I woke at 5am this morning. Just awake. It got down to 36 degrees last night and I slept like a baby in my fuzzy onesie over my clothes, under two blankets plus the 30 pound weighted blanket. When I woke I just lay there, eyes open for nearly two hours, thinking about life. Cold in the van, perfect under the covers. Heater still broken.

I’m 20 days out from my last supply run. I can see the end of things. Six pounds of ground beef left. The fun stuff is gone, string cheese, macadamia nuts, and the La Croix supply is dwindling. What I’m enjoying most right now is my coffee. Three cups a day, which I know is on the high side, but it’s working for me. Heavy cream always, and a heaping teaspoon of ghee in the first cup for energy. There was a time a couple years back when coffee stopped working for me and I went off it for a year and a half. I’ve actually done that a few times. I hope it keeps working. I’m loving it.

As supplies dwindle I feel an awareness that this is good for me. A healthy exercise. I’m targeting June 1 as my next supply day, which will mark a one month interval. Once I’m through the ground beef I’ll be doing the pantry excavation, going through every last corner of the van for tuna fish, sardines, beef broth packets, almond butter, that kind of thing. The freezer has changed everything about how long I can go between runs. Before I got it a couple months ago I was resupplying about once a week. But I’m still figuring out how to optimize. Things like coffee filters can become a serious issue out in the wilderness. There are a lot of things like that. You’ve just got to stay organized and on top of it. It’s just diligence.

The music keeps flowing. I feel I could keep it going but I’m giving some attention to video too, just finishing up a visual for one of the Hi-Fi Lonesome songs. I posted a new Chasing the Butter song yesterday called This Is a Feature. Having fun with that stuff. What’s emerging is that Chasing the Butter seems to have found a sound, this EDM dance direction. I didn’t see that coming at all, but it’s a thing. I notice a nice balance developing between these Roads entries and the music. Something is taking shape over there. But it’s not “the thing.” It’s just a feature.

Meanwhile Shannon slept outside last night in her tiny backpacking tent on a ledge overlooking the canyon about 50 yards from my van. She’s got a sleeping bag rated to zero degrees. I’ve never met anyone more into hiking and backpacking. I enjoy hearing her stories and her passion for it. I’ve learned a lot about that world from her. We’ve settled into a good routine. I’m basically in the van with the door shut until mid-afternoon. Then I mill about while still doing things. She keeps herself busy with her own pursuits. Most evenings we build a fire and sit around and chat. It’s been nice having a buddy, especially for this stretch.

My thoughts are starting to turn to June. The Grand Canyon through the end of the month, then southwestern Colorado. I’ll see Mesa Verde, the Four Corners spot. Then Durango. Packages waiting in Telluride and a friend I’m looking forward to seeing there. Friends in Grand Junction, Silverton, and two friends camp hosting on the eastern side of southern Colorado. Another nomad friend passing through that I want to connect with. And I want to make it to my old hometown of Boulder to see some dear old friends. A lot of variables, but I’m sure it’ll fall into place.

As I lay awake this morning a lot of my thinking was about the people I love. I’ve been caught up in these adventures and it’s time to make some calls. I’m going to prioritize that this afternoon. I know I typically don’t like calling people unannounced, and maybe that’s part of why I’ve been feeling out of touch. But I can push through that resistance and make the effort. It goes both ways, I know that. But I can pick up the phone. I treasure the people in my life. A lot of people have been very good to me.

We moved campsites yesterday afternoon, about 100 yards down the road. This one is much better. A stunning view again, down a little two-track side road far enough that you can’t be seen from the main road. Good firepit. I really like this spot. Plan is one more night here, then a different area about an hour and a half away that we’re targeting.

There’s been a new development in the electrolyte saga. I’m going to live with it a few more days before I go trumpeting the apparent solution, but I think I finally have it sorted. And it’s not exactly what I thought was causing all this.

The music continues to flow. Something emerging out here is a reboot of the Hi-Fi Lonesome Sound System project. Calling it Season Two. A few more things to sort out and I’ll start posting the new songs.

It got down to 34 degrees last night. I slept in my onesie over my clothes under two blankets and slept great, as usual. My diesel heater, after 6.5 years, seems to need some attention. It’s not firing up, throwing a fuel pump or fuel supply error. Probably a clogged line. I have a maintenance kit for it, I’ll just have to get in there and figure it out. It’s installed under the passenger seat with a subwoofer on top of it, so that’ll be a project.

Last night I roasted garlic on the campfire. Highly successful experiment. Slice off the tips, cover in olive oil and salt, wrap in foil, leave in the coals off to the side for about 30 minutes. Delicious. Watching Shannon cook over the fire has inspired me. It adds a nice dimension to the evening.

Yesterday I ran into an issue looking for old files on my older storage drives. Searches were coming up empty even for files I could see right there. Turns out those drives were formatted in a way the latest Mac OS can’t index. The fix was to copy everything to another drive, reformat the original, copy everything back, and reindex. Tedious. But this is the kind of thing I run into regularly, stuff you don’t expect that requires time and attention before you can move forward. It’s also how momentum works. When you’re building something there’s all this slog to get through first. Then once you’re airborne you’ve got to stay consistent and keep building. That first part is so difficult. I’m taxiing the runway right now with this particular project.

There’s something going on between campfires and me. The sparks pop out and shoot in my direction. The smoke follows me wherever I go. Last night I was getting my steps in circling the fire trying to stay out of it and the smoke just kept shifting to find me. Uncanny. Shannon says I need to use my mind to send it the other direction. I actually think she’s right. I’m going to work on it.

I’m liking this move to Substack. It’s making sense. I have some ideas for it and I’m going to keep experimenting.

Made it to the North Rim yesterday around 2pm. The dirt roads in here are impressively maintained, some of the best condition dirt roads I’ve been on, and they’re extensive. A complex network with countless little roads to explore. Our current site is great, though we realize we’ve been spoiled by our recent spots.

The wind was intense last night. We hiked out to a rock just before sunset and sat on the edge looking over the canyon. Steady 40mph wind, like sticking your head out a car window. The canyon is simply stunning. Vast. More lush than I was expecting, forested, with an enormous waterfall visible in the distance. We’re very close to Supai, which I’d love to visit, but that’s another year. About $450 with a permitting system and more planning than I have right now. Being this close is a little tantalizing. I’m fairly certain the waterfall we can see is in Supai. It looks like paradise.

This whole area feels deserted. Barely anybody here at all.

Today is chilly, high in the low 60s. Shannon is off on a 17 mile bike ride to scout another possible campsite. I’m staying at my practice until mid-afternoon. I made a new song a couple days ago that despite recency bias I believe is one of the best I’ve made. I want to keep building the momentum. I have to remind myself sometimes that the practice is the priority over the adventure, even when the adventures are this good.

Shannon put three potatoes in the coals last night to cook overnight. In the morning we found that something had been in there. Unwrapped them all and ate half of one. I’m setting them out again tonight with the game camera trained on them. That’s exactly why I got the thing. My first customer. I think it’s something bigger than a squirrel but smaller than a raccoon. I think one more night here should be enough to solve the mystery.

I woke up early with intense painful leg cramps again, mostly the calves but creeping up above the knee. After more conversation with Claude it sounds like I’m still magnesium deficient and need to up my dosage. I must have been really depleted because I feel I’ve had quite a lot of magnesium this past week. Yesterday I made a large batch of the electrolyte potion, 120 servings, so it’s now far simpler to mix each one. I’ve made little custom labels for everything using my sticker printer. That little thing has been handy.

Last night around sunset I noticed I was feeling a heaviness. At the time I didn’t know what it was or where it was coming from, but it was distinct. In this season of my life I feel more in tune with my mind and body than I ever have, so when this feeling arrived I noticed it like a foreign visitor coming through the door and approached it with curiosity. Sometime in the night it became clear. I had taken in a little news yesterday. The recent geopolitical events. A deep sadness for the world and our country, for what everything is going through right now.

What I find interesting, as an observer of my own experience, is how the feeling seemed to bubble up from somewhere away from my conscious mind, from the body or the unconscious, and then made its way through. I’ve gotten better at not pushing such feelings away. I’ve learned to let them wash over me completely, and with a little time they pass. If you avoid feeling them they come back to bite you eventually. The sadness, I realize, is a perfectly reasonable and sane response to what’s happening out there. It means something is working right.

Last night I set my alarm for 7am and went to bed just after 10. This morning I was lying there, looked out the ceiling fan, saw the light. Figured it must be close to 7. Rummaged around for my phone. The moment I looked at it the alarm went off. I hadn’t checked the time once since I’d gone to bed.

Things like that tend to happen more when you’re in the zone. I felt deep in it yesterday. The music is flowing right now. I can’t get the video faucet to turn on, but the music is flowing. So I go with that.

I keep wanting to create new YouTube channels for different buckets of music. Channel creep. I’m on the fence about how well this serves me. What I do know is that I need to press on. Everything is and will always be a work in progress. I’ve labored to build a container that will flex and mutate and adapt along with me. I’m trying to be a good shepherd to this good mind I have. Give it outlets, tend to it, water it, let its sails fill with wind and see where it goes.

I’ve learned not to stress too much about the outer appearance of how things are going. Inside they’re going quite well. The outside will catch up. There’s always a lag time. That’s just how it works.

Today is the day. We drive into the North Rim. We’ve done planning but don’t have much of a plan. We’ve settled on one campsite to target, but once we’re in the vicinity it’s still about an hour down a dirt road to get there. No other campsites along the way, and if ours is occupied we turn back. No way of knowing without driving all the way in. About three hours of driving total today. We’re thinking one spot for the first week, a different spot for the second. But we’ll see how it plays out. Adventure time.

Shannon brought back some items from Kanab: baking soda, chicken seasoning, three boxes of Crystal Light packets, three cloves of garlic to experiment with roasting in the coals overnight, and more heavy cream for my coffee. She also filled up my 5 gallon and 3 gallon water jugs. Very helpful favors.

I feel well supplied for this two week stretch. The one thing I’m low on is electricity. Seven percent on the whole system, which I’ve rarely seen. Everything is off now except the fridge, freezer, and overhead lights. Driving will help, the van charges off the motor, but the real catch-up will have to come from solar. This spot has been surrounded by tall pines, great for shade but not for panels. I’ve had a very brief solar window each day when the sun comes through overhead. I just need an exposed spot and the system will recover. Bike battery is drained too.

Time to pack. This adventure is exactly the kind of thing this van was designed for, and exactly what I was dreaming about when I imagined this life and set about bringing it to life.

Shannon went into Kanab yesterday to run errands and pick up a package. The package was delayed and she ended up spending the night there. So tomorrow is officially the day we head into the North Rim. She picked up a few things for me: heavy cream, Crystal Light packets, chicken seasoning. I moved her bike and OneWheel over by my stuff and put the game camera on them overnight. Just moths and some joggers at 7:15am. I’m liking this camera. Old tech, big and clunky, but it works. The night vision is decent and I like how it stamps the time, date, and temperature on the video.

We’ve been here a week. It’s been a great spot and it’s served us well. I’ll be ready to roll tomorrow.

The video work is still feeling stuck in the mud. My mind wants it to be a neat, tidy, perfectly framed slice of experience, but it’s rarely that out here. It’s got all the chaos and incoming variables that this life contains. I just need repetition, constant repetition and iteration. I’m doing that, it’s just going slowly. This week I’ve been pulled more toward music. A lot cooking in that department too, and it needs the same consistency and iteration. That’s the name of the game for the rest of the year. Do all the things, do them consistently, keep refining the systems and the skills. Put in the time.

Today I’ll pack up and prep the van for travel. Firewood has been so plentiful here that I’ll be carrying the excess forward into the Grand Canyon. To our best knowledge campfires are still allowed there, in which case we’ll be grateful for it. I don’t know what to expect out there but I expect an adventure. I expect to be there until the beginning of June.

The electrolyte potion keeps evolving. The Crystal Light is making it taste good enough that I decided to add another ingredient: 5g of creatine. Twice a day puts me at 10g, which is supposed to provide noticeable cognitive and energetic benefits. The cognitive case for slightly higher doses seems to have emerged recently, several studies, plenty of influencers on YouTube. The problem has always been that creatine tastes terrible and I don’t excel at taking bad tasting things twice a day. But folded into this potion I think I can manage it. I could use more brainpower and energy. Bring it on.

Yesterday Shannon messaged to tell me it was her saying my name on the walkie talkie yesterday morning. That had never crossed my mind. She was checking if I was awake to go watch the Route 67 gate open. I heard it in my dream and thought it was part of the dream. I had a good chuckle when I heard that.

Back at our group camp in Utah a month or so ago, I spent some time with a 78 year old nomad I’ll call G. We had some great talks. He was forthcoming and earnest in his reflections on his life. He’d been married three times, described himself as a lifelong functional alcoholic, said the alcohol wasn’t a problem so much as it made him make bad decisions. I asked him how he felt about approaching the end of his time here. He said he feels ok about it, that he’ll feel content. The reason, he said, is these past five or six years living as a nomad, feeling this kind of freedom, experiencing life this way.

This resonated for me. In many ways I feel like my life began when I discovered this life. I continue to feel so grateful to be here and have the privilege of living it. When it’s time for me to go, let it be known that I found my peace. I found my happiness. And it’s out here on the road in the van. Particularly in the wild places.