#{Boontdusties.com}

It’s true what Ran says on his website – all week our plans for visiting his little plot of land were plagued by the threat of cancellation. Thankfully patience prevailed and Jake, Josh and I walked down to Belltown after I got off work and hitched a ride with one of Ran’s friends Adam.
We had no idea what this guy looked like, and when we got to the meeting spot we asked every dude with a ponytail whether or not he was the one we were looking for. Being a coffee shop in Seattle, this took a while … but eventually we met up with the right person and were on our way.

It takes about 5-7 hours to get over to the Eastern edge of Washington by car, so we filled the ride with all the standard getting to know eachother business – which for me, consists mostly of in an depth paranormal history. Adam is a really interesting fellow, and we discussed things like the possibility of the entire pacific northwest seceding from the union and making ties with the republic of ganjistan, an update on the now famous Johnny Gosch/ Jeff Gannon conspiracy that my carride companions had never heard of, and finally some excellent encounters with demons (adam told amazing personal stories in this department). Thankfully for my scaredy-cat nature we would not be sleeping out in the forest this night.

When we arrived in Spokane, Ran welcomed us into his mom’s home and served us some homemade fruit pie with real whipped cream. The dough was made out of sourdough with yeast caught from the air! I wanted two pieces, but settled on an organic poptart Ran had found at the Grocery Outlet.

Adam collapsed on one of the bed’s and the rest of us sat around the living room loafing. I was worried that it would be awkward hanging out with someone I had only met briefly before, but everyone got along really well. Ran picked up Josh’s guitar without even asking (which might be kind of stupid to even make note of, but I personally thought it very cool) and he just started shredding – singing loudly anything from Beat Happening to “Don’t Fear the Reaper”. It seemed out of context from my own version of his internet persona, but I really enjoyed listening to him fool around on geetar as he rocked back in forth in the chair.

The next morning we went to Fred Myer, this giant Walmart/grocery store type place where they have self-checkout machines. I totally didn’t understand how the fuck they worked and afterward I looked forward to getting out to the land where there would be no mechanical devices to mess with my head and beep at me furiously. “Please put the orange on the scale. Please put the orange on the scale. Please put the -” AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

We listened to a mixed tape that Ran put together with an odd mix of Zelda music/Hawkwind/Vaseolines/Ramones (etc.) and made stilted and strange conversation. My favorite topic had to be this story about women bleaching their assholes to be more like the airbrushed porn stars in the magazines. Where the hell did that come from?

When we arrived to the property, there was a tiny tree covering the road down into the property itself – but what’s funny is that though my instinct wanted to say something like “you want me to get out and move that?” Adam already knew that Ran wanted to keep it there to detract unwanted folks from entering the property.
I like this way of thinking – using the way things already are to your advantage instead of seeing them as obstacles that must be “solved” with quasi-solutions.

I’m happy to say that we spent most of the day being lazy. Sure we took a few hikes up the hills to check out the seedlings that Ran had planted, and to collect water from the spring that was actually a lot clearer than I had thought. But mostly we just sat around looking at the chipmunks and listening to squirrels in the trees, wandering around the various swampy areas. Picked kinnikinnick which Jake smoked a few times with no real effect except a pleasant taste. I went barefoot up the side of the hill and through the sticker bushes and it felt great to dirt all over my feet and tromp over dead trees.

We split wood and used Ran’s extensive collection of high-quality ebay-bought tools to cut logs for a fire, and sat around discussing the best way to build a house on the land. I stayed quiet during this discussion cause I don’t know the best way to go about it. Frankly, I just tend to naturally agree with Ran on this one, and think he should just be patient and let things fall into his lap. Though, if he did one day want to have a week long party where we slapped together some cob, I’d be right there with my pant legs rolled up.


The day turned into evening. We drank spring water without boiling it as if we thought ourselves invincible, then cooked beans and quinoa(sp?). As night fell some people recited poetry, and Josh sang some of my favorite songs of all time. (I’ll try to put them online as soon as I can convert them to mp3). Here’s the lyrics from Bring Out Your Dead:

It sure is hard to get a job.
That must be
because of
overpopulation.

So, let’s pray,
for the bubonic plague.
To sweep
over
the nation.

Then maybe
McDonald’s
would hire me.

Or I could get a job
bell ringing.
Singing,
bring out your dead.

Bring out, your dead.
I’d be the guy
who says
bring out your dead.
Because everyone would be dead.

His other song is about the post-apocalyptic earth after everyone is dead and all that is left is the last two killer robots, who, ironically enough, kill eachother. I think that is a really important moment in our not too distant future which we should probably have already given a fancy name.

Ran and I tried to sleep by the fire on these old car seats he took from the junkers left on his property. But by the middle of the night I was getting cold and feeling vulnerable to being drug off by some creature of the night so I snuck into the tent. My arms kept falling asleep and I strange dreams of an entity that looked a lot like Samuel L. Jackson, and told me that he was the demigod of “free” boxes on the side of the road. It rained through the night and my backpack got soaked through, including my birth certificate.

The next morning Jake and I brushed our teeth with tree sap, and we cleaned up the camp and left. I don’t think there’s much more to say.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 12th, 2005 at 11:33 pm and is filed under Open Discussion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.