Mentor

This is a tribute to my hesitant mentor.

The fabric of our restraints was sewn in the same sweat shop,

probably in the Philippines.

And the neighborhood watch guarding our brains is asleep on the job

accept me as your student

I supplicate myself on bony knees.

My heart beats irregularly because it needs a valve and cylinder job

like your dust-covered Kawasaki Custom Dream Bike

Give the angels the keys and show me some blues scales.

Debris From a Former World

In my quest for the Arctic Wolf I crossed hundreds of miles of tundra and came across this relic of past ages entombed in the snow and ice. I pity the poor traveler who abandoned ship. I picked through his dusty posessions and came on some dirty clothes and cans of salmon and some books of philosophy. There is no telling what kind of person he was or what he was searching for here in the bleak arctic, but he represents that eternal longing in us all, that mythological creature who finds no contentment in his surroundings and his thirst for new experience is never quenched.

Who knows where my own travels will take me but I raise my glass to this vagabond in his 1969 Ford Econoline conversion van. May his road be filled with adventure and may he never be content as long as there is an unexplored horizon in the distance to draw him on.
Walk well, my brother

Merry Christmas

Trashy Blond Girl and Captain Consumption wish you a Merry Christmas and a Fat and Happy New Year.

Wood stove in Van?

The stove idea was an experiment. I'd heard of wood stoves in boats and RVs but never in a van and my trip to Labrador demanded some solution for how cold and damp it gets. A propane tank would run a heater and with proper insulation that's not a bad idea. The van wasn't air tight at all so the risk of dying from lack of oxygen was actually less than dying from exposure but I was going to one of the most remote places in North America where wood and not propane was plentiful. And the challenge of a wood stove was something I had to try. Then someone sold me the Fatsco wood stove and I bought 7 feet of stainless steel flex pipe ordinarily for pellet stoves. The hardest part was figuring out where the stove pipe would exit the van. I considered the sliding windows but finally decided to put it totally out of the way through the roof so the stove pipe would heat up and radiate heat. I think there's a good argument for putting the stovepipe chimney horizontally through the back of the fiberglass roof, instead of vertically through the very top of the roof. It adds like a foot onto an already high roof so can catch on tarps and bridge underpasses and tree branches. IF it went through the back it would be out of the way and if the angle was still sloping up then the smoke would still draw out and not get stuck. I don't know. I think the way I did it looks more "traditional" but it would work as well if it went horizontally but not cause me problems with tree branches.

apple-eating wolves?

I saw an apple with bite marks that may have been left by an Arctic Wolf. No sightings but I feel I'm getting closer.