad to have taken a step towards resolving it.
Another highlight from this experience was watching, through the butchering process, the spectrum that exists between my perception that “This is an animal I see alive on a farm” and “This is meat I could find on a grocery store shelf”. Wathing the gradual shift in my perception of the meat was really fascinating.
Almost immediately after leaving the farm, I went to 4th of Juplaya for 4th of July weekend. For those unfamiliar, 4th of Juplaya is like a mini, renegade Burning Man. It happens in the same desert where Burning Man happens, but with no tickets, no central coordinating organization, and no portapotties. Except this year somebody did bring portapotties, which was nice since it meant we didn’t have to rely on our RV bathroom.
Like any good Burning Man-esque experience, there were cool art cars:
Including a pair of somewhat-janky art cars that our friends rigged up on their Priuses (Prii?). These were a blast for riding around on playa and definitely not street legal:
Plus a bouncy castle (which inspired my friend to build an inflatable bouncy castle that floated on the Sacramento Delta for Ephemerisle):
Near-nightly hotspringing:
And lots of sunrises with frandz:
I also brought out my flaming bullwhip, and learned that I can safely wrap the whip around my leather chaps while it’s on fire (though not for very long):
Immediately after getting back from Juplaya, I moved into my new place in San Francisco. I’m staying in a room at the Village, where I get to hang out with babies, eat communally, and spend quality time with my adult roommates.
My time in SF is mostly occupied with learning Spanish (on Duolingo and BaseLang), going to the gym (Fitness SF, using FitBod as a training routine), dancing (fusion at Mission Fusion and Shades of Fusion, plus ecstatic dance at Church of 8 Wheels), getting Avant Garden ready for Burning Man, and getting my Spanish student visa (way harder than I would’ve expected).
Some highlights include jumping into the ocean as a way to wake up:
Going to the wedding of some of my campmates, who brought up our Burning Man camp 3 times in wedding speeches:
Summiting Boundary Peak (the state high point of Nevada, which is a couple hundred feet away from a taller mountain in California that’s not even the state high point of California):
And spending time enjoying the outdoors:
The Boundary Peak summit and paltry hiking that I did in SF were (insufficient) training for my other big adventure of the summer: summiting Mt Rainier, Washington’s state high point. This was by far the most technical mountaineering excursion that I’ve done and probably the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my life.
We started our first day at Paradise Trailhead, and then ascended 4,500 feet (half through alpine meadows, half through scree and snow) to Camp Muir.
That afternoon we spent about three hours boiling water (lesson learned for next time: just melt water and treat it, don’t bother boiling it all. It takes forever and burns a lot of fuel) and then went to bed around 7PM so that we could wake up at 10:30PM.
We got started around 12:30, after spending about half an hour fumbling around with the rope. It’s important to start so early so that the snow is still hard. Slushy snow is bad for walking on and prone to avalanches.
This was my first time with such an extreme alpine start. We really lucked out with a full moon that night, it meant that we barely needed our headlamps and got to have amazing views.
When the sun rose we had to start evaluating when we would want to turn around. We picked 10AM as a rough turnaround time.
The ascent was absolutely grueling. Another 4,500 feet of elevation gain, this time without our heavy bags but instead roped together and wearing crampons. If it wasn’t for my rope team, I definitely would have turned around.
My rope team (the third person was taking the photo above) crested the volcanic ridge at 10AM and decided that it was worth spending another ~30 minutes to reach the true summit. We summited and promptly turned around, since one of our party was getting a headache from the thin air.
Overall, it was an amazing climb. I’m so thankful for my whole team who helped get me through this. I really should have trained more because this was truly the most grueling thing I’ve ever done. Still, I’m energized for more mountaineering, and have started looking into what big adventures I can go on for this upcoming year in Europe.
From here, I’m continuing to spend my time preparing for Burning Man, and then will spend early September recovering from Burning Man, and finally will head to Barcelona on September 18th, just in time for La Mercè.
It’s been a packed spring and summer. I joke that I’m the busiest funemployed person that anyone knows. I’m finding moments of stillness when I can and, in the meantime, enjoying riding the wave.
At the bottom of this post is a photo of a pig carcass, split open and gutted. If you don’t want to see that, don’t keep scrolling.
Also since you didn't actually kill the pig I think it means you need to go vegan
Congrats on Mt Rainier!! Sounds insane