A Skoolie in the Desert

Hey everyone. It’s been a rough couple of weeks for us and the world. We briefly talk about the state of the country, what with secret police throwing people into unmarked vans and all, and how it’s a bummer you can’t rely on individual humans to do the right thing.

Then we talk about the importance of art. I published a novel recently, a weird lil thing I called The Planets, Or: How I Kept It Cute At The End of the World. It’s about a girl with anxiety who survives a nuclear apocalypse on a homestead, and although I did write it before we purchased our property, clearly the subject was already on my mind. Vince also mentions the film The Day After, which reportedly made Reagan depressed for a month and straight-up changed his position on nuclear war. Art matters!

But on to the topic of the day… we recently went to Joshua Tree to help our friends work on their skoolie! If you’re not in the lingo, a “skoolie” is a school bus that’s essentially been turned into an RV.

But our assistance is coming from more than the simple goodness of our hearts. Our friends will soon be moving overseas for a year and plan to park their skoolie on our 10 acres while they’re gone! (Or at least, they were moving overseas before Covid hit… now, who knows? But all we can do is keep moving forward.) Their bus will have solar panels and battery storage, a potable water system including a shower and a washing machine, a compost toilet, enclosed sleeping quarters, and more.

In general, we see communal living as the future. Both Vince and I are introverts who are protective of our personal space, but we’re gonna have to get over that and embrace communal living because it’s the only real viable solution to late-stage capitalism. These days, few people (particularly few millennials) have the resources to truly be self-sufficient. The only way we’re going to beat capitalism is by banding together and pooling our talents, pooling our resources. So this bus is a big step toward that model of living… our friends have a bus full of amenities but nowhere to park it, and we have 10 acres of land but very few amenities. It’s win-win.

So while we were visiting them in Joshua Tree, Vince helped set up the skoolie’s pumped potable water system. We also had some grown-up conversations about rights, responsibilities, liabilities, etc… our property is more valuable than anything we’ve ever owned and the bus is probably more valuable than anything our friends have ever owned, so we want to make sure we’re all on the same page before anything happens. There’s a lot to discuss: security and theft, accidental damage, regular maintenance, wildfires, and permits (the only thing that scares me more than wildfires!).

Once enough work has been done on the bus in Joshua Tree, our friends will move the skoolie up to our property in Mariposa! Exciting!