

Step One: Save the World

The Journey of a Water Protector

DJ Rankin

steponesavetheworld@gmail.com

Well, here I am. Sitting next to a tiny little fire, in a tiny little cave, on top of a not so tiny mountain, just outside of Cherokee, NC. Hidden away from society, reality and humanity, although I am feeling pretty close to astronomy right about now. Truth is, it's not even much of a cave, but I managed to make it quite homey. The mountain is littered with boulders, big, small, medium, extra medium, and even a spectacular rock climbing arena at the top. The "cave" is really just a couple of giant hunks of granite, positioned with a gap between them just large enough for a tiny little fire. So I guess it's really the fire's cave and I'm just a hanger on. The boulders overhang the flame by a few feet and get good and warm as they probably loosen their grip on the mountain, just a few feet from where I lay my head. Plenty of rocks everywhere, so I built up a retaining wall to hold an almost levelish bed of dirt. I kept building the wall up to protect from the rogue coyote whose tracks I've seen nearby, and from the lone wild turkey that I'm pretty sure is in charge of this mountain. I gathered some fallen trees and muscadine vines and lashed together a rhododendron thatched roof. This place is pretty sweet, so don't feel too bad for me, plus it's got an exquisite sunrise viewing area on the roof. Should have a photo uploaded to Air B&B by tomorrow.

As luxurious at it all may sound, one might wonder what has driven me up this hill, away from friends, family and anyone else with an opposable thumb. I'm not ready to talk about that. I'm just not. Where can I even begin? What I saw? What I experienced? Sure, might be a good start, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Or the edge of the frozen river. It's not what I saw, it's what I learned. I learned about the truth of the past, the lies of the present, and the destruction of the future. Not quite the lighthearted conversation I used to be known for. I'm messed up. Broken. Don't get me wrong, I learned so much about love and compassion and humility and kindness and even how to pray. I pray more from the heart in one day than I had in my entire life leading up to this, and now's when we need it more than ever, but praying up here alone in this cave isn't going to be enough to save the world. We all have to use what we've learned and what we've proven possible, to show everyone that there is a better way to live. If we can't figure it out together, someone else will gladly manage it for us, and from what I've seen, it's not going to be near as pretty as this little mountain chateau where I currently reside.
Step One:

So, I first heard about Standing Rock at the end of October, when I was visiting a college roommate in Boulder. He was the RA of a little hippie college, beautiful women, salsa class, legal weed, climbed a boulder in Boulder and smoked it. This was the life. Then he invited me to a Standing Rock action meeting where they skyped with a girl who was at the protest camps in North Dakota. How had I not heard about this before? I had been traveling for a while and not on the facebook much, or keeping up with the news at all, but this was big. Turns out that even if I had been glued to the tv all summer, I would have still been just as in the dark. The lack of mainstream media coverage and the slant they took when they eventually had no choice, completely depleted whatever faith in american news outlets I had left. Sure, fox news is going to frame it incorrectly, that only reaffirms that they're doing the right thing out there, but everyone else too? Then, when you realize that they're all owned by the same corrupt corporations that they report on, well, the rose starts to fade out of your glasses pretty quick. But I digress.

If you've just happened upon this book in a discount bin and also don't know anything about Standing Rock, I implore you to do a little research and see for yourself the same things I saw when I started digging into the google machine. This book is far from a comprehensive historical record of Standing Rock, this is just the journey of one water protector, and you probably won't believe half the stuff I'm gonna tell you anyway, so check it out for yourself. But just in case you're reading this after the post apocalyptic internet crash of twenty-something, I'll synopsisize it real quick for you.

Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) is in the oil business. The dirty crude oil business. Currently, the oil pipeline business and they were putting a pipe right through the Sioux reservation. Through sacred burial land of the Lakota Sioux people. Through land that the US government agreed to let them retain in the Treaty of Fort Laramie, and that was only after we'd forced them out of the rest of their vast hunting and gathering grounds. A treaty that we broke over and over as we stole more sacred sites and resources that they depended on for their way of life, which led to the Lakota Sioux defeat of Custer's invading army. The only war that the US ever claimed defeat in and we've never gotten over it apparently. A treaty giving them the right to live in a good way, after we'd robbed them of every other piece of land that could possibly be exploited and desecrated for financial gain. Including their most sacred Black Hills, where we installed a massive monument displaying four of the faces of the very ones who raped their land and oppressed their people the most... just in case they forgot, I guess.

The Dakota Access Pipeline, or dapl, was originally routed through Bismarck, the city just north of the reservation. A single city council meeting put that to an end. Why run it through a metropolitan area full of white people when there was a perfectly good indian burial ground just a few miles down river? Now granted, the native population on the rez is a lot lower than that of the city, hmm... why again is the native population so low?

So anyway, protest camps had formed nearby, all the way back in the spring, for an indigenous led movement to stop dapl from stealing their land. It began as a primarily native encampment, reuniting over 300 tribes from across the continent and beyond in an unprecedented show of unity, from a race that most people don't even know still exists. The youth of the tribes got online in a way that was inconceivable during those other times that our government wanted something that the indians still had left. Now people were awake to the evils of corporate greed and its destruction of our Mother Earth, people were standing up and at its peak, the camp was fifteen thousand full of indigenous, environmentalists, veterans, hippies and people from all over. They weren't mere protesters, a word cast in a discrediting negative light by our dear old mainstream media, they were the Water Protectors. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that the last section of pipeline to finish drilling and installing was a three-foot wide segment running directly under the Missouri River? The primary water source for not just the Lakota reservation, it's the biggest river in the entire country. Not to worry though, I'm sure someone will be able to filter, bottle and sell it all back to us. At least somebody's win/win winning as we're left to pay the cost of free trade. Mni Wiconi. Water is life.

So you get it, oil bad, water good, yadda yadda yadda. Ok, so where was I? Oh yeah, I got back home to Asheville, NC, thankfully a pretty progressive city and my hippie roommate had been keeping close tabs on the situation. She filled me in on what she knew and I dug into the interweb for more. Every video I saw, every article I read, every interview I watched, made this feeling, this need, this calling inside of me just know that I had to be there. What I would find out later is that thousands of others simultaneously got the same unexplainable call inside of them as well. It was nearly thanksgiving by this point and it was decided, I'd spend the "holiday" with my family (And we don't even have to get into the synchronicity of the current oppression of indians while the rest of america celebrates this day of massacre with a capitalism parade, do we?) and then I'd arrange a ride for the twenty-four hour journey to ND. Luckily for me, Asheville has a strong activist community and several FB pages dedicated to Standing Rock, including a rideshare page, so that part was easy.

Then bloody sunday hit. Protectors were at the bridge where the police barricade was set up and the night's protests escalated to the point that the fully armored police units attacked the unarmed protectors with the usual mace and tear gas, no big, and then they blasted the crowd with a water cannon in the subfreezing Dakota night. An ice cannon. And oh jeez, almost forgot this one, a young woman's arm was also blown apart by a concussion grenade. In the police's defense, they were working closely with TigerSwan, a private mercenary and intelligence firm hired by dapl to operate outside of the law, so the cops had to go big if they were ever going to get noticed during tryouts. "Get off of the bridge. For your own safety." Wow. I had to be there.

We did thanksgiving and I filled my mom in on what was going on out there. Not so surprisingly, she hadn't heard of it either in her small rural town. She got it though, unlike some other protectors' families and some members of mine. She could see that something inside was pulling me there, no matter what the risk or sacrifice. I'd never done anything like this before. No protests. No anti-oil FB posts. Sure, I could agree that solar was better than oil, global warming is real, but that's about as deep into it as I got. I was a music guy, producing bands and shooting videos, which meant that I had a big professional camera and editing rig. So, obviously my role was to film the atrocities taking place against citizens of our planet and share them with the world, but I was down to do whatever. Split firewood, build structures, why I'd even cook if that's what they wanted.

So I arranged a ride with a few unknown Ashvillians as I tried to plan and pack for the coldest cold that I'd ever experienced. I had a hundred dollars, so I got wool socks, long johns, handwarmers and a few other survival items. I was only going for a week, ten days tops, I had to be back by the fourteenth for sure. I called in a few favors from a few friends and got some good boots, gloves, ski gear and anything else that I could gather. You should have seen me layering up the night before I left, testing out the mishmash of gear that I had accumulated and still feeling underdressed for the occasion.

And the next morning it was on. I grabbed my pack, camera bag and imac desktop computer. Who even does that? And imac in a blizzard? But if I didn't bring it, then I couldn't edit until I got home and by then it might be too late. The four of us loaded up and hit the road. What a good time, we hit it off instantly, of course we did roll one before we rolled out. The current independent news gossip about Standing Rock (The Young Turks, Democracy Now, The Intercept) was roadblocks issuing $1,000 fines for bringing supplies into the camp, we decided that probably included green supplies, just to be safe. Plus this was strictly a peaceful prayer camp, no guns, alcohol or drugs. We need to respect the Lakota tradition while we are guests in their nation.

Our driver, Barry, was older than the rest of us and was a radio dj, an activist, an artist, a father and had a whole life worth of stories to keep us entertained for hours. He had been a part of the Occupy movement in Asheville, the second longest running Occupy camp in the entire US. He'd also helped rig oil pipelines back in the day. Hey, a job's a job. The other two passengers weren't strangers to each other, they were a couple, about my age, who ran an organic farm near ashevegas. We all shared very similar views on most everything. Politics obviously, religion, food, music, psychedelics, sorry, where was I, spaced out for a minute? Oh yeah, what a trip. We didn't drive straight through though, it was cornfield after cornfield after cornfield and we eventually made it to a hotel in Mobridge, a South Dakota town an hour south of the camps. Figured that we should get a good nights sleep and probably better to roll into camp at ten in the morning, rather than ten at night.

Up and at 'em. Excited, nervous, anxious, ready, not ready, but mainly just pumped to finally arrive at this place that our hearts had been pulling us to for days and weeks. The four of us headed out and the snow got worse the closer we got to camp, but Barry was a pro. The first time we slid on the ice, he recovered with such mastery that it quelled any doubts that we might have had. We arrived a few days after the first blizzard, enough time that the camp had properly recovered and was in full-on GO mode. We were going to stay in Rosebud camp because Barry's contacts told him that most of asheville was already there, and we were all such good friends that we were staying near each other for sure.

There were three camps in the movement. Sacred Stone was set up first and was far up on the hill, on "private property", so supposedly it was the least likely to be raided. Oceti Sakowin was the "main" camp and was on the north side of the Cannonball river, directly south of the pipeline's construction. Oceti risked the most chance of arrest because it was on Army Corps of Engineers' land, at least according to them anyway. There was a big white glowing dome where there were daily meetings and orientations, as well as drumming and other activities at night. We were camped in three locations, but we were all one family and welcome anywhere at any time, even the Sacred Stoners.

We pulled into the main Rosebud entrance, just south of the Cannonball river, and we were greeted by a big and tall dreadybear with an even bigger smile on his face. He pointed us towards a safe place to park in the recent maze of snow drifts and welcomed us to camp. We made it. We were home. We didn't quite know it yet and I'm not exactly sure the moment that I first felt it, but this was home and everyone agreed, all of us that stayed at least. Something else to that point, something we didn't realize or at least discuss until the winter had a chance to test our limits, was that everyone felt that they had been preparing their whole lives for this experience. There were particular moments towards the end when I felt it more, but it was there even in the first week. Small little experiences that seemed insignificant at the time, now made perfect sense and I started to feel that everything had happened for a reason.

Sure, I already felt that some, but it also just felt like an easy way out of dealing with an unfavorable situation. Like a heartache in particular, but looking back now, I specifically needed every single break-up along the way to put me right here, right now. And it's still happening. Little things that pop up and I conveniently have just the right experience to handle it with ease. Still waiting on the last couple of skillsets to come into play, snowboarding mainly, guessing I'll be using that in some type of ice age arctic resistance movement coming soon to a theater near you.

So we pull into Rosebud, park, and we're immediately greeted by a tall blond hippie who seemed to know her way around pretty well. Summer walked us down to where most of asheville was camped at, on the west side of camp, closer to the road that we came in on, Hwy 1806. On the walk, Derrick joined the crew, he had only gotten there a day or two prior and was brimming full of life, energy and passion. He had been a traveling Bernie campaigner for the whole primary and had apparently gained enough notoriety that some campers recognized him and hooked him up with a propane heater and other supplies. Just another past experience that helped him out with the present. They showed us the Asheville yurt, a community space and always a warm sanctuary to take refuge. Camp was comprised of a few different types of structures, the aforementioned yurt, tipis, tarpees (we'll get to them later), huge army tents and a few wooden buildings. A yurt, for those unfamiliar, is a circular canvas covered structure with poles, lattice and full-size doors forming the walls, a big wooden ring in the middle of the ceiling and 2x4 rafters reaching from the ring to the wall to form the roof. A woodstove in the middle kept the place so toasty, and this particular yurt had a kitchen on one side which nightly had some tasty soup or another, generally a later meal than that at the main mess hall.

Summer told us about the orientation at the dome and pointed us towards the mess hall, but first and foremost, we needed to set up camp. Derrick showed us where he was at, behind the yurt in a little strip of trees, not too many of those in the frozen Dakota plains apparently. The recent storm had caused a lot of people to abandon camps with flimsy summer tents that had collapsed, so before Summer left us, she said that it was cool for us to scavenge whatever supplies we needed for our own camps. Considering that I also only had a flimsy summer tent myself, her advice was much appreciated and put to good use over the next few days as I got my camp dialed in. There was a fallen tent right beside Derrick's that I was going to "borrow" a tarp from, when all of a sudden it became very apparent, this other tent was in the best spot. A little nook in the trees with windbreaks on two sides already, so I pulled the pile of tent out and began to set up shop. Tarp on the ground. Tent on the tarp. Blanket on top of the tent. Rope tying the blanket to a tree above to help support the weight of three feet of snow. Fly for the tent tied behind it to create an additional windbreak. Built a snow wall on one side. Another tarp tied vertically, wrapped around the remaining side and across the front, then clipped with carabiners to a tarp stretching from Derrick's tent. Welcome to the neighborhood.

I can't quite remember what we had for dinner that night, but it was probably something like pasta with red sauce, a big pot of some vegetable and these hard little frozen dinner rolls which made an appearance on most of those early nights. I do remember that it was packed. There was no door at the time, just the flaps of a big army tent and once inside it was sardines. Us, not the meal. Woodstove on the left surrounded by chilled out campers and a supply table on the right covered with mylar emergency blankets, toothbrushes, rope, batteries and a massive basket of handwarmers. (Good thing I spent my last few supply dollars on my own stash.) Instant heat handwarmers that I'm sure are made of only the most eco-friendly of chemicals and probably biodegrade back into water once they're done warming the globe. Don't get me wrong, I used a lot of them early on, handwarmers, toewarmers, superbodywarmers, gotta keep a super body warm somehow. At some point though, my resistance to the cold and my disdain for artificial heat (that for all I know causes even worse environmental impacts than the pipe we're here to stop) caught up with each other and I hardly touched them again.

A bunch of dining tables filled the hall with food being served in the very back, the tent was abuzz. There was a certain magic in that place, especially while all the tourists were still in town, I'm allowed to say that because at the time I was still one of them. You could sit down at any seat and immediately get into a conversation that went deeper than any you'd ever had with your best of friends at home. Every single one of these people felt like long lost family members and were all so passionate about whatever it was they were into. And so smart. Studied. Already aware of the thousands of ways that civilization and government and business and the man have been selling us all out to line the pockets of the already lined, for pretty much ever. I had no idea. One early conversation that I remember the most was with a woman that I never saw again, couldn't even tell you her name. Remembering names proves to be tricky when you meet a hundred people in a day and they all have fur hats and face masks.

She told me about NAFTA and what it was really about. One of it's primary objectives was to keep mexico from becoming a major player in the rigged game of global capitalism. Mexico's economy was booming and they were on par to join the big boys by the next year according to some kind of measure or another, they were supplying food to pretty much everyone. So here comes NAFTA, and now US megacorporations are free to trade throughout north america. Sounds peachy. Of course, the agreement says that wherever a crop grows most efficiently is where it has to be grown. Ok, still makes sense I guess. Except that Monsanto has figured out how to artificially grow mexico's national staple crop, corn, even better than it can naturally grow in its own birthplace. Plus, with our government subsidies for our corn farmers, we've done nothing but drive down the global price of their biggest cash crop. So mexico can no longer profit from corn, it was kinda their thing. We also crashed their thriving dairy market and they are now the largest importer of our powdered milk. Even with all of our fancy sciencing, we still can't grow sugar better than they can, so I bet we buy it from them, right? Oh no, we actually have a lock on that too, we just invade countries that grow it and now we own it, it's pretty neat really. And for bonus points, we sued mexico when they put a tax on importing our high fructose corn syrup. Oh, they're gonna buy corn from us one way or another.

It's not even about the money for them really though, they're just trying to slow down their childhood obesity epidemic, second in the world only to yours truly and all because of the fake food invasion of free trade. So now with two million agriculture jobs lost, nafta hooked them up with manufacturing work in unregulated factories at cutthroat wages. We said stick to what you're good at, we'll do the corn, you do the cheap unskilled labor to help support our always falling prices. Oh... no... you didn't think you could come into america and apply for the job that we stole from you, did you? Poor fella, no, we don't like mexicans. So now the once thriving farmers are broke and mexico's status on an international trade level is lost, seems it was the US corporations who pocketed all the cash. And this was all by a president supposedly on our team. But hey, at least we secured all those most important american jobs. That's why this pipe's important too, right? Gotta have work mining for natural resources, it's the only job they know, gotta put food on the table somehow. What are they gonna do, go work at a solar panel factory? Um... that kind of work is for mexicans.

Not every conversation was revealing government conspiracies to keep us down, many were completely awe inspiring. Hearing people's stories, what had brought them here, the incredible things they were doing in the world. Every one of them. I don't think it was at dinner, maybe later in the evening, Derrick found me and wanted to introduce me to someone. Jeremy was a filmmaker from the southeast and we hit it off, talking about projects, gear and other boring industry jargon that only we get to geek out on. He had also only recently arrived and had done a little digging on what was required to get a press pass. Apparently, early on it was easy, they needed all the press they could get, but now with an influx of media, it was tightening up a bit. Bigger news outlets had started to take notice because in a few days, over two thousand veterans were supposed to arrive and stand in front of the water protectors. Certainly the militarized police force we were up against wouldn't use their criminal tactics against the veterans of the same great country that they also served.

So to get a press pass, the main thing we needed was a letter of assignment from a producer. No freelancers allowed. Which was of course what both of us were. We determined that it could be pretty vague, didn't need to be the great CNN or anything, so we both set out contacting any producer that either of us had ever worked for. Phones were tricky at camp. Had to go up to the top of Facebook Hill, a big hill on the west side of Oceti. Some phones kinda worked in Rosebud, mine was not one of them. I trekked over to Oceti, stood out in the icy wind and alternated hands between texting and handwarming. They did have a bicycle powered charging system. Sometimes. That's possibly the solution to saving the world, bicycle powered everything. Bicycle powered lights. Bicycle powered kitchen. Bicycle powered tools. And maybe just maybe, even bicycle powered bicycles.

That first night was just about over, I stopped by the asheville yurt and there was going to be a neighborhood meeting in ten minutes. Perfect. There were almost twenty of us crammed in there, circled around the woodstove, and we all faced the most peaceful voice we had ever heard. Carmenia was a Lakota grandma, a grandmother, a Lakota elder, a spiritual counselor. Respect. She spoke softly and had her audience hanging on every word. This was a meeting about all sorts of camp stuff, but apparently there had been some recent drama among this neck of the camp, so she came to help get us back into a prayerful way of carrying ourselves, truly working towards the greater good. So then she pulled out her chanupa. Her sacred prayer pipe. We burned sage as she spoke to us about the ceremony of smoking it, assured us that it wasn't any of that funny stuff, and passed around my first puff off of a real live indian's ceremonial pipe. On my very first night at camp. Ok, so this is what it's going to be like. Cool.

The next day, Jeremy came through, he wrote the letter himself and got a production buddy to put it on a company letterhead and we were in. After we finally got it to download at least. We still had to wait in line for five hours with frozen toes to get the pass, but sometimes you have to sacrifice in the name of art. All kinds of media types, some knew all sorts of information about oil companies and protests and ecological concerns and you could see why they were there. Other seemed to have not even read a single one of the articles that I dug out with my first internet search. You could also tell who was camping and who was staying at the nearby casino/hotel. That's the difference between media covering the water protectors and water protectors filming the movement that they are a part of. Not here on assignment for a paycheck, but here to show the world why we have to stand up.

Media passes in hand, we set out filming. He had a background in nature videos and wanted to highlight the river itself. I was just a slacker music guy before, so now I was completely open to film whatever came my way, including frontline actions. That is if there even were any more once the vets came and saved the day. We filmed mainly b-roll stuff, tipi filled skylines and the long line of headlights coming down 1806, as the camp reached maximum capacity in the anticipation of something monumental happening over the coming days. Glad I came when I did, looks like I almost missed it altogether.

For a couple days, I spent a few hours each morning working on my tent and snow walls. I had two zero-degree bags that I had borrowed, if you cracked a bunch of handwarmers and threw them in it, then eventually you could bear to get bare. Once in the cocoon, it was easy peasy, too hot at times really. That first venture outside of the bags in the morning did have a little bite to it though. I can only laugh at it when I look back now, that was nothing. And remember that my computer, hard drive and camera are also by my side enduring the same cold with neither bag nor warmer.

I'd go to different orientations, including frontline training where we learned basic medical procedures for mace, tear gas and hypothermia. The legal team presented us with what not to say if arrested (basically, don't say anything) and gave us a phone number to write on our arms for us to call to get bailed out. We learned different techniques for holding the line as a group and keeping our members from being snatched by the other side. Other than that, I mainly just walked around with Derrick, checking out different areas of camp and filming here and there.

Camp was incredible. So many different subcamps, neighborhoods, smiling faces ready to help with anything and everything. They drove from far around just to support, many loaded down with supplies to donate. People were pouring out love and energy all around. Magic. Within just a few minutes you'd here someone across the river shout "Mni Wiconi" and then it would erupt all over camp. Water is life. The water of the planet is the most important element to all of life, it's kind of a thing, we should probably keep it. Of course, a bunch of hippies that can't even pronounce english, pretty much butchered it for a long time. For the record, it sounds like "mini wichonee." I'm down with the water, love it, but that was about as much as I did really. No firewood. No dishes. I would help however I could if I happened upon someone who needed it, but I didn't join a work crew. I was media. I held the most elusive press pass. I was not yet a water protector.

Finally, it was the day for the vets to arrive. The day we were all waiting for. Our big chance to get that shot that would change the world. The world that I didn't even have a clue how bad needed changing yet. Jeremy and I, plus our newly recruited assistant Derrick, were ready to make history. Or film it at least. I even pulled out the steadicam because today was the day. The vets rolled in as promised, some even on horseback, and they gathered for their own orientation to camp. Meanwhile, we set up for our shots, our press passes got us access to the road and they were about to march to the bridge and show dapl who was boss. In 3... 2... 1... Here we go. The flashy parade to storm the bridge for all of the mainstream media was underway. I got out front and filmed the whole thing while I walked backwards through ice patch and snow pile, what a hero, this guy. We stopped short of the bridge at a rope barrier put in place by Oceti security, under advisement from the elders. This was as far as anyone was permitted, the elders of the "Seven Councils Fire" (translates to Oceti Sakowin) didn't want anyone on the bridge. The seven councils for the seven tribes that came from the seven stars of Pleiades. Or the seven daughters of Atlas. Or the seven days of creation. We are all made of stars.

Turns out that at that very moment, Obama finally decided to join the party, now that all the cool kids were doing it and everything. He stepped in and had the army corps deny the easement to drill under the river, at least pending proper ecological review. ETP should have had this review in the first place, but they treated the ginormous pipeline like a bunch of smaller localized projects and bought up individual parcels of land or got smaller permits where necessary. No federal regulations, just local permits from a state government who is completely dependent on the petroleum industry and whose oil vein corruption runs deep. Not deep enough to not destroy the whole planet though. But hooray hooray, Obama saves the day. The same Obama that when begged to step in earlier decided that he would "wait and see how things played out." The same Obama that in 2014 visited Standing Rock, went to a powwow celebration and met with the locals to assure them that he was their president too. The first black leader of the free world was actually going to treat the red people like humans. Of course that same trip was scheduled so that he could scope out where the pipeline would go, yep, he was in on it since before the beginning. But luckily, now that every major media outlet and a metric ton of american vets have arrived, it seems our savior has stepped in to save the world. "Veterans, you can all go home to your underfunded VAs now. Campers, it's all over. Plus there's a really bad storm coming in, you should all go home soon, nothing to see here."

Turns out they didn't see the need to stop digging for some reason. I personally filmed them excavating two days later. Rumor has it that they decided to pay the $50,000 per day that they would be fined if they continued, a drop in the bucket truck compared to the millions they were already spending, and far less than they would lose if their equipment sat idle for that very same day. Go USA go!

Jeremy and I did a couple of interviews with vets and decided to call it a day, we had just documented the end of global tyranny after all. Back at camp we were itching to get high, smoke some green, pack a bowl, roll a spliff, scrape a resin ball, anything. Ok, so we weren't actually itching, that's an entirely different drug altogether, but once we found out that it was socially acceptable as long you were respectful, we were craving it pretty hard. We piled into Derrick's tent, which was pretty sweet, big thick bed, lots of insulation, mr buddy propane heater and ten or so handwarmers. Laptop in hand (Oh yeah, I had two computers out in this mess.), we planned to watch a movie while we executed a genius pot harvesting operation.

Derrick had a bookbag with all sorts of crumbs in the back pocket. Dust, fluff, lint, sand, morsels of beef jerky (he used to work at the factory), what may or may not have been rabbit hairballs and every once in a while, an actual scrap of that sticky icky iggy. Once the forensic team was through, we had enough for a nice spliff, half tobacco/half herb and we proceeded to partake in the teriyaki flavored treat that with our lowered tolerances, actually worked. Ahhh... As for the tobacco, I had quit smoking a year before and only in the last couple of weeks had I smoked an occasional rollup. Heading to camp where I thought weed was non-existent, and then upon learning that in native american culture, a small gift of tobacco is customary and is used for praying, I figured that there was no use trying not to smoke and bought a pack of American Spirit rolling tobacco. I'll probably quit soonish, but currently it's just me and my pouch up here in the cave and I wouldn't dare throw it out in the cold all alone. What am I, a jerky smoker?

And segue to the other itch that the three of us were feeling, girls. Again, not an actual itch, gross. I had kicked off the summer with a breakup and was trying desperately not to meet anyone while I was working on the biggest creative project of my career. Couldn't have anybody weighing me down right as I was taking off. Then I came to Standing Rock with zero intention on meeting someone, I would be lucky just to survive, but after a few days of mess hall conversations and such a group of amazing people, I was pretty sure that I could find "the one" out here. At home, you might meet someone you vibe with every few months if you're lucky, but here, they were around every corner. Even in a round tipi. Never before had I encountered such a concentration of women who were my type, whatever that means. Derrick and I had met a couple of ladies that we clicked with a couple of nights before, he had even gone to stay with them one night in Oceti, so we invited them to a campfire that we had planned in our deluxe apartment complex. This was the first fire that I attempted to build, succeeded, but not after a few false starts. Turns out that frozen wet wood doesn't make the best kindling.

Fire finally aflame and the three musketeers were the lone attendees. How romantic. I did manage to score half a spliff when I went next door to bum a rolling paper, and then after the magic power of THC began to take hold, look who decided to stop by the neighborhood, the mythical women of lore. Jeremy had never met them and was beginning to think it was all a setup to get him cozy and high next to our dwindling flicker. We can cuddle if you want to. Once the fire no longer kept the feeling in our toes and after Jeremy had retired, we all moved into Derrick's cushy tent. Cozy, warm, soft... the tent, not the women. Well...

After we chillaxed, chatted, played with dreads and even named a few, we called it a night in a big cuddle puddle and the body heat was rocking. Don't worry, it all stayed PG. At least until the morning when I found myself alone with Ms. Dready, slid into first before I got called out on the way to second, oh well, back to the batting cages I guess. Still, it felt nice to touch a woman after some time off, even if she was leaving later that day, and even if I'd probably never see her again, and even if I did see her again, later that day making out with some other dude before she took off. Still felt nice. It was just enough for me to get back on the wagon, back on the not-chasing-women-and-focus-on-yourself train. There were definitely plenty of camp hookups, or snags as they became known. You could even get condoms and pregnancy tests at the main medical tent and I know of at least one #nodapl baby conceived in Rosebud, but it's not cold enough for that kind of talk yet.

Today was Jeremy's last day and we got a tip that there was something going down at the bridge. Red team go. The storm was ridiculous, but we managed to navigate our way up the slippery 1806. About the time we got to Oceti's main entrance, two protectors were returning from the bridge and told us that there was nothing going on there. Cool with me, I was freezing, couldn't open my eyes for the onslaught ice projectiles and it was probably time for dinner soon. Protecting all this water is hard work. The wind picked up and with our heavy equipment it was looking a little sketchy to try to push through. I knew that the legal team had moved, so I guessed that maybe their old army tent on top of facebook hill was sitting empty. Good guess. There were four protectors already seeking shelter and we were welcomed into the snowstorm sanctuary. My phone somewhat worked up here, so I checked in with a few people before it died. I started talking to Tiena, a native of the phillipines, where it turns out the US government is actually not that fair and square either. Stick to what you're good at I guess.

I set up and interviewed her while Jeremy was handling a phone call, might as well do something productive today. Then, as I wrapped up with her, a native elder came in seeking refuge after being at the frontline for a prayer action. What? There was an action? He showed us video of some indians in full ceremonial garb, dancing and singing as they prayed on the bridge in a torrential snowstorm. We could have been there. We should have been there. But then we wouldn't be here. So I guess it was all good. We interviewed this guy, super interesting, he had all sorts of words of wisdom and tales of oppression to share. He explained just how rigged the system is against not only those that have experienced it as openly as he has, but even against the participants that think it is the end-all-be-all of everything that is. The storm got crazy during the interview, you can hear the tent about to fly away, but eventually it eased up and we were able to continue the journey home.

Jeremy left the next day. As well as the crew that I rode out here with. I wasn't ready to leave. The work I came to do wasn't done. With all of the other media here, I hadn't captured anything special, nothing that wasn't staged and certainly not anything that was going to help save the world. Now, with all the press leaving, having successfully reported on the success of the veterans and Obama's victorious success, I kinda saw a need to stay behind and document what was really going on. I knew that once the story was actually broken through to the mainstream, it would of course be soon forgotten. "Oh, Standing Rock? Wasn't that the thing from last month? Oh that's way over with, you should just watch this new Kardashian spinoff instead." So I let my ride abandon me, but this was still in a time when there was a large influx of people, including a large asheville crew, finding a ride wouldn't be a problem. Anytime I told someone I was from asheville, the response was something like "Geez, is the whole town here? Half the people I've met are from Asheville." You could credit the progressiveness of the mountain town, but it's probably just the sheer amount of hippies and lack of jobs that made it possible. When I moved back to asheville a couple years ago, I was continuously warned that it was impossible to find a job there. "Great, I hate jobs."

With most of my crew gone, and little did I know that Derrick was sneaking off to a protest camp in texas later today, I set out alone to Oceti to see what I could see. Oceti had two gates, north gate was the entrance and the southern exit. North gate was where all the action was, plus it was the best vantage point for the continued excavation that I mentioned earlier. I chatted up the two guys working security, both vets about my age and had been at camp for just a couple of weeks. They clued me onto the digging on the hill and mentioned that there was a better spot to film from, I just had to wait around on they guy to drive me there... Cool, I can chill for a bit, I obviously hadn't learned about indian time yet.

I could zoom in pretty far, so I went ahead and filmed from north gate, the main entrance, or Echo1 as I would learn to call it. Echo1 was a little wooden shed with a fire pit outside. It was a smoldering pit full of a pitiful fire, so with me being fresh up on tending pitiful fires, I assumed the role of firetender. Turns out that firetender is a pretty important position with tons of perks, inside information and a quick promotion schedule to the top. Security is a sweet gig, for the first couple of hours at least. Every third or fourth car coming in had some kind of present for us. Smokes, candy, pizza and one time we got all three at once. One day when I was there, a car asked if I needed anything and I mentioned that my boots were starting to fall apart and weren't quite winterproof anymore. Less than an hour later, I got a delivery of some brand new awesome boots and wool socks. The boots stayed dry and warmish until my very last day at camp, props to Black Lives Matter on that one.

So anyway, here I am keeping the fire going and there was some type of commotion happening in camp. An agitator was disrespecting a woman and a tipi. Don't know if he was just clueless, drunk or a dapl infiltrator. I realize that may sound like a bit of paranoia, but they were a real thing. Next thing I know, the guys working security take off and leave me in charge. I've seen this happen since then, you're just chillin somewhere, normally at security, and by default you get hired to cover a shift. "Hey, can you watch the post for a sec, I just gotta run to the bathroom..."

Security's easy, as long as everything is secure. Just stop cars as they come in, make sure that they're not drunk, remind them that it is a drug, alcohol and weapon free camp, also remind them that it's cold outside, make sure that they have a warm place to go and send them on their way. Eventually, the real deal returned and my temporary reign was over, a snickers and a coke richer, I thought I did pretty good for my first go at it. I don't even drink that much soda out in the real world, but out here, when it came around it was such a treat, an offer I couldn't refuse. You just had to drink it quick, it was already starting to freeze when they handed it to you. We're talking cold here. I ended up in charge again that night, although I never made it to walkie talkie holding status. A car whizzed past the post and towards the bridge, not exactly the most kosher tactic. The one official man on duty took off to handle the situation, so I'm left with no walkie to hear any update or call for backup, who knows whats going down, guess I better put another log on.

Next, a BIA car drives towards the bridge. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is the reigning authority on the reservation. The rez is a sovereign nation. At least in theory. So the morton county police, dapl security and eventually the national guard had no authority. Supposedly. But they technically didn't have authority over the scared burial sites either. And they constantly threatened to raid the camps and arrest us all. For protesting. For exercising our american constitutional rights. In another country where they couldn't tell us what to do anyway. I guess that's some sort of double negative though, we don't get constitutional rights if we team up with the foreigners to protect their families. Those pesky foreign native americans. It's whatever though, the BIA was started by the US War Department anyway, but we can pretend they're on our side for now.

By this point, I took position up on the road so that I could move the cones and barriers as our security and BIA returned from the scene. BIA truck pulls past, I'm manning the post, so obviously I'm someone official and they deem fit to share some deets. The car in question drove full speed ahead and slammed into the concrete barriers at the bridge. Guess they had been a little stiffer than the plastic cones they blew through down here. The driver fled the scene on foot and the car was beyond their line of jurisdiction. Have a nice day.

First day on the job was pretty exciting so far, but a long ways from over. I was only eight hours into a twenty-four hour shift. Now of course, I wasn't officially on duty, I wasn't even from this camp (not that it mattered much), but if I'm wanting to get the money shot then obviously this is the place to be. The official security shift change happened and I had planned to take off, but they had a young lady named Dizzy Wolf working the overnight shift by herself and it didn't feel right to leave, even if just to keep the fire roaring for her. I know what you're thinking, but it wasn't like that. She was too young for me, plus she wasn't my type. (whatever that means) We talked through the long cold hours of the night, well mainly she talked and I played with the fire. We smoked cigarettes like they were going out of style. (Wait a sec, you mean they are going out of style? Well smoke 'em if you got 'em I guess.) And once it was apparent that I would survive my first overnighter, I set up the camera to catch a time lapse of the sunrise over camp. It was magnificent. The silhouettes of all the tipis as the camp came to life under a wide open horizon. Of course, I elected to leave the dapl lights out of frame for this one.

The dapl lights lined the hill on the other side of camp, running from the bridge to the drill pad. They were these super bright, giant gajillion candlepower spotlighty monstrosities that made you really start to understand the concept of light pollution. Maybe they were trying to lure out Mothra to help their cause. In the dapl fog that seemed to occur on most nights, there were huge beams of light extending upwards, like alien tractor beams that some newbie had pointed the wrong way. He was probably just the firetender or something. The lights, one would assume, were probably there to provide light for the workers, but they were all over the place. It seemed like new ones every night. They were positioned to illuminate any route that a rogue crew of protectors might use if they decided that they wanted to be on the offensive special teams unit. Plus, they lit up all of camp so that dapl surveillance could keep tabs on us, while also psychologically warfaring us and our lack of sleep patterns.

So that part certainly sounded like a piece of blabber from a theorist of conspiracies, but take into account the dapl helicopter that constantly flew over camp, super low and over a sovereign nation which should probably be a no fly zone. Or later when the unmarked plane circled over camp at night with no lights whatsoever. Or any number of things that I saw that would make the viewer at home say "Nope, must be a lie. That wouldn't happen in my country. The greatest country in the world." Of course TigerSwan, who has been connected to the BlackWater mercenary company of international war crime scandal, has come out and admitted unlawfully spying with listening devices, facebook hacking, facial recognition, listening to cell phones, employing camp infiltrators and helicopter video surveillance of camp. But I'm getting ahead of myself, so where was I? The lights. So you definitely got used to them, in fact, they were quite convenient. With all of the white snow everywhere, you hardly even had to use a flashlight to get around at night. That part was no joke, they actually made it easier to get around, thanks dapl.

So I caught the sunrise shot, hung around for a couple more hours so that I could officially hit the twenty-four hour mark and ensure that breakfast would be available in the Rosebud mess hall, then I finally caught a little shut eye. Also discovered this fun fact, it's warmer during the day. I'm pretty quick, I know. And if you stay in an unheated tent, then it's also warmer in there during the day. Not a schedule I kept all the time, but staying up all night next to a roaring fire and sleeping during the sunshine hours had its advantages. I did a few more evenings at Echo1, but no overnights and nothing as exciting as that first shift. One of the heads of security, Mario, stopped by the first night and was a little weary of me, some white guy with a camera that he'd never seen before, but Dizzy Bear vouched for me and I was in. Another seemingly important security figure saw me at the post, assumed I was with Mario and tried to put me on the new recruit schedule. "You're Mario's boy right?"

"Nah, I'm just the firetender, I gotta head back to Rosebud soon."

"Oh, ok. Well, can you watch the post for a second while I run an quick errand? I'll be right back."

It's easy to lose track of time at camp, and after your first overnight, days start to blur and weeks are soon to follow. I still had a pretty good grasp of when I was, the day of the week started to fade, but I was still going home semi-soon. I had no clock to punch into though, no deadlines, no boss to yell at me (at least not within a thousand miles) and nowhere to be except exactly where I was at any given moment. When I was hungry, I ate. When I was tired, I slept...eventually. When I had to go, I went.

When I first got to Rosebud, the bathrooms were five porta potties enclosed in a plywood structure. Cold to say the least, also a very tight space to remove a twenty pound camera bag and two coats interwoven with two ski bibs. At some point in those early days, the sanitation company removed the toilets because they could no longer continue to service them with the constant threat of impending doom. Every week or so we faced the next blizzard scare, and they not-so-conveniently decided to pull out a week before our composting toilets would be ready. So, for a few days there, we had to figure it out on our own. I just willed it to stay inside, number one was easy, but two, three and four would have to wait.

One of those nights that I was working overnight at Echo1, they finished the new bathrooms in Oceti and a few days later we had our very own facility. They were pretty fancy, at least as fancy as a poop tent in the snow covered prairie could be. When you went in, there was a piping hot woodstove with an attendant who filled you in on the procedure: occupy one of the seven or eight spacious plywood stalls equipped with a five gallon bucket and a household toilet seat (guys sit down for either, apparently frozen dribble clean up was not in the attendants job description), cover it all up with 2 scoops of sawdust and vamoose. No bad smell at all and great fireside conversation that commonly received input from one of the output stalls. Most of the time it was even somewhat warm, at least before the negative forty days. The waste was then picked up by a farmer who continued to compost it before using it as fertilizer, at least that's how the story went at the time.

One night, after I clocked out of my pseudo-security job in Oceti, I headed south to Rosebud to finally shut my eyes for a bit. I popped my head into Echo3, Rosebud security, to see if there were any familiar faces on duty. I was greeted by the welcoming grins of Pete and Jacob, two men that I would consider brothers through the coming winter. Every person at camp was really a brother or sister, especially once our numbers started to dwindle and we truly became a family. However, there were particular people that each of us formed an even deeper bond with, a true brotherhood, a soul connection, someone you could reveal your true self to and would sacrifice anything for. I met Pete the day before in the mess hall, he'd looked up from his seat with so much joy on his face and asked my name, not out of social courtesy, but because he already cared for me far more than I ever imagined one could care for a complete stranger. He had a full head of long wild dreads and an even wilder look in his eye. Pete was only twenty-four, ten years my prior and already so much farther than myself along his spiritual path. He sang and rapped and played guitar with such passion and emotion, exuding love with every word that I ever heard him speak. I could still see the signs of youth in him, a need for attention among them, and I realized that once he has a few more years of experience on him, he's going to make an incredible spiritual leader for many. I hadn't met Jacob before, but immediately, as we sat around that fire, we began to build the aforementioned brotherhood of legend, one that unparalleled any other at camp. He had been through a lot, and was still going through a lot. Our bond would put me in a position where he would later tell me that I was the only one who could put him in check. Love this dude.

The security shack at Rosebud hardly even qualified as a shack at the time. There was a plywood, three walled structure for supplies, but no light or heat, so I guess it was more of a closet. The real security post was a few walls of tarps connected to the closet, as well as a partial tarp roof. In the center of this house of tarps (tarps of course being yet another product of petroleum) was a magnificent fire, far more respectable than that of Echo1. In it's current state, it was a ring of rocks surrounding a fire pit that was four feet in diameter. I would see this fire undergo several transitions, including a (straight out of Dr. Seuss...no, Willy Wonka...no...ah... Mad Max, very Mad Max indeed) hatcheted together, sheet metal contraption hanging from above. It was intended to escort the wet green pine smoke off of the premises. I'm pretty sure that this was the left-handed smokeshifter we made up in boy scouts, just to send the newbies on wild goose chases all over camp. Found it.

Pete loved this fire, as I would come to, to him it was the most sacred fire in all of Standing Rock. Each camp had a "Sacred Fire", but this wasn't ours, Rosebud's was farther east, closer to the mess hall and sat just off of the main access road on the left. The sacred fires were for praying and were meant to never go out. During frosty nights, even those that the snow reduced vision to just a foot or two, someone still had to go stoke the fire. I never saw it extinguished, dwindling, but always with coals. I guess that before I entered the picture, it had gone out once, probably back when rain was still in existence, and so had the main sacred fire in Oceti. According to Pete, this fire at the post was the only fire to never go out, the longest burning at all of camp. Makes sense, there was no other heat source at Echo3, so whoever was manning it, depended on it's flame for their survival. Not just for the physical heat, but also for their mental stability, which gets a little shaky around four in the morning, especially if you're going at it alone.

Months of prayers and energy had gone into this fire, I wouldn't pray into it tonight, but eventually this fire would receive words from my heart in ways that I didn't realize possible at that moment. Truth is, I didn't know how to pray yet, not from the heart at least, not in a way that makes me feel the way it does now. I had "prayed" to the universe several times in the last few years and asked for prayers in the single facebook post I left in my wake (which probably seemed a little out of character for those that knew me well), but I knew that this was a prayer camp and to support the movement I needed to do things in the Lakota Way. I would never have thought that I would end up with this feeling, this unending belief that pulses through me so strongly. Please don't let this turn you off if faith isn't your thing, it wasn't mine either six months ago. I'm not going to get to the end of this thing and ask you to give up everything you believe or don't believe and ask you to worship some war mongering deity that lives up in the sky. I don't want ten percent of your stuff to ensure that you spend eternity in the good place. However, I will keep you updated on my own personal experiences that have slowly built this energy in me. This is the story of my journey, so while I'm not here to convert, I do hope to inspire.

Jacob began, not actually praying, but sharing his story with brothers and the fire. He'd been through it, he didn't grow up on the rez and had only recently come back to his roots. He'd suffered from abuse, depression, alcoholism and meth addiction. It had been this place that gave him the opportunity to heal, a safe place that gave him a real purpose in life. I knew that alcohol was a problem with many natives around the country, I knew that they were genetically predisposed to it's addictiveness, but I didn't quite understand how it was used to keep an already oppressed population from ever recovering. And not just them, alcohol has been glorified and allowed to be accepted by mainstream culture because it keeps people complacent. Keeps them down. Keeps their minds closed and makes them think that being a part of the system is the only way to survive. (Pot on the other hand, opens the mind and heals the body, so of course it had to be villainized, but that's a story for another chapter.)

At camp, I also learned that prohibition was pushed on the country by none other than our beloved oil industry, go figure. Turns out the alcohol powered engine was developed before it's gasoline counterpart and is a far more efficient fuel, Henry Ford himself believed it was the "ideal fuel." The problem with the alcohol-powered car was that anyone could make alcohol, from any number of resources, even from corn. With alcohol so easy to manufacture, there would be no way to regulate and monopolize the industry, and that just wouldn't do. Alcohol was shown to be the detriment to society that it was, just long enough for prohibition to hit and for the newly invented unleaded gas to be released. America officially chose a new, inferior fuel source, alcohol regained it's glorification and the rest was uphill from there.

As for the meth, I don't personally know of any government conspiracy to spread it through the population, but I'd imagine they're not innocent considering their roles in the cocaine, crack and heroin epidemics that plague our country. Of course, we do know that they funded the drug cartels, who in turn infested the rez through a campaign of violence, threats and money. And super conveniently, it all happened just months after a network of for-profit prisons were opened and accepting applications. So, yeah... Meth is all over, a nationwide serial killer concentrated in depressed rural communities living in poverty, and a reservation is just that. They are concentration camps, plain and simple. They were originally chartered as POW camps, and they still are. I didn't learn about all this stuff until way later into the winter, at this point, it was the first I heard from anyone who had a history of meth.

I interjected at some point when he paused, with my own perspective on what he dealt with. Pete ever so gently informed me that at this sacred fire, especially in a moment like this, we don't talk over each other. We give each other our undivided attention and give them the time and space to process, reflect and gather their thoughts. There would be plenty of time for counsel down the road, and there was. Got it. I shut up and listened to every word intently, not trying to also think of the right thing to say, or comparing it to how it related to my life. Jacob finished spilling his heart out to the fire, then he took the pinch of tobacco that he'd been holding, praying his energy into and offered it to the fire.

Pete shared stories of his past relationships, how he felt that he had done wrong by a very special person in his life, and that he continued to hold guilt for the pain and hurt that he had caused. That's one way to pray into the fire, you just speak from the heart. You don't ask for material things. You ask for healing, for humility, forgiveness. Not forgiveness from the heavens, but forgiveness from your own heart. You pray for your inner self to be able to release this negative energy that you've been hanging onto and has been weighing down your spirit. Then you offer the tobacco to take your prayers, your suffering, off of your heart and out into the universe, to the creator. The creator that knows that everything happens for a reason and we're always exactly where we need to be at all times, just like I was supposed to be right there with my brothers at that very moment, instead of snoring in my ice chest of a tent.

I was offered my own pinch of tobacco to share my own troubles with, but I wasn't ready, I wasn't ready to face my demons and truly allow myself to heal. Not that I had been through anything like either of them, or most people at camp it seemed like. Trauma was a common theme among many of the protectors, trauma which made them stronger and prepared them for the trauma we would endure at camp. Many, in addition to the veterans at camp, dealt with PTSD. I'd managed to keep mine under wraps until we made it back to Cherokee safely. Safer at least. I'd managed to hold it together during everything we went through at camp, always with a level head, regularly giving counsel and helping my family through their own breakdowns. I think I had compartmentalized everything as a survival tactic and once I finally reached a place where I felt safe, that's when it hit me. I'm messed up. My whole life has been flipped upside down, everything I thought I knew about the world went up like a puff of smoke, and no left-handed smokeshifter was gonna be able to fix it.

We sat there all night, the tough conversation was over and it was all good times from here on. Pete played music, original songs that were so deep, so powerful, so prayerful. Songs of love and healing and how we have to come together to save our mother from the pain that mankind has forced her to endure. We have to make a difference. He also spoke of the current love of his life, a beautiful young woman who he'd met over the summer and recrossed paths with here at camp. Jeanie was away visiting her kids, but hoped to return to camp soon, Pete hoped so too. We also discussed the sickness that seemed to be spreading through camp, what later came to be known as the dapl cough. Those who had been there longer than me, had already knowingly been sprayed with chemicals at the frontline and it was suspected that cropdusters were spreading chemicals over camp. Then factor in such extreme weather and close communal living and there's no wonder we were feeling it. That's when it hit me...Onion Tea! How had I forgotten about onion tea? I used it before I left NC to squash the slight cold I felt coming on, yet it hadn't even crossed my mind to make it here. It was settled, tomorrow I would make the biggest pot of onion tea that the world had ever seen.
Step Two:

Onions are very powerful. Their sulfur and quercitin detox the liver and the rest of the body, remove heavy metals and they make your blood work better as they fight inflammation, viruses and bad bacteria. You can actually cut an onion by the bed when you're sick and watch it absorb all of the yucky stuff in the air, or stick 'em in your socks, no joke. Onions have been used by many cultures around the world, including to fight off our first great medical adversity, the big bad black plague. By the end of the winter I was eating a slab of raw onion, a clove of garlic and a hunk of ginger almost daily, but for now, let's stick to onion tea. I can't take all of the credit for onion tea, whose name tends to turn most people off unless they already know about onion magic. I've been considering renaming it to Super Happy Fun Juice, but it's got a reputation of it's own now, so I think it's here to stay. I actually got the basic recipe off of the internet a couple years ago, but the knowledge of my family at camp made it even more powerful with a tweak here and there, it's pretty dialed in now, I think.

I stopped by the kitchen to try to make it happen and they were super accommodating, got me a knife and cutting board and pointed me towards all of the ingredients, as long as I promised to bring them some. They sent me to the pantry for lemons and ginger and when I stuck my head in, I was instantly captured by the gaze of a water protector who happened to already be grabbing lemons and ginger. Yeah. She hooked me up and now we had a chance to meet, right time right place if I ever saw it. I told Stephanie that I was from Asheville and she had been there several times to see a local band that we both like. A jam band. First jamchick I'd met at camp, nice. We talked about music for a little while, but we'd have to go through all of that later, I got some onion stuff to make.

-DISCLAIMER- Camp recipes are massive and meant for a large crew. I had to adapt many from home and no longer have the capacity to downsize them, and any invented at camp were just made up anyway. You can do it though, just wing it, do what feels right. You just gotta believe. Also, we didn't use measuring devices and all of our ingredients were deep frozen, adjust accordingly.

ONION TEA

-A whole bag of onions. (White are the strongest but a few red ones add a pretty pink hue.)

-4 heads of Garlic

-A piece of ginger the size of my hand

-A dozen frozen lemons (Probably less if they're fresh and juicy.)

-At least a third of a half gallon jug of honey

-A few big shakes of dried turmeric or good sized chunk of the fresh root

-A few small shakes of black pepper, always use black pepper with turmeric

-About half of the smallest feasible amount of cayenne powder

-Love

Step 1. Fill 3-1/2 gallon pot to a rolling boil. Unless you just can't wait any longer, it takes so long, just skip ahead.

Step 2. Place lemons under woodstove to thaw, rotate periodically.

Step 3. Cut onions into eighths and add to water. Should look like twice as much as you could possibly imagine necessary.

Step 4. Peel and cut garlic into chunks and throw in.

Step 5. Dice and add ginger. Leave the peel on it, it's got some good stuff in there. (Add fresh turmeric root in the same fashion now too.)

Step 6. Boil contents for as long as you can stand. About an hour.

Step 7. Strain out plant matter. Squeeze it to get all of the goodie out of it.

Step 8. Cut lemons and squeeze through strainer into cocktail. May sting.

Step 9. Add frozen honey blob. (Although it never actually completely freezes.)

Step 10. Shake turmeric/pepper and dash the cayenne. Don't confuse the two.

Step 11. More lemon and honey to taste. Lick page below for taste sample.

Step 12. Love it. The whole time you're making it. Get some positive vibrations all up in it. The less shortcuts you take, the more your hands touch it and the more intent you put into it, the more healing power it'll end up with.

Speaking of healing, here's just a few of the many things treated by this miracle drink, nutrition facts that the drug companies haven't lobbied to have implemented into our school cafeterias yet:

Onions: Heals the entire circulatory system and blood, including high blood pressure, fights infection, improves lung function, detoxifies.

Garlic: Fights bacterial infection (use in place of antibiotics, three cloves every 4-6 hours), fever, cough, stomachache. And cancer. Plus a big vitamin B6 boost which makes you happy.

Ginger: Cold and flu prevention, inflammation, cancer again and girl problems. 1 in 99 at least.

Turmeric: Inflammation, heals wounds, high blood pressure and/or cholesterol, diabetes, psoriasis, natural antibiotic, prevents cancer cell growth. Plus it tightens skin when used as a face mask and cures acne, so you'll be all prettied up when you get to feeling better.

Black pepper: Cold and flu kinda stuff, respiratory stuff, stomach stuff, heart stuff, oral stuff, impotency and it makes the turmeric more absorbable by the body by over 2000%. Always together.

Lemon: Boosts immunity, eliminates toxins, balances pH levels (for a man or a woman), also fights acne. Gonna be so fresh tomorrow.

Honey: Cough, energy, healing power.

Water: Life.

"This stuff will make you feel so good." I wrote that when I labeled the carafe because I knew the name could be off-putting. It was a hit. Before you're even done drinking a cup, you can already feel it clearing the sickness out of you, even if you didn't feel sick to begin with. I filled a portable container and set off on my first onion tea delivery route. I stopped by Echo3 and dispensed a few cups, some quickly accepted by a protector feeling ill and another cup to a brother I was just getting to know. Ronan, he was my homie, I first met him when Derrick left and I was hoping to inherit his cushy tent, but this guy was my new neighbor instead, better. He was so incredibly chill, always happy, sage and wise, calm and understanding, we clicked right away and our bond was more natural then any at camp. I learned a lot about how to carry myself from this dude, but not right now, I was on a mission.

The security posts were my primary target, they are the ones who work the longest shifts in the coldest cold, and whose only source of heat also blasts them with the not so healthy pine smoke. (I would later hear of pine needle tea to combat this, but never got the chance to make any.) For the first time in my travels, I stopped by Oceti's south gate, Echo2, and they were more than happy to consume anything guaranteed to make them feel so good. Echo2 didn't have the same battle to keep warm as the other posts though. This station was the main exit for the camp, but unless there was a "situation," cars weren't stopped upon leaving, so the staff there could spend most of their time inside the small shack. There was a full size woodstove crammed into the tiny space, so being too cold wasn't the issue in the least. I was invited in for woodstove coffee, but after just a few minutes, I was overheated and either had to disrobe or get back to my mission. I chose the latter.

Once at Echo1, I hoped for a familiar face from my previous days on post, but found all new protectors and they were the least receptive of my ill named feel good juice. They took some because they felt obligated, but I'm thinking that it never got the chance to make anyone feel so good. There was a weird feeling there, a strange energy, not the open arms I had been received with before. I poked around in the fire and got one of them to loosen up a bit, a female vet, still didn't get anything out of her that explained the vibe I was picking up on. It had been all vets on duty before, so that wasn't it. Oh well, who knows, maybe it was just their first shift and they hadn't gotten comfortable with it yet. Or perhaps a situation had gone down, or was even currently in progress, rogue car driving into the bridge type of thing.

I headed back to Rosebud, stopped back in at Echo3 to fill their cups with the last of it and went to the mess hall to check in on the tea I left there. It was almost gone and rave reviews all around, people were already feeling better and my first crack at cooking (we can call it that right?) for the camp had me feeling pretty good about myself. Maybe that's the moment I really became a water protector.

When talking about the ingredients with those who wanted to know the secret, I would list off the items and hype up the power of the unknown onions. Then, almost every time, someone who had seen me meticulously cutting up all the ingredients and hovering over the pot, would interject "and a whole lotta love." After enough repeats of this, I started adding it to the official ingredient list. I didn't think of it like that at the time, but of course it had been made with love, I'd made it out of a pure desire to make my family feel better. Little did I know, as I became more aware of the love I was putting into my work, it would change the way I would think about food for the rest of my life. And the way I think about love for that matter.

At dinner that night, I got into another of those eye opening conversations, there really was no small-talk at camp, this one was with Randy the acupuncturist. Sure, we had an acupuncturist, and a massage therapist, an herbalist, a chiropractor, sometimes a reiki master or a sound healer, you know, all that hippie dippie stuff. Being a hippie myself, I was pretty into it. Onion tea came up in the conversation and he knew more about their magic juju than I did, he's also the one who suggested using the turmeric (with black pepper) and the cayenne. He also recommended licorice root, which crossed my path a month later and made it into a special limited edition batch. We of course also talked about acupuncture, which I'd never tried but had been wanting to, so we planned for me to stop by in the next few days and give it a go. An ancient non-western medicine that can treat basically anything without hazardous chemicals, I'm in.

He also introduced me to Julie, the massage therapist that he shared a yurt with. He wanted us to meet because she was interested in studying broadcast and certainly I was interested in a massage from a beautiful water protector. I was indeed, more so than the acupuncture really, carrying the camera bag all over camp was taking a toll on my shoulders and sleeping on the cold hard ground didn't do my back any favors. So in the course of under thirty minutes, I had an entire barrage of bodywork appointments, when does the wilderness survival part start again? Nothing scheduled, there was hardly a concept of time or days by this point, but we all knew that we'd be in the right place at the right time.

I'm still learning that concept and just how true it is, it helps a lot when dealing with things that don't seem to be going the way you had expected. It goes hand-in-hand with everything happens for a reason. Like the night that one of my sisters told me about a fire she had been trying to light in the asheville yurt, all alone and ready for bed, but just couldn't get it to catch. Three times she almost had it going, but nothing. Finally, after giving up, she just crawled into her bag and passed out. (Don't feel too bad, remember that I'm still just in an unheated summer tent.) The next night, another protector was in the same yurt, easily started a fire and about an hour later, the ceiling and the stovepipe caught on fire from creosote buildup. He was right there, wide-awake, with a fire extinguisher at the ready. The night before, she'd have already been asleep before she knew anything was wrong and who knows what I'd be writing about on this page.

The next day was another case of impending doom. A storm was a brewing and if you didn't want to be snowed in for the winter, you'd better high-tail it out of here. Crunch time. Decisions to be made. I still had a couple more days before I had to leave to make it home by the 14th, but it seemed like most of the asheville crew were heading out and my chances of catching a ride later might end up on the slim side of none. What do I do? The real world is waiting on me (this was back when I still thought of society as the real world), but this feeling in my gut, the one that pulled me so strongly here, was telling me that my work was not over. Could I leave and come back? Rides may be harder to come by, but even if I found one, I knew deep down that life would catch up to me out there and I'd never return. How could I leave just to regret abandoning what might just be the most important thing I had ever done in my life? How could I deny my intuition that has so rightly brought me here, brought me home? But if I don't come back, people will be upset. They won't understand. They'll think that I chose this place over them. They won't understand that I'm choosing this place for them. I'm choosing this because I'm the one here, witnessing what is becoming of our world and I know that whatever the solution is, it will come out of this place. If I leave now, it won't just be abandoning camp and my new family here, I'll be abandoning the only hope I have of making a difference for my family back home. Tick, tock, tick,tock...

Ok, obviously I stayed, there's like so much more book left, like it was even a possibility to give up now. Now that I had made that decision, it wasn't all just fun and games, there was still a lot of that impending doom business to deal with. A few days ago, a school bus had shown back up from asheville, had an open seat if I wanted it, but I'd already made up my mind. The driver runs a dope vegetarian spot in ashevegas and has helped the cause across the board, she had returned after a short stint back east but now the impending doom had her on a mission to get our city home. With my new disposition growing solider by the moment, I set out to help asheville get back to asheville.

Turns out that giant diesel school bus engines aren't really the biggest fans of working in this sub-zero climate, and this particular one seemed to be taking a snow day. We scrambled to get the engine warm with propane heaters that wouldn't stay lit, sprayed starting fluid, and finally I ran to Echo3 and got a bucket of hot coals to put under the motor. Prayed. Back up plans started forming, go get a rental van and get the crew on the road, wanna be on the road asap, gotta decide, quick, go time, pray again, last try on the key and... vroooom!

It didn't actually sound like that. It actually turned over and died immediately, but it was more than we'd gotten yet and was enough to give us the hope we needed to make it happen. Several more cranks and a few gas peddle pumps later and she was purring. Of course, all of the windows were iced over, on the inside, so I climbed up on the dash with a propane heater and a scraper and got it cleared off. We did it. They were off, safe from impending doom. It almost even snowed a whole two inches that night.

Also catching a ride with them was a protector who I'd talked to a few times at dinner and always exchanged some bit of wit in passing. He wasn't from asheville, but figured that it would be a good place to hitchhike home from. I'm sure it was. As we were standing around the newly revived bus saying goodbyes, he mentioned that he'd left some stuff in his camp that I was welcome to use. He didn't want it to get buried in the storm and go to waste. Simple stuff, a military sleeping bag, heater, shovel, a small knife, things like that. He told me where it was, hopped on the bus and was gone. They were all gone. The bus has left the station. No further departures for the season. Please buckle up for the remainder of winter.

Feeling really good about my resolve to stay, I was ready to begin my journey as a Water Protector. First though, I should probably go check out what kind of goodies are in my new bonus tent. He said it was directly behind the donations tent, so many tents and I hadn't been to donations yet, but it's probably the one with bags of jackets piled up in the front. I was still operating with all of my original gear, with the exception of the awesome new boots. Turns out I wasn't as underprepared as I had initially thought, of course, I was a little puffy after piling on all my hodgepodge of layers.

There were two donation tents stuffed with all sorts of warm clothing, some premium items, like brand new carhartts and ski bibs, but there was also some junk. I think some people just threw their goodwill bags on a truck without considering what we needed. Not trying to sound unappreciative, because we are all so grateful for the amazing outpour of support that we got from around the country. We are so blessed to have so many guardian angels looking out for us and it was that immense wave of support that inspired us to carry on. Though it was a bit overwhelming trying to handle it all and many bags never even got processed, especially once we were shorthanded. So for future reference, if we ever decide to winter in one of the coldest climates of the country again, we're probably good on unmatched cotton socks with holes, khaki slacks and tubs of dress shoes and sandals without mates. Again, thank you from every one of us to every single person who made this movement possible. Every single personal note I read to the Water Protectors touched me, reminded me why I was here and gave me the energy to keep going. Thank you all so very, very much.

Behind donations, I found the tent in question. Just as it had been described, a snowed over tent that was accessed by crawling through an ice tunnel on the side. There was a piece of metal with a question mark cut out of it which held the blue tarp door in place. On my knees, crawling through the tunnel, I saw the shovel that he mentioned before and realized that it was there to dig your way out if you got snowed in. Cool. I think. To the left was the tent flap and I was inside. Completely dark. No wind. Silent. I switched on my headlamp and saw the sleeping bag on a raised bed that took up most of the space in the tent. Two pallets with three inches of piled up sleeping bags forming a mattress. A tub of canned goods, an organizer with the knife, a light and some Bernie Sanders rolling papers, plus a bunch of dirty socks hanging from the tent frame.

I started rolling up the bag, this thing was awesome and would prove to be super warm through even the worst of the season. Then it hit me, I should just live here. This place was sweet. The raised bed was way better than mine, the extreme darkness made it great for sleeping during the day and the snow banks surrounding it blocked a hundred percent of the wind, which was both cold and noisy. Sure, there was the whole part with the shovel and having to dig yourself out of the inevitable blizzard that could hit at any time, eh, blizzard schmizzard. I'm in.

I went back to my first camp to get some essentials and started making myself at home. First things first, gotta get rid of these socks hanging everywhere. He'd already insulated with a layer of emergency blankets, those thin aluminum foil looking sheets of mylar that reflect body heat, and then a layer of blankets. He also had a roll of residential fiberglass insulation in the tunnel, R13. I felt like I was hoarding it when the entire camp was in a mad scramble to winterize, but it was too big to get out of the snow tunnel, so I decided that I should only feel bad if I didn't put it to good use. I probably had the only tent in camp with R13 lining it's bottom edge, effectively stopping any draft coming off of the snow wall that insulated the tent on the outside. I added another layer of emergency blankets, which I figured would reflect both body heat and a short blast from the propane heater that came with the place. It did, it got warm in there quick, which was good since all the insulation probably inhibited the proper ventilation to safely use said heater. So just a quick blast to knock off the chill, but the problem with the mylar wasn't catching the heat, it was that it caught all of the condensation too. The problem with the condensation of course, was that upon sunrise it had all turned to icicles. Better add another layer of blankets to hold the moisture. Oh, and the socks didn't go unused, I stuffed them into the pallets underneath of me which helped a lot.

So not only had I elected not to leave camp, I had moved down the street, to the east side, into an even deluxer igloo and I couldn't have been more pleased with myself. I couldn't wait to try it out, but I still had a full day of water protecting to do. A storm did roll in, and while it may not have been the impeding doom we had been promised, it was definitely cold, windy and snowing sideways. At dinner I overheard a young blue-haired protector talking about some kind of action happening at the bridge, as we speak. She was also here as media, armed with a GoPro (a popular, small, action camera) and said she was considering checking it out. I was in. Could this be the reason I stayed? Now that the masses had fled, was it about to hit the fan? I went to get the camera from the new spot and we were off. The wind was strong. Really strong. And blowing directly into our faces as we made our way through Oceti. A pickup truck was crossing our path, loaded with winterization supplies and I locked eyes with the driver. "Hey, I know you." It was Tiena, the protector that I had interviewed in the old legal tent with Jeremy. Was I destined to cross her path only in high wind conditions? She was in the middle of a mission, but pointed at the army tent she lived in and told us to stop by anytime. Deal. Now back to our own mission.

The closer we got to the bridge, the stronger the wind got and the thicker the snow became. How was I even going to film what was happening with the snow blowing right into the lens? I'll figure it out when we get there I guess. My partner did fill me in on a vital camera trick that I would use all winter. Batteries die in this cold. Fact. Cell phones would only last a small fraction of normal life. There was tons of speculation that DAPL was using some type of device to drain our batteries, I don't know anything about that kind of technology, but I could see how something as simple as a machine that forces phones to search for wifi and gps in conjunction with the extreme cold could drain them pretty fast. I never heard any proof other than rumor, but there were all sorts of crazy stories of phones losing a full charge at once. And videos. Oh, and this one time, someone came into the kitchen to show me their phone, functioning perfectly, scrolling through contacts and media, the only thing was that they had removed the battery and were holding it in the other hand. Yeah... what's up with that?

Anyway, this trick is sweet – handwarmers. I tweaked it a bit and started using toewarmers because they have an adhesive back and need less oxygen to activate. Stick a warmer to your battery and you're in business. Until the end of camp I did this, the only approved artificial heat in my book, it could even revive a completely dead battery for a few minutes.

Finally at the bridge, my first visit since the vet's march fell short. It was covered in ice, had concrete pylons running parallel all over it and the official barricade was on the north side of the bridge. There was nothing going on, maybe twenty people who had just arrived, probably inspired by the same rumor that had brought us out here. I filmed a bit while I was there in an eerie silence, but it was cold, so we dipped. She was having a harder time with the temperature than I was and needed to find a place to warm up before we made the trek all the way to Rosebud. Well, we did just get that open invitation to Tiena's, musta been a right place right time kinda situation. And it was. We popped in, were greeted with smiles and cheers and were filled in on why the whole tent was abuzz. So earlier, there had been some events on the bridge, probably the very thing that sparked the rumor that we were chasing, and we just walked into the center of the action. That's gotta be some kind of compound right place/right time type of scenario, I'm not that good at math though so we'll just go with it.

Earlier, some of the vets had gone up to the bridge to remove some of the razor wire from the barricade. They had all been told that their commander in chief denied the easement, so they wondered why this barricade was even in place. Two of them had been filming from their phones when one of them mysteriously went dark, with plenty of battery left and all of the video was lost. The other phone wasn't afflicted and they let me watch their footage. It showed them clipping razor wire on our side while dapl cops approached from theirs, guns drawn as they proceeded to stick them into the faces of veterans of the same country that they worked for. These guys were brave (the vets, not dapl), not flinching, guess they've probably seen worse.

I don't know guns, not even the big bright orange plastic one that was pointed right into their faces, but I'd imagine it was some type of "less-lethal" projectile, one that would probably not be too healthy at point blank range into the face. Rubber bullets, ooh, sounds like a cool toy, happy fun times. Probably like paintball or something right? Not quite. These are metal bullets with a plastic coating. They can tear flesh, shoot out a windshield and blow a hole through a shield made of half-inch plywood. Not a rumor. Not a happy fun time toy. Especially not just a few feet away, pointed directly into these guys' faces. The vets eventually backed down and regrouped back at camp, that's when we walked in.

They were preparing to go back out for round two and I just got enlisted into their media team. Here's the thing about filming at the frontline, I'd already read this before I came to camp and they reiterated it to me during press orientation. They target journalists. It's documented that they've shot at least one who wasn't even near the barricade, she was off to the side at what she thought was a safe distance. They targeted another journalist on a different occasion by name, calling out to him before they tackled him, smashed his camera, confiscated his memory cards and arrested him. For documenting. Documenting what they claim is a legal operation. Documenting their aggression against the peaceful protests. (If they weren't peaceful, wouldn't they want that documented?) Documenting the militarized police and private security firms using less-lethal and chemical warfare tactics against the citizens of their own country. Documenting what the future of your neighborhood looks like once the particular resource they're after isn't in the frozen landscape of a faraway land, inhabited by a people who were already thought to be extinct.

Of course they don't want this to be seen. Of course it's in their best interest to suppress the media. Of course it's worth it to break our constitutional right to the freedom of the press. The freedom of the knowledge. With freedom of the press out there in this new digital world of live streaming, how can they ever push their agenda with their own biased news outlets? How can they ever sweep the injustices that they perpetrate on their own people under the rug? This isn't new, the propaganda machine has been manipulating the development of this country since before it was even a country. Once your eyes are opened up to it, you start to realize that everything you've been taught your whole life is a lie. A fabrication. Meant to frame the tyranny enacted against human beings, our brothers and sisters, in such a light that makes the very evildoers come out looking like heroes. Just like that nationally revered monument in the sacred Black Hills I was talking about.

So of course they're more than willing to violate constitutional rights to keep our voice out of the spotlight, it can't be very healthy to their plan if people start to see what's really going on out there. Start waking up and standing up for themselves. Alright, back to this later, I gotta whole covert-op thing going on, plus it's getting cold out here.

The plan was simple; this was just a low-key trip to one of the abandoned vehicles that had burned near the bridge, to retrieve a hook off of the hitch. (They say we burned them, we say they did. I've only heard first hand stories from one side.) A mission later in the night would have the hook attached to a lengthy cable and connected to a truck, which they could use to yank the razor wire free. Unsure of the rogueness of this mission and how much it truly helped the cause, I made sure not to influence the team, I was only there as a bystander to document whatever happened, even if that meant filming them acting out of line. I was here to film the truth, whatever that was, though I did sincerely hope that I didn't have to see anything that would make me lose faith in our movement.

So we headed out to the bridge, rolling past Echo1 about eight deep. I didn't recognize anyone at the post and as they asked us what was up, the vet running our squad claimed we were just going out to ensure that everything was good at the bridge, and we kept on rolling before they could question it. The guard on shift looked weary, but what was he going to say to a group of vets, mainly native including the leader, who were also all twenty-five years his senior. I've got my camera stuffed in my coat so that it's at the ready while hidden from the ongoing, or oncoming, wind and snow. We get to the rope barrier where the veteran's march had ended a few days earlier and our leader asks us to stay put. We could see the truck from here and he wanted to be the only one risking his safety for this part of the mission. It was a pretty simple task for now, not even that close to the barricade and it was in the cover of shadow. I felt pretty safe, from weapons and arrest at least, I'd be facing a different type of danger tonight. It was cold. Really cold.

I filmed the whole operation, just in case something went sideways, other than the wind which was in my face and lens with just a little icy precipitation. My lens had gotten fogged inside and was now frozen over. So I'm out there wiping and scraping the lens with my scarf, enough to make a real cameraman cringe, but it's freezing back faster than I can clear it. Ok, whatever, let's do this. You can't operate a camera with big ski gloves, maybe you can point and shoot, but I need to zoom, focus and make other adjustments, otherwise I'd be better off with a cell phone out there. So one glove off until I can't take it anymore, then switch hands and get the frozen one back into a glove with an already warmed handwarmer. One problem, the glove is frozen. Handwarmer or not, it's got no flex, and my hand is getting equally frozen stiff, not a good combo. No time to think, the glove thing isn't gonna work and stopping the camera while I figure it out isn't an option. I threw the icy glove to the ground, shoved the fresh one into my coat, switched camera hands and buried my frozen phalanges as deep into my layers as I could manage. The footage throughout that transition must have been shaky, but I did it. And he did it. Returning to the crew victorious, hook in hand, so we headed back to the warm, warm, beautiful woodstove.

We'd ended up catching the attention of some other security guys, they met us on the road, but all was good. They did suggest not rolling eight deep to the bridge for a simple check up, maybe we weren't that covert after all. Back in the tent, hands starting to thaw back to life, they decided to chill on secret missions for the night. I was chill. All packed up and ready to head home, I gave them my number and told them to try to get ahold of me before they went out again, who knows, maybe my phone would work at just the right moment. But I never saw those guys again, I stopped by two days later and a friend told me that they had left camp. No groundbreaking footage, but I had actually filmed something real, not just the show that was put on for those other cameramen a few days ago. Game on.

Over the next few days I pulled all-nighters at Echo3 and made onion tea by day. I spent a lot of time at security with two new characters, Andre and Benny. Andre was a Lakota man about my age and was pretty slow to open up. I'm good at slow, good at quiet, good at staring into the fire for the meaning of life. We began to spend our time upgrading the shack with foam insulation panels I scored from the asheville compound and sleeping bags that he had in the nearby security supply tent. We used plywood to cover the gaping hole of a door on the front and then I thought about lining the walls with emergency blankets. Not only would it contain the dry, wood burned heat, but it would reflect the light from a single small flashlight enough to brighten the entire room, plus it added a fun disco effect.

This was also my first chance to partake in an undiluted pot smoking experience, or "medicine" as I would come to know it. The Lakota knew it was medicine long before the state of california. Aside from the more serious ailments that it's widely known to help, if only to treat discomfort it is such a useful plant. Anxiety, depression, nausea, insomnia, lack of appetite, pain, arthritis and that's just to name the basics. All problems that mainstream culture tells us that we need to ingest a chemical compound for. We need a patented pill manufactured by a giant for-profit pharmaceutical company in order to survive. The same corporation that spends millions lobbying in order to keep marijuana illegal, they're not the only ones though. Pot has been demonized by everyone from the DuPont chemical company, who wouldn't be near as successful if industrial hemp were widely available, to the republican party. They were pretty sure that african american voters weren't rushing to the polls to cast straight red tickets, so they increased the penalties for possessing this "lower-class drug." Now the sentence was harsher than that of the rape of another human being, for simply possessing a naturally grown plant, and felonized a crucial demographic of "lower-class democrats" while stripping them of their voting rights.

The campaign to villainize the herb frames it as the devil, just as bad as heroin, they even share a schedule-one drug classification. One problem with this tactic, is that once a teenager tries it out and realizes that it's not evil at all like they had been taught, now they assume that the equally illegal heroin is also a good spiritual experience. It's not. They actually got this one right, although the US is still the largest importer of black tar into the states, as our military guards the poppy fields in afghanistan.

Pot opens your mind, makes you aware, makes you question your surroundings, gives you an incredible attention to detail and focus, connects you to the Earth and inspires you to come up with ways to change the world. Plus, it's not addictive. Now, why in the unchanged world would the government want it's subdued citizens to have those powers? Much better for them to consume themselves with alcohol and prescription pills that close your mind, make you complacent and make you feel like there's no way out. The bonus is once you drink your liver away, they get to sell you a pill to help. Nobody gets sick from weed, just hungry.

Some gracious passerby gifted us some beef jerky, cigarettes and a couple of nuggs. We twisted one up (the weed, not the jerky), sparked it and... ahhhh, finally. All of the physical and emotional tension that had built up over the last few weeks just melted away. My whole body felt better, plus the fire looked really pretty. Andre began to sing, I would come to know many singers over the course of my adventure, but this was my introduction to indian music. Generally accompanied by at least one drum, this was instead an a cappella performance about being a girl's "southern man." He had predicted that if he sang, the girls would show up, and they did. Well, one at least, but in this blizzard that was still a pretty impressive manifestation. She stopped in after hearing the tune, offered one of her own and then disappeared back into the cold wind that had delivered her to us. New to the music then, I had no idea that I would come to crave it, that it would sooth my soul and ease my heart in times of stress.

The other brother I mentioned, Benny, was not quite as slow to talk, in fact, his radio handle would become "Running Mouth." He worked the overnight shift frequently, which tends to take a toll on one's sanity. We'd spend the long nights discussing ways to improve the fire pit, going on early morning wood runs and freestyle rapping about Andre. One night it was time, we'd talked about this fire pit renovation for long enough. Tonight was the night. The fire was already pretty impressive, it took eight big split pieces every time we stoked it. His plan was to dig it down, deeper into the ground, which would make it way warmer by heating the ground around it and channeling the smoke upwards and away from our faces. I believed the first part, not as confidant in the smoke shifting aspect, but I was in. This was also the same night that Pete was having a party at his place, I had rsvped and intended to make at least an appearance, but never did. I felt bad, even though I didn't feel that I was here to party, I had really just started working. He was disappointed when I hadn't made it and I made a promise to myself to make it up to him, this was one of my closest brothers after all. Sorry Pete.

Alright, this should be pretty easy, kinda. We'd shift the fire over to one side of the pit, then dig down about a foot and a half before we shifted the fire into the hole. And we actually pulled it off, well him mainly, he had the right kind of fire boots for just the job. I provided stellar moral support of course.

Before we started we had received a visitor, a dark, shadowy, caped figure in search of hardwood, but we mainly just had the frozen pine that was all over. I loaded him up with what we had and gave him an idea of somewhere else to check. I cracked open the last handwarmer that I had on me and he was back into the shadows. About the time that Benny pushed the coals and fire into the new pit, less fire and more coals since we hadn't been stoking the half fire while he was digging, the shadowy figure returned. Seeing the condition of the flame, or lack thereof, our caped night protector reacted in shock and immediately began restoring our lifeline. He described it as that, the most important part of camp, of our village. The one element here that keeps us alive, without it, we die. I jumped outside with an axe and started shaving pieces of green pine kindling... looks like I'm fresh out of hardwood.

The giant fireslinger Benny was defeated from the impressive fire digging experiment, so he caught his breath while we got the small pieces in place and blew them into a fire. I was already pretty good with fire, but this winter humbled me and took my skill to another level. Without looking, while he was building one side, he offered advice on stacking the wood and how to not inhale too much smoke. Then he looked up and realized that I got this, we were good, he could relax a bit. We brought the fire back to life, no problem really, super hot and deep bed of coals, and then we had the chance to discuss our own lives. We sent Benny to bed, he'd still been up from an all-nighter the night before. We could handle this, plus Andre had left us some meat to cook on the fire.

The shadow's name was Ernie. This man would, even tonight, but more over the course of our adventure, become one of the people that not only earned a special place in my heart, but carved out an entirely new part of me. Something inside that I didn't even know existed, maybe it hadn't before, but now it's where our friendship will live forever. So kind, gentle, understanding, experienced, loving and inspiring, this man is who I want to be when I grow up. He's not even that much older than me and still has challenges on his path, but there's something about him that doesn't try to tell you how to live, instead he shows you in every step he takes.

He'd been mentored and pushed along his path by a Lakota grandmother years ago, and in him, I could see a reflection of the peacefulness I'd seen in other grandmothers here. He had recently been offered the opportunity to firetend for Marty, a spiritual leader at camp who ran the sweat lodge. That's what he'd needed the hardwood for, but we'll talk about all that stuff later, we had plenty of the universe to ponder at the moment. And then there was the meat.

Andre had claimed to have elk steaks for us, but it turned out to be ground elk, whatevs, it was four in the morning and it all sounded good to us. Plus we had a pack of bacon and some tortillas, now we're cooking. We had one pan and a grate, but how should we do this? The fire was taking up only half of the pit and extending into the ground almost two feet. We tried sticking the grate over the flame but knew that it wasn't the solution, wait, I got it. The half where the fire had been resting was now a perfect shelf, a shelf that I bet we can cover with coals and make a pretty sweet cooking surface. Spot on. We ended up leaving the fire in this configuration for weeks and I'm sure the person that changed it had no idea about the food possibilities, not everyone can survive in style I guess. Shelf, coals, grate, pan, and with the bacon almost done and the pan full of pork grease, we threw in the elk meat. Toasted some tortillas and it was time to feast, so good. Right on time, Andre strolls up with a girl under his arm, hip to the smell of bacon and here to collect his cut. There we were thinking that we'd had a good plan and he's the one that really made out that night.

It was probably about five by this point, an hour where you get a little out there after a long shift on post, so we still had a ways to go. There was no official schedule for this job, or any job, people would just show up when they could, but people fill many shoes now that the mass exodus lowered our numbers. It was expected that we'd be here until after breakfast, who'd be up for working this job before they'd even eaten? As the sun was coming up though, much to our surprise, we heard steps and walking up was none other than Ronan. He'd woken up early and figured that he'd give whoever was on shift a nice surprise early release. Lucky for him, we still had a hot pan of elk and bacon burritos at the ready, looks like Rosebud wouldn't go hungry after all. And honestly, this was better and more personal than anything he'd have eaten in a few hours at the mess hall anyway. You're always exactly where you need to be and everything happens for a reason, especially when there's a bacon vibration in the air.

In the interest of full disclosure, we're starting to get to the point when even weeks begin to run together, especially looking back through it all from this point. So I'll do my best to get my timeline close, but honestly, you'll never know the difference anyway. We're also reaching the point, well me at least, where I started suspecting people of being dapl. Now, I knew a person couldn't be "DAPL," it wasn't even a company, it was just the name of the pipeline, but it was how we would commonly referred to anything or anyone who we suspected of being an instrument of the bad guys. Sounds like a bit of paranoia I'd imagine, and a lot of the times it was or we were saying it as a joke, but it was legit. Confirmed. Proof. TigerSwan. Bad guys. Infiltrators we called them. Posing as protectors, sometimes just for intel, but some would agitate, spread rumors and incite the occasional riot or two. There were also water protectors who seemed a little off, but with a little time and understanding, you saw that they were just struggling with their own path to truth, as all of us were. Most of the time, when someone new showed up for the first time, they were so excited to be there and couldn't contain themselves, always had a great story of what inspired them to come and an even more inspiring journey to camp.

One time, about a month later in January, a guy showed up and immediately got stuck in the snow. Not an unusual story so far. Four or five of us jumped up, that's what we did, it's what we were here for and normally seemed like a race to see who could help someone first. So we get in position to push him out, before he's even got it into reverse we already have it rocking. Then he guns it and it goes nowhere, we suggest that he ease the gas a little but now we can't budge it. The same van that we just had rocking. We push a little longer, but I know something's up, so I walk around to his window as I called out for him to check his emergency brake. At the window I peek in and excuse me sir, do you know why I pulled you over this morning? I told him that I could see that the emergency brake was up and he replied that it was broken, I insisted that he drop it just in case, extra cold out here and all, and as he did the van pulled right out. Yep, not fishy at all, huh?

We're not through with this guy yet though. He pulled out and parked on the side of the main road of camp, probably even got "stuck" there later too, but I wasn't around for that one. I did get his plate number though, not sure what I should do with it, but I could at least remember it if I saw it in the future. I smelled something off about this guy, and for a camp with this many hippies and not a single shower, that was saying something.

I walked up to greet him at his new parking spot and asked if he needed help with carrying anything. He had some stuff for the kitchen, perfect. He was just a little too clean cut, a little too business not casual, but I don't judge, water protectors come in all shapes and sizes. When I asked him about his trip and a few other simple questions, he just locked up. Nothing. Not at all the standard response. People are so excited to finally be here that it's normally hard to get them to calm down, but not he. He also wasn't dressed for camp, it was cold here, like really cold. If you're planning on spending any amount of time outside of your car, you layer way up. Not him. I'm more than suspicious by this point, not that it made me treat him any differently than I would have anyone else. My policy on infiltrators was simple, treat them like one of us, better than one of us, one of our guests. Shower them with love and good vibes and show them what we're all about. Make them feel so welcome and loved that maybe, just maybe, they'll see us for what we really are and they'll start to question whether or not they are working for the right team.

So there we are, gonna help him carry stuff to the kitchen, so he opens the back of his suv to unload. He brought a bag of oranges and a bag of apples. That's it. Two bags of fruit. He drove all this way, not that I ever got enough out of him to know where he came from, just to bring seven dollars worth of fruit that you could get at any grocery store. Not that I look at the mouth of a gift horse, all of our produce was frozen after all, but even my basic math skill knew that this guy just didn't add up. We walk to the kitchen, him empty handed because somehow I managed to carry the entire load, and still can't get any backstory out of him. I at least make up a backstory when I'm on a secret mission. C'mon guy. I had intended to keep tabs on him, but once we got to the kitchen there had been some type of situation or other and while I was distracted he got away. His car was still there and he was loose in camp somewhere. I wasn't worried, we didn't have anything to hide, they already had surveillance helicopters flying over us all the time. I guess he could have sabotaged something, but at this point I had to let it go, everything for a reason. I did let the chef on duty know about my thoughts, we decided to put the fruit in the unheated pantry to freeze and we prayed for it really good.

Back in December at security, Andre pulled the classic "I gotta run an errand, you got this right?" No problem. This was the first of a couple of nights where I noticed that my dapl radar was way more sensitive when I was high. Paranoid some might say. I might agree. Suddenly a line of five cars all caravan over from Oceti and pull into our camp, there had been a big meeting at the dome, a security meeting. My experience at Echo1 had been strictly with vets and Ikicita. The Ikicita are a group of native protectors, warriors yes, but there to protect the tribe from all elements of threat. This wasn't some made up thing for camp, it's a traditional group of protectors and here they were marked by red bands and feathers on their arms. Some of the members that I'd met were young, in their early twenties and seemed to be a little overzealous at running security, but these were trying times and we knew that we were up against an adversary that didn't exactly play by the rules. Other Ikicita, with a little more age and experience on them, were the very guys I'd been working with and getting close to here. As for Echo3, we were not Oceti, we governed ourselves and it was members of our close community that comprised our security team.

Anyway, these cars come rolling in and I leave the fire to go greet them. Each car was all excited about this security meeting at the dome, apparently there had been a rogue security crew acting like they were in charge, but now things were going to straighten up. I don't know who they're talking about, but my head went straight to Ikicita. They told me that security was going to tighten up and we'd be getting some new recruits soon. That was the basic story that I got from each car. Here's the thing, I didn't recognize a single person in any of those cars. I was still somewhat new, but I felt like I'd been getting around quite a bit and ought to recognize most in Rosebud at least. They were also a little too clean, a little too L.L.Bean, they all looked like they came out of some kind of catalog where their outfits all matched a little too perfectly. After being at camp for a while, most of us had pieced together getups from donations, melted pants, duct-taped coats, mismatched gloves, not these guys, none of them. Like I said, I did notice that when I was stoned, I got a little trigger happy on picking out infiltrators, but looking back now, there was definitely something off with those guys. They looked like actors playing the part of what mainstream america must assume we look like. And here I am, at security all alone, not even officially on duty, but I knew that wouldn't make a difference if tonight was the night that something big was going down.

Where was Andre? He was a warrior. He had faced plenty of oppression in his life and he was prepared to do something about it, at least at this point of his journey. Had he known something was up? Had he gone to prepare and left me as the fall guy at the post? I happened to have my camera with me and in-between suspected dapl cars I would talk to the camera, just in case something went down there would be a record. I kept the camera on, resting on its bag but ready to grab at a moments notice. Of course, if tonight had been the night and I'd captured that vital piece of evidence that would show the world what was really happening out here, it wouldn't have seen the light of day. It would have been destroyed in any number of ways, including a simple toss into this sacred fire that already held my prayers.

Turns out that nothing happened, at least as far as I ever found out. Andre returned and I mentioned my suspicions, but not the extent of my paranoia. The members of the Ikicita that I had known continued to operate among the ranks of security and I would never find out anything more on the subject. Perhaps the rogue security had been those vets that I had gotten that weird vibe off of at Echo1, or maybe it was an entirely different group that I never encountered, I'd all but quit hanging out at Echo1 by this point. I also suppose that there might have never even been a meeting at the dome, I hadn't heard about it beforehand and I never talked to anyone that I knew about it, including our own Echo3 security team.

Since we're on the subject, sometime in that stretch of three or four days there was another weird interaction, and I wasn't even on the pot this time. We were chilling around the fire, laughing about memories past, when a car pulled up and parked at the post. Two people barged in, seemingly vets, but with an air about them that was more militant than most of the reformed patriots that I had met.

You see, the veterans had come to save us, to stand up with us for what was right. They had realized that the war mongering country they had once blindly served was not quite as high and mighty as they had been indoctrinated into believing. They could now see that in the name of peace and justice, they had been sent to any number of countries not to save the day, but to further oppress the people for any number of precious natural resources. Now they saw that the very same thing was happening here, to US citizens, on US soil. I became good friends with many and even closer to a few that gravitated towards Rosebud's relaxed and prayerful vibes. In general, the vets I knew weren't uptight and militant, they were chill (many of them hippies) and here in the same way that we were. Sure, many dealt with PTSD and had their issues, but they were water protectors as much as any of us, peaceful water protectors.

Anyway, we're chilling around the fire and these two vets roll in, dressed like vets to the tee, but with an energy about them that felt like they were still on duty, still working for the man. They burst into the post, rattling off about a guy that was on the loose in camp, a child molester that we needed to keep an eye out for. The lady was talking so fast that we couldn't have interjected even if we had seen him. They gave us a photocopy of his picture to hang up in the post, definitely something weird about that flyer, but I still can't quite put my finger on it. So they gave us the paper, their entry ticket to the post and then proceeded to fully inspect the shack. Shining their lights into every corner, on and under the supply table inside and around the perimeter. They asked us how we were doing on supplies, if we were warm, but not in the loving way that we asked people as they came into camp, more like an interrogation. More like a recon mission to assess the strength of the post, to do a head count of staff, to confirm that we were in fact unarmed. What better way to get that intel? A child molester on the loose, we'd be monsters not to help without question. The vets were here to help so we welcomed them with open arms and let them lead our security teams. Not that it was a mistake. They were some of the strongest and most dedicated to the cause people that I would meet, and their experience gave them a heads up on exactly what type of tactics we'd be up against. But certainly not every veteran in the country shared the beliefs that they did. Certainly many truly did serve in ways that genuinely helped humanity and had no reason to be ashamed of their service. Others still may have carried out their orders against these oppressed nations, who were simply trying to defend their homelands, and forced themselves to believe that it was all in the name of freedom and justice and bettering the world. Forced to believe it, because if they didn't, then they would have to face the fact that they were themselves the oppressors, pawns in a global takeover that wasn't quite as righteous as they had been led to believe in the pamphlet. Already dealing with PTSD from what they experienced and had their eyes opened up to about how the world actually works, it might be too much to handle to allow themselves to realize that they had in fact been a part of the problem.

So to assume that every vet that was at camp was truly there standing up for our cause was probably a little naive. It was vets after all that made up the private DAPL security force, TigerSwan, ex-BlackWater contractors, hired mercenaries sent to overseas war zones to do the dirty work that even america doesn't want on its rap sheet. And here they stood next to Morton County police, a rural community's law enforcement agency with a global issue thrown into their laps. So of course they continuously threatened our lives and freedoms with a complete arsenal of less-lethal weaponry. "Less-lethal," not "non-lethal," and honestly it's a miracle that no one did die, that I know of at least. All it would have taken is one tear gas induced asthma attack, or one stray rubber bullet to the temple, or another concussion grenade exploding into a protector's unprotected face, but miracles happened everyday at camp. We were constantly in prayer. There was some strong energy there. Partners transferring energy, maybe. The protectors were protected.

So these two vets at Echo3 had their intel, or maybe they were legit and only there to help, either way I got their plate number as they left. I would see this car a few times over the next month and it would always seem a little sketchy for one reason or another. The next time I saw it in fact, was at Echo1, a week later, with the exact same child molester story and the same detailed look around the post. Now, why on Earth would they have waited an entire week to let Echo1, the main entrance of all of camp, know about such an urgent matter as finding this guy? Hmmm...

Here's the funny part about it all, Echo3 was the most warm and welcoming place in all of camp. As people would be walking by, through the cold, we would invite them in to warm up by the fire, freshen up on handwarmers and enjoy a barrage of snacks that we had accumulated through various guardian angels. They could have just come in and been our friends, they would have gotten way more out of us for sure.

While apparently we're still on the subject, and perhaps a way to segue back to some of the happier moments at camp, here's an example of some Echo3 visitors who seemed a little off, but ended up being vital to our camps survival. One night I stopped by the post, perhaps delivering onion tea, yeah, that sounds good, I had a whole bunch of onion tea and there I was. Jacob was on duty, by this point, our brotherhood was growing exponentially. We had begun teasing and picking on each other, something I do almost without thinking out in the real world, but here I had managed to curb it to respect the spiritualness of the camp, which was also growing in me. Throughout the winter I would reach this point with several of my brothers, the ones who proved to be able to take it and dish it, and would find myself having to consciously dial it back.

So I take a seat and Jacob introduces me to Drew and Travis, two brothers from Alabama that were quiet, clean cut and not quite the hippies that we'd grown used to seeing around camp. Jacob was mid conversation about something or another that I didn't think he should be sharing with strangers, especially not these obviously dapl dudes. I'm trying to send him mental signals to hush-it, but it didn't really matter, we had no real secrets here. We weren't up to anything. We were here to pray. Think it was probably just something about weed anyway. At some point, Jacob and Travis went to go get wood or something and I had my chance to get to know Drew a little better. Turns out he was an ecology guy, he had done his college thesis on the impending man-made extinction of a particular turtle in our shared southeast. It started to make sense now, them being so quiet was the weird part, but I also had to remember that this was their first night in this amazing place and unlike anything they had ever experienced. I was leaning towards #nodapl, still a little weary, but in the next couple of weeks I would come to love these brothers and be grateful for tonight's new arrivals. They would end up reappearing on into the winter for a bit, but for this trip they were only staying through their college's Christmas break. Wait!? Was it already Christmas? Not quite, but it was just one tipi corner away.

The brothers took a day to find their paths in camp, but eventually they'd head up our solar panel team. They didn't know much about them prior, but they were smart, mechanically minded and after using the casinos wifi, were able to get a pretty good understanding of how the systems operated and got our panels working way better. They also made one spark in the kitchen, so... There were many generators at camp, providing power for medics, kitchens, mess halls and huge communal tents. Rosebud was the exception and would later be commended on our almost zero reliance on gas and oil, the very things we were here to fight. Can't fight dapl with dapl. I would hear it as a joke, but I was serious when I said it.

How could we argue against a pipe carrying oil if we needed that same oil to survive ourselves? Well, not exactly the same oil, turns out that this oil wasn't even for domestic use and was all being exported to China. All for profit. Yeah, we'd still have to import the same amount of petroleum and be no more self-reliant than we had before, which was one of the main pro-pipeline talking points. The other one they like to throw in there is that pipelines are safer than trucking the oil across the country. Less spills. Of course, of the 300 pipeline leaks in ND alone last year, only one was reported on. And the trucks don't always spill millions of gallons directly into major US waterways. But that's not even the point. We have to be on a path of removing our dependence on oil, so building a web of pipeline infrastructure isn't exactly a step in the right direction. Other countries have stepped up and proven that the technology is there and affordable enough to provide power to a country without it, so that's why there's a mad rush for the oil empire to sink their pipes in while they still can. But who knows why they all seem to be going through sacred native american prayer sites. It's almost like they're scared of prayer or something.

We had two generators and they mainly just got used if there was an issue with the solar system, like a three day blizzard for example. (I know, solar system, haha, at least until we break that too.) The kitchen and the mess hall had the generators, some of us more diligently than others tried to keep them cut off as much as possible. We commonly finished up dinner prep by headlamp and ate by candlelight. The ambiance couldn't be beat. We still regularly used the product in chainsaws, vehicles running countless errands, sometimes at great distance, and eventually we had two snowmobiles. We were also pretty reliant on propane. Forget about the personal heaters, the kitchen was the main culprit.

The kitchen was in a big army tent, smaller than the mess hall but I would later learn that it was far bigger than was required for a bare buffalo bones operation. There were four propane cook stoves along the left wall, giving us a total of nine burners. Two prep tables sat back to back in the middle with a third against the tent wall on the right. There was a dish system in the far right corner, a woodstove on either end and the rest of the space had shelves of food, cookware, spices and other kitcheny kinds of things. The two most notable items were the pans that we used to be able to cook for a group this size, especially as hungry as they were after a hard day of water protectoring. One was aluminum, three feet in diameter and had five inch walls. The strange part about it was the bottom, it wasn't flat, it was concave and bowed up in the middle like a flattened reverse wok. This made a lot of things difficult, but once you made it through the learning curve (meaning you messed up a few things on the curvy pan) it was easy enough to work with and held the most food out of anything. Ever. The other pan wasn't cast iron, but could play one on tv. It had a long handle and looked like something straight out of Jack and the Beanstalk. We all imagined some giant flipping a single massive pancake in this monstrosity. I loved it. Without these two items, I don't think we'd have survived the winter, at least not in the fashion that we did.

At this point, I had only been into the kitchen once, to get supplies for onion tea, and the same for the neighboring pantry tent. I had however, begun to rummage through the smaller pantry area that was at the very back of the mess hall. It was full of items that we could grab between meals, stuff that was easy to prepare on your own, including an entire top shelf stacked to the ceiling with ramen noodles. Top ramen noodles. One night I was poking around and ran across a single can of pink salmon. Yup, that's what I wanted. Perfect late night snack. I was gonna grab what I needed and make a personal batch of salmon patties right there in the mess hall.

I'd been making onion tea on a small, two burner, tabletop Coleman cook stove, and if you wiggled the hose it would cause the flame to drastically fluctuate. Fun. That would do just fine, it would only be a few patties anyway, enough for me and a few to give away, that's all I could get out of a single can. Then I found another can, cool, there were only ten or twelve people in here at this hour, so if I could find a third can then I could make midnight treats for all. I ended up finding almost 20 cans. Thought about it for a minute and decided that I shouldn't squander these on a handful of night owls, I should make them for the whole camp. It was settled, I'd pop into the kitchen tomorrow and see if they'd be cool with me making them to accompany whatever they had going on for lunch. There was only one problem with this plan... I was still hungry.
Step Three:

During my prior visit to the kitchen, I spoke with Jan and Suzy, the pair that I would later find out were the leaders of the kitchen. On the next day when I went into the tent however, I was greeted only by Julie, the massage therapist that days earlier had dug deeper than any illegal excavator on the hill could have managed. Julie not only worked in the healing tent, she also cooked and diligently did most of the kitchen dishes, a feat that would prove ridiculously difficult as the winter set in. I asked her what the plan for lunch was and she said that she was thinking chili, something simple that she could throw together pretty easily. I filled her in on my salmon idea, meant to accompany lunch, and she said "Great, I've got some stuff to handle anyway, I can't wait to try them."

What!? I'm no cook. I was just messing around really. Salmon sounded good to me as a small batch midnight snack, now I'm standing in an unknown frozen kitchen on the hook to feed the whole camp? Just like at the Echoes. She didn't actually abandon me, I assured her that I could handle it and I wasn't worried about it really. It was only ten and lunch was routinely served at one or two, plus Jacob had already said that he would come help me. I went to the pantry to think about side dishes and got it all figured out pretty quickly, I also found an entire shelf of salmon. Time to do the thing.

If you've ever messed with canned salmon then you know that a lot of the time you still have to debone it. It's riddled with small spiny ones and the larger backbone sections, so you have to break it apart and remove as many of these as you can. Or just eat them, but this was my kitchen debut, can't start chipping teeth this early. I'd made these at home before, but it had been a while and never any more than three cans. Julie told me that she tried to aim to feed a hundred people, so I did some solar powered math and figured that thirtyish cans should cut it. This was my first lesson in adapting a recipe from home, intended for single family usage, and converting it into a quantity sufficient enough to feed my new camp family. And the kicker? The cans were frozen. Not all of the cans were solid ice, most were actually just really cold and slushy. Yep, pink salmon slushies, now available at your local nodapl snow-conery.

Jacob and I plugged away, we'd only be able to get two or three done and we'd have to thaw our hands by the woodstove, but it was hardly doing the trick with it's smoldering wet pine fuel. We put the frozen solid cans on top of the woodstove and eventually, like hours later, got through the entire pile of tin. I loaded the bowl of fish up with an obscene amount of spices, trying to gauge what would be appropriate for a serving of this magnitude, but really I was just winging it.

"Winging it" would prove to be my cooking style from then on, especially with a dish like this where you couldn't properly taste test it and add more spice down the road. I also caramelized some garlic and onions to throw into the mix. Frozen onions, which I had learned when I was making all that tea, don't make you cry. I remember the first time that someone brought me some fresh ones and I sobbed like a toddler who you're trying to get to eat raw onions. So, freeze your onions to save the tears, it has a few side effects and probably doesn't need to be as frozen as our particular ice chest achieved, but maybe. Freezing produce messes with the texture though, I heard and confirmed that water chestnuts don't lose any vitality, but we were in no position to be picky with the onions. Plus, once I cooked them down with the garlic, no one was any the wiser.

Another funny thing, and I had noticed this before camp but even more so now, basically daily, people love the smell of sizzling garlic and onions. Once we were at that step of the process, undoubtedly someone would pop into the kitchen and exclaim that it smelled so good and they couldn't wait until dinner. There were a few exceptions, but most meals at camp started with a giant pan full of the olfactory pleasing combo. Sometimes I wouldn't even know what I was cooking yet, but I knew that it started there. It was fun when someone stopped by to rave about the smell, and when they asked about dinner, you still had no idea. I constantly threatened, but never actually pulled off, to simply make the biggest pan full of garlic and onions for dinner. You guys love it so much? Here you go. Honestly it probably would have received less complaints than I had imagined.

So onions and garlic, check, next thing was bread crumbs. I had only found one box of actual breading, but I had commonly crunched up corn flakes back home and we had plenty of those here. We both crunched a bag, and while I still claim this is one of the funnest jobs in the kitchen, we were definitely tired of it by the time we had reached an acceptable level of crumble. Ok, almost there, just once last ingredient and we can mix it all up. Just the eggs left. And... the eggs are frozen. Of course they are. Again, for the sake of full disclosure, they weren't actually deep frozen that day, but it does make the story sound better, doesn't it? They had been left on the table near the woodstove, a common practice for bringing items from deep freeze to shallow freeze. So we cracked in a bunch of slushy eggs and mashed them up as we mixed the giant bowl of salmon concoction that we hoped tasted like something intended to be food.

Since we're doing the whole full disclosure thing apparently, I had a secret weapon. Something I'd used at home a lot, not exactly sure when I originally discovered it, but when I saw it mixed in with some spices, my eyes lit up and it was immediately added to the recipe. Lawry's seasoned salt. So good. The red and white label caught my eye right away, and not only would it make it into the salmon tonight, I would use it in the majority of the meals I would make until we ran out and I had to figure out how to cook for real.

This was one of my first lessons of how blessed we were here at camp. We always have everything we need. Now I know that I've been bouncing back and forth between past and present tense depending on the story or how I feel at any particular moment, but the use of present tense there was more than intentional. We presently "always have everything we need." We're always exactly where we need to be, everything happens for a reason and we always have everything we need. These are some of the most important things that I took away from Standing Rock and I pray that those lessons won't fade as the memories do. Now, I know that I didn't "need" the Lawry's, and I didn't even learn that particular lesson on that day, but looking back, it was there in front of me the whole time. This lesson has helped me to give up material belongings that in reality (which is the only place that they exist) were never even that important to begin with. Side note, there's no word in the Lakota language for "mine" or "my." This lesson has also, time and time again, allowed me to follow what my heart is really telling me to do. Without the apprehension of not having specific supplies or conditions, I've been able to, with full confidence, do things that I would never have even attempted otherwise. And we haven't even gotten to manifestation yet.

Weren't we making salmon or something? Well, I actually got Jacob to fry the patties in the giant pancake pan so that I could work on the sides. So yeah, technically, the first meal that I cooked at camp (in the kitchen at least), I didn't even cook myself. So sue me... I don't have any personal possessions anyway. When I checked out the pantry earlier, I ran across a box of persimmons, the big orange asian ones, and immediately knew what I wanted to do. It should compliment the salmon nicely, if I could pull it off. The recipe at home, which a friend and I had made up one night (her mainly), was "persimmon salad" and it had no actual salad element involved. Fairly simple, slice the persimmons into big chunks, fresh mozzarella into similar size pieces, fresh basil leaf and toss it all in olive oil. Simple, different, pretty and delicious... Wait, the dish or the girl?

Persimmons were frozen, but icy produce isn't the end of the world and it didn't really change their texture that much at all. As for the other stuff, I still had to figure something out, I would later call it "camp style." You take your recipe from home or whatever idea you come up with at camp, you see what ingredients and equipment you actually have, and the rest... you wing it. You do what feels right. A slogan that I'd followed before camp, in fact it probably helped to even get me here, but it took on more strength as I started to learn all that other stuff I was going on about earlier.

This time it was a simple solution, but sometimes there's a key ingredient and you really have no idea if your substitution will work, you just gotta believe. That's another one, "you just gotta believe." Believe in yourself, believe in your family, believe that you always have everything you need, believe that you're at the right place right now reading the right book, everything for a reason. Even if that means that you ruin a vegetable dish and don't feel that you can serve it, who knows, maybe there was something unseen that was wrong with the plant matter and would have made your family sick. (Hey, that only happened one time and they were already on the way to being too old and everyone that tasted them thought that they were good and this was in a makeshift kitchen late in the game and, and, and... and they just weren't good. I tried to cover it up with spice and only made it worse. I had a standard and Rosebud had a reputation by that point and they just weren't good enough to serve. It just didn't feel right. I'll assume I saved the day by throwing them out. Whew. Not hanging onto that one at all or anything.)

So camp style persimmon salad, no problem. It was a recipe that I'd helped to invent anyway, so no one would have a clue how bad I missed the target. No fresh motz? No worries, found some shredded, not the same but a more than adequate camp style solution. Fresh basil, this one's probably a bit trickier. No fresh, not much of a surprise, and I just don't think that dried is going to do the job, even for camp style that would be a little out there. I could try not adding an herb, but I knew that it was the trio that really made the dish. I kept digging through the spice rack in the frozen pantry and found a bag of fresh tarragon. Frozen fresh tarragon. I'd never used tarragon before, didn't even know what it tasted like. I nibbled it, a little like licorice, ok, maybe? I pulled it out, thought about it, set it down, cut persimmons, tasted it again, set it down, smoked a cigarette, asked a few friends what they thought about it, tasted it again and let's try it, we're out of time anyway. I think I was worried that it would overpower the dish, but here goes nothing.

The Alabamas, as we came to refer to the brothers in charge of the solar system, had popped in to work on our panels so I recruited them for the taste test. Now that I think about it, this was just their first full day, so they weren't doing solar quite yet. We had actually recruited them from the mess hall to help in the kitchen, one tending our fires and the other opening the last of the icy salmon cans. It was Travis on the cans and he couldn't hang, they were cold remember, so he cut persimmons while we reminded him that Jacob and I just did the first twenty-five cans. (Sorry I remembered that part Travis.) So back to the tarragon taste test team and 3,2,1... Delicious. So Good. I'm pretty sure that the next time I'm making it with a full selection of ingredients, I'm still gonna use tarragon. Always just what I need. I'd probably stick with the fresh mozzarella whenever you can though.

To round out the meal, I figured we'd keep it simple, we'd just open up some big cans of corn and heat them up. We had so much of the stuff, an excess of corn. I didn't fully understand the implications of corn's plot to rule the world at the time and I had more immediate concerns at the moment. The simple task of warming up some corn in this frozen tundra was a little more of a challenge than we'd underestimated, of course the cans were frozen solid. No problem, we were pros by this point. While Jacob finished up the last of the salmon, I had a thought, scary I know, a finishing touch that would take the dish to a whole 'notha level. Inspired by a restaurant back east who served the home cooking classic with an orange zest butter or something as equally hipster sounding, I wanted to make some sort of sweet butter sauce to drizzle onto the salmon. I grew up making honey butter, just like it sounds, honey and butter mixed together, plenty of both here, but it needed that extra umph to reach next level status. Got it. Ginger Honey Butter.

We had a big bag of ginger root, so I cut it up super fine and heated it in a pan with the butter and honey and voila. My first meal was complete, lunch was served, at five in the evening. So, maybe I still needed some practice getting everything thawed in time, but all in all, it was a success. Enough so, that I would have the guts to try again soon. Plus, I'd discovered a new favorite herb through the limitations of my environment. The butter was the real star of the show though, and to think it was a last-minute bonus item, glad I went for it. Once the rest of the meal was gone, people were eating it off of their fingers until the heart-shaped dish we served it in was dry. One protector, Daniel, who I ended up being really close to by the end of the adventure, was the resident salmon expert. He had actually worked at a salmon canning factory in alaska and commented that he couldn't believe that we had gotten canned salmon to taste this good, not after the stuff he'd seen in the factory. Yum.

Of course this first meal wasn't without its first complaint, Tim felt that with the amount of cheese in the salad, and lack of actual salad, that it should be called cheesy fruit mix. First of all, how much cheese is too much cheese? And second of all, this Tim character ended up being somewhat of a complainer, so I didn't take his cheese woes to heart. Tim was an older protector, an elder to hear him say it, elders being those that in Lakota tradition are respected for their counsel the most. In the interview that Jeremy and I had done during the storm in the old legal tent, the man we spoke to had many powerful things to say. One that stuck with me was on the subject of elders. In his tradition, the elders are the wisest, the leaders of the tribe. They are the most experienced and age has calmed their hearts, making them the most level-headed, slow to lose their temper and least likely to make rash decisions that get the tribe into unwanted trouble. In our colonized culture however, we cast our elders to the side, locking them up in retirement homes so as not to have to listen to their senile babble. Our patriarchy then leaves the sons to lead, the ones who have yet to develop the patience, humility and understanding to lead in a good way. So he thought he was an elder, older certainly, but that's not the only prerequisite to be an elder. It's more about the way that you carry yourself, the way that you lead by example.

Not to pick on Tim, I saw a similar behavior in several Lakota "elders" as well. They demanded respect. Respect is not something that can be demanded, only earned, and you do this by respecting those around you. You don't go off on a five minute diatribe about respecting your elders and then not even attempt to listen to what others, your family, have to say. Respect, gotta give it to get it, end of story.

Now, as the story continues, I do have a couple of nice things to say about Tim, like, he was the hot tub door man. Sounds like an interesting job, wait, was there a hot tub? No such luck. I'm not sure if it was his idea or he just made it happen, but we ended up with an ingenious solution to the hassle of tent flaps. Imagine carrying a meal from the kitchen to the mess hall and you have to open a velcro tent flap, pull back a blanket that insulates the door and then wiggle through, all with a hot pot of food items. Plus, it didn't do a great job of keeping the draft out, draft is a pretty big understatement I must point out. So we had these hot tub covers, two inch thick foam panels covered with vinyl that fold in half. I don't know where they came from, I'll assume it wasn't a gracious soul at home worried about leaves in our hot tubs (there's no leaves silly), but they were awesome. Tim installed them at a few locations around camp, leaning at about a fifteen or twenty degree angle against the tents. There was a pull rope to open from the outside and all you had to do was push from the inside. You could even use your head if your hands were full and it would shut automatically behind you because of the angle. Genius. Almost, at least. In heavy snow storms the design did leave the door vulnerable to getting snowed in, but we made it work.

The other thing I have to give Tim credit for, was a little food for thought that he dropped on me one night while we were smoking a cigarette after dinner. I can't remember the cheese content of the meal, but I'll assume it was within the acceptable range. Someone had brought a whole case of these air filter masks that were decorated up all nice, they were what people in heavily polluted countries wear daily to go out into the smog. Reading the box, we confirmed that they were made in korea, and he spoke about how in korea, they buy bottled air. He spoke of the four elements of the Earth: land, fire, water and air. He noted that they already sell us land, and they also sell us fire through our dependency on oil and natural gas for heat. Air would probably be the last element they bottle and force us to buy, it's already occurring in korea, and all because of the pollution created by industry. The same industry that stands to profit from the eventual outcome. So that leaves us with water, a common topic in this book. Water is good. Water is obviously already available in bottles, but also widely acquirable otherwise, so they don't quite have their talons as deep as they'd like.

Already, this was an enlightening conversation, I'd never considered that the pollution of our mother could be an intentional act, meant to drive the sales for the very corporations that enacted such a despicable plan. I'd only considered that it was a tragic by-product of the greed of the few at the expense of the many. Let me also remind you, this was just one conversation with one man, just a theory of conspiracy. I've seen no facts, no smoking gun, no shredded documents that prove any of this, but like I said, it was something to think about.

This is where it got really interesting though, he explained that this was not an oil pipeline, it was a water pipeline. Wait, what? Can you repeat that? He explained that they've already completed sections of the pipe farther north, along the river, that aren't connected to anything yet. That once the black gold in this pipe leaks into the river, as well as all of the other pipes all over the country, we'll be at their mercy for our water supply. All it will take at that point is to connect the northern section of pipe, the one that's upstream from the eventual river contamination. They'll have the perfect delivery system to transport clean water across the country, at a steep premium of course. Mind blown. Now this was just one man's story, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it all winter. Knowing all that I know now about just how messed up the world is, and what the powers-that-be are capable of, I certainly can't discount its credibility. Besides, he is an elder after all.

Next thing. That night at security, Andre and I worked on installing a woodstove in the security shack. Great idea, remember the whole part about being cold I mentioned earlier? But this stove was cartoonishly small and flimsy. We got it put in, but it only burned once before it was decided to replace it. No big deal, it's the thought that counts anyway. Maybe there's more weight to that than I realized as I wrote it, it was our thought to put one in that inspired the next team to install a proper stove. We also put a cot and a couple of the military mummy bags in the shack so that security members could catch a nap without curling up around the smoky fire. The fireside manner still remained standard protocol and my personal preference for the rest of that fire's existence though.

Earlier, after dinner/lunch (since it wasn't served until five, they didn't do another meal, my bad) someone had come into the mess hall and informed us that Andre had been at security all day without relief. They of course were too busy to handle the post themselves however. I volunteered, even though I had been cooking all day, I didn't mind, I loved that fire. Pete also said that he could come up, for part of the shift at least, not too long however, tonight was a very special occasion. His darling Jeanie had returned. Oh Jeanie. What a sweetheart. What a beautiful, amazing hippie with this thing about her that was completely unwordable. No wonder he had fallen so hard for her, and lucky for him that he met her before I had. I got to the post before them, that's when Andre and I did our renovations, turns out he was in no hurry to leave the post. It had a magnetism about it for sure.

Pete and Jeanie showed up, then another, and another, and before we knew it there was a guitar party around our precious fire. Pete, Jeanie, Stephanie and others took turns sharing songs and we sang into the night. I can barely get a few notes out of the instrument, I play at the keys, but that proves to be a harder item to acquire in these conditions. Not impossible though. You just gotta believe. There were so many musically talented people at camp, and such a diverse range of styles. Turns out if you get a group of the most amazing people you've ever met together, more than a few of them know a thing or two about music.

This went on for hours, until slowly we began to lose musicians to the wee hours of the cold night. One protector had left but returned shortly after, she had just moved into a new tipi that day and wasn't one hundred percent sure which one it was out of a field of snowy tipis, and at this hour didn't feel it appropriate to start popping in at random. No worries, we happen to have a brand new, fully bedded cot available for just the occasion. I kid you not, within hours of us "randomly" setting it up, we needed it. Is that everything happens for a reason or we always have everything we need or... either way, it was pretty cool.

I found myself in Oceti the next day, probably on an onion tea run. Onion tea had started to get a reputation as the magic elixir that it is by this point. I now had several stops added to my route, including the tent where the vets had conspired to pull out the razor wire. It seemed there was always someone sick there. I was always received with a warm welcome and commonly fed an equally warm meal as a reward for my efforts. That was always the problem with the tea delivery route though, it was the sick people that needed it the most, but they were bedridden in their tents, not at the mess hall or the security posts. I always implored everyone to take some to anyone that they knew was under the weather. Ha, under the weather begins to take on a different context in these conditions, a few feet under the weather at times. I'd lightly announce that I had something to make any sick people feel better as I walked, but I wanted to be mindful of my surroundings too.

This was a prayer camp and people may be in ceremony without me realizing. This was something that I had been prepared for before I came to camp, there had been plenty of posts online with warnings of what not to do at camp. Walking around screaming was a no-no due to the constant state of prayer. Even if you didn't recognize it as ceremony, it didn't mean that it wasn't. So I got it to as many as I could, and the more I made, the more the word spread. I could actually call it onion tea and not get an adverse reaction, I considered changing the name still, but decided it was too late in the game, onion tea was here to stay. On the way back to the mess hall, I stopped in at Echo3. This was common, but it was equally as common that I would never be able to break away from the fire and would end up there all night. We did just have a late night jam session the night before and all.

Pete was just arriving for his shift at the post, he didn't like to work "security," he instead worked as the Rosebud welcoming committee. He let me know and invited me to the sweat that was about to be underway. He was gonna go, but got recruited to cover the post at the last minute. I hadn't been to a sweat, didn't know anything about them really and hadn't gotten an invitation up until now. I resisted at first, had things to do, I had too much work to get done to take the afternoon off just to go sit in a sweat lodge. Pete insisted, this was the most important thing I could do. This would heal my body and spirit, make me more productive later and add more meaning to the work that I would do. Sweat was a prayer ceremony and this was a prayer camp, this is why we are here. It convinced me, I had to hurry though, and I didn't even know what I was doing. He told me to take a gift of tobacco, throw on a pair of shorts under my obscene amount of layers and find a towel. Luckily, for some reason, I actually packed a pair of shorts from home. We always have... forget it, you know.

I arrived at the sweat lodge, or the "inipi," and at the fire that I would soon find out was heating the stones that would heat the lodge. The fire was massive. It made the fire at Echo3, the one I had begun to pour my heart into, seem like a candle in the wind. The fire was stoked with only hardwood, all pieces about three foot long, and was being tended by none other than, you guessed it, Ernie. I was so excited to not only see a familiar face, but for it to be this man that had already made such an impact on me in just the few days I had known him. He was the only one at my first sweat that I already knew.

There were six participants that first time, the fewest that I would experience a sweat with. As we stared into the fire silently, preparing for the oncoming spiritual journey, I failed to catch anyone's name. I would later meet Jon, the man that originally built Echo3, and Parker, who was from the same hometown as Ernie and had an affinity towards wild game. It's quite a challenge cooking for a group where some only eat game and some can't stand it. The trick? When they ask what it is, you just tell them that it's the kind they like, and lawrys. I would also be joined by Ziggy, he would be in my first two sweats, although I wouldn't start getting to know him for another month. We would eventually become very close, an Alaskan Inupiaq with such an interesting story, but we have other matters at hand right now.

Our guide arrived, Marty, a Lakota spiritual leader. I use the term "spiritual leader" because he told us that the title "medicine man" was no longer used by many, ever since the US government banned praying. Say what? After colonization, we made illegal the practice of sweating in the inipi, a prayer ceremony, so the medicine men had to move the practice underground. Also made illegal, was the sun dance, the most powerful prayer ceremony, an intense ritual performed by the spiritually strongest. People go there and are healed. It's powerful. Marty is a sun dancer, as well as Parker, Ernie and all of the spiritual leaders that I would sweat with. It wasn't until 1978 that the sweat lodges and sun dances were once again permitted to occur in plain sight through the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Well, if there's an agreement between america and the american indians, certainly it will be strictly upheld, I'm sure, probably, maybe, possibly, there's a chance, fifty fifty at least.

Once it was time to sweat, we shed all of our extra layers and entered the inipi on our hands and knees to humble ourselves. The lodge itself was a round dome about twelve feet in diameter and five feet high. It was constructed with long curved wooden poles and covered with canvas and leather. There was a three foot hole dug out in the center, about eight inches deep, this is where the glowing stones would be placed to heat the lodge. We each crawled around the fire pit clockwise, the same direction that energy naturally flows in this hemisphere, you can consult your maximum water usage toilet if you need a demo. And then we took our positions, compared to later sweats with as many as sixteen people, we had plenty of room to get comfortable. As comfortable as one can be in nothing but a pair of board shorts in zero degree weather, there were no stones in the lodge yet and it was still a bit chilly. Marty entered first and once we all joined, he prepared us for the sweat. I was the only newbie in the group so I paid extra close attention. Ernie would begin handing in stones, pitchforking them to be more specific, and Parker would use a set of deer antlers to place them in the pit.

We'd begin with one in each of the four directions. North, south, east and west, representing wisdom, healing, newness and inner vision. Then stones for Father Sky, Mother Earth and Creator. We were pretty quiet the whole time, but were instructed to be completely silent during the placement of the first seven stones. As each was set, some cedar needles were placed on top and sizzled while they released their energy cleansing aroma. I don't remember the total amount of stones in that first sweat, but I would later sweat with as many as forty-two. That was a hot one. Marty would be pouring, which meant that he was running the sweat and would be pouring the water onto the stones, which would produce the steam that would heat the inipi. Hot doesn't even begin to describe it. It was to heat, what the forty below nights were to cold. The stones themselves weren't crazy hot, different shapes and sizes of glowing fiery red, it would be the water that would test the limits of what I could endure.

I think I heard someone say that it gets as hot as three hundred degrees in there, people say a lot of stuff around here though. I, however, am not going to say a lot of stuff, that's not really why I'm here, to write about one of the first most enlightening moments of my life. But really, I'm not. Sweat is a prayer ceremony. The inipi is sacred. You don't film the sacred fire, you don't film prayer, you don't film sweat. This is me filming. I came to film. At times, a part of me wishes I had filmed more at camp, in Rosebud at least. I filmed plenty of the action abroad, but didn't film the community or the daily adventure or people's stories or the most inspiring moments that happened everyday. If I had filmed more, then I would be editing a movie right now instead of writing this, although that might prove hard to do in a cave. It would be a documentary focused not on the pipeline, though including anything about it that concerned our daily life, but focused more so on Rosebud. This community where love is the currency and inspiration is plentiful. As the winter thinned out the masses, we were left with our strongest brothers and sisters, who all had the most compelling stories, passions, talents, personalities and drive to make the world a better place.

Plus, it was fun. We had a great time, most of the time. I had a great time all of the time, except for just twice when my energy got thrown off a bit. Through all that we experienced, even with intense situations, sad moments, crop dusters and lack of sleep, I was learning so much. About myself and life and our mother and the universe and humility and patience and understanding. I was eating it up. I managed to keep my cool in some pretty crazy times and helped keep my family together when they started to lose it. I've always been pretty level-headed, and anytime something didn't go my way at camp, the way I expected it to, I treated it as a lesson in humility, got over it and moved on. I always have everything I need. I didn't start praying for humility until my next sweat, but it would be something that would be included in the majority of my prayers, still now. A good friend will later tell me that he starts every day by praying for humility, patience and understanding, that's how he can make it through the day of extenuating circumstances. Now I throw the other two in most of the time too. Oh well, I was going to try to talk about how good I did at camp, so that I could crack a joke about hiding myself away, alone in a cave on top of a mountain, but I started bragging and humility ended up taking over the conversation... creepy. Let me inception my way back out of here and we were... oh yeah, if I had filmed the camp all winter then I would be editing our story.

The story of this family of a hundred surviving and thriving, compost toilets, frozen dishes and fireside connections. It would be called "Rosebuddies." But I didn't. And I don't regret it one bit. I lived it. I was there. If I had tried to capture it all, I might have missed everything. But everything happens for a reason, so, this is my movie, sorry, the movie that I would have made. (no word for "my" in Lakota remember) This book is that story, and I'll be able to describe things in a more personal way. Plus, you'll still be able to read it with no power or phone service at whichever camp you end up at. And so if this is the movie, then... here we go... hand drum roll please... I can't film sweat. I can describe it a little more, but you'll get no walkthrough of this level. Had to be there.

So most sweats consist of four rounds or "doors," the person pouring douses the stones with water and then the inipi becomes the most insanely hot thing you've ever experienced. It's dark, there's praying, there's singing (which is powerful prayer), and all of our energies combined as we sent them out into the universe. Meanwhile, we are trying to survive by breathing, meditating, believing, sheer willpower and in the event that it turned out to be too much for you, there was an emergency exit. There was a code word for the door, to inform the doorkeeper, Ernie, that it was too hot for you. I heard that at "real" sweats, you can't get out, but these are for tourists so... I couldn't help it, in the third door I tapped out. All I had to say was "Mitakuye Oyasin," words that I now say more than daily. It means "all my relations," or "we are all related," and it's the word that the Lakota end every prayer with. It is a prayer for oneness with all forms of life. All of the animals and plants and mushrooms and rocks and air and water and we are all related.

I called out and Ernie opened the door, letting an icy cold draft in, refreshing. The best air I had ever felt. Marty did give me the tip of laying down and breathing close to the ground or breathing through my towel. The ceremony humbled me. That was the only time I didn't make it without opening the door, but in my defense, that was in my top two most intense sweats. I was also dehydrated which didn't help, and I think that since it was my first time, I had a lot of impurities for it to flush out. Oh yeah, more than being a spiritual journey and a mental test, it was physically rejuvenating. The steam was obviously great for your body, you sweat out all of the toxins and dirt (dirty hippies) and it certainly killed whatever bacteria could survive in the cold. Personally, I think it helped loosen up our coughs and the chemicals that we breathed, both knowingly at the front line and whatever those planes sprayed over camp.

After we were done in the inipi, it was a hurried transition back to winter wear as my body temperature traveled from extremes, then it was to Marty's tent for dinner. Bbq buffalo, nice. We sat and listened to Marty talk for 2 hours. Some of the most enlightening and informative stuff I'd heard at camp, and scientific. He was talking about our prayers, combined, and the vibrations that it sends out into the universe. He started talking about things familiar to me through my studies of string theory, the theoretical physics about how the universe works. His terms were all different than mine, but was he explaining how prayer, belief and manifestation work, with science? Whoa.

This night would truly become the beginning of my path with connecting to the universe. He also spoke of all of the nations, the separate nations, he said that it was time for the "two-legged nation." All of man together, woken up and saving our dear, dying mother. He spoke of some of the history of his people, massacres, the outlawing of inipis and sun dances, the creation of reservations, which I heard for the first time here referred to as concentration camps, broken treaty after treaty and other truths about the oppression they have faced. He did have an idea, maybe we'll say more feasible than practical, but a possible solution. Move here. Get everyone who supports us to move here, you have to be a resident of ND for a month to claim residency, and vote. Change the laws, replace the politicians, use their system against them. I've been there almost that long already, geez, and others had been there for months longer. If you're reading this at any point after I write it, don't move there, we are not there, it's empty, currently a snowy muddy mix with a sign posted at the gate, "Property of the US government, No Trespassing." This sovereign nation, Lakota land, just the next in a long series of stolen for profit lands, at the cost of not only the Lakota, but of the entire Earth.

Back to the future with Marty, bbq buffalo, talking, oh yeah, and we smoked a lot of weed. More than I had up until this point put together, tenfold, like eight fatties. There were seven or eight heads on it, but with my current low tolerance and recent spiritual awakening, it had me on another level. The only weird part, was that his kids had a tv watching some cheesy shows, what a shock to go from this crazy spiritual thing to a tent where I saw the only tv I would see at camp. Once, we even ate bologna sandwiches with soda and tv, seemed a little ironic, but we didn't actually watch the programs, we were all glued to Marty. And that was that. I survived, barely.

I was changed, I was already changing, but this experience put life into perspective and inspired in me a new way to live. A way which gave a new depth of purpose to all of the things I would do from then on. A way to put my heart and intention into everything. A way to save the world. The night was not over though, in fact, it would be one of the most memorable, one for the books, maybe even this one if I ever finish it. My first experience cooking with intention, although I didn't really know it at the time.

For several days, I had been trying to wrap my head around how to pull off the seemingly impossible. Pizza. At home I made pizza pretty regularly, dough, sauce and sometimes even cheese from scratch. But, at home there was an oven. Cooking at camp meant not only being creative with the ingredients we had, but also the equipment. Turns out, you just have to believe. Now, full disclosure again, I had worked at a pizza place before, as a teenager I managed a Papa John's, so I did have a little pizza experience, but we never made dough or sauce or cooked it during a blizzard without an oven. Some kind of on-the-job training that was. That job would be the extent of my professional cooking career. I never worked in food service again. I was never a chef. I had never cooked for more than 5 people before. This would shock people every time they asked about where I learned to cook for a lot of people. I learned it here.

A lot of people came to camp and fell right into roles that they didn't plan on or have that much experience with. Everything just sort of worked out. It all happened for a reason. Late in the game, someone would mention to me their thoughts on us, the water protectors. They felt, like most of us did, that they were meant to do something greater their whole life, knowing that something big was coming but having no idea what it could be. I figured it would be something with my music and film stuff, kept feeling like I was getting close to it, but never quite getting to that great, life changing thing that I knew must be right around the corner.

They also pointed out, like most of us, that everything that had happened in their life had been preparing them for this moment. A sort of training that unknown to them, was getting them ready, and we all felt that this was some sort of training in itself. We all came with different abilities, many incredible talents and also many underdeveloped skills. Things we had messed around with for fun, never taken to another level, never tested in a situation where the survival of your hundred person family depended on it. This place gave us that experience. Training. We learned how to survive in the most devastating climate imaginable, not just survive, but thrive, and built an incredible belief that we can do anything and everything. We knew by the end that we would be leaders in this thing, this movement, this waking up of our people. We would be the ones to inspire the world to stand up. Maybe somebody should write a book or something.

So I'd been working it out in my head, how to possibly do this, and I had a couple of thoughts. In the lead were somehow using the heat of the double barrel woodstove in the mess hall or doing it in cast iron. There were a bunch of single barrel woodstoves and a few of the doubles at camp. Made with 35 or 55 gallon drums, they lay horizontally on legs and have a door on what would have been the top of the barrel. The double had a set of in-between legs and then a second barrel on top of the first, a smoke chamber meant to retain the heat from the fire and make the stove more efficient. As a result of this design, there was a three inch gap between two piping-hot barrels, worked good for reheating food, could just work to make a pizza, maybe. I envisioned some type of metal box, that may prove to be foil and a baking sheet in this freshman attempt, and later in the season would hypothetically muse about building a brick oven around that space.

Brick and cob ovens had been discussed plenty of times. Would have been great. Would have used it all the time. Would never have given me the chance to wing it and innovate camp cooking as I pushed the limits of what was possible in a kitchen tent though. Cob is a mortar made out of clay, sand and straw and apparently there had been someone trying to get a brick, wood fired oven built before the freeze, but winter won that race. Eh, wood fired pizza probably wouldn't be that good anyway. Around this time, we also started hearing rumors about the possible (later probable and then for sure, impending doom, run, now, fast, don't look back) flooding that would happen once this record snow melted everywhere and filled the river that our camp was next to. So, knowing that as our fingers and tents began to thaw in the spring, we'd have a lot of cleanup to do and didn't think it imperative to build a brick oven in the flood plain that we'd be responsible to take apart and clean up. But when I'm at a more permanent camp, you better believe that's what we'll be doing. We always talked about a pizza shop serving roadside slices, it's amazing what you can pull off when you forget about money and only deal in love.

The other option being cast iron, but how do you cook a pizza in a pan? You need heat all around, not just on the bottom. I bet a dutch oven works on a fire, but I had neither fire, nor dutch oven. No worries, I believed. I'd figure it out when the time came. I'd do what felt right. In the meantime, I had to make dough and sauce and it was already nine or ten at night, I'd been at Marty's through dinner. I wasn't in a hurry though, this was a late night recon pizza mission. No pressure, but I couldn't contain my excitement and a few folks knew it was coming, so I had better deliver. Step one, start the sauce. I make sauce from scratch, on very few occasions did we use pre-made sauce and even then we doctored it up a lot. The first time I didn't have the dream ingredients that I would soon manifest, canned italian San Marzanos as well as fresh organic tomatoes, but I had plenty of the canned red vegetable... fruit... whatever.

While the sauce was cooking, I started on the dough. I had been putting it off for the last hour or so. Like I said, I'd been making pizza at home for a while, enough so that I knew my dough recipe off the top of my head, so that wasn't the problem. The issue was yeast. I had done a yeast inspection, hehe, and hadn't turned up a single tiny little yeast. This could be a problem. I knew there were recipes that didn't call for the living organism, but the lack of internet would make researching a suitable solution rather difficult. I had been talking about it all day, putting it out there into the universe and hoping someone would have a secret stash somewhere. That's how it worked, you just talked about needing something, perhaps only a strong "want" in this case, and the universe would provide. Almost without fail it would appear on your path. I would become blown away with the things that would manifest into my journey. I had already learned a little about manifestation before camp, but this place had it down to a science. I don't know if it was the powerful energy that you could feel all around, or the sheer number of amazing people also putting their energy out there, or the thousands of saints at home who couldn't be there so they sent an abundance of supplies to keep us going, probably a little of all the things. And the more it happened, the more you believed, so then the more it happened, and then the more you believed, and so on and so forth and so good. Upward spiral. One of my biggest prayers leaving camp is that we will be able to keep this energy going. That we will continue to believe, and know that we always have everything we need. At this time, I felt like I needed yeast, but I wasn't going to let it stop me from trying.

I was only going to make a single dough ball, the Alabamas were in bismarck today and I had mentioned the yeast to them. They could be back at any minute, but I had waited as long as I could. It was time. I made it. I don't remember what the recipe was that I came up with, a wild guess based on some other recipes I found on the backs of flour bags and such, but it was going to possibly be passable. We were getting there, probably eleven at night by now, not that I had a concept of time at camp anyway. I still wanted to cook some garlic and onions for the sauce while I was in the mess hall. I would do the real cooking in the kitchen, but this tent was more home to me, all of my people sitting around the fire laughing. And crying. That woodstove also heard stuff just as important as the fire at the post. Brandon, Pete's roommate, had arrived and we began discussing the bag of unknown dried mushrooms I had found. He suggested sauteing them with this and that and... "Great! Sounds like you got this, I gotta get this garlic finished," and that is how it's done.

This was not the first time that I peeled garlic, onion tea has four heads, but it was the first time since the sweat earlier in the night. It didn't consciously change how I would do things, but I think it opened up something inside me, turned on a part of me that would from then on, through everything that I did, exude this new energy out of my pores in all directions. Everything would now have a deeper meaning, and the love that I put into it all would come back to me multiplied, which created an upward love spiral, way more pleasant than its downward counterpart. I started peeling garlic, and I've always peeled them individually, but this time it was a little different. I've had people share all sorts of tricks about speeding up the monotonous garlic process. Mash them with a knife and the skin comes right off, true. Put them all in a jar, shake and the skin comes right off, true. But I'm in no hurry, I'm cooking with love, why should I rush that process? I could have used canned sauce if I was in a hurry, although it probably would have been frozen anyway. Doing the garlic, or any task where it doesn't take intense concentration or planning, is a chance to meditate. Zen time. That's probably why I liked cooking in the first place, a chance to zone out, collect my thoughts or not think about anything at all. This time was different, however, and as the next week went on I would explore the process more. I would begin to develop my own personal way to cook with prayer, with intention, with love.

I was just zoning out in front of the garlic, only half listening to whatever the night's topic of discussion was around the stove. The last few hours had been slightly hectic, gathering supplies, waiting on yeast, wrapping my head around how to bake it. I still didn't have a real plan, just a few vague ideas, but I wasn't worried a tiny bit. I had faith that it would come to me in the moment. You just gotta believe. I knew that I'd be in the right place at the right time, even if that included not pulling off this first pizza. It would still be a learning experience and an important step along my path. I did also remind everyone that this was only a trial run of what may or may not be a continued series of experiments relating to pizza, but they weren't buying it. Maybe it was the excitement and belief they saw in me, or maybe it was the onion tea that had brought them back to life and gave them faith in me (I used to claim that it might start a zombie apocalypse, which after this winter we all feel pretty prepared for) but in all honesty, I think they just really badly wanted some pizza.

Anyhow, I was spacing out as I worked through the giant pile of cloves, thinking of the sweat earlier in the day, thinking of the revelations that Marty had given me, still not all sunken in yet. That made me think of Pete, my dear brother who insisted that I attend sweat, that it would put meaning and prayer into all of my other work. I could already feel it, but it was only in its infancy. It would develop over the next month and every time I sweat, it was at the perfect moment with the perfect lesson. Every sweat I went to was different, Marty would pour my next one, but then I would sweat with different spiritual leaders, in different inipis, different times of day, amounts of stones, different songs and different things would be talked about and prayed upon. And it always, every time, seemed like the exact sweat I was intended to attend. I wouldn't make it for 2 weeks sometimes and would find out about it at the last minute, rashly decide that I could make it happen and it would be as if it were meant for me exclusively. A private message to my soul with exactly what I needed for the next step of my path. I felt it big time. I felt the right place right time thing, now more than ever.

So peeling garlic, I started thinking of Pete, and then Jeanie who in only a day or two had captured my heart. I thought of everyone living with them, Brandon cooking mushrooms, Uncle Bill and his little sweater vested pomeranian, and Ronan, brother Ronan. Then I thought about spending long, cold, amazing nights at security. I thought of Ernie, dear brother, and Jacob who held the same status in my heart. And Andre, we had spent a lot of time together, but I wouldn't say that we were close at this point. He had struggled in his life, a lot of things to heal from, and this was certainly the place to do it. He had been full of angst and anger, ready to destroy this pipeline, but then I started to see a change in him. One of those nights, I think it was the night of Pete's party, the night that Ernie and I cooked elk and bacon, Andre stopped buy with a fellow partygoer, Mary. Mary had been running the coffee and tea department in the mess hall, arguably a far more important position than that of mere chef. You can survive without food for a while, but coffee? No way, you need that to get through all of the other jobs at camp, including cooking. (We had our own in the kitchen though.)

So she was important, got it, and she was also a mega talented singer and guitarist from NY. More so than anyone else I would hear perform at camp, even Pete with his heart on his sleeve and such powerful messages, Mary had this crazy amount of emotion in her voice. This awe inspiring feeling that poured out of her, she made you care, made you cry, made you believe. I didn't even know this at the time, at security that night I'd hear her noodling around inside, but wouldn't understand the full power of her talent until later on. Anyway, she and Andre popped in after leaving the party, maybe to show her the renovations we did earlier in the day, maybe so he could try to land a smooch on her during the private tour. One thing I remember her saying was "You guys just sit up here all night? In the cold?" Yeah, you could say that.

Still peeling garlic, looking back, I thought of the pair. I had seen a change in him starting that night and developing from then on. Turns out they had gotten romantically involved and would be an item throughout the winter, and she had him going to sweat. I saw him after his first sweat that winter (being Lakota, I'm sure he had sweat before) and it was like this wave of calm and relief had poured over him. So I thought of him and her and that made me think of another singer that had been there, Stephanie, whose sweet soft voice drew you in and made you hang onto every word. Thinking of her made me think of Summer, who had been her best friend at home before they came, one of the few that didn't come here knowing not a soul. And so it went, not on purpose or really even thinking about it, but as I peeled the garlic I thought of most of my brothers and sisters. Thinking more about those that I knew needed help, needed support, needed my words, needed my prayers. I wasn't praying for them right then, but I was thinking about them and hoping for the best.

Garlic was done and I realized that I had been cooking with love. Not on purpose. No more than I may have done before. I've always wanted the various families that I have been a part of to enjoy the food, be nourished and healthy, but this was different. It had been with this... this... feeling, this caring, the unparalleled compassion that I had developed for my new family. In a way I'd never loved a group of strangers, stranger than most anyway. The people that made me feel like I'd found my place in the world, the great thing that I was always meant to do and it was just getting started. I had put unintentional intention into the garlic, and once I finished, I could feel the energy that I had, not lost, but given. It felt good. Now I knew what cooking with love and intention meant, not that I wasn't doing it before to some degree unknowingly, but this was a whole new thing. It's changed the way I will think about and prepare garlic for the rest of my life, but more on that later, we got some pizza to make.

I gathered all of the ingredients, assured the masses (about seven people) that I would return with some type of pizza inspired, half botched laboratory creation and then I disappeared into the night. I love having help in the kitchen, sometimes. Sometimes it's nice to zen out for a while in silence. I would have some of the most amazing people assisting me and it was a true honor to have gotten the chance to spend the time that we did together. But this I needed to do alone. I needed the space and quiet to coalesce a plan that I could believe in. Plus, there was a good chance that I would mess it up, and all alone I could recover much more gracefully. In the kitchen, I began to brainstorm and smoked a cigarette. This would prove to be standard practice. Can't quite figure out what to do next? Or when to complete each step so that we'll have the pans we need to get everything done at the same time? Or why is everything so frozen? Smoke a roll up. Sometimes sitting on a stool staring into the pot of stew, or maybe walking around the spice rack looking for that secret ingredient that will bring it all to life (once the lawrys was gone at least), taking that moment to relax and think was exactly what was needed. I would often say that I'd never cook again in a kitchen that didn't let me smoke and serve what I want, when I want. We'll see.

I would use cigarettes as timers too, "Smoke this, then it's time to flip the biscuits." (Wait, biscuits?) So I cleared my head and it started coming together, cast iron was the way, may take a little winging it too. I grabbed the biggest piece I could find, not nearly as big as any of the pans I described before, just a normal sized pan with a lid. I would cook it as low as I could, hoping that the lid would capture enough heat to cook the top of the pie before the bottom burnt. That first night the toppings included the mushrooms that Brandon sauteed (delicious I might add), ground elk and broccoli. I had done broccoli pizza before, you just cut it up really small and it works great, looks pretty and is original enough that it gets you big points with the veggie loving hippie chicks. The elk and mushrooms were already cooked, but the broccoli needed some heat and more importantly, the dough needed to rise and not be dough anymore. Here goes nothing.

It took about two minutes before I realized that this was not going to work, oh crap, well, what do I do? Not quite enough time to smoke and think. Either way, I had to take the pizza out of the skillet in another minute or the bottom would be on the wrong side of extra crispy. Got it. I removed the pizza and threw it onto the flat top grill that sits on top of two of the propane burners. This flat top is a must-have for every camp, great for pancakes, and because of its amount of surface area as compared to two pans on the same burners, it's the most efficient way to cook so many things. But I wasn't cooking with it tonight, I just needed a flat metal operating surface to save this pizza on. With the pizza out, crispy bottom and doughy top that was seemingly untouched by any temperature above ten degrees, I turn the heat up to high. I waited as long as I could stand, certainly I'd earned a smoke by this point, and with the pan as hot as I could get it at nearly midnight in the late december north dakota darkness, I put it over the rapidly cooling pizza inspired dish. And waited. Hoping that the heat emitting from the piece of iron would do the trick. Eventually I had to check on it, knowing that I'd be letting precious energy escape from the makeshift oven. And...

It was working. The dough was transforming into crust. Still not there yet though. I waited a bit more and threw the skillet back onto the flame for another round and soon we were cooking again. I also had to remember that there was no yeast in the dough, may not rise at all. All of this may be fruitless even if I had discovered the future of camp pizza, the propane-fired delicacy that it was. And, waving my hand over the oven, feeling the heat waves and assuming I'd just know when it was done, again waiting until I decided that it was now or never and it was now. It worked. It looked like pizza, smelled like pizza and yep, tasted like pizza. We had done it. I knew it was only a prototype, had a lot to be improved upon, but it was pizza. Pizza was possible. Anything was possible. It had lost its crisp bottom because the steam from the toppings was trapped in the "oven," and the top never got anywhere near crispy, but it was done, not a bit of dough left.

Side note: I think this method would work excellently on a fire, just use a semi flat warm stone, crisp the bottom in the iron, transfer to stone, cover with pan and cover with coals. It will cook way faster than the contrived plan I'd come up with, dutch oven style with just a pan.

I sliced it, couldn't find the pizza cutter that I knew we had, so I used a knife and got it over to the mess hall faster than any pizza delivery service in the history of the pie. I walked in, eyes lit up when they saw I had returned, I played the "now remember, I said this was just an experiment..." card, and voila, one delicious elk, mushroom and broccoli pizza pie. Raves of how good it looked, then silence, a hush fell over the crowd... fantastic. I of course knew that it was pretty sub-par, soft bottom and even softer top, and this would be the first of many times that I would credit it to the lowered standards of being at camp for so long. "I could feed you guys anything and you'd love it, even ramen." Now granted, the mushrooms Brandon made were off the chain and the elk broccoli combo was on point, plus the sauce might just have been something to write home about. The sauce from scratch, laden with the fanciful smelling garlic and onions, the garlic that I had accidentally poured my heart into and was possibly what gave the dish it's mesmerizing effect over the group. The same group that was there as I prepped the garlic, ensuring that they got special attention in my subconscious thought process. The very people that I prayed for as I poured my heart into the food. It was as if they could taste the love. But... it was probably just because it was pizza. The last thing you'd expect to be delivered in the middle of the night out here on this iceberg.

Ernie had also arrived while I had been in the kitchen, so great, the man that I cooked with first, elk at that, and he got to be here as I made this next step on my journey. And of course he loved it too, it was pizza. Also just arrived were the Alabamas, they had returned from town, yeast in hand. We were in business, although even writing the word business seems foreign to me now. There was no economy at Standing Rock, only giving.

With the ingredient list finally complete, I made enough dough for four more pizzas and went to work. Pete came to help me in the kitchen, a true blessing and inspiration to be around, but sometimes a little scatterbrained, gotta love him though. We cranked 'em out, a half-hour per pizza with the two rounds of heat necessary. We tried different techniques of letting steam escape, cook times and at which point in the process we added toppings. Nothing really improved it, except the wonderful, wonderful yeast, which made a much more familiar dough that was easier to work with and always did its job. When I made the dough of course, I had to proof it by the woodstove, the only place warm enough for it to sort of rise. I would later work with love and yeast (possible book title) but for now the garlic is enough of a revelation. While we were making the second round, a quiet Hawaiian man that I had not yet met came in to stoke the fires. Yeah, unless you want icy eggs and frozen water jugs in the morning, someone has to keep the fires going.

We wouldn't talk that much that night, just a few anecdotes about making blizzard pizza. I would worry that he was taking note of the mess that had become of the kitchen, flour all over the table from tossing dough, bowls of toppings and utensils everywhere, plus a three-part cooking process operated with sand and levers and other technologies unknown to modern man. I of course would clean it all up, in those days I was just a squatter in the kitchen. It was in essence, the community's kitchen, there to use if you were going to cook for the community, so I was within protocol, I think. It was an unsanctioned middle of the night food laboratory, but I figured that as long as I cleaned everything and left no trace that I'd be good. Working in the middle of the night gave me space to cook without being in any of the proper kitchen staff's way. I hadn't even met the head chefs yet, only talked to them briefly when I was making onion tea, but I should be fine, it was pizza after all. Who knows what the Hawaiian was thinking, these crazy hippies trying to cook pizza at two in the morning, gotta be stoned. We weren't, although I think we did come across a bowl pack right before we made the final dessert pizza with chopped up candy bars and fruit sauce and drizzles... So good.

The Hawaiian, one of the calmest, coolest, most gentle and selfless people I have ever met, was Harry. He was part of the kitchen crew, not just the firetender as I had been at security, and he had some actual kitchen skills. He had been there longer than me and would stay till the end, so if anyone tells you that I was the head chef don't believe it, Harry's in charge. He was a surfer, I had tried twice, so I had at least a story of sucking at it to relate to him. He would also report commonly that his tipi was sixteen degrees inside, no matter how cold it got outside. He wouldn't build a fire, honestly, once it gets as cold as it did, sixteen degrees sounds pretty nice, plus we had good sleeping bags. Don't worry about us, we were the ice protectors, at least that's what it felt like.

Pizzas complete, cleanup done, we left three slices on a plate for the breakfast crew and clocked out. Cold leftover pizza for breakfast, certainly that would earn us another chance in the kitchen, and it did. We delivered half a pizza to security, I think it was Ronan on shift. If you thought the standards were low in the mess hall, you should try the isolated fire with a solitary guardian at wee hours of the morning. He liked it. On the way back there was a situation, a water situation, sounds like it's right up our alley.

The final couple of pizzas had attracted some spectators in the kitchen, one of who was Wendy. She was one of our strongest protectors, a person who would inspire me to be a better me. She could channel all of her energy into helping people, in a selfless way that put whatever I was dabbling around with to shame. She was the type you had to force to sit down and take a break every once in a while, you should probably breathe, and of course I would eventually accuse her of being a robot. That was the only way someone like her could exist. Always on. Always full of energy for the next task. Always the first one to volunteer for any and every project. We were all there to help, and many were quick to jump up at any opportunity to do so, but she was something else. And always operating on little sleep it seemed, or whatever recharging system she had back at her camp. I also considered that she could be a daplbot, but ended up concluding that I didn't care, as long as they worked like her, we'd take a hundred more. We would develop a profound respect for one another, inspiring each other and providing advice in times that no one else's words would do, more so than anyone else at camp. I wanted Wendy on my team.

It wasn't just the faith I had in her, but her faith in me gave me a stronger sense of responsibility to be the best that I could, couldn't let my idol down. Her believing in me made me believe in me. I first remember meeting her at the woodpile a day or two earlier. I was getting firewood for my new sweet living situation, what, I didn't mention that? Hmm... sure seems like something I would have mentioned. Here I go leading you on to think that I'm living in an igloo still. Truth was, I did still stay there because of its private status, but I now had a cool new spot as well.

It was one night that I was grabbing dinner, looked for a pretty face to sit with and there was Stephanie, empty seat waiting for me beside her and everything. We had only talked briefly a few times, but she was the only one I'd found that was into the same music as me, so I was determined to get to know her. I took a seat and the table was already mid-conversation, about music production. Whoa, there were other button pushers here. The culprits were Thomas, who I knew previously as one of the biggest fans of onion tea, and Henry, who would see a part of me that few ever make it to. Henry was a music guy, a composer, and was here using those skills to help indigenous people to capture their music and traditions. He also worked with the youth council, teaching them the technology that will empower them to share and change the world. He did all this at the M.A.S.H. tent, Media Artists Saving Humanity. He had solar power, a few microphones, his macbook, cables and far more than anyone would have imagined of an ice encrusted recording studio. (Says the guy with two computers still in his tent.) I stopped by the next day and it was settled, I'd set my iMac up and have a secure location to store my camera. Well, as secure as it could be with an unlocked wooden door operated by a pull string, but there would normally be someone there and to seal the deal, I could sleep there too. I could bring the cot that a friend had left me and have a woodstove heated place to sleep, near my computer and solar power. Score.

I had to pick up my bed every day, this was a communal space and so it was only home once everyone had cleared out. This was a more private communal space, so it worked out well, but I highly recommend not making your home in public spaces. May sound like a no-brainer, but I've seen it plenty and it does have its advantages. By all means take up a cot if you're tired, if you don't want to trek across camp in the snow and wind just to have to struggle to start an icy pine fire, sleep here tonight. I've done it, that's what they're there for, makes it really easy to get up for breakfast too. Those cots are great when a carload of newbies show up at night without a plan on where they would stay. (This probably isn't the best approach. Many planned on staying in their car, which works in a lot of climates, but here could be either deadly or would wastefully burn hours of the very fuel we were supposed to despise. Try to get in contact with someone at camp, just find someone who seems to be in the know online, let them know that you're coming and try to show up early in the day. There's a lot going on at camp and arranging housing for people takes time and energy. Of course, strive to be self-sufficient.)

But if you take up residence on a cot in the mess hall, it can no longer help a weary traveler. There was one guy, Three Feathers, who had a roaming night shift job and took up shop in the mess hall. He would stay mummied up in his bag and pop out whenever the fireside conversation piqued his interest. He'd get up with strong opinions, arguments and frustrations about whatever political or religical topic was on, remind us that he had bronchitis and then get back in his bag. Bronchitis? Maybe you shouldn't sleep in the most communal place at camp, the place where we all eat and drink. We won't call it a rule, but a strong suggestion of courtesy for the well-being of your family. Also, couldn't get him to drink onion tea, tried so hard. How bout some "Super Happy Fun Juice?"

There are perks for the public snoozer, you don't have to run home and build a fire, this was the most-watched fire all of camp. And once everyone has left, however late or early it was that night, you were there to keep the fire going into the morning, very noble indeed. And... you never missed anything. You wouldn't sleep through an action at the front line, you were always ready for a raid, you were prepared for a big... box of homemade cookies to arrive. But you don't miss a thing. You woke up early when the dishes were clanging around, kids running about, bumping into your cot and endless chatter abounding. I once heard about someone asleep in the mess hall complaining that the overnight fire tender was being too loud, nah, you gotta suck that one up. Wouldn't it be a lot nicer to have a more secluded sleeping arrangement? Nicer for everyone.

But my deal was different, I came in late from whatever mission I was fresh off of, stoked the fire and crawled in my bag. Henry would wake me up around ten, or whenever he needed the space, and we would have some of the deepest conversations about spirit and love. Both of us learning so much from each other and our paths. Then I would pack up and leave. Never knew I was there. Henry had been recording indigenous music before this, working with the Navajo and doing work in South America. He had been on his spiritual journey for longer than I had, although he was a good bit younger, and it was pretty cool how he had been called to Standing Rock. Long before he knew of the camps, maybe even before the camps were a thing, he had been on a spirit quest and had a vision of many things that he didn't quite understand at the time, but would later become obvious descriptions of our movement and camp. The most memorable was the word, not a picture, what he saw was the word "Plains." What could it mean at the time? Then when he discovered what was happening in ND, it would all click.

We exchanged love stories, he had some, I had some, similar enough that digging deeper seemed to happen naturally. I was getting pretty experienced at love, or my ever-evolving idea of it, and I think my perspective really struck a chord with him as we developed a strong mutual respect for one another on a deep personal level. We admired each others paths. He also asked me once, "Are you ever not happy? Is your energy always like this?" Yeah, I'm mostly happy all the time. Certainly there are ups and downs, but I see humor in everything, even the bad stuff. Sometimes I may be hurting inside and dealing with it by making a joke. It may be a coping mechanism, and it may only be me projecting happiness, but it converts the negative energy into a positive one. If I can genuinely create a positive, from the heart, loving energy, even in times of duress, then it can start a snowball effect and get me through the pain. So many times, not even at camp, just in my life, I've been a little off inside and projected more happiness than I felt. Told a joke, got a laugh, started a funny back and forth in the group and soon enough everyone is buckled over, good positive energy everywhere, love, and suddenly you don't feel so bad after all. A shot of laughter with a love back, pretty good medicine I'd say. Certainly better than descending on a downward spiral of negative energy, always harping on the worst and expecting more of it to come. Think happy thoughts. You gotta think happy thoughts to fly.

With my newfound need for firewood at home, I eagerly ran off to get a load one morning before I started my day, wanted to show that I was grateful for the hospitality and kindness I had been extended. So I'm loading up my arms as full as I can manage at the woodpile (All of the sleds I saw were either loaded or being used. Sleds are so very important in a snow camp. Bring sleds. Send them with other donations. Sleds sleds sleds.) and I hear this cheerful voice from above. "Can I help you with that brother?"

Wendy. Forgot I was going somewhere with this, huh? Now we had already learned, and it was good practice in the right situations, that there's not a need to ask if someone needs help, just help. If you see that you can be of assistance, don't ask the obvious, that only puts them in a position to seemingly have to ask for help, just jump in and do what you already knew needed to be done. Not that there's anything wrong with asking for help, it's tough sometimes and something that I would struggle with, but it's a sign of a true leader who knows that we are the strongest as a community. All that being said, use your judgment, take a hint, sometimes someone genuinely doesn't need or want the help. It may be their zen time. Their meditation. Their garlic. So here's the robot, ready to load her arms and follow me on my mission. The first of many missions that would build this bond that we share. We had our official introduction and hauled some wood, worked so good that we hauled some more to the mess hall too. (with a sled this time) And now today, she had joined the pizza party, oh yeah, pizza, and now we clocked out of the kitchen and into the water crew.

The watershed was a wooden structure by main street, in front of the kitchen, right next to the community woodpile. There were three 250 gallon cube containers on one side and a massive round water vessel called the water buffalo on the other. My first experience with the water buffalo had been trying. Everything was frozen. There were propane heaters that would warm the building sometimes, but the spigots where the water was the thinnest froze easily, did I mention that it was cold out there? Frozen water would continue to test our ability to problem-solve, adapt and survive. Now one might suggest "Just melt snow, duh." Great idea, it solves the issue entirely. Endless amounts of snow we could melt down for endless pots of coffee, for cooking, drinking, cleaning, would be the best way to conserve this precious natural resource. Plus I'd found a bottle of snow cone flavoring that a donor with a fun sense of humor sent us. Except that we had recently confirmed what was rumored to be the case, what many thought possible but it just couldn't be reality, that would be too much, nobody would actually do that to another human. There were chemicals in the snow.

We had sent some to a lab and there were several contaminants in it, the largest concentration being silver nitrate. I had heard of crop dusters flying over camp before I arrived, and daily there was a bright yellow daplcopter flying super low all over camp, but I hadn't seen anything more than that at this point. I would eventually see a small snow-like fluff falling after a late night unlit plane flew over, not a cloud in the sky. That's messed up man. A different kind of evil. There were obviously all sorts of rumors about what the chemicals were intended for. Some said they had been sprayed into the air to produce snow, a compound that would attract water molecules and freeze, that explained why we had so much more snow than surrounding areas. Another theory, presented as fact but, you know, was that it was there to help them with surveillance technology. Coating the whole camp and providing a map when viewed through fancy equipment, it did explain why we got a new coat after every snow.

But the most believed theory... We were being poisoned. People were sick all the time, different symptoms, but like I said earlier, that is to be expected in these conditions. As the winter went on though, we all developed the same dapl cough and felt a strong feeling of lethargy set in over the camp. One person later told me his theory about it being something "less-lethal" that coated the lungs, reducing oxygen intake, which would lower immune systems to whatever various illness they took on. Would make everyone feel tired, irritable, run down and would cause the familiar sound of the dapl hackle. But going to sweat helped, the superheated water vapor broke it loose. And so did onions. And so did weed. But we were already breathing enough of whatever it was to not feel the need to supplement our food with it too. So we didn't eat the snow, yellow or otherwise. Well, Pete still did, he figured that with everything he had been sprayed with at the front line, this couldn't be any worse. Wild Card. We did wash dishes with it for the first half of the winter, boiling snow was a constant task in the kitchen, and it takes a lot of snow to make just a little bit of water, dapl snow anyway. It would always leave a thick white frothy foam on top, but that wasn't the craziest thing about it. I never filmed this but I so wish that I had, if you put a handful of snow on the table and held a lighter to it, it would melt. Not melt like ice, but melt like the cellophane on a slice of cheese, like plastic, globbing down the sides and even leaving a char mark where it touched the flame. Water doesn't burn.

So we had gotten a water delivery, which was just a big tank on a big pickup truck. They had already siphoned as much as they could into the containers in the shed, but there was three hundred gallons on the truck still. Due to the mechanics of siphoning fluid and his possible parking spots, we just couldn't get it out. So seven of us jumped right in. A fireman's line to move five gallon container after container, returning the empties back to the front. Two of us filling, three handing them off, one lifting to the top of the water container cubes and another pouring them in, five gallons at a time. 300 gallons. Three or four in the morning. Late december. Negative twenty degrees. And loved every minute of it. We were singing and laughing (as quietly as we could manage) and enjoying the opportunity to spend time with our family. Such good energy emanating from the crowd. Plus, we had just eaten pizza. This was the first time that it got that cold. Negative twenty degrees. Twenty below. How can you even imagine that degree of cold? After a minute, and not the vague, all encompassing meaning of minute, synonymous with moment, while, bit and confusingly a second, but one quartz powered minute and you could feel frostbite trying to tingle its way into your fingertips. Beards were covered in icicles, warm dish water would freeze before you could finish getting the food scraped out, it was so cold sometimes that cardboard had trouble burning. This was only the beginning, buckle up (or down) and prepare for a bumpy winter.

I left the water team exhausted. My last twenty-four hours had been a music-a-thon at Echo3, sleep a bit, onion tea, my first life changing sweat, first pizza attempt (including garlic revelation) and now water hauling after dark. It was time to rest... In my brand new deluxe army tent in the snow. Certainly it would be warm, probably needing a fire stoke and I was definitely excited to curl up for a little campfire and chill. But Henry wasn't home. There was no fire. It was cold, maybe negative nineteen and a half inside. Only a few days ago I had still been sleeping in the igloo, but this was the coldest cold I had ever known, up until that point at least.

It was time to build a fire, I crumpled some cardboard and started splitting little pieces to get it going. Luckily, in this temperature, cardboard would still burn, but that was the only thing. The wet, green, frozen pine was not very forgiving that night. Three times I got a small fire going, burning the smallest of pieces that I shaved down, but that was it. I couldn't get anything bigger than my pinky finger to burn, and even that took so much heavy breathing. I was exhausted after three rounds, smoke inhalation probably not helping, I was ready to call it quits. And I did. I remembered the water protector who had trouble with her fire and turned out that a chimney inferno was imminent. I get it. I'm going to sleep. I dug into the army bag, plus I had the super fuzzy warm blanket inside, and curled up as tight as I could. Once you got those things warm, they did such a good job, but with frozen limbs it took a while for my body heat to build up. I was thoroughly defeated, the fire had won, so I slept.
Step Four:

After expending all my energy on the fire, breathing in a bit of it here and there, and then the accompanying long cold winter night, I woke up sick. Yes, sick, me, mister onion tea, unable to prevent his own downfall. Truth was, I had only been taste testing the tea, it had always been gone so quickly with everyone else who needed it. I still felt great, so I wasn't at all prepared for this. But I got up, had to, it was still so cold in here and I knew that there was a big beautiful double barrel woodstove calling my name, plus I needed supplies. I made it to the mess hall, dragging, and took up by the fire. It's easy to tell when I'm sick, my energy is completely drained, you can see it in my face and feel it in my lack of something funny to say. So friends noticed. I agreed to go to Pete's and take a nap by the fire, but first I had to get an emergency dose of that good good.

Step one: Eat a quarter of a raw onion, a clove of garlic and an equally sized chunk of ginger. Frozen onion was way easier to eat, but I think it also downplayed its helpfulness. Take a few bites of one and when the burn sets in, switch, and then a few bites of another and switch. They almost relieve each other, especially a juicy sweet onion. They not only have very strong medicinal value once they get into your system, but the burn immediately starts to clear out your congestion before you're even done eating them. One morning I came into the mess hall feeling very out of it, lethargic, run-down and cloudy headed. I did this and halfway through, I coughed up a giant chunk and felt ten times better. Then kept eating and did it again, ten times better again. So it made me feel a hundred times better in five minutes, and moments later I was in the kitchen doing jumps and spins.

Congestion. Phlegm. Mucus. I had an enlightening conversation once about mucus, over dinner I imagine, about its connection to other serious ailments. This incredible mother told me that the Chinese describe autism as having too much mucus. Whether this means too much total, or a buildup in one particular place or another I'm not sure, but she had done the seemingly unimaginable. Through diet, she had almost completely relieved her child from any sign of this condition. Without any of the medication that big pharmaceutical tells you is needed. Without over-processed genetically modified foods that affect our bodies in ways we can't even begin to test for. Certainly no gluten. There was actually even a woman who had been more successful than her and had written a book about it, if it personally affects you, you should probably look it up. Now, I don't know how far out on the spectrum her daughter was, but this was still such an inspiring story that I couldn't forget. Inspiring that we can cure something like this with food, and simultaneously depressing that this condition is intensified and possibly brought on by the very products that have been pushed on us, in the name of profit. Cheaper, faster, faker industrialized food. No thanks.

So the onion garlic deal got me through to the next level, then I tracked down some elderberry concentrate. Elderberry was my go-to before onions, it is a super immune booster and is used to treat everything from common colds and the flu, to asthma, aids and cancer. Super juice, and it tastes a lot better than step one. I downed a packet of Emergen-C, I used to swear by it, but I hardly use them now. They do help though, especially if you don't have all the natural remedies that we had at camp. I never even made it to the herbalist tent, we were truly in abundance with an abundance of knowledge throughout the camp on anything and everything.

I drank a bunch of water. A lot. Water is life. This had been going on the whole time, it's the only way to get through the onion and stuff. Then I derived a method of making a quick, single serving cup of onion tea. I certainly didn't have it in me to make a full batch. I cut the onion, garlic and ginger, squeezed the lemon (sometimes throwing in a peel as well) and honey (yes, we had to squeeze the honey out of frozen jugs), a dash of the turmeric/black pepper combo and an even smaller dash, tiniest bit, a fleck of cayenne pepper. Put all that into a mason jar, fill with hot water, we normally had it readily available for tea, give it a good shaking, some time to brew and there you go. Onion tea to go. Single serving edition. Drank it. Went to Pete's. Passed out.

Woke up. Completely better. One hundred. Fresh and energized. Ready for a brand new beautiful day. It was still afternoon, I still had time to do something today. Anything. I had such a full day yesterday and had successfully completed the one project I'd been pondering, so today was wide open, anything was possible. I popped by the kitchen to make sure that they knew that there was some pizza, check, it had been devoured hours earlier. Somehow we started talking about the pantry, which I had recently rooted around in on the search for secret ingredients, and I now had my new project. Pantry 2.0.

The pantry was a wreck, it was an army tent the size of the kitchen and had started overflowing. We were so blessed. People had donated so much, and such good stuff. The pantry had all of the canned items and the produce mainly, but there was also some bread, oil, vinegar, a literal ton of peanut butter and a giant shelf of coffee. Oh the coffee. Camp coffee, that's for another time though I'm afraid. There was also two woodstoves in there, and for a long time someone would stoke the fires through the night. We finally stopped because it was constantly causing the produce to thaw just a little and then refreeze, not so good. It looked like the pantry was probably working great for a long time, but then a rush of donations flooded in before winter did and it just couldn't handle it. I had been able to commandeer one person to help, this would be a project for sure, and who else could one hope for on their team? Wendy. Nice.

The plan was simple, but might look crazy for a bit, we were going to move everything on the right half to the left half and build some new shelves on the right. Then, move it all back and do it again on the other side. Sounds good to me, we worked into the night sorting through piles of cans, an endless supply of beans and an overpopulation of corn. So many awesome, unique items too, like canned kiwi. There were blank cans that were just labeled "Pork in Juices," cans of clams, mangoes and lychees, so much enchilada and mole sauce and all of the ingredients for cashew chicken. My favorite fruit discovery was cases of peaches in pear juice, where did all the peach juice go? We also found a stash of homemade cookies that, what we didn't devour right then, we decided to save for a special occasion, like the couple day away christmas for example. I found a box of tropical fruit juice, perfectly slushied (we must have still been burning fires at that point) and perfectly complimenting the secret cookies. We were definitely the lucky ones. We worked late, even getting Jeanie's help with the massive pile of cans, and as we finished up phase one, plans were made for an early start in the morning.

Early at this point meant ten, but that would fluctuate throughout the winter. Breakfast was served religiously between nine and one, unless we were feeling spunky coming off of an all-nighter and hit an earlier mark. I frequently made the announcement that I was no breakfast chef. I could do it if I had to, if when I got up it wasn't under way, or maybe if I was still awake, but don't depend on me to provide an early meal at a reasonable time. Remember what time I served that first lunch? I didn't even have a clock at my house. For now, Henry would wake me up to let me know when it was ten, but once I moved on from there, I would be completely clueless.

Not having the time at camp wasn't generally an issue, and there was a clock in the mess hall and the kitchen, so if there was a meeting to attend you could keep up with it. The whole camp ran on "indian time" anyway. It happened when it happened you had a vague idea of a schedule, but something always came up on the way, someone to help, a crisis to narrowly avert, a bowl to smoke. We were all on our path, trusting that we were always in the right place. If something came up and you got sidetracked, we didn't stress over it, we knew that everything would work out, maybe the whole point of the first mission was so that you would cross paths with someone who needed the exact thing you were good at. There were a couple of times that I started getting a little anxious, waiting on a meeting to end because I had work to do, but a deep breath and a reminder of how it always works out and I was good. So not having a watch, no big deal, unless of course you're the chef that everyone is depending on, so... I don't do breakfast. Of course, we ended up starting dinner at ten in the morning in the thick of the deep freeze, but that's another story.

Henry woke me up promptly at ten, but we got sidetracked in deep conversation of the universe and love. This was a place where "Sorry, I got into a conversation" was a valid alibi. So many conversations were eye-opening, inspiring, informative and life-changing, so by all means take it all in. I didn't end up back at the pantry till noon, but we worked pretty solid into the night so I think that makes up for it. The supplies were easy to wrangle, just walk outside knowing you'd find them, maybe ask around to just one or two people and you'd have everything you needed. Including 2x4 and plywood panels, already made to the exact length of the wooden floor platform that they would be standing on. See what I mean?

We almost finished that place up in a day, but once it got late, and after much deliberation, we decided that neither the hammer nor the drill were quite quiet enough for late-night construction. During the same day we had been shown the hoop house, the structure used for dry storage and where we needed to take all of the dry goods loitering in the pantry. It was constructed of curved pieces of PVC and tarps with a piece of plywood as the door on the front. We first had to organize this space before we could begin hauling sled loads from the pantry. Always something. There were large stacks of 25 and 50 lb bags of flour, rice, beans and almost as much sugar. Tubs and boxes of oats, quinoa, cornmeal, a bunch of pasta and other assorted goodies. Found a tub of granola which I put aside for a project I had in mind, lots of dried mushrooms and peppers, plus even more ramen than was in the mess hall. Also stacks of military MREs and dehydrated emergency food, we weren't quite at the point of needing to break into those, but we stacked them right at the door so that if things got crazy they'd be easy to access...

Those couple of days are probably when Wendy and I's bond really began to grow, a mutual respect for each others work ethic that would continue to inspire the both of us to be the best versions of ourselves possible. Also inspired in those pantry days was a long list of sweet treats that we could possibly make for christmas, it was only a couple of days away and with my newfound database of ingredients, it would be silly not to concoct something. Without an oven. Well, that kind of changes things. Talked about pies, maybe not the traditional method, but camp style, probably deep fried pie fritters. That's where I was leaning when we found the crispy rice cereal, of course, no oven needed there. We did need marshmallows though. I found one bag but that wouldn't cut it, so I just talked about crispy treats all day, and marshmallows, and by dark I had more than enough. Even more powerful than manifestation, is the promise of sweets. They wouldn't be enough alone, they're pretty good, but basic, and the pizza had already set the standard that I don't mess around, so we certainly had to keep that going. No oven, no oven, no oven...ah, fudge.

I've never made fudge, but I had watched my mom. She always made the desserts for family gatherings, which was great if you were a spoonlicker or didn't mind the broken reject cookies. I felt like I was channeling her energy, making sweets out of love for my family. It was christmas eve, we had finished the shelves and almost had them loaded, it was almost even organized looking. I found a fudge recipe on the back of a can of sweetened condensed milk, which I had to manifest in the first place, all these cans and not until the third day when we were almost done did I run across any. Guess I didn't need it til then. I had the ingredients. I had the time. Just needed the equipment. To the kitchen. I popped in and Suzy was prepping for dinner, I started gathering gear and she said "You know, it's great and all that you're making desserts and pizzas, but..."

Oh no, here we go, did I leave a mess? Were my kitchen privileges about to be revoked before they'd even officially been instated? A stern talking-to least? "...but, I could definitely use some help in here for meals too." Whew. I wasn't in trouble, I was being recruited, and I got to skip the standard dirty dishes initiation process. Sweet. I told her I'd love to, I actually had free time right now if she could use a hand, didn't really want to start on desserts until the less crowded night time anyway. She said sure and asked if I minded doing garlic, but I didn't have to do something so boring if I didn't want to. Garlic? Are you kidding? I got this.

We talked and got to know each other while I peeled and chopped. She was actually from asheville too, so we had plenty to gossip about, even had a mutual friend back home. She was cool, calm and collected like me, so we instantly meshed in the kitchen. I would cook with several people over the winter, but she was special. It was our energy in there together that would hang around long after she left and make the kitchen so centering to spend time in. I cut all of the garlic, four heads, we negotiated a bit and landed on four heads. For every dish from then on, always four heads, if it was a garlic based meal anyway, but that was pretty much all of them. Only once did we overdose on it, one night with pasta, garlic bread and garlic mashed potatoes. Twelve heads total, she had heartburn but I was fine, so whatevs.

I did onions too, and then chopped up some type of meat. Some type of meat? Mystery meat. Unmarked meat. Random leg of this or roast of that, we had all sorts of stuff like that. A lot of hunters had brought us their scores, some labeled in detail including how many points the buck had, but lots had little indication of what was contained. And it was all frozen, so there was no proper investigation into it. Just wing it. Do what feels right. So I chopped it up, think it was beef, maybe. And now it was time for Suzy and I to attempt our first kitchen challenge as the newly formed dream team. Both of us preferred making sauce from scratch, but at this point in the day that was a little too ambitious, we had to doctor some jarred sauce to meet our strict guidelines and standards. I popped over to the pantry to get some and, oh hey... Wendy... yeah... I kinda got sidetracked with a new camp career, indian time, you know, so... you got this right? Of course she did, she's a machine.

Turns out, making frozen jars of prego taste homemade is harder than making sauce from scratch, a theme that would continue through Suzy and I's kitchen relationship. We added the garlic and onions, herbs and spices, more herbs and spices, but still too sweet. Vinegar, pepper, more herbs and got it. Not too bad. We had completed our first project together, a christmas eve, mystery meat, store-bought sauce, spaghetti dinner. And it rocked.

Everyone was beginning to feel festive, many people's first christmas away from their families at home, including mine. But we were here with our new family and friends, I didn't see any homesickness, we were all finally home. It was a great dinner, not just the food, the ambiance was most spectacular. People had begun to decorate the mess hall with a few strings of lights and stuffed animals that had been donated as christmas gifts. And there was music. Everyone up late sharing the guitar, the first time I had experienced a night like this in the mess hall. But no christmas songs, never heard a one, and don't think I didn't mention to manifest one. So I just sang my own winter wonderland in the compost toilets. What? It had great acoustics.

While they were entertaining the masses and too preoccupied to notice that I was getting the sugar out, I prepared the fudge laboratory. There's definitely a science to fudge, you have to get the right amounts of stuff into it first, but we didn't really use measuring cups or spoons, so wing it. Then it has to be cooked in a double boiler and constantly stirred so that it doesn't burn. What could possibly go wrong? Nothing so far, seemed to be working great. Still had to pour the liquid fudge into pans and let it set into something edible, hopefully not too hard and not too soft, a real Goldilocks situation. So I needed somewhere cold to put them so they could become fudge. Luckily, anywhere I set them would work, literally anywhere except on top of the woodstove at the other end of the tent. The real trick was finding a spot that wouldn't get raided in the night by the late-night munchies, or santa.

I had four batches of fudge and they all turned out perfect. It was so tasty, soft and firm, some with nuts, just like a friday night on the outside. It was a christmas miracle, especially considering that I eyeballed the butter out of a thirty pound frozen block. I made the crispy treats, the easier of the two tasks, you would have thought anyway. They turned out great until the unavoidable cold set into them. When I left them they were soft and chewy, but when the serving temperature is forty degrees below normal, they get a little crunchy. So, I think add more butter than normal, that should fix them, never tried again though. Of course there were no complaints, everyone was too excited to devour the childhood favorite and they were still super yummy. I stashed all of the sweets, took a minute once I realized that I had to hide them from not only the late-night munchers, but also from the all-knowing noses of our neighborhood's dog patrol.

There were a bunch of dogs at camp, along with a couple of cats and a rogue ferret. I'd originally encountered the ferret in the first week when she crawled into a warm tipi overnight and ended up in Jeremy's jacket by breakfast. But the dogs, they had their own thing going on, Rosebud canines did at least. There were a lot of stray/lost/abandoned dogs and even a pet shelter for a while. Often, people had to leave in a hurry, emergency exit in the face of impending doom, and I'm sure a few pups that liked to wander got left behind. Also, there were rumors that stray dogs from the rez were being dropped off at camp, just to get rid of them and bring them somewhere safe or maybe even just to mess with us. And then, once word got around in the dog community that there was a camp full of food and dog people, you'd see some dogs making the two mile hike from Cannonball, the closest town. But the water protectors were dog people, for sure, most of the dogs got adopted and some nursed back to health. The Rosebud dog squad was something else. Since we were all such a tight family, dogs could have their run of the camp without too much worry. After all, this was the suburbs to the big city of Oceti. I guess Sacred Stone were the wackadoos out in the sticks, the hill people unaffected by city politics.

Once, I heard a story of a secret dog mission, one pup went door-to-door briefing the other dogs and excitedly they all took off. We later put two and two together and remembered the tossed out deer leg that I had seen a team of dogs trying to pin down. Tonight most of the animals were in bed for the night already, but there was one that I needed to worry about, Buddy, James's dog. James is Smokey's son, and Smokey was the leader of the camp. I'd get to know Smokey more later and James and I had hardly spoken, but we would eventually build a strong brotherhood. We would find that we could talk junk to each other and neither would get butthurt. We could also talk about heavy issues. But mainly he just liked my cooking. Our relationship was slow to develop, but I know how to earn my way into the boss's heart. Late night pizza is a pretty good start. He would call me "Chef" all winter, at first because he couldn't remember my real name and then as a term of endearment. I would call him "Boss." What you cheffing up tonight? What you want boss, sweets or meats? Usually we ended up doing both. So on christmas eve we'd barely even met, but I'd managed to convince him to wait until tomorrow for his just desserts, but Buddy was another story. James had a dog at home, but he wasn't here, so he took in Buddy. Buddy was cool, friendly, chill and most certainly able to find a pan of crispy treats. So I hid them on the top shelf deep inside of a mountain of ramen, no one will ever see them, and they didn't. I went to bed, excited to see how amazing christmas with my new family would be. Wouldn't have been surprised if I'd seen reindeer prints. Just got to believe.

I believed that it was time for a breakfast treat that had been burning a hole in my pocket. Rise and shine, what a beautiful day. I'm hungry. In the pantry a few days ago I had found a can of corned beef hash, the fresh made version of which is my favorite breakfast. So with only one can it only made sense to eat it all in a completely self-gratifying moment of runny egg and cheese mixed with the canned delicacy. Happy. Today was going to be a great day. Understatement of the year in a year of understatements. Check on the fudge, awesome, must be all the love I stirred in, I don't even know how to make fudge. I stepped into the kitchen to see what I could help with on this glorious day, asked Suzy and Jan, "Well... we were thinking... maybe you could... grill the steaks?" Heck yeah I can. That sounded like the thing I would like to do most in the world. How cool was that? So you said there was a grill somewhere? "Wellll..."

So the consensus was that at the outside of the northeast corner of the tent, buried in a few feet of snow, there might possibly maybe be a grill. Got it. But I didn't get it. Dug all around to no avail. Plan B? "Well, we do have that thing over there." Over there was a small grill designed to sit on two burners of our three burner stove. I have nothing but the highest regard for this kitchen gadget. I will tell you of ways we pushed this guy passed the boundaries of the possible, well, boundaries of the sane at least. I'll also put this in any list of ideal kitchen equipment, if you must use gas that is, but I have to save some stories for later too, this is a long book. And the steaks. Oh man. A few days earlier, Organic Valley, an amazing supporter of the movement with regular deliveries to all of the camps, had brought a pickup loaded to the gills. Bunch of milk, bunch of cheese, some half and half, sour cream, heavy cream, other stuff I'm sure and an obscene amount of steaks. Top quality grass-fed beef. NY strips, ribeyes and filets, oh my. Obviously we saved them for a christmas meal to remember, and the day would prove to be an unforgettable one for sure.

With steaks my only official kitchen detail, I had plenty of time to construct the most impressive spread of desserts that a frozen army tent in the icy dakota plains had ever seen, at least mid-blizzard. Oh yeah, there was going to be a three-day snow dump rolling in today. Sweet. White christmas. (Might have just taken that understatement title.) In my pantry mission, I saw the big box of homemade cookies and immediately knew we had a proper dessert table in a box, just had to test a few to make sure they were still good. At about noon I couldn't wait any longer, this was going to be an all-day party. Everyone had given up their previous lives to be here, standing up for such a very important cause that we all felt so passionately about and spending their holidays in such a foreign world. The least I could do was take care of my family, reassure them that they were in the right place, and we all knew we were.

The cookie donations, made with love from our supporters all around the country, made for a fantastic spread. Four different varieties of chocolate chip, sugar, snickerdoodle, brownie, oatmeal, and so many others. Most with heartwarming, personal notes to the water protectors. So many people loved us for being there, wished they could be, and these notes inspired us to stay at it. They gave even more purpose to what we were doing. Again, thank you, thank you, thank you to each and every person that took the time and thought to provide for us. The manifestation station here was amazing, and only happened because as we were putting our energy into the universe, our brothers and sisters at home were undoubtedly being called to help us. We are all so very grateful. We were the lucky ones. Thank you.

The cookie table was full, still had my goodies to serve though, so after a careful consolidation the spread was complete, campmade fudge and all. The solar system was acting up that day, so the cookie table was candle lit. Still pretty sure everything happens for a reason. It was so beautiful. And for those who didn't know it was in the works, it was such a decadent surprise. Gratuitous cookie spread. I don't mess around. We had gotten stockings from a church, so great, and in a world where a lot of churches are political and not on our team, it was very refreshing. Playing cards, lip balm, batteries, cotton summer socks, and all sorts of items and things and stuff. No smokes or rolling papers though.

Better check in at the kitchen, marinate the steaks with Suzy, check out the grill, season it a bit and give it a dry run. Could we use it inside? It said outdoor use only but warnings schmarnings, this should be outside enough. Turns out they actually knew what they were talking about with that one. I would later cook inside with it, but burgers and steaks were an outside item as they dripped grease and smoked more than I did. But it was cold outside. Like a literal blizzard. Told you we don't mess around. I set it up outside of the mess hall, close to the door, but it turned out to be too windy out in the open. We moved it behind the few trees near the other inipi, the one I had yet to visit.

I started the grill, complete with a temperature gauge that let me know that we had a problem, the wind was still blowing the flame around below the grill and it was having a harder time getting as hot as it had inside the kitchen. Plus, it was cold out here, did I mention that? No worries, we'll wing it. I loaded the grill with the dripping marinated steaks and soon four foot flames were leaping from the grill, in a high-wind scenario, next to one of our few trees, and then the snow started. I managed to stay pretty warm. Keeping my ungloved hands near the grill as ice built up around the rest of me. Plus, I had recently come into a wardrobe upgrade.

One day I was talking to Pete about wanting a better pair of pants or bibs so that I could shed a layer, it was beginning to be a cumbersome operation to get dressed, and more importantly go to the bathroom. Of course, in the way it always did, the universe was already thinking of me. Pete went into the security shack and brought out a brand new pair of Carhartt coveralls, exactly what I wanted, completely wind and cold proof, highly recommended. Except that these were extra large, or something ridiculous like that for my small frame, but I rocked them for a month anyway and loved them. Turned out to be too much loose material weighing down on my shoulders in the end, but on this christmas night they kept me warm even as they iced-over.

James walked by with Neil, the spiritual leader who used the nearby inipi, and I had several other visitors checking on the smell of charring meat emanating from the blizzard that was beginning to consume us. It was nice to have a few witnesses. Here I was, on christmas night, in north dakota, cooking by headlamp, covered in ice, in a blizzard that was possibly the worst of the season, and I was grilling filet mignons. So cool. I knew I was living what would forever be one of those moments, those times you look back on and, and, it was just really so cool. Something that I could never have seen coming a month ago.

What an amazing turn my path had taken me on, and it was beginning to be apparent that this fork in the road may not circle back. There may not be any more existing in the real world, not now that I knew that this was what was out there. A place where I belong, a place I had always been meant to be at, a place that needed me as much as I needed it, a place that made us all be the best possible versions of ourselves, was teaching us how to live and how to live in a good way, this was the real world. I had originally come for just a week, almost a month ago, which was the standard story for most of us that endured the winter. I had then said that I would stay through the holidays, knowing that numbers would probably be low due to homeward bound travelers. I also felt that me not coming home for christmas would show my family and friends how important it all was. Inspire them to look further than the occasional mention in the evening news. But at this point, I realized that I wouldn't be able to leave anytime soon. Every single day I was more sure than the last, this is where I was supposed to be. I was gonna do what felt right and this was it. I was grilling steaks in a blizzard. Best christmas ever.

Trent came out to loiter by the grill as the first round was almost done, he knew what I'd learned a long time ago, always make friends with the chef, especially on steak night. Trent was a burner, a Burning Man artist and festival organizer, but he turned out not to be that bad, lol. I had talked to him in passing in the mess hall, but my initial internal judgments had made me assume that he wasn't going to be a close brother, I was wrong.

I am one of the least judgmental people I know when it comes to many circumstances, I can talk to you about all sorts of stuff, completely open-minded and I can just love with all of my heart, for a friend. But I still struggle with making subconscious judgments before I've gotten to know someone. Sure, this makes me become quick friends with those that I immediately connect with, but it also causes me to miss out on unexpected valuable relationships, like the bond that Trent and I would share. He grew up with some mad survival skills, he would trek around at night with his snowshoes and a bag of gear looking for nights to save. He saved this one and brought the steaks in as they were done, the grill was struggling for temp and I had yet to figure out the intricacies of its hotspots, so there was a variation of doneness. Perfect, people like them different, but turns out it's hard to tell the pinkness level from the outside. So here's a tip I later figured it out, cut the steaks in half after they're done. Not only does this ensure people get the steak that was meant for them, it also makes the meat go further because some half vegetarians will only take a half. It took five rounds to cook all the meat and even though we only brought out half at a time, the steaks were freezing while they waited their turn to sizzle.

Finally done, blizzard in full swing, I mean sideways snow, it may have even been going up sometimes, couldn't even see the dapl lights, pants stiff with a coating of ice up to the thigh, I carried the last tray into the mess hall. So very proud of myself, proud of my family, honored to be able to experience this day, in this place, it's like I was meant to be here or something. I'll save you from having to hear the cheers I got as I joined the already very joyous bunch, mainly because the rest of dinner was so delicious. I had only done the steak, but the rest of the crew had prepared a nine item buffet line that put the cookie table in its place, and everything was amazing. Spot on. They put a big plate aside for me, by now certainly in its cool down phase, I topped it with a juicy steak and proceeded to take such delight in the most incredible christmas dinner I had ever had. And it wasn't just due to our extreme situation and wonderful people, the food stood on its own. The steaks may have been the star, but they were the least tasty item on the plate, they were still pretty banging though.

What a fun dinner too, everyone in a celebratory spirit, a hanukkah song and dance broke out, homemade presents, so much joy and merriment. Everyone was grateful, full of love, and all actively pouring love into everything they did for each other. It was like all the best parts of a holiday at home, except for the inappropriate crazy uncle who gets drunk and causes a scene over family drama. Well, we did have Frank, but his tale is still to come. Then, in this incredible concentration of love and energy, it happened, this incredible thing, this sign. Something Marty would say was the moment that all of our energies synchronized and was the true beginning of our paths together, our journey to save the world. Everyone in camp witnessed it, no matter if they were inside or out, tent, tipi or toilets, there it was right in front of each person, no matter which direction they were looking. As we were wrapping up our meal, basking in the glow that this amazing group of human beings had created just by being themselves, which meant loving each other, there it was, the most intense, bright, close, inspiring flash of lightening we'd ever seen. Snow lightning.

A christmas lightning blizzard. It was right in front of me, in the center of the room, what a flash. And it was right in front of others in the back of the hall. And right in front of Benny at security. And right in front of another in their car. And in another's tarpee. It was something I'll never be able to fully describe, but we knew it was for us, it was completely mesmerizing. Absolutely incredible. Wow. But the story doesn't stop there, at what is obviously the pinnacle moment of our christmas saga, there's still more blizzard missions and close call of certain christmas death ahead.

Six or so of us had a very special task, make our way to James's tipi for a nightcap, a christmas smoke session, a little medicine to complete the most epic of days. Getting there was the first challenge. The storm had been getting pretty bad as I was grilling, but after an hour in the mess hall, it had gotten much worse and the snow drifts were building up in what used to be our neighborhood roads and paths. I had never been there, and probably only got the invite because of my heroic dinner efforts, so I was in the middle of the pack. It was treacherous. For real. We were lucky to be together, it wouldn't take much to get stuck or lost, and in this white out with a couple feet of snow falling per hour, that would not have been good news. We walked through some snow drifts up to our knees, I had no idea where we were at by this point, but we were following James and he supposedly had a hot stove waiting for us, so it was all good.

Finally inside, warm, hot, taking off layers, we rolled joint after joint until we'd smoked one for each of us. I was so lit. My tolerance was super low, after sweat being the only time I'd gotten proper high, and it got me. I was tripping. When I closed my eyes there were psychedelic kaleidoscopes of sacred geometry. Whoa. But I'm an OG, so I was cool and soon enough it was time to gear back up and hit the road. Ooh yeah... the road... about that...

We'd been in there for an hour at least and the snow hadn't slowed down. It was white, everywhere you could see, snow coming at us from all directions, wind and ice blowing in our faces, in our eyes, could hardly see the back of the person in front of me. And remember, I don't even know where we are. Somebody does though, so we take off. Yes in fact, the snow had continued, gotten worse even, and we had a task in front of us. Of course we couldn't see in front of us, so we linked up, hands on shoulders forming a train whose track was under three feet of snow. We walked for only a minute or two, the train circled around and we were officially lost. Everything looked the same in all directions. You could see tents but they all looked the same, white. Uh oh. And we were so high, but like I said, we were pros, obviously. Well, guess we should do something besides stand there perplexed as we slowly get snowed over, and to the rescue was none other than the cyborg herself. She took control and led the group towards the barely visible dapl lights (thank you dapl) and finally to what was left of main street, now we could gather our bearings.

Our next destination was the compost toilets, big holiday dinner and all, and we were on the way. Wendy saved our lives that night. Headline: Water Protectors grill steaks in lightening blizzard then freeze to death smoking marijuana. Somebody should outlaw that stuff. We'd have probably figured it out without her, but we didn't have to. Knowing where we were didn't help that much. It was still super sketchy and waist-high snow drifts. We made it to the bathrooms, barely, F plus. The tent was shaking like crazy. These army tents have big metal poles in the center and they were going nuts, the canvas walls sounded like they were going to be ripped off at any moment. Definitely felt a little unsafe, but we'd been through the worst to get here and had business to handle. Pete and Jeanie were there waiting for us, so we added them to the official snow train passenger list and we upgraded to a rope for us to all hold on to. A couple near-death experiences and we decided to start using our brains, plus the situation had brought our buzz down a little by this point. And they're off.

Still bad, but this time with a plan and our destination being straight ahead, the mess hall beckoned. But... and this hardly ever happened, I tapped out. We were walking right by the mash tent and I had been up all night making desserts in a long stretch of long days. Traversing the snow drifts to the mess hall and then to security for a late-night christmas present sounded like exactly what I wanted to do, so fun and eventful I'm sure, but I just couldn't do it. That army bag was calling my name, and hopefully a fire. I informed the saddened group of my early retirement, certainly not actually that early, and plowed through a snow drift to get to the door. There was a front door to the tent and then halfway in, another door to the studio space where we also slept. Snow had beaten open the front door and poured inside, everything had an eerie, frozen over, abandoned feeling.

The next door had held, and once inside I saw Henry sleeping, but his fire had gone out, poor guy. Feeling quite capable at the moment, I set out to avenge my previous defeat, reclaim the title of competent firetender, and after a bit I was actually getting it going. Then Henry sits up and digs his way out of his frozen bag to let me know that the wind had knocked the stove pipe loose earlier and filled the place with smoke. Um, ok. He'd gotten it back in place to keep snow from coming through the vent, but didn't think we should build a fire, not to mention that my bed was right where the pipe had fallen earlier. Eh, I'm not worried, I'd come too far to go out in a rogue stovepipe incident. I climbed in my bag, so cold, so so cold, so so very cold, wished I'd stayed with the gang cause now because I was wide awake and freezing.

Eventually I got it heated up, and even in these conditions, the army bags were so warm, you can put this bag out in the snow, bundle up and survive. Literally. That's how they're designed to work. They're a little bulky for travel, but if you're on a non-hiking winter mission, they are the best thing ever, roomy too. I survived the night. I had survived christmas at Standing Rock. What an experience. Definitely putting that one in the book.

The next day it was still snowing, like crazy windy snow. I ventured out into the madness and headed to the mess hall to see who else had survived. Turns out it had been a rough night all over, the stovepipe there also had issues. It had been knocked down from the wind and poured smoke into the tent. Luckily someone had been there to save the day. It was a ridiculous task and certainly dangerous, but they had managed to get it back up and temporarily fixed, even in the ongoing wind storm. The mess hall was the biggest tent in Rosebud, so it had more of those metal supports and in a storm, the whole tent would start rocking. I think they're made to be a little loose so that they can shift in these situations, instead of being too rigid, but it is pretty nerve-wracking when it feels like you're going to blow away, or be buried alive.

It wasn't too crowded this morning, the weather and big day prior had people staying in for a bit, but there were a couple of key players up and at 'em. One in particular, the drunk unck I mentioned earlier, Frank was a character. I first saw him when I was working at north gate in Oceti. I walked up to his truck to welcome him and it took me five minutes to determine if he was drunk or just crazy, I settled on the latter. He was older than most of us, gray streaked beard, camo pants, Indiana Jones hat and he had a whole look going on. And he was pretty out there, loud and talkative, and not normally in a positive way. We were all healing here, this was a safe place where we could work on ourselves, but this guy. It often seemed like he could be an infiltrator, starting stuff, trying to create dissent among the group. Certainly being too aggressive with intense subject matter to people new to camp, those that had not yet realized that he was not the standard water protector and that he did not speak for the rest of us. James was the first one that suggested he might be dapl, with Frank sitting right there, and through the winter it would become a running joke (kinda) with Frank even bringing it up.

If he was dapl, it was an interesting approach he took, not trying to disguise it too much, hide in plain sight maybe. Through the winter I would get more of his story, he had worked, and as far as he led us on may still work, in the oil industry. Yeah. He was part of the crew that cleans up the carnage after a spill. Yeah. He would talk about how easy it is to clean up, you'd never know there had been a situation. He talked about how I would fall in love with oil if I ever saw it coming directly out of the ground, mesmerized, said it comes out bright green, iridescent even. He would tell stories about the oil fields and often explain the reasons we should leave camp. How could dapl possibly expect this to work? So you had to assume he wasn't, far too obvious, unless that was the plan all along.

He also was there healing, he might not have come for that, neither did I, but I could see a slow change coming over him. A calm. I desperately tried to get him to go to sweat with me, there was one coming up at midnight on the new year, and he was so close. But then he started backing out. I tried. You have to want to go though. You have to be open to it. We had a connection that he didn't have with most, but that didn't mean that I let him get away with his antics. I called him out and reminded him that we were in a prayer camp, no room for inappropriate outbursts. I sent so much love his way, in the food, through the garlic, even if he was dapl, I still loved him. He had been there longer than me, camped in his truck, but wasn't always around. He often went on multi-state treks, for his own missions but also delivering water protectors to where they needed to be.

And he did drink. Not at camp because he couldn't have pulled it off, we were serious about no alcohol, but he'd come back from the casino admittedly tipsy. Honestly, couldn't tell. He was a wild one sober, assuming I had ever seen him sober, so it wasn't the end of the world when he came in after drinking. The bigger issue was that he would take people from camp, many with alcohol problems, and fill them with drinks before he brought them back, not cool. Now, sometimes people drank at the casino, no judgments, there's nothing wrong with that for some. Those that are struggling however, need our help, not our enabling. Bringing them back to camp in a bad way put not only their safety at risk, but their citizenship in our community, the one place that could help them the most. I had my issues with his way, but we are all on our paths and he was there for a reason. Those that chose to go with him were also on their paths, but I certainly never got in the truck with him.

I did pray for him though, and genuinely wanted the best for him, for him to realize that this place can heal. I thought of him while I was gathering ingredients for onion tea. I thought of him while I began to peel the garlic. The garlic that I had already been pouring love and energy into, normally thinking of those closest to me, but today would be different. I thought of Frank, prayed for healing and calmness in his heart. The garlic skin kind of stuck on the first clove, so I took the extra time to also pray for patience and humility for him. One clove peeled, a pile more to complete and praying for Frank had felt so good that it inspired a new way of prepping garlic, one that I still practice today.

I take my time, in no rush, a sort of meditation, and I peel them all with intent. While I was peeling each clove of garlic, I thought about a different member of our camp, praying for them, whatever issues I knew they struggled with, or prayed for their continued well-being and strength in their hearts. I was doing four heads, standard prescription for any meal or delicious new health drink possibly titled Crazy Fun Energy Potion. I ran out of cloves before I was able to get through the entire camp. This made me focus, intently, putting energy into every step, and it was something else when the garlic skin stuck on those that I knew needed some extra thought. This way made me truly think about my camp family, pushed me to pray for those that I wasn't as close to or that already seemed to be doing pretty good on their own. This was when I truly started cooking with love, working it into every step in the kitchen, love meant for them, energy that would be there when those very people ate. And they could feel it. I often joked that my food wasn't even that good, I just prayed really good on it, and those I prayed for were under its spell. I imagined that a weary traveler would pop in from of Oceti and be disgusted with a meal that Rosebud was raving about. He'd think the food was no good, complaining to the chef. "Sorry brother, it'll be better tomorrow for sure, what was your name again?"

I taught this method to a handful of people that helped me, it inspired them, explained some of the energy we had going on in the kitchen and led to their own versions of garlic peeling. My favorite was on into the winter, a protector liked to simply picture each of us at the happiest she'd ever seen us. I like that one a lot. Now I had a method of always loving the food, even if things were hectic, we'd always remember this part and garlic was a major player in most meals. The garlic was already super healthy and now it was even more powerful. And praying for all these people with compassion, understanding their struggles... it healed me. It strengthened the humility that I'd been praying for, strengthened my sense of purpose, it strengthened me. Try it. It feels really good.

With everything now prepped, I only needed to brave the elements to run to the kitchen for turmeric and cayenne. I grabbed the jar of spicy powder and dug around until I finally found the always hiding bag of turmeric, I turned around and I kid you not, this happened: A woman who had just arrived at camp walks in, holding a big mesh bag of something or other and asks "Would you guys be able to use a bunch of fresh turmeric root?" Seriously? I exclaimed that I was just grabbing the powdered version and held it up in my hand. I was only in the kitchen for a minute, gone in sixty seconds, and she happened to catch me in the act. If I hadn't been there, it may have set on a shelf untouched, unknown for the duration of the winter. But there I was, and there she was, our paths crossing at just the right moment. A beautiful experience. Talk about some right place right time stuff going on.

The experience wasn't the only beautiful thing, this young woman was very much so, even prettier than a twenty pound bag of turmeric root. Her name was Brittany, we wouldn't talk much that day, but she would eventually help me in the kitchen and I would soon be very fond of her. Her calm and always cheerful demeanor was entrancing as love constantly poured out of her. She had such an incredible energy about her, and our energies were definitely on the same vibration, but she was only staying for a week. Even in just a few days she touched me, made an impact and I very much look forward to the day our paths cross again.

This had actually happened once earlier, that I met a girl that impacted me so strongly, and in just a few days, and strange enough, we connected over onion tea as well. Told you it has superpowers. I was in the mess hall, sometime after the first pizza experiment and was sharing the story of the late-night snack with a friend. April had taken a seat across the table from us and somehow midnight camp style pizza had grabbed her attention. Her energy was amazing, and as I told the tale, it only got stronger. She was giving me her attention, a quality I certainly appreciate in a woman, so she had me. We talked about onion tea, she already knew of it and the power of onions and suggested that I try adding mallow. It's a plant with too many health benefits to mention, but it's good for respiratory issues and cough, which sounds perfect for onion tea, and she happened to have brought a small bag just for me. Yes ma'am, I'll do you anything you want. And then she left the next day.

There were so many incredible, beautiful, strong women that had major impacts on my life, but there was something about these two. This instant connection that if they had stayed longer, I would have pursued exploring and explored pursuing, but alas, they left. Left me to continue growing and finding my purpose. A task that proves to be more difficult when you're also spending energy chasing a girl. I had to put that energy out there for my family, not hoard it all for one person. Not that it's not possible to do both, love is endless after all, but I was just learning, still feeling it out. I'm not sure at this point I can do both to my full capability, so back then I definitely wasn't ready to slow down this incredible path that I found myself on. I would think of these two all winter. Waiting on the next that never came. Waiting for them to return which never happened. Wondering how in only a limited time my heart had been touched so strongly, twice. Everything happens for a reason. I needed to meet them not only for tea ingredients, but to show me what my heart was capable of, what the right energy could attract into my life. I also needed them to leave, to leave me thinking and remembering, but focused on the task at hand. I wasn't here for romance, I was here to love. And I did.

I trekked up to security with a jug of tea, a normally uneventful task, unless you count life-changing fireside moments as eventful, but today wasn't a normal day. It was snowing remember, snowing hard and fast, but it was the middle of the day, so no worries. At least that's what I thought, maybe I should have worried a little bit harder. Made it up there no problem, sure, there had been massive snow drifts in the road, but I was a trooper. A survivor. A water protector.

Echo3 was a tough place to be in these conditions, so I brought some leftover fudge as a special thank you, as long as they drank all of their tea. I don't remember who was there, we'll say Andre, sure, but I couldn't stay long, I had told Suzy that I would help with dinner. I took off, this time crossing to our secondary road that ran parallel to main street, and sank past my waist into a stretch of soft, deep, powdery snow. Uh oh. I pushed through, running out of breath and growing tired faster than I was cold. I finally got a little above it, finding that if I crawled across, I wouldn't sink as bad. I crawled for what felt like a hundred yards, probably not that inaccurate actually, panting, gasping, thumbs freezing, promising the universe that I had learned my lesson about solo blizzard missions, and finally I stumbled into the warm (well warmer at least) mess hall. "Anyone want some onion tea?"

Now back to the kitchen. So I must mention that we are starting to reach another point when days really run together, once I start spending more time in the kitchen it becomes harder to separate it all. Certain events are clear as to when they happened, but which night what took place and which particular dish I made gets a little fuzzy. So I'm just going to wing it, less play-by-play of the daily goings-on, a vaguer approach to telling the story of the winter's impending doom. What do you care? You won't notice, and frankly, those that were there probably won't either. The winter got fuzzy for all of us at times, and sometimes the whole camp got fuzzy at the same time. Must be something in the water. Or the air.

Suzy was thinking chicken. Roast chicken, and she had a couple big packs of thighs, both of our favorites and as far as I'm concerned a superior cut of the bird. We cooked them in the big aluminum thing, but realized that it would never be enough for the entire camp. Generally in this situation, we'd come up with some sort of dish that we could build around the chicken, a way to cut it up and make it go farther. That was in fact our original plan, but watching these juicy thighs sizzle made us want to do anything but separate them, mechanically or otherwise. Suzy told me of a few boxes of breasts that she knew of, outside, under a few feet of snow, the snow that was still falling. Falling isn't exactly the right word, it was more like it was being thrown down at us. I was in. I really wanted a piece to myself, it smelled so good, or was that just the garlic and onions?

I dug around for a while and eventually uncovered a thirty pound box of chicken, sub-zero chicken, the first thing I'd have to figure out how to thaw that wasn't in a can. The tricky part was that all of the meat was packed together, woven into a frozen block and would prove to take a little bit of umph to get apart. At home I would have run cold water over it, but cold water here would be even colder ice within minutes. So warm water then? Well, warm water is normally a no-no because bacteria growth is accelerated with the heat, but not only would the warm water cool off instantly, the hazardous cold of the kitchen was equally hazardous for bacteria.

The extreme temperature was a blessing sometimes, unlimited space in the freezer (my pet name for the coolers buried in the snow out back), no need to refrigerate leftovers, you just leave them on the stove and they'll be frozen before you know it. Plus a level of sanitation that I'd imagine is otherwise unattainable. It was too cold for bacteria, for germs, for bugs and mice. Just meant you had to cook with your coat on, no big. So I put the chicken in an empty cooler and filled it with warm water, the water was cold soon and I attempted to pull the pieces apart. This was gonna take a while. I rinsed, lathered and repeated for a few hours until I had enough free to properly accompany the thighs. Cooking at camp was a two step process, first cook everything to room temperature and then actually start cooking the meal.

Well, that was a task, but finally finished. We decided to make instant mashed potatoes, we weren't thrilled about it, but it would be easier than making them from scratch, we thought. I gathered four big boxes of the dried flakes, all different, and all with a different combination of milk and water to be added. Hope you paid attention in math class, three and a third of this one and four and a quarter of that one, luckily we hardly used measuring cups. We figured it out, when in doubt add more butter, and were actually impressed with the concoction we had brewed. It was very comical for the onlookers as we tried to get our bearings in a foreign world of convenience. Pre-made items that were designed to save time, not always the case. We knew how to mash potatoes, only a couple of ingredients, why was this so hard? Plus it literally took an hour to boil water there, sixty minutes.

After dinner, a group of us headed to security for a treat delivery, after my recent death care I warned the crew of the conditions and we were off. Still very bad and getting worse, we navigated the solid white terrain, stoked the sacred fire on our way, and eventually made it. Camp Tip#38 Don't do missions alone in a blizzard. Unless they're secret missions of course.

One time I was up at Echo3 and the medic from Sacred Stone walked up. There was a teenager missing on a devastatingly cold night. A seventeen year old boy had wandered off in only jeans and a jacket, why he wasn't geared up I'll never know, so we were concerned to say the least. The medic hopped in the tow truck whose driver was keeping warm by the fire, they drove up main street and I walked down the side road. I walked alone, not that smart really, don't want two missing people out in this, but I was geared up and it wasn't quite blizzard conditions that night. We searched as long as we could, dreading that we would find him, until eventually we had to give up. He'd only been gone a few hours and was a teenager in a camp of amazing females, he might be at exactly the right place. I would go to bed that night worried that he was somewhere stuck in a snowbank, how could I handle not finding him if he was in fact in danger? Next morning I discovered that we were right though, he had had a disagreement with his current love interest and ran into the arms of another. Still put us at risk out there searching, and some searches did turn up with more hypothermic results than this one, so please let someone know where you're going in these moments. And no wandering off into the woods to think. It's hard to think in forty below anyway.

After our group made it back from Echo3, a more difficult chore than getting there, I wasn't ready to call it a night. I felt like staying up for a bit and concocting something. Sure, a late-night snack sounded good, but I was thinking more like something for lunch tomorrow. Something to save time and take stress off of the kitchen crew. Something like, like... chicken salad. Wendy helped me, she had also led the expedition (she was fresh up on day saving), and we got to cutting. While we were working in the mess hall the crowd was pretty thin, one younger protector saw our initiative, took some of his own and swept the entire tent. A task he was certain would be undone quickly, but thought it would be nice if at least the breakfast crew walked in to a less polluted environment. His name was Carson, and I had briefly met him the day I was sick in Pete's tarpee, he had actually caravanned here with Jeanie. His mother was here with him, a very loving soul herself, Melanie would always give you the longest hug, with such emotion. I thoroughly enjoyed those moments, but it did get to a point that if I was in the middle of burning dinner, I would have to sidestep her with a quick hi and bye routine. They had both had difficult paths, her dealing with drug addiction and him having to grow up around it, but they were here together, healing. Chicken salad complete, a thorough taste testing by the family and it was finally time to call it, another day at camp under our belts.

I woke up with a plan. A new plan. A pizza plan. I spent the day pondering the next step of camp pizza evolution as I helped my family with whatever tasks the day held, and finally it was time to give it a shot. Dough, sauce, and go. The plan was simple. Had to work. This was the answer. Grilled pizza. I got the grill super hot, cut it down to low and assembled the pies right on the grate. I was still dealing with the same issue, heat only from the bottom, but I was pretty sure that the grill would hold enough temperature to do the trick, I believed. And it did. It would take a few rounds to dial it in, but with the right combination of high to low to med to off, I finally figured it out. If the last attempt had been an 80 percent success, then this was 95, and I could do two big ones at a time. Almost perfect. Crispy delicious bottom, melted cheese and a non-doughy top. All it needed was a crispy upper crust and it would be flawless, but we were camping in a blizzard, get over it. I made eight pizzas that night, and after a run to Echo3 followed by a gleaming review from the late nighters in the hall, we still had a big tray full. Perfect, cold leftover pizza for breakfast, everybody loves that.

I shot back in there first thing in the morning, as first thing as it gets for me at least, excited to see all the smiling faces enjoying the surprise. All those that were never around in the wee hours to try my creations, and the verdict is? No one had eaten it. I don't mean that it was still there. There was definitely an empty pan that had been filled to the top, but no one I talked to had any. I checked with everyone I knew, nothing. Apparently the night owls, along with a crew of Oceti visitors, had wiped it out. But I had put so much love into this batch, prayers specific to those that I imagined consuming it. I was momentarily disappointed, but then completely okay. They needed it last night. All that love I put into it didn't go to waste. It went exactly where it needed to. It kept our protectors happy, kept them going through the cold night as they did their work. So, only one thing to do now, make more pizza.

But that was later, first I had some living to do and this was certainly the place to do it. I thought that I was living before, loved my life, great friends, great family, love, a career that I was passionate about and so far the best year of my life, but this was something else. Living in these crazy survival conditions, only concerned with the minimal things I needed, not being attached to a phone and all the distractions of the "real world" pushed me to learn so much about myself, and what's really important as I was growing into a better me. This was living. I was alive. I was awake. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Except I was also supposed to be in the kitchen, cleaning.

Stephanie had helped me turn the giant bowl of chicken salad into a tray of sandwiches, but we still were only able to use up half of the supply. I was talking to Jan about it, one of my specialties back home, and noted that we had enough leftovers to save for another easy lunch. She said "Oh, are we going to save that?" I got the hint. If we're saving it, then save it, free up the bowl. I went to the kitchen and also realized that I'd left a dirty pan on the stove from the previous dinner, I promptly said to Suzy "I'll help you with dinner, but first I need to clean up a little." Her response was a simple yeah, but it said all it needed to, she agreed. So I cleaned up, helped with dinner and soon enough it was pizza time again.

I enlisted Pete and Jeanie into dough duty, I mixed it all but got their help kneading, it takes a while to do it right and wake up all the yeast. I had already sent a wake-up call though. I've known for a long time about water, ever heard of it? I knew that it has its own energy, its own vibration that can be affected by ours. A long time ago I read a book, well really it was a picture book, about water. The author spoke about how we affect the water around us, in a visible way. If you send energy into water as it freezes, you can look at its crystals under a microscope and see for yourself. He was using sound waves, energy that even the least new age of scientists can get behind, to influence the freshly forming ice. He spoke words to the water, and anytime it was a positive word, like happy or hope or love, the crystal pattern was a magnificently geometric work of art. And inversely, if he spoke of anger or hate, the crystals had a disjointed angular sloppiness about them. Intriguing, but I was no hippie by that point, so whatever.

I would later have a friend who spoke to her water, "I love you water." Some might consider institutionalizing her, but I was on my way to being an energy loving jam hippie and I recalled that water book. Maybe there was something to this. That same girl was down on microwave ovens. If you microwave water and do the freeze test, no patterns form at all. If you microwave water and try to use it to grow a plant, nothing. Microwaves kill water, it's vibration at least, which is the part that gives us life. Water is so important to us. It's the fabric of everything we eat. We are made of it. Our precious planet is made of it. Of course I love you water.

I still talk to my water if I think about it, not as often as I'd like, but I always talk to it when we work together to complete the most important task of pizza dough. Waking up the yeast. I tell the water about my adoration for it and our task at hand. Then to the warm water I add the yeast, a living organism certainly susceptible to whatever love I can dish out. I get it wet, gently stir it around and whisper something like this, "Good morning happy little yeast. It's time to get up and make some pizza." I'm a little out there I know. I don't make a big deal about it, just a quiet wake-up call right into the cup, I don't want to get committed or anything. Even if I'm surrounded in the kitchen, the yeast and I go off on our own and have our morning coffee clutch, plan our day, and I like to throw in another shout out to the water just for good measure.

So the yeast was awake, but I had Pete and Jeanie double checking while I prepped toppings. Tonight it would be combinations of elk, buffalo, artichoke hearts (score), mushrooms and sweet potatoes, yeah, sweet potatoes. I was fine-tuning the process now, pretty spot-on, just wasn't crispy on top. I was working on a solution though. Once everyone still upright was at capacity, I wrapped up the tray to save for lunch. My daytime people needed to try this. Served early at noon, gone by fifteen after. So what's for lunch?

Grilled cheese and tomato soup, classic. We wouldn't actually use the grill though, even though it is my favorite, it's only half of the power couple. The flat top is so vital, we could make twenty-one sandwiches at a time, without it we'd have had a much more arduous task on our hands. Suzy taught me a trick with the childhood favorite, instead of putting butter on either side of the sandwich, spread mayonnaise on it. It's way easier to spread, especially out here in the tundra, and you can get it evenly over the entire slice. From now on. Mayo though, we had a whole stash of miracle whip, but everyone wanted real mayonnaise, dukes or hellmans. Donation tip #19 Real mayo.

While she was putting her own innovations to work on the sandwiches, I started on the soup. You should know by now that I don't mess around, no ordinary tomato soup would do. I did start with a bunch of cans of frozen campbells, but also a bunch of herbs, the go-to garlic and onions, and I stewed down a bunch of fresh tomatoes to throw in. Yeah, fresh tomatoes. One of the more powerful moments for me at camp. One that really gave me no choice but to completely believe in the power of manifestation. The day we got the tomatoes.
Step Five:

It was a few days before christmas, when we were building shelves in the pantry, that I started itching to make tacos. Tacos are my favorite food, especially my family's crispy fried recipe, so I wanted to share with my new family. It seemed like every time I thought about them though, someone else made their own version. Tacos can be an easy meal to put together, especially with simple flour tortillas, and it seemed that everyone else loved them as much as I did. And then there was the ever famous frybread taco, or more familiarly, Indian Tacos.

Frybread is a beloved specialty on most reservations, no matter what epic meal time I prepared, any mention of frybread would get a more excitable response. Frybread is one of those amazing, inventive things that evolved when facing uncalculatable adversity, in this case, the oppression and mistreatment of the indigenous people of our own country. When the reservations were created and treaties signed, our government agreed to give a certain amount of food rations to the tribes. It's kinda the least we could do, we had just commandeered the vast majority of their hunting and gathering land and intentionally exterminated the buffalo, their most sacred food source. At first, the agreed upon food was simply withheld. Those that had been fighting with the tribes were in no hurry to provide for them, who cares about some treaty. They knew that there would be no repercussions for their continued abuse of the natives, no one on our side was going to stand up for them.

Eventually we did end up giving them some of the promised commodities, all the rancid flour and spoiled milk. Real stand up guys. But the natives rose above their tactics and invented a way to use the rotten ingredients to make what is now a highly-anticipated staple for many on the reservation and off. No longer using rancid ingredients (though only the lowest quality food seems to be available on the rez, including spoiled meat), it seems like everyone has their own frybread recipe, and many very closely guarded. I couldn't even clear one for this no-name book, I had to make several vows of silence to get to the ones that I have, but I can give you an idea.

The dough is made with flour (Blue Bird if you can get it, the best, I think it's from the southwest), powdered, whole or condensed milk, yeast or baking powder and a pinch of salt and sugar and love and stuff. After it's risen, either roll it out and cut into four inch diamonds or you pull it apart and pat it into similar flat pieces. Cut a slit in the middle, throw it in the deep fryer and you're done. The most awesome, crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside, sometimes slightly sweet, tender delicacy that you could possibly imagine, especially if you worked in the kitchen and got one right out of the hot oil.

So frybread was a big deal, Jan was still making it at this point, so when she left I had to recruit a few frybread sous chefs. If the bread alone wasn't enough, they'd already taken it to the next level, something I both admired and wished I'd helped to come up with. Indian tacos. A piece of yummy frybread piled high with beans, the mystery meat of the day and whatever produce we could produce. I stand behind my taco recipe, but I knew that I would have a hard time topping these guys, they were so good. I was still determined, but I also wanted to make a big bowl of pico, so I would need actual tomatoes, not the frozen diced ones in the pantry. At that same time, another protector had been mentioning her growing desire for a tomato sandwich, a southern staple that I grew up on, fresh from the garden, nothing beats it.

I was walking by the pantry and didn't really pray, but I spoke out loud to the universe and expressed how nice it would be to get some tomatoes, and then went on my way. The next day around lunchtime, a new arrival walked directly up to me, not in the kitchen or pantry, I was just walking around, and he said "Hey, I have fourteen cases of organic tomatoes, where do you want them?" Wow. I excitedly said "Awesome, I just ordered those"

"You ordered tomatoes?" Well, kinda. They were from a farm a few states away and were magnificent. Where to put them was a good question though, didn't want them to freeze. So we stuck them into the sometimes above-freezing water shed and we ate tomatoes for weeks. I was blown away. I believed. Recently out of sweat, I was developing this connection to our planet, our universe and the common energy that poured out of everyone at camp, and this just kicked it into high gear. I had just manifested fourteen cases of tomatoes in a ND blizzard, just by putting my positive energy, thoughts from my heart, my love for others, out into the universe.

Obviously there were many other cogs in the wheel. The farmer that felt compelled to grow and send them, as well as the distributor who felt compelled to hand-deliver them. What do you think compelled them from so far away? What energy inside of those at camp had compelled us to travel so far, to a completely new landscape, during such harsh conditions? What had compelled us to stay? Everyone I spoke with had also only intended to stay for a week and soon realized that this was where they were supposed to be. There was an incredibly strong feeling coming from inside each of us that this was the most important thing we could possibly be doing. What we were meant to be doing. What we had been training for. The greater good that all of us knew we were destined for. A way to make a difference. A way to inspire. We were the people we'd been waiting for. And we always had everything we needed. Tomatoes, turmeric and tobacco, all you had to do was put it out there.

And you yourself were also trying to make it happen for others, paying it forward, giving selflessly because it felt good when you saw the look of delight that it elicited. I bought one pack of roll-ups before I got there and that was it. I never went without, not for long anyway. I would regularly give my last cigarette away, people would try to not accept it, but I insisted. If I give you this last pall mall, then in an hour someone will give me a pack of spirits, please take it. And that's how it worked. Of course as soon as I got it, I immediately gave away half a pack, eager to share with everyone who always looked out for me. You never heard anyone denied a borrowed cigarette. It was only borrowed because you knew that you'd be the one with them tomorrow. Help yourself, it's not my tobacco, it's just happens to be in my pocket.

An economy based on giving, not on greed and amassing wealth, is the most beautiful, amazing thing that one can experience. A moneyless system, not built on the destructive practices of capitalism, but on the principles of love and taking care of each other. Taking care of the planet that we are all a part of, a living, breathing, ball of energy that will provide everything we need if we don't fight her. If we don't destroy her. The world was not meant to work this way, has not evolved to operate in this manner. A manner in which one species thinks that they are above all the rest. Thinks that they can decide who lives and dies. Thinks that they know the best way to live and tries to force it down everyone else's throats. Righteously choosing which animals don't belong here because they are competing with you for the same food source. Or because they compete with your food for the same plants. Or even deciding which plants deserve to live, exterminating those that compete with your food's food. Oh, and definitely can't let anything survive that might bite us, that goes without saying. Taking the laws of nature into our own hands. Destroying vast food supplies for an uncountable population of lifeforms, only to spread agriculture, a food supply for a single species and if any other dares to touch it, it's lights out.

Reducing the amount of species on Earth and decreasing our biodiversity makes all of life on the planet weaker, and leaves us vulnerable to famine and disease. With a wider variety of life, life will go on. Life as a whole will always endure the harshest of conditions, even global water contamination. Some species won't make it, but the ones that do will become stronger. With only a few species kicking around, all it takes is a minor catastrophe and the survivors are far and few between.

What this also means, is that we've essentially stopped evolution. We took ourselves out of the laws of competition by destroying all that threaten our ever growing food supply, growing enough food for more people than even exist, expanding production and reducing the natural world so that we can feed our growing population unchecked by any natural law of survival. We are done, this is who we are, there can never be a better, more evolved version of us, because we don't respect the system that has worked for millions of years. Don't respect the rules that every other form of life lives by. We don't respect ourselves. We think that we are the end goal of evolution, or creation, we think that everything was made for us and it's our right to destroy it. Our duty to take over the world and change it into a place where only humans thrive. No matter what the consequences. This is our destiny.

If the Earth evolved over billions of years or if it was created for us not that long ago, either way, we should treat it like the gift that it is. The ever-providing, life giving, work of art that we are all so lucky to get to experience. We should treat her like the most sacred item in existence, treat her like the most important thing imaginable, hold her the closest to our hearts because without her, we are nothing. The Earth doesn't need us. Doesn't need us tearing her apart to build whatever fanciful architecture we can come up with. Doesn't need us replacing rainforests with cash crops. Doesn't need the underground network of oil veins that span across the globe. The Earth doesn't need us to do any of this toilsome labor. She was doing just fine for a long, long time without us and she'll continue to do just fine long after we're gone, even after the eventual devastation that we're currently perpetrating. She'll clean up all of our mess and have no trouble starting over, no matter what we do. We're the ones who need her, and we're the ones that will suffer when we don't realize that soon enough. What if we don't start to take notice until it is too late, until we are on a collision course for extinction? The same fate that we've deemed appropriate for so many of the other residents of our planet. What a shame.

But these tomatoes though... Lucky for them that we approved their existence, even assisting where we could, but not near as successful as the biggest exploiter of human energy in their quest to take over the world. Corn.

Corn is in everything, including but not limited to the classic fan favorite, high fructose corn syrup. Not because it is the most suited for all of it's many uses, quite the opposite really, it's hardly a reasonable solution for anything. It's way unhealthy for all of the livestock that we force feed it to, unevolved to be able to process it, which causes outbreaks of disease, which lead to antibiotics, which cause their own list of complications. It's not even that healthy for us, hardly any nutrients, although it does provide calories. The most calories per acre actually, which of course is why the monies-that-be like it so much. No, corn isn't actually that good for most of its common uses, it has only grown to become the most successful species because it has convinced our entire race to work for it. We've been on corn's payroll for a long time. It was just a type of grass in a field when it found us back before the dawn of civilization. Through indigenous horticulture, or gardening, we held the seeds sacred and helped them evolve in a good way, we treated plants like they were our brothers. We are all related. Then colonized agro-culture invaded and after years of us artificially controlling its evolution, corn got almost as obese and unhealthy as we did. We selected based on size, not nutrition. Inflation at it's finest. Now of course though, it's super inflated with genetic tampering driven by profit increasing corporations, so if it's not organic, it's pretty much toxic.

Corn's also got us inventing new ways to use it so that we can use up the ever-growing surplus of the crop. The surplus of course was created because our government gives a monetary supplement, a subsidy, to corn farmers when the market dictates a lower price. So now immune to the laws of supply and demand, the slaves of corn can feel free to produce as much as they want, no matter what the actual consumer need is, foregoing all the other crops that aren't endorsed by the current administration. Now the overlobbied government has to come up with more ways to use corn because they subsidized its growth, and with more uses, we need more corn and so on and so on. Corn has it all figured out. Tomatoes not as much, they're doing pretty good, but we do still grow them in cages. Maybe after we fix all this oil mess, I'll lobby for cage free tomatoes, but for now we'll stick to the soup.

While Suzy and I were preparing the somewhat simple lunch, a protector I'd only met once had been washing dishes, completely focused on the not so envied chore. Dishes were a task at camp. They piled up in the mess hall, but at least people were in and out enough to notice and chip in. In the kitchen however, at least since Julie had left, dishes had a tendency to pile up a bit. It was a joke in the kitchen before I had arrived, someone would come in to help, the dishes would be offered up as the best way to assist and within a few minutes it would be, "I'll be right back, I just have an important text to send." Guess how many people showed back up. In their defense, who even knows where they could get signal around here. And if the kitchen started to get too packed with curious bystanders, one mention of the mountain of dishes was sure to clear the tent.

This particular protector was unintimidated by the daunting pile of pots and pans, Becca was a godsend. She spent days digging into them, I of course undoing all of her progress as she went, and eventually kept denting it until she was finally caught up. The woodstoves almost kept the kitchen at a bearable temperature, but the dish station was in the far corner with only a piece of canvas separating it from the glacier forming on the outside. We were still melting snow to do the dishes, so before you could even begin, you had to collect an obscene amount of snow, luckily we had just that amount in stock. So boil some snow and crack into them, if you've ever struggled to get a dirty pan free of debris, you should try it frozen sometime. She liked to talk about the days when it was so cold, "how cold was it?" It was so cold that as she would be scraping out a pot with warm water, the water would start cooling off rapidly and before she can get the food particles cleaned out, they would start freezing to the sides as ice began forming. So cold.

My favorite was one day that I came in to do dishes, yes, even I did some, and there was a slab of ice with eight or nine random cooking utensils stuck out of it in all directions. The dish set-up at that time was just a small double sink and a pre-rinse tub to scrape the big stuff into. With a pan the size of a monster truck tire, this proved to be a bit tricky. Once the water was dirty, we poured it out into a big plastic tub as "gray water," and once that was full, we poured it into the compost pile. It would get overfull and heavy and was a pain to transport. Once, it was frozen so solid that we had to abandon the tub while it sat upside down at the compost pile, until it warmed up just enough to knock it loose. When that happened, I started using this giant... no, huge... this massive pot that we'd never used for anything else, it had to have been 3'x 3'. The beauty of this arrangement was that if it did freeze solid, we could just set it on top of a woodstove and soon enough it would melt just enough to unload its contents.

The compost pile was maybe fifty yards behind the kitchen, right next to the pig pen. Yep. Pigs. We just used five gallon buckets to put the kitchen compost scraps into. Sometimes, we would feed it directly to the pigs, but you had to be careful, pigs can't eat onions. Pigs, sweet, so bbq? Nope, I made a joke one time to Smokey and was quickly set in my place. "Don't touch the pigs, or I'll feed you to them." Ah... so that's what they're for. Before she'd even finished the dishes, and for the remainder of her stay at camp, Becca would be my first official assistant, and she was most excellent. I had a lot of helpers, but it was easy to get sidetracked at camp, so many things to do. Not Becca. I could give her any task, like cut an entire twenty-five pound bag of potatoes, and I could depend on her to get it done. Even if I had to leave the tent for a while, I knew that we were still on schedule. She had a very calm, soothing demeanor, the exact energy that we tried to keep in the kitchen as much as we could. She was also the first person that I taught my new garlic method to.

With lunch out of the way, it was time to jump into dinner. Often, we'd be cooking both at the same time due to the intense thawing process and sheer amount of food that we had to prepare. Tonight was a special night, something I'd been dropping hints around camp about, just waiting for the right time and ingredients. Tonight was fried chicken. Now, I'm a southern boy, so I grew up on it and it was one of my specialties to cook at home. And the beauty of fried chicken? We didn't have to camp style it, it wasn't a dish inspired by fried chicken. This was legit fried chicken. No need for an oven, we could just fry it the same exact way I would at home, except for the ice and mass quantity.

The exciting smell of soul food also attracted an important visitor to the kitchen, a protector that I didn't know well yet, but would soon come to love and respect dearly. It was the dready bear that had first welcomed us to camp, Dan, and he was just that. Big Dan, one of the nicest, chillest guys at camp. Normally with his dreads up, occasionally you got to peek at his impressive locks, but his laugh was much more impressive. You'd hear him all over camp, from the other end of camp, with his always recognizable and often contagious chuckle. He'd built a little house for himself, the bear cave, and it would often be where we found ourselves after dinner, listening to sweet jams, sweet conversation and sweet, sweet medicine. He loved to pop into the kitchen, a VIP lounge of sorts, and keep me company while keeping one eye on the food. He also understood the importance of the cigarette timer, often gifting me just that. I think he thought it would make the food be done sooner, sometimes it worked.

This may have been the first meal of just a few that I made without garlic and onions. Definitely used lawrys and butter, which I regularly shared as being my secret ingredients. I won't bore you with the details here, gotta save something for the special features section of this dvd, but we had chicken, mac and cheese and brown sugar carrots. Tasted like home.

The next day is when we got our first snowmobile, someone had donated it to a really solid brother here, Brock, who happened to be Suzy's snag. Snag might be an understatement, they may have met at camp, but their relationship was a little more substantial than your average momentary camp romance. We'd learn this week that... drum roll please... Suzy was pregnant! This was the first pregnancy I'd been close to at camp, although I'm sure there were plenty of nodapl babies. How exciting. There had also been a baby born at camp before I arrived, and what did they name her? Why Mni Wiconi of course. Brock was Smokey's right hand man, a jack-of-all-trades as were most of us. Because of his relationship with Suzy, he was a regular kitchen visitor, always with some snippet of news or another.

Speaking of snippets of news, the day before, while I was frying, Stephanie had come into the kitchen to grab some cayenne powder, there was some type of action at the bridge and she wanted to be prepared to help injured protectors. Cayenne is not only renowned for its healing power, it's also good for the blood. It can be applied directly to an open wound and will immediately clot the blood. It can also be used internally to treat a fried chicken induced heart attack, hmm, seems like we always had everything we needed. At least back before we had all these new things that capitalism tells us are necessary to live a healthy life.

Stephanie also had some watered down milk of magnesia which could be used to treat pepper spray in the eyes. So thankful for strong protectors like her, but I wanted to be at the bridge. I was supposed to be there. Documenting the violence that our government was literally unleashing upon peaceful protesters. People in prayer. If it had been a more generic meal, I would have taken off and left Becca to wrap it up. But this was a menu from my world, I had to be here to finish it. Stephanie consoled me, reminding me that we all play vital roles, and as protectors make it back to camp, they'll need some warm food for sure.

I went back to work, still thinking about the bridge, but before long, she returned. The situation had not escalated into that of the past, or the future. And now today Brock came in, telling us of the people climbing up Turtle Island. He had gone out to retrieve them on the snowmobile before it was too late. Picking them up as the dapl private security was close on their heels. Turtle Island is the name that indians call our entire continent, the continent that used to belong to all living creatures that inhabited it. It was also the name of an island hill, northeast of Oceti, which was sacred Lakota burial grounds that the army corps seized and now held hostage at gunpoint. I knew that Suzy was also itching to get a ride with Brock on the snowmobile. I already had a plan for dinner and assistants were coming out of the woodwork, so I gave her the night off.

Today I had the always dependable Becca, a young woman named Erica and none other than Brittany, my turmeric delivering angel. Cool, I like her. Erica was such a help plus she was doing all sorts of important work at camp. She was a Sacred Stoner, but had begun to spend a good amount of time in Rosebud. I first met her and Becca at the same time, days earlier, working on the dough for the first night of grilled pizza. I was making it in the mess hall and they both wanted to help, why certainly. While I was working on sauce, I told Becca all of the ingredients for the dough. No measuring spoons though, so good luck. I don't like to use a spoon to mix the dough either, just get in there with your hands, work that love all up in it. I got Erica kneading and then she caught my name, "Ah, so that's you that I've heard all about." Uh oh. I was hardly even cooking at that point, so...? She worked with the youth council, who worked closely with the mash tent and Henry had been bragging on me.

So now back to the present and I had the gift of working with them both again, and Brittany to boot. Today was gonna be a good day. Salmon patties were up again, and this time I had helpers to do all the dirty work. The icy work. I had been in the kitchen alone for an hour earlier, sometimes people would pop in while I was by myself and feel bad for me. No need, a little quiet time alone does a body good, especially in the kitchen. Now, being alone in the thick-of-it is a little more hectic, but I always survived. Today I had been alone with a big box of brussel sprouts. I'd found them a few days earlier in the pantry, about thirty minutes after Suzy mentioned that she wished we had some. She had her chance, I couldn't wait any longer, it had been a team manifestation anyway.

I zenned out for a while and cut them all in half. They absorb flavors better that way and get a better crisp on them, plus they're easier to eat. Then I soaked them in water for a bit to rinse them and soften them up. Backfired a little, when I came back to them a while later, the water was frozen. Ha. Not frozen frozen, so I was able to break it all up and was ready to drain them. My salmon team was cracking into the cans and as I carried the disposable aluminum catering tray (we reused them though) to the sink, it started to bend and collapse from the weight of the added ice water. I got it to the sink before I lost it though, set it on the sink just in time, turned around and the whole pan flipped over onto the frozen plywood floor. For two seconds I started to get upset, said half an expletive and then shook it off. I looked up at Becca and Erica, shot a double thumbs up and an "it's all good," walked it off in a quick circle and took a deep breath. It was all good. Then I did the only thing that one can do in a situation like this... thought I was going to say smoke a cig, huh? Nah, I picked up most of the floor food and proceeded to make the best brussel sprouts that anyone there had ever eaten.

Those that had never tried them were convinced, and those that didn't like the tiny little cabbages before, were converted. I mean, I did have a few tricks up my sleeve. The floor was frozen, the sprouts were frozen, the air was frozen, any germs were frozen and a few wood chips in dinner never hurt anybody. Sometimes it was really a great convenience to essentially work in a walk-in freezer, sometimes. I kinda used a recipe from home, except the final step of wrapping them with bacon. Besides being a pain to wrap so many, I liked to save the bacon for the breakfast crew. I'd love to make elk and bacon pizza, buffalo bacon burritos and bacon mac, but we never had a surplus of bacon. Sometimes none. I had taken myself off of the breakfast schedule, so this was the least I could do. But you better believe that when I did make breakfast, I didn't hesitate to use the tasty, tasty meat selection, especially the time we got five pounds wrapped in butcher paper, thick-cut, super good stuff. Thank you. So donation tip#3: bacon.

I rinsed the veggies and made their marinade with a couple bottles of dijon mustard, a whole bunch of brown sugar, honey, maybe molasses and some spices. Maybe a little balsamic too, not much though. Tossed them around and let them sit for a good while, while I... wait for it... smoked a cig.

Soon we had two more helpers join the crew, a bunch that I had met in the pantry with Wendy. They would stop in to raid our tiny snack stash and we were willing accomplices. Normally we ran a tighter ship than that, but this was a special team. Hope and Anya were two of three sisters, the absent littlest one was Trinity. And I mean little, Trinity was three, Anya nine and Hope eleven, they were definitely not the youngest water protectors though. They were here with their grandfather Grant, their mother was in prison and suffered from the same addiction that destroyed many lives on the reservation. Grant had a horse named Girl too, but I didn't meet her until later. The pair popped into the kitchen, on a quest for snacks I'm sure, and the energy was popping too, so they wanted to join in the fun.

Those days with that crew, before Becca left, are some of my favorite days in that tent. I loved it all so much, but there was something very special about the energy that we created. This was also while I was learning to spread all this love around, and showing them what I was doing, I think we were all so into it that it was contagious. Literally five times a day a visitor would exclaim "Wow, the energy feels so great in here!" Yeah, we like to keep it pretty happy.

Plus, we had one of the few radios in camp. Sometimes there was a radio station broadcast from within camp, and I would later learn more about it, but normally we listened to a classic rock station out of bismarck. It was a really good station, lot of old good stuff, including an occasional track by my favorite Steve Miller Band. But like with any workplace radio station, it gets old. Especially the commercials. We're out in the thick of it, crazy survival conditions, disconnected from the world and we hear repeating commercials for car lots and pest control. Kind of weird.

We got the girls gloved up and gave them each a giant bowl of salmon and accessories to start mixing. The entire team eventually got into patty making mode and it was on. I was prepping the pan for the brussel sprouts, certainly I used some butter, must have, but I also had a super secret special surprise ingredient. Something I had found in the mess hall pantry the other day, so I went to grab it. A delectable treat that could only be used to create something as crowd-pleasing as brussel sprouts, and then Dylan caught me with it and I had to give him a spoonful to buy his silence.

Dylan was one of my homies, my boys, my dudes, this man was legit. The tall skinny hippie was here with his beautiful family. His wife Maria, who he'd met in spain, and their two completely adorable kids. Mina was just a tiny baby, normally strapped to one of her parents' backs or stomachs, and Casey was two and he was something else. He had his run of the place with his own side missions just like the dog patrol. I think they may even have even teamed up for some of them. He could use a hatchet and was always ready to chip in on firewood detail, a true water protector. He'd often be running around in the cold air without gloves, sometimes a passerby would mention it, but he was good.

He'd never been taught to be cold. He'd never been forced to wear a jacket if he didn't feel like he needed it. Kids know their bodies probably better than we know ours. They know if they're cold or not. The human body is amazing, it is extremely adaptable and will acclimate to its surroundings in no time. By the end, I was walking in a tee shirt between tents and hardly started a fire at home. Kids don't get sick from the cold. It's the germs that get you sick, which don't live in the cold, they stay cooped up in the warm house.

My favorite Casey story was when he came into the kitchen on a mission, walking all around the tables in search of something. Almost giving up, he walked up to me for a little office banter, some water cooler talk... or maybe a frozen ice jug chat. As soon as we started to zing each other, he stopped, spotted and walked straight towards a bin under a table, reached in and grabbed a miniature sized hammer with a pink handle, the kind used for hanging picture frames. He said that he needed it for something and asked if he could take it. Most certainly Mr Bond. He returned a half hour later with the hammer head bent all the way back, parallel with the handle. I lost it. I asked him if his mom and dad had seen it, after a sneaky grin I think I got an affirmative. Gotta love a good side mission.

They all lived in a tipi back near tipi village, as could be imagined, a big circle of tipis on the south side of camp. They were camped beside another family that lived on an old school bus, we were getting pretty close to having our own baseball team. Maria was so cool, and spoke with the most entrancing accent. She cooked for the family most nights in the tipi, stopping by for the random ingredient or potato masher and created dishes that constantly kept me on my toes. She was a master of the dutch oven; bread, lasagna, probably could even do a pizza in a cinch.

Dutch ovens are great, I always talked about using one at Echo3, we ended up getting one, but I'd never be able to make enough for everybody. It's an excellent alternative to cooking with gas, a subject that I'm highly passionate about pursuing with future camps. You gotta do what you gotta do. Fight dapl with dapl. I get it. We cooked on four propane stoves. Heated water for dishes. Coffee. Onion tea. A lot of propane. A truck would show up in Oceti every saturday for a long time, you could go wait twelve hours in the cold and fill up, until eventually it stopped coming. We had our camp pretty much off of generators and I think this is the next step in that direction. I used the woodstove to cook meat slowly a few times, kept coffee going, thawed cans and warmed food, but that was it. I had a vision for a woodstove meant for cooking on with an oven built into the side. I think it could feed a camp our size, a hundred people. With some believing of course.

When we arrived here at the land that the cave sits on, the first thing that I noticed was a big cast iron cook stove. A sizable cooking surface and a small wood-burning compartment with accompanying ash cleaning door. It could only take small pieces because that's what it takes to get it hot enough. And to the right of the fire chamber, a proper oven. A bread making oven. Lasagna making oven. Pizza oven. Although, the closer the pizza gets to normal cooking conditions, the more sparkle it loses. This was essentially what I was thinking about, but it was heavy, real heavy. Not that we couldn't round up a crew of able bodies to move it, we certainly moved some really heavy stoves, but an easier transport option would be far more versatile.

(Editors note: Still me, but from the future. I'm currently transcribing all of this out of the notebooks and into a computer while I live off of the land with some other water protectors. So spoiler alert I guess, I make it out of the cave, eventually. They have a similar cook stove and I use it everyday, yesterday I cooked groundhog and bread and I absolutely love this thing. The brand is Home Comfort and I think you can get old ones pretty cheap. There's a little art and science involved, it will be a challenge to cook for more than the group I'm with now, but I'm always up for a good challenge. Manifestation complete.)

So one of these per hundred, fresh bread, nuf said. It would have worked great at camp, probably could have just replaced one of the woodstoves with it, should warm the place up a bit. It would be another challenge providing wood. Someone would have to split it all down small and it would have to be really dry, not this frozen pine stuff. So we'd need special wood or need to spend time drying the frozen stuff by the fire. All doable. What might not be as doable, is taking this setup to the Two Rivers camp in south texas for the summer. It's already going to be so hot, I couldn't imagine using this contraption there. Plus, I'd imagine they have to use gas generators to run coolers for the food, something we'd never had a need for. Possibly solar, and hopefully we can make it that way, but that's probably a lot of power. But... that's a problem for another book.

Another neat idea that a really ingenuitive guy taught me about later in the winter, was solar ovens. Now, solar panels to provide electricity for an oven might work, but this was not that. You make an oven chamber, say a two foot cube, and line it with a heat resistant reflective lining, even foil. Put that into a larger receptacle that you paint black. Stuff a bunch of insulation in between and build a slanted top with plastic, like greenhouse plastic. You're cooking pizza in a greenhouse essentially. Just aim it towards the direction with the most sun and even out there, it could get as hot as 350, so way higher in other climates and longitudes. Cool. He said he could use the same method to cook a hotdog in a pringles can, but that just made me want the pringles. Plus we already talked about cob ovens.

For cooking and climates where you can be in an open-air environment, I also have another dreamed up invention fantasy. Just build a long metal trough with a grill grate on it, then shovel in coals from a support fire outside. It would need proper ventilation, but it wouldn't be much hotter than the propane cook stoves we were using now. Working on manifesting it now. Like right now. Putting it out into the universe, wanting in my heart to help my family and my mother, just gotta believe and do it in a good way. No matter how we figure this one out, it needs to be addressed, and soon. We can't be hypocrites. We have to lead by example. We have to show people that there's another way, a better way, we have to inspire.

But it's also just logistics. We were low on propane a lot, never really completely out for long, but depending on conditions at other camps, this could be an issue. Or a certain government may stop all incoming supplies. Not those guys again. Don't they have something better to do. Isn't there a black guy they can bust with a tiny amount of weed and lock up for twenty years. They wouldn't do that anyway, those are vital supplies for survival, that would be like denying us water. Like denying us clean drinking water. Denying all of us clean water. But at camp, the government definitely tried to stop supplies from coming in, there were roadblocks in december handing out thousand-dollar tickets to people bringing us stuff.

Those are just a couple of basic, logistical reasons to get off of the gas. And how about when stuff really hits the fan? What if the ongoing global destruction causes a massive lashback, devastating earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis or a thirty degree temp drop? A lot of people would survive. We are a very adaptable species and would start forming groups, tribes, families. Camps like ours. That's what we were doing, designing a template for how to survive. Inspiring camps around the country and building an infrastructure that will be there for us if something goes wrong. Oh, what could possibly go wrong? Nothing like this has happened yet and we've been living this way forever. Living with no regard for the well-being of our most precious natural resource. Our infinitely producing planet. Oh, well, should be fine then, keep it up I guess.

Of course that's no guarantee that our government will survive, it's been on its last leg for a while. The current administration seems to be trying their hardest to bring that on, almost in a cartoonish way, like Wyle E with an acme wall, an acme drill and an acme concentration camp. It's really the best thing, they're showing us the monster that our big business, capitalist ways have created. If the election had been rigged in the other direction, we'd still be in the same boat, but we'd somehow be satisfied with the mediocre results of our wonderful two party system. At home and complacent with a small victory in an election where neither choice was a good option. You'd have no idea about all of the devious things going on under the radar. She wouldn't have stopped dapl, you can count on that. She'd have been down with all the pipes that the mega corporations wanted to stick in our water. They own the government. Dapl had the National Guard working for them, we were unarmed protesters, praying... the National Guard... an oil company. That's messed up. It's not gonna last that way forever. Things are going to change. They have to. We can't continue to survive in a society owned by money, and with everything out in the open this term, there will certainly be things brought to light that will begin a change.

It may not be an easy transition. The government could collapse, martial law could be instituted, the National Guard could be on your street. We have a place to go. We have a way to live without government assistance. We have a growing network of leaders, survivors, givers, protectors and we will be here to show you the way. Such as... Get off propane. How can you fill your tanks when something extreme happens? And most of all, it's not good to use propane. It's a bad guy too. I may use it again, but I'll be constantly looking forward, trying to treat the Earth the way she needs to be treated in order for her to recover. Dylan and Maria had it figured out. I admired their drive and commitment to protecting the planet, leaving as slight of an impact as humanly possible. Dylan always ate out of a wooden plate bowl, a slender semi-flat/semi-curved dish that he had carved himself. Coupled with his fork/knife/spoon combo and a cup, he never needed to dirty anything in the mess hall or use a styrofoam plate. Wait, what? Styrofoam?

Yeah, styrofoam. And paper. And plastic. Plasticware. Tons of it. I was ashamed. When I first got there, the population was so large that there wasn't enough ceramic dishes and only the few had their own gear. I always grabbed mine from the trash and wiped them out or off, and there were always a ton in the trash. A ton of styrofoam plates is a lot. Even when the people left, the disposable everything was still the main attraction, we were short on plates and I guess maybe they wanted to save on dish duty. We can do better than that. I kept talking with our merchant (soon to appear) about getting everyone their own, portable, strong plastic or metal cup and plate plus silverware combo. We could even personalize them real nice so that they'd want to carry them, wash them and not leave them in the mess hall with half of dinner freezing to them.

Many people had their own cups dangling from a carabiner on their coveralls, one couple in particular had it going on. Jess had her favorite cup always attached to the front of her bibs and Bill had a magnificently sized bowl that he could eat any meal out of. These two are important later, pay attention. Creating an endless amount of styrofoam trash that is hazardous to life is no solution to anything. A pile of paper plates is "better" maybe, because you can burn them, but it's still a waste of ever dwindling resources. We have to lead by example. We have to act in a way that we can be proud of and know that we are doing our very best to answer this call to save the world. This is not a time to look the other way in the name of convenience, this is a time to do what is right, to live in a good way. So Camp Tip#13: Bring your own. And Donation Tip#8: Portable platebowls, cups and utensils.

Anyway, duck fat. Dylan was standing in front of me, lunch in his bowl and eyeballing my duck fat, the secret ingredient in the brussel sprouts. Yep. Duck fat dijon brown sugar brussel sprouts. And butter. With enough butter and brown sugar, you can get anyone to eat just about anything. Maybe better throw in some lawrys just to make sure. Or just deep fry it. Must have taken too long ranting about styrofoam plates because when I returned to the tent, the entire crew was invading our marshmallow stash. Mainly the little ones, but the adults were cheering them on in a game of chubby bunny. The girls were stuffing as many marshmallows into their mouths as they could and trying to pronounce the phrase. For a split second I wanted to give them grief because I was planning more crispy treats, but this was really a way more perfect use for the sweets. Always. Every time. Sprouts sizzling, pattys shaping up and Harry walks in to see if we need help. Well, actually, you wanna fry these? He was more than happy and I had once again dodged actually cooking the salmon. JK, I jumped in and took over towards the end when the mod squad started cranking out heart-shaped patties. Think they musta put a little extra love into them. It's an incredible thing to be so inspired by everyone around you, to get to work with your role models, your heroes, your idols. To get to inspire those who inspire you and to constantly be in awe of the most amazing people you could have possibly conceived of ever existing. I highly recommend it.

Oh no, forgot about the crucial ginger honey butter, no worries, only takes a bit. Erica cut some ginger, frozen ginger, which she was able to almost shave into a fine powder, much better for the final product. And we were done, so many salmon patties that we'd have enough for tomorrow's lunch, always a good thing. I didn't realize it until I wrote an index card note, but, hehe... "Leftover Salmon" (You either get it or you don't.) The duck fat sprouts were a hit, even the small pan without the animal product was pretty tasty too. Yeah, we even made some vegetarian veggies, pretty crazy huh? Becca was a vegetarian, and since she was helping in the kitchen, I felt a strong desire to make sure she could eat what we worked so hard on. I made her cook them though.

We had a few vegetarians rotate through the troops at camp, I didn't cater to them, but when I could, I tried to keep them in mind. I had to do it under the table though. We eat meat. Many of those that were normally herbivores, ate it at camp, it was what was there and undoubtedly held the most protein for keeping warm through the frozen nights. "We eat meat" were my orders from the top, my hands were tied, you got to take it up with Smokey. As I spent more time in the kitchen, my relationship with the leader of the camp started to bloom. I wouldn't say flourish, no, we'll stick with bloom. The kitchen was his office. I worked in his office and I was charged with keeping the workplace coffee going, and more often than not, I failed. It's just a pot of hot water and always folgers (that's what they liked, even if we had some pretty fancy alternatives), how hard could it be? My full-blown addiction to the sometimes sludgy camp coffee hadn't completely set in yet. Sure, I relied heavily on the strong brew on all of those overnight shifts at the Echoes. It's the best at 4 a.m. when you're starting to lose it and your brother and sister walk in with a thermos of coffee, smokes and whatever that idiot in the kitchen is inventing tonight. But I didn't quite need it as much during the sunshine hours, at least not after a couple of cups in the morning to help the cigarettes go down.

Smokey was a little ornery, and he loved to give me a hard time about pretty much anything he could think of, including the coffee. And the meat. He liked to pick on me because he saw that I could take it, he wasn't going to ruffle my feathers, and I was pretty good at dishing it out to. He was from the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in south dakota, as were a lot of our Lakota family. He reminded me so much of my grandfather, who had passed away around this same time last year, and no matter how hard he fought it, I earned a special place in his heart. He'll never admit it though. He had a way of digging at you, that on the surface seemed harsh if you didn't know him, but then you figure out that he's messing with you because he likes you, and then you realize that he's still very serious. Do it right. Do it his way. The Lakota way. We were guests on Lakota land. Here to help them with their movement. They were the ones who inspired us to even come here in the first place. They manifested us. They poured their hearts into the universe, their energy, and it pulled on our heartstrings and called us to action. It was a crazy feeling, by the minute feeling more and more that I had to be out here. I had never done anything like this. I would never in a million years have imagined myself camping in a blizzard for any reason, especially not for that silly old environment.

The environmentalists are just another group that the mainstream like to make fun of. Like hippies. Those that have ideas outside of the destructive greed system that, for some reason, are given no credibility in the mainstream media. The media owned by the same companies that profit from the destructive system, but we've got more interesting conflicts than that one going on. So I never saw this coming, but for a while now I'd been doing whatever felt right and this felt like the only right thing in the world. I had to be in North Dakota. So we did things their way. We followed their traditions. Before every meal we made a spirit plate, a small dish with a little of each dinner component, and someone (usually a native elder, many times a spiritual leader and if we were lucky a grandmother) would pray to the Creator, Tunkasila, to our grandfathers, our ancestors, with many powerful words that helped to concentrate the room's energy in a good way.

They prayed for everyone at camp, our families at home and our so gracious supporters that kept us going. We prayed for the dapl cops and for their families. We prayed that their hearts would be opened and they would start to see another way. We might feel that we are the good guys and that what they are doing is wrong, horribly wrong, morally wrong, but in the end, they are just doing their jobs. Certainly most are very ethically motivated. They took this job to protect the people. To help their community and country. To save the world. To feed their families, who in the end are the most important things in their world, so nothing else matters. I get it. Not that this is the war that it's sometimes felt like at camp, but I get it. I'm sure in the history of wars, nobody ever thought that they were the bad guy. You're just there protecting your people, defending what you believe in and cherish the most, the unfortunate part is that in many cases, to the powers-that-be, that means money.

I don't think I have to elaborate on that, most everyone gets that our war hungry country is fueled by greed. Stealing natural resources, employing their own private security firms, funding their own weapons and technology companies and funneling money into their own reconstruction crews to rebuild after the carnage that is left in their wake. Building a civilization to our liking over top of their priceless sacred sites, their history. Trying to erase who they are and force them to assimilate to our broken, money-hungry, capitalist system. Putting them to work for us or putting them to death. Sounds like a concentration camp to me, and I'm supposed to believe that we're the good guys? But our men and women on the ground, risking their lives each and every moment for the greater good, they believe in their hearts that they are the good guys. Saving the world. You would have to if you were going to survive, to deal with everything that you went through, everything that you had to do, you would have to believe. You'd have had to have soaked in all of the indoctrinations and propaganda that are constantly force-fed to every one of us. Most people do, and to get through that, it would be vital, but I'm also sure that many have started to question their roles in the oppression of others for the sake of greed. I know some have seen the other side of the coin. Wondered if they were in fact the good guys. I've met plenty. Now that I've been through only the most minor of PTSD episodes, I empathize so deeply with those that have seen first-hand the atrocities that our country is capable of. Those that have had their eyes opened to the long history of evil doings and have lost faith in everything that they thought they ever knew. It's scary. And the people standing on the other side of the barricade are people too. Under all the riot gear and flak jackets and gas masks, they're humans too. Two-legged nation.

Certainly scared too, but doing what they have to do. So we prayed for them. For their safety and for their compassion. Sometimes you could see on a few of their faces a look of sympathy, questioning what they thought was the right way. This was not what they signed up for. They took a vow to protect the very people that they were being ordered to harm. By a corporation. By an all-consuming machine designed for only one purpose. Money. Not life, liberty, freedom, happiness or puppies. But money. And they didn't care how many puppies got in the way, they were getting those dollars. But you can't drink dollars. We did speculate that if a dog had been harmed in the chaos, peta could probably get the whole thing shut down though. Our prayers were working. They were starting to realize that it's not right to perpetrate violence on people in peace. People standing up for the very planet that you share. Standing at the front line praying for the safety of you and your families. We just had to keep it up.

Our elder would pray for the animals who gave their lives to nourish us, for the wood cutters, the late-night security volunteers, the firetenders, the medics, the dishwashers and without fail, "the chefs who prepared this food." Without much calculation, I'm pretty sure I got the most prayer energy out of the camp, sheer statistics, I think that's a major reason that my energy stayed strong and I was able to spread the love to the rest of camp. Another upward spiral.

The prayer would end with Mitakuye Oyasin, all my relatives, and was quickly answered from the crowd of hungry campers with "Aho." Aho was the single most used word at camp. It's like aloha, "hi brother" or "see you later friend," but also used so much to say "that's right," "I feel you," "amen" or "thank your brother, now let's eat." Another tradition we strictly adhered to was "women, children and elders first." We didn't pull any punches though and commonly suggested that those only moderately older than us should skip ahead, "Uncle Harry, you're pretty old right:)"

Some tourists questioned the practice, considered us all equals and thought that we should eat accordingly, but this was our way, the Lakota way. We not only believed that we were equal, but we honor those who breathe life into the world, as well as the ones who are there to guide us as we learn the lessons they have long known. We've all but extinguished their traditions, this movement for indigenous rights is not really the best place to further colonize what they've managed to cling on to just because we may not understand.

Chefs of course eat last. Not a tradition of the camp, but my personal way and that of many of my fellow kitcheneers. Harry stuck to it more than me, sometimes having to beg him to eat and assuring him that everyone had their fill. I just wasn't that hungry after I'd spent all day at the stove, especially if it was a meal I could snack on or needed to taste test a lot. Plus I liked to sit by the fire, smoking my end-of-shift cig and watching my family eat. That's why I liked to come up with crazy camp foods, comforts from home that they'd never expect here. I loved to see that look on their face when, after a hard day of work, they walked in to their favorite food on the menu.

And Smokey's favorite food was meat. Red meat. Beef, buffalo, deer, elk, burgers, steaks, meat. I received two stern talking-tos at camp, the first was sometime this week, ah, chicken salad day. I had a soup going and he came into the office. "What's for lunch?" Chicken salad sandwiches and a creamy potato soup. "What's the meat in the soup? No meat, figured the sandwich was meat enough and I'd leave this vegetarian. "We eat meat. None of this california hippie stuff. They can eat meat too. And chicken ain't meat." Yes sir. Chicken ain't meat? He had gotten food poisoning from chicken once and couldn't be near the stuff. I would still cook it, but I would also try to have a red meat dish, eventually I wised up and just made a few burgers and left them in the office for him.

He was a great leader. We all respected him very much so it was easy to follow him and stay unified. Rosebud had it going on, we had the sustainable energy game on point, the unity and fellowship, prayer and inipis and a pretty respectable kitchen service. We would later be asked to speak with the other camps and give advice on how to recreate the vibe that we had going on. How to create a family. We just put love into everything we do. From-the-heart love. Genuinely caring for one another and for our mother. The other camps had this too, I think we just attracted a lot of very similarly minded protectors, those with chillest, laid back personalities that were also very hard-working and truly selfless. You just have to love. You just have to believe.

More and more, everyday, through all of the miraculous things that I experienced, I believed. I prayed more from a deeper place each day. I really started knowing, without a doubt, that I was always in the right place at the right time. It was obvious. I stopped planning meals the day before. I much preferred to wake up knowing that as long as I believed, we'd come up with another spot-on camp creation and we'd no doubt hit it out of the park. This let me wake up and check in with my family, read the vibe of the camp and be inspired by what I thought they needed that day, plus I could see what new ingredients had manifested overnight. The next day it was finally time to break out something I'd been considering since the pantry shelf days. I'd found cans of water chestnuts, bamboo shoots and tiny little corns... Chinese food. Cashew chicken. Only problem was... it was chicken.

Whatevs, what's the worst that can happen? He had definitely been serious, also seeming to joke and just be giving me a hard time, but Jenny had also been in there and agreed that he had meant it. Jenny was super cool, she was working in the kitchen before I was and had done some video editing work in the past, so we hit it off right away. She was always checking in to see what the latest footage I had captured was, although by this point I was hardly even filming at all. She had wanted to do oriental night with me, but happened to be away from camp for a few days when we it happened, cashew chicken waits for no one.

When I went into the kitchen, Suzy already had a few chickens boiling, the easiest way to cook a frozen chicken, or five. It thaws and cooks at the same time and just falls off the bone, just be careful because some companies have packaging inside of the birds. So, technically Suzy cooked the chicken, I was off the hook, and now with the heat off of me we decided to put it on the reverse wok pan. It was just such a weird one because it got the hottest in the middle, which was where pan curved up so it was the shallowest too. Just had to move stuff around a lot or it burned. The cornstarch was always missing, so I dug and crawled my way into the hoop house to grab a box that I had seen. The front plywood door had been left ajar and the latest blizzard had gotten inside, then at some point in the winter, the back corner started caving in from the weight of snow, but really it was the excitement of never knowing what could happen that made the hoop house fun.

It was great, the harder and crazier that things got out there, the more we handled it, got stronger and could feel that we were in the right place. I was already somewhat following my path before camp, but this place kick started a deeper connection to that feeling and I've been able to hang on to it at least up til now. I'm at the right place. I'm guessing you are too. But I didn't have any chopsticks.

I didn't disclose it until the meal was done and a success, but I hadn't made this in about fifteen years. I had learned how from my first girlfriend in my teens and hadn't tried it since. Still worked. Becca got me with the same non-disclosure tactic one night. We were trying to come up with a dessert plan. Thomas had brought me a big box of brownie mix and I had rounded up a few more, but of course, we had no oven. I had the grill, which I would eventually try to pull off some pretty extensive baking in, but even if it worked, it would take a long time to do the amount that we would need to make.

Thomas would end up in the kitchen more as the winter went on, many times helping with breakfast, the one meal I couldn't be counted on for. He had worked with Food not Bombs in the past, so he knew a thing or two about cooking for a large camp. There was a food not bombs kitchen in Rosebud too. Betty ran the all vegetarian kitchen and came up with all sorts of creations of her own. So the veggie people had another option, we didn't completely neglect them, they had their own special spot, plus I slipped a few through under the radar. For example, the brownies were a no-meat recipe. See? Eggs though. Frozen eggs. I was still working on getting the whole frozen egg thing figured out by now, and I can't imagine doing it in the morning, but eventually I got it pretty down pat.

Warm up a pot of water, pretty hot but not boiling, and let the eggs soak for ten to twelve minutes. (two American Spirits) The whites will be thawed, so crack all four dozen into a bowl. The yolks will be a mushy slush, or a slushy mush, whatever, I'm no wordsmith. One technique to deslush the mush is the standard whisk, it works, but takes a while and a lot more forearm vibrations, that's why I consider it the novice approach. I prefer a more hands on method, just put your hands on them and mash'em up. It's cold, especially if it's below neg twenty outside, but hey, they're saying that neg twenty is the new zero. I use one hand to rake yolks into the other and just squeeze them so that they squirt out between my fingers. Keep at it and eventually you'll get a somewhat consistent egg smoothie. I didn't have it down that smooth yet, so some of the yolks weren't completely beaten, which as one could imagine leaves little chunks of cooked egg yolk in your brownies. No big deal, this was camp style, blizzard camp style, out in the middle of a frozen prairie camp style. We could do just about anything and people would eat it up.

So how did we cook them? What was Becca's bright idea? The idea that she assured me she had done before, only after it was done did she reveal that she had been twelve the last time she had tried it, back when she couldn't use an oven. Well duh... scrambled brownies. Yeah, exactly how it sounds. Just like eggs, with chunks of egg yolk and everything. Pour it in the pan, keep scooping and flipping as it cooks and eventually you have a whole pan full of yummy gooey brownie globs. No edge pieces, only the perfect center cuts. Or let it go a little longer if for some reason you prefer the crispy edge bits. So good. We did these a few times and it may be the only way I make them from now on. Thank you preteen Becca.

My own teenage memories were working out too, cashew chicken was coming together. Not bad considering I was trying to remember a recipe and upsize it to a hundred servings with limited frozen ingredients and kitchenware. I was starting to get the hang of this. I really did want some chopsticks though. I wasn't sure if I could eat asian food without them, that's almost sacrilege. I had hoped to make some, I think it was Brock who brought me some scraps of firewood that might work, but in the end I only had time to improvise. I used a couple of wooden kebab skewers. Not the right size, but it worked well enough, camp style.

Suzy and I just had to make the rice and the meal would be done. Here's the thing, Suzy and I were really good in the kitchen together, we could make all sorts of magic happen, but we not only struggled with instant foods, neither of us were masters of pasta or rice. Those are the two things that every chef is required to master, a test of true chefdom. It was always a stumbling block, how much water and how much pasta would it take to feed everyone. We normally had way too much or not quite enough, but we actually got pretty close with the rice that night. Eventually I quit trying to figure it out and just winged it. I just did what felt right, not even trying to measure, and I most of the time came out ahead. Only once, the rice was crunchy, so Stephanie and I named it "Stephanie's special crunchy rice" and charged a dollar extra for it. Go capitalism.

Another meal was done. Another unexpected treat for my people and in a totally different direction than the southern style that they knew I could pull off. My confidence was going up too, and I still had Becca, Brittany and Erica, our energy was unstoppable. I was ready for anything. I was even ready to party. Well, not party in the sense that it used to mean to me, but Pete was having get-together and I wasn't going to miss another. The last one had been a talking circle where they passed a feather and whoever had it spoke of whatever was on their heart while everyone intently listened. Listened the way Pete had taught me how to do a Echo3. Then there was hours of music and I'm sure a little medicine for the people. I would be at the next one, rain or shine.

Or snow. And it was snowing in fact. I geared up and headed to Pete's house in tarpee village. Yeah, tipi village, tarpee village, we got all the villages. So a tarpee is essentially a tipi made out of tarps, how fitting. It's made out of a wooden ring up top with wooden 2x2 strips that run from there to the ground. Then pieces of tarp are pulled around it tightly and stapled on. A woodstove heats it and it has many of the qualities of tipi, mainly the wind resistance due to its conical shape. Of course, it is made with petroleum-based tarps, but one step at a time. Tarpee village was farther down main street, then closer to the river on a side road that broke off to the left. There were six tarpees and Pete's was the last one on the right. At least I thought so. But here I was, standing in the snow, didn't know for sure and didn't hear anything that sounded like it could be a party. I asked out loud and got no response, so eventually I headed back to the mess hall. As I walked in, Pete was walking out. "Are you coming to the party?" I told him what I just told you and he said that the party wasn't at his place, like I had heard through the grapevine. It was at Trent's art tent, it was an art party. Sweet. If I hadn't walked in at just that moment, I would have missed Pete and never known. Mmhmm...

Trent lived in the second tarpee from the gate, next to Jacob and his mom. I came into a packed house, Summer, Jeanie, Becca, Johan, Wendy, lovely lovely Brittany and a few others, plus Trent. Johan had only been back at camp for a little while, he had come earlier in the fall and left to gather supplies and funding before returning. He came back ready to get to it and on his first visit back to the mess hall he was trying to get us set up with a solar shower. I suggested the now empty porta john shed, but in the end it just didn't work to have a shower at camp. There was already an emergency shower for if things got hairy up on the bridge, but it was pretty much reserved for that. As nice as it would have been to have a general washing facility, it just didn't make sense. First we'd have to dispose of the gray water, which we considered filtering and reusing, but the bottom line was the use of the precious mni to begin with. Plus the casino was nearby if you just had to wash some stank off.

Johan was a funny dude, full of spastic energy, always very excited, maybe like... like, scrappy-doo, yeah. He had a talent for finding out what people needed and getting it for them, commonly having his contacts in seattle send supplies. We had an obscene amount of chickpeas and I had the idea for five gallon buckets of hummus, just needed to manifest a gratuitous amount of tahini, Johan was my guy. Daria was another who had this gift. She had been here for a long time and had the whole camp in her pocket. Metaphorically and literally, she had a little notebook of everyone's needs and wants, as well as a list of available items and people, just waiting to make the next manifested camp connection. She also, and Johan too for that matter, went to most of the camp wide meetings. Most Rosebuddies didn't, we kept doing our thing and just sent a few representatives. Many times these meetings would take a lot of time for just a little information, so it made sense that our representation be the same ones that knew what everyone needed and what they could do.

I took a seat near the stove and saw that Summer was carving wood with an exacto knife. I had given my pocket knife away sometime over the last week, so I waited until she was done and then I started to art. And what did I make? You got it, chopsticks. Shorter than average for ease of carrying and they stayed in my pocket for the rest of the winter. I showed them to Dylan the next day and he recommended curing the ends in the coals of a fire, I ended up doing it by rolling them on top of a hot woodstove for a long time. I still use them, not just for standard chopstick fare, and because I made them myself, I'll never just throw them in the wash tub or leave them on a table. I'll make a bowl next I think. The dish situation is crucial, anything to get off of disposable stuff. We need to acknowledge this and make a concerted effort to make a change. We can't expect to be taken seriously if we are blatantly being hypocritical in the ways that we treat the environment in the name of convenience.

The first step was done though, I had my much-needed chopsticks. Pete and Jeanie played a really good nodapl song that they had to been working on and then Becca asked everyone to name their favorite moment from the last few days. Obviously everyone had something beautiful to say, but hers was about me. Well, I guess she did spend a good bit of time with me, and even after cooking all day we'd often sit together as we ate, we were buds. Her moment was when I dropped the brussel sprouts, not because she thought it was so funny, but she said it inspired her when I handled it the way I did. She hadn't even noticed the second I spent under my breath, before I gained my composure and calmly breathed through the situation, she only saw the flash of upright thumbs as I walked it off. She said that she would not have handled it the same, but that observing me turn what could be a cause of negative energy into a positive one, it showed her another way.

A way to work through difficult situations. Staying positive through the hard times. To laugh it off. Knowing that everything happens for a reason. This doesn't mean you can't be sad or upset, but you can know that you'll get through this and come out stronger on the other side. Sometimes bad stuff happens. It may be hard to understand at the time from inside the situation, but those things have to happen to push you along your path and prepare you for the future. If you can understand this, then you can endure anything with a level of calm and positivity that makes everything not seem quite as bad in the first place. Plus I still served those sprouts and they loved them, winning.

And I was inspired by Becca, not only was she by my side for most of my work day, she was also coming in and helping with breakfast, and doing dishes with any other free moments. Wow. She was doing a lot of breakfasts with Tina, a really neat hippie who had the most soothing voice (not unlike Carmenia) and had a lot of wisdom to share. The first time Tina and I were working together, we went to the pantry to get supplies and to blaze one into the woodstove. We were halfway through a bowl when Summer walks in, I hand it to her and she starts to reach for it, then pulls back and chastises us for smoking in there. Aha, gotcha. She didn't care what we did, but the powers-that-be will and they won't like it. Summer left, Tina and I looked at each other and giggled. She said not to worry about Summer and we went back to our business.

In the pantry, Tina taught me about using a pendulum, or I gravitated more towards the technique of standing up and feeling which way you naturally lean. It's a way to tap in to your higher subconscious self and look for direction or answers. It's simple, I stood up and relaxed, asked to show me a yes and my body leaned forward on its own, I asked for a no and got the opposite response. Then I asked a few control questions and they all checked out. So I asked a few unknown questions, I'll let you know how they pan out.

Tina lived with Daria in a tarpee, one night we went back to smoke and it was late, so I just stayed in the guest bed. We had fancy teas and snacks, they had it decorated all nice, very cozy. Daria had an excellent clothes line system. I scoped it out when she was checking to see if she had coveralls in my size that I could trade these oversized ones for, I was at the top connector's house after all. She had a rope that went up and then through a nail turned into an eyebolt kinda thing, then the rope went to the other side of the tarpee. So everything was high up out of the way, in the driest part of the place, and all she had to do was let some slack go of the rope and the hanging clothes would drop down to a manageable height, genius.

Daria was big into permaculture and sustainable living, she was actually published in a book that she shared with us, a collection of different experts speaking about living creatively with as little impact as possible. I didn't get to spend much time studying permaculture at camp, but I will once I get the chance, I think they might be on to something with a lot of what they have going on. I'm into what I know about it: Care for the Earth, Care for the people, Return the surplus. It's permaculture, as opposed to agriculture. It doesn't destroy an ecosystem to grow food for one species, it creates an ecosystem for all species to flourish. I'd have to look into it more to see if it's truly in the most natural accord possible, but certainly it's miles better than anything else that's going on in the world. Civilization at least. It's still taking life into our own hands, but I think it's doing so in such a way that it could sustain itself without human interference. I can neither confirm nor deny until I do more research, and the wifi is down at the cave right now, sorry. But it could at least be a big step in the right direction, something to inspire a new way to live in harmony with the planet. Check it out. P-E-R-M-A-C-U-L-T-U-R-E.

Camp was full of experts, on everything imaginable, but even more so, camp was full of jack-of-all-trades. Basically every single person had no less than a lot of skill sets vital to our survival, seemed like everyone could do everything. A pretty useful situation really. Made it harder to keep track of days though. In one day you might split wood, make lunch, winterize a tipi, get water, fix a solar panel, cook dinner, go to sweat, put out a fire, start a fire, work on a car and then decide to make late night grilled cheese sandwiches before going to work overnight at Echo3. What day is it again? And grilled cheese?

I still liked to take care of my late night people, it was them who inspired me to cook in the first place and they often missed meals because they slept during the day, so I liked to provide bonus items when I could. And because of the small numbers, it was possible to do it right there in the mess hall in a normal human sized pan. I would offer late night food to anyone that came in after missing dinner, but there were a few people that I would go a little more out of my way to provide for. Elders mainly, and there were a few gentle souls that touched me in a different way, not telling me how to live, but showing me how. Leading by example. Providing a template for being a better me. Exhibiting the humility that I had been praying for. I was blessed to know them.

One of those dear souls was Greg. He was regularly there for dinner, lived in Sacred Stone but got around, often appearing late night. He led some sweats but I never got to attend one of his, he drummed and sang and was regularly at frontline actions, meetings and he was even in a Skrillex video once. The most humble, soft-spoken, gentle soul I'd ever met, and turns out he was Erica's dad. Whoa, had no idea, makes sense now though. He had been an activist for a long time, so no wonder she was so involved and seemed so much older than seventeen. She was no stranger to what we were doing out here. Greg was always so very appreciative of the food I prepared, so much so that I was compelled to make sure he was full every time I saw him. It was him who had inspired that particular round of late-night treats. And Erica was there too, so I had an assistant already. She asked if I ever stopped. Yeah, I took a break after dinner, caught a buzz, but I didn't come here to stop. I came here to start.

Grilled mozzarella and american with tomato, not too shabby for two in the morning. Greg first, then with everyone else fed we still had enough for three more, so two for security and one bonus sandwich. In walks Summer, in the middle of handling some situation or another, obviously a little stressed out and in need of a double shot of TLC. "Would you like a delicious grilled double cheese and tomato sandwich?" as I seemed to pull it out of my pocket. Mind blown. Spirit lifted. Stress relieved. Grilled cheese can fix most things, it's all in the delivery.

The next stop on my route was equally impressed, it was Wendy at the post by herself. She had only recently started working shifts at Echo3, once we got short-handed, but she had been a part of many late night food deliveries, so my arrival wasn't completely unexpected. I hung out for a bit and finally decided that I would just sleep on the cot inside, save me a trip and a fire build, and kept me close by in case there was a late-night situation. I always like to have two people at the post, even if one was just keeping company. It's way easier to survive with a friend, plus it makes it possible to leave the post to check on things. Like a missing teenager or the sacred fire. Or the compost toilets. I would sleep on the cot occasionally, but generally if I stayed there, I preferred to sleep by the fire.

One night I was on duty with Stephanie, I'd found what I thought was a blanket by the fire and wrapped up as a stranger walked into the shack. Hank came in and sat with us, he was an interesting one for sure. He had spent a lot of time in the woods alone, working on all sorts of cool survivalist projects and sharing pictures off of his phone. He was a little socially awkward, he did live in the woods by himself, but he was cool. And the feral ferret was his. Obviously. Stephanie and I had been cooking a big pack of bacon on the fire when he walked up, apparently the fastest way to attract relief to the post. Hey can you watch this bacon for a minute while I run to the bathroom?

We ate and talked about deer hides and stuff, until I finally curled up and went to sleep. I woke up a few minutes before Ernie stopped by and realized that I was sleeping in a cape just like his. His black cloak that made for such a grand entrance as he approached out of the shadows, and his own shadow also looked really cool with it, looked like it had been drinking onion tea. Was this his cape? Oh no. I had rolled it around in the dirt all night. No worries, he had given his away to someone who could use it more than him, and here was this one that was even nicer than his old one. Pre-dirtied and everything. So yeah, he gave away a cape out of love and an even better one appeared on a his path, even works with capes. Makes sense. It was the most magical place I've ever experienced, and it was about to be a magical day, tomorrow was New Year's Eve. While we would have no champagne toast, you know we didn't let the night go uncelebrated. We don't mess around. I had a plan. The last few weeks had been leading up to this moment and I felt like I was finally ready. Crunch time. Hopefully. This was it. My chance to shine. It was time to do it for real.
Step Six:

Pizza for dinner. Proper dinner at a decent time with enough pizza for everyone. Sixteen pizzas we would make, not a small feat, but I could make the sauce a day ahead of time, one of the few times that I ever planned ahead for a meal. On my way from security, I ran into Suzy and Miranda and we had an impromptu kitchen meeting. Looked like they could handle today and I could work on pizza stuff, but I wanted to stay out of their way, so I kept my mess in the mess hall. I got the sauce going, garlic and onions and all, I was doing a big pot, sixteen pizzas to make but had made way too much really. No big, I could save the leftover for next time, just stick it out in the freezer, I think there's room. I was nursing the pot when Suzy walked over to ask if I could help her with dinner. Sure thing. I considered carrying the hot pot over with me, but for some reason had the wherewithal not to. Maybe it'd been humility reminding me that I wasn't invincible. Considered cutting it off and resuming later, but eventually landed on leaving Wendy in charge of it. Should be fine, she's the most dependable. Although she's also important and needed many places besides stirring a pot of sauce. I helped Suzy with whatever it was she was whipping up and when we made it back, I checked on the sauce. I could smell it already. Burnt. Barely, but it was. I hoped I could fix it, but after a few hesitant tastes, I finally decided that it wouldn't work, especially for the debut of pizza night.

I didn't freak out, I held my cool and just quietly whispered my findings to Suzy. She took the fall since it was her that pulled me away, but I just took it as a lesson of patience, and humility. Way better than the humility lesson I would have gotten carrying the hot sauce across the slippery slope. I had been impatient to begin with, I could have just cut it off, but I wanted it to get done, so I put it on someone else's shoulders. I tried to rush something that didn't need to be and involved someone else who was probably busy with other important things. I get it.

If I was praying for humility, patience and understanding, then I shouldn't be upset when lessons in the three appeared along my path. One can't expect to simply be granted these qualities, these are things to be worked towards, gradually changing one's perspective one step at a time. So Wendy had enlisted Hope and Anya to help stir the pot, but turns out they're better at stirring a figurative pot than a literal one. It was all good though. I had plenty of time to do the sauce again tomorrow, and this time I could do less of it, plus it would be even better this time. Everything for a reason.

Wendy still felt bad even though I didn't let it bother me, I'd have probably felt bad in her shoes too. I showed back up later on, prob after a safety meeting at Dan's, and she had made me a big bowl of fruit salad. I thought it funny, but a nice sentiment, and it gave me an idea. I took the bowl of fruit, added some semi frozen yogurt, granola, nuts and fancy honey. Mix all that up and... uh, duh, megadelicious. This was the first edition of what would become a staple desert, and a healthy one at that. But for now it was just another midnight snack, inspired by an "I'm sorry" present from an accidental sauce burn. So we ended up getting the camp's favorite dessert because of an "accident", that's a pretty good trade-off I'd say. Everything for a reason.

Soon enough it was new year's eve and I had a full day ahead of me, sixteen dough balls and a new batch of sauce, maybe I'd even get it right this time. I took my time today, starting early with garlic and onions, stirred the sauce myself, made four batches of dough and soon it would come together. In the meantime, the non-sauce-stirring girls had appeared in the kitchen and wanted Suzy's help making a special burger recipe. Potato chip burgers with a slice of sweet potato, mmm. So, junk food night. I was glad too, I was worried that sixteen pizzas wouldn't cut it, not if everyone wanted a plateful. This was the first time I had a deadline, as loose as it may be. How long would sixteen pizzas even take? I decided to cook half of them and start serving, then there would be fresh ones rolling out for another hour. And I still had hopes for my secret plan to come together, a way to up the game, to bring my score from 95 to 100. I kept talking about what I needed, working on manifesting the special item, and halfway through the pizzas, guess what, like clockwork.

At the door of the tent appeared Australian Alan and Betty, Australian Alan was awesome. Surprisingly, he was from Australia, had a fun accent and most importantly, was into good music. He liked jam and funk and zappa sounding stuff, like me. Once, we were talking about jam bands and I mentioned Snarky Puppy, my fav band, but really more jazz than jam. He didn't see that one coming, then he blew my mind by jumping from Snarky to Hiromi Uehara, a japanese pianist who is my other very favorite. The two are not really similar at all, except that it is epic experimental jazz, but there's a lot of that out there. That sparked a connection one night over music and developed a brotherhood that no ocean will be able to break apart.

He and Betty were tarpeemates, both at the door disguised as kitchen volunteers, but I think they really just wanted to see what I was cooking up for new year's. Garlic and onions. Well, what I really need is a plumber's torch, like for creme brûlée. Betty had one back at the tarpee and would have it in my hand in moments. Just gotta put it out there. The key item was in route, a little olive oil on the crust and a once-over with the torch... it worked. So good. Crispy artisan pizza in a blizzard. One hundred percent. Sauce was better than it had been the day before, potato chip burgers underway, pizza perfected, all was good on the last day of the year.

Wow, I'd already been here a month. Didn't feel like it at all, but somehow it also felt like a year. I had called my mom on christmas, then the phone gave up during the storm that night. I wouldn't touch a phone for all of january, I didn't know anyone's number off the top of my head anyway. Talk about a 21st century first world problem. It was nice not having the constant distraction, life was way better when I was paying attention to it. Tonight was the first time that most people had tried camp pizza. Unless you had been in the know before, then it was probably a complete surprise. The general consensus was that we had done it. We had handcrafted the seemingly impossible. Minds were blown. Preconceptions were changed. We could do anything. Of course, now they would expect the impossible, but we just had to believe. Sixteen pizzas was plenty, at least with the burgers in the mix. Even had enough for me to pack a few pocket slices for the road.

James, Dan and I were chillin at Dan's, celebrating our full pizza bellies, when someone mentioned a bonfire at Turtle Island. We're in. We filled Dan's truck with friends, James hopped on his three wheeler and we were wheels up. Turns out it was a double bonfire with drums and singers, a lot of people, lot of familiar faces. A bunch of protectors had also climbed the icy hill to stand at the chain link fence separating us and dapl. Eventually they all came sliding down the hill, reporting back that they had been talking at the cops and seemed to get an almost humanistic response from a few. Happy New Year!

No toast, but I did have a pocket full of pizza. I hoped to give it away and manifest some herb, but four of us rode in the back of the truck, so my four pocket slices just made sense. What a year. What a month. The best month of my life. I had finally found the place I truly belonged and had started coming into my own there. I had grown so much just in the last two weeks. 2017 was going to be a great year. A year to make a difference. A year to inspire. A year to be inspired. A year to grow, to learn, to teach. A year to save the world. And pizza. How do you follow that?

Camp pizza closed out the year on top, but you have to ring in the next with something equally as awesome. Gotta set a standard. Big year. Can't disappoint. New precedent for a new president. See the kind of pressure I had to deal with. Well, I did have one ace up one of my five sets of sleeves, my very favorite meal, a thing I grew up with once a week, a favorite of all of my extended family back home. It had been what they ate on their first christmas without me. A recipe handed down to my mom from her mom from her mom from her mom from texas. And the best part? There was no camp style concessions to be made. I could make it just like I would at home, just way more of them. What could even come close to comparing to the now dialed-in crispy pizza? Crispy fried tacos. OMG, so good.

Elk tacos. I mix the meat and beans together, then fill raw corn tortillas, fold them and place in the bubbling oil. Works really good in theory. The beans always explode, even at home, but at home the stove is level, the pan has a flat bottom and doesn't hold twenty-four tacos at a time. I tried to do them in the aluminum monster, thinking that the deeper wells on the edge would work. Didn't. It was too deep and all of the taco contents just slid right out. So...

So, Harry and I thought that we could transfer the bubbling hot oil into the other big pan, pretty ambitious. We did have the forethought to cut off the gas powered flame first and we actually pulled it off. Safe and sound. The other pan was way better, beans still explode though. Tina was in the kitchen too, making a magnificent salad and a side of black eyed peas, but I also had our special forces unit of kitchen aides. Fresh off their burgers success the prior day, the girls were eager to help and I had been inspired recently with an idea for a tasty dessert, today was a day for celebration... and dessert. I gathered all sorts of fruit, fresh apples, canned pineapple, peaches in pear juice, those random cans of mango and lychees, plus frozen blue, straw and raspberries which turned the final product a brilliant purple. I had a cache of granola in the hoop house, plenty of honey, just needed yogurt. I had seen a whole cooler full outside during my meat searches. Found it and grabbed three big tubs of yogurt, frozen yogurt. Deep frozen yogurt. Oh boy. I put them near the fire, soaked them in warm water, tried to cut them apart. Not gonna happen. They were starting to melt but still just a frozen block in the middle. Eventually I got them far enough along that I could dump them out into a big metal bowl that I put on the woodstove. The edges were melting into liquid, but the rest was still rock hard. If I could have gotten it slushy, it would have been awesome, but no go. I had to cut the icy parts up and smash them, bringing the soup to a complete liquid state, then it was too runny, so I had to put it back out in the freezer for a while. Always something.

The girls filled two trays with fruit, granola and honey, then when we had waited a sufficient amount of resolidification time, they mixed in the yogurt. It was runny and bright purple, looked like a mess, but it was the first batch of a soon-to-be favorite. For now we would call it "fruit goop," but it would receive an official title soon enough. When it was first served, diners were a little skeptical of its outward appearance, but soon the reviews were in. Approved. Don't judge a dessert by its cover. The less judging the better really. The tacos were also a success. The more beans and meat fell out in the pan, the dirtier and smokier the oil got, and by the time I finished them all of the carbon monoxide detectors were telling us that dinner was ready. I ate seven, I felt I had earned the chance to gorge myself on my favorite meal in the world.

I was walking outside later when Bill and Jess came up to me, they were always so very appreciative of everything I made. Often telling me how very glad they were that I was at camp, lifting me up and making me feel needed. Today Jess told me that she hadn't eaten meat in three years, but the crispy tacos were glowing from the love that I had put into each one. She couldn't resist and ate a not so healthy fried elk taco. And loved it. Wow. Cool. They are so tasty. Not that I ever felt bad about it, but I did acknowledge that my cooking wasn't always the healthiest. Many times fried and more often than not, on the butter heavy end of the spectrum. I was over and over again reassured that we needed it, we needed the grease, we needed the fat, we needed some calories to keep us warm at night. Deal. Not sure if I already covered this, but it was cold out there.

Tina had asked me to fill pots with water at night so that she wouldn't have to wait for our plastic containers to thaw in the morning. She could just flip on the burner and eventually the ice would be ready to be the first coffee of the day. Or oatmeal, we always had delicious oatmeal with all sorts of dried fruit or nuts. But we needed to have metal water jugs. Something that could be put right on top of a stove. It would have saved so much time, headache and melted jugs of toxic plastic. That night, we had finished cooking by headlamp once the solar cut out, fairly common and as long as you had a light handy, it was pretty seamless. Harder to clean up after yourself, something I was still slack on and unless my helpers jumped in, would often be left in a less than amazing state. This night I was at least going to fill up water jugs and pots for the morning crew, but the water was all frozen. The watershed... frozen. The jugs in the mess hall... frozen. I gathered what tiny amount I could and had to give up. I hated it for breakfast, but what could I do?

Luckily I had Becca there to report back, Tina had been frustrated with me for sure, until she discovered that this was a camp wide situation and that I had tried my hardest. I loved Tina so much, but she could be a little frantic sometimes, not always the calm energy I liked to maintain in the kitchen. It was weird though, she had such a calm soothing voice and demeanor, I think she just got overwhelmed easily. It could be an overwhelming place. She also, kind of unknowingly, took over the energy in the kitchen, made you start worrying about whatever she needed. Not the way we normally operated. We worried very little generally. We always knew everything would work out.

It was around this time that Suzy left, but she assured me that she was fully confident I could handle it on my own. I'd been doing most of the meals without her anyway, building a solid team and learning how to delegate effectively. She relieved any insecurities I still had, telling me I was a natural, how crazy it was that I'd never cooked for a lot of people and I just somehow figured it out on the fly. Okay then, I can do this. Plus we still had Harry, and Tina would be here for a little while longer, so we were just fine. I only had Becca for another day or two though, nooo. This was upsetting, well, I'm actually not easy to upset, but I was going to miss her so much. She had been by my side while I was learning how to cook in a way that would affect me on a level that I was yet to understand. Needed a little comforting maybe, I had just the thing, chicken and dumplings. Comfort food if I ever tasted any.

I had never actually even made it before, but I'd eaten it plenty and thought I had an idea of how to put it together. In the end though, I knew I had Becca and we both believed. And butter. I would end up serving it in the big aluminum pan, filled to the top, and it actually had a tiny amount of leftovers the next morning. So that was how much food the camp needed. Three feet around by eight inches tall, crammed full to the top, heaping maybe. What is that in metric? Serving it in one pan made it look simple, but it took way more than a single dish to make this single dish happen. I worried less about dish count at this point and more about time, we currently had the best dishwasher slash assistant chef in the history of my professional career. Eventually, after dishes became a burden, I did become a little more aware of my process. Doing a lot with just two pans is a valuable skill to have, my next living situation may not be as kush as this one, plus it saves ever so valuable water.

I had some whole chickens boiling, onions and garlic going, mushrooms sautéing and the gravy thickening. So four burners, but when you were making this much, it takes a while. Gravy was one that always took longer than I thought it would and never made enough. Always made it work somehow though. I got everything to a resting point, time to smoke, but I knew that I was out of papers. Becca didn't smoke. Nobody else on the current kitchen crew did either, so there were none laying around. Smokey hadn't been around, no James, no Dan, where were my smokers at?

I stuck my head outside and asked the protector who was fiddling with our backup generator to do me a solid, if he saw anyone walking by smoking, see if they can spot the chef a cig or a paper. I was certain whoever it was would be more than happy to oblige, plus they could stop in and smell what we were up to. I walked back in and before I could tie my apron back on, Dylan walks in. Just the man I needed to see, you got a paper I can have? I had commonly gotten that very tobacco accessory from him, and he commonly gifted me an american spirit without being solicited. He said that as a matter of fact he did, and pulled out a brand new, still in the wrapper, pack of spirit rollies. He had gotten them just for me in town earlier that day. How could I not feel like I was in the right place? He needed to roll one out of it though... what a bum.

He was stoked on the dinner menu, and it all seemed to be working, made the dumplings in the chicken broth, added peas and carrots and an obscene amount of spice and there it was. I really had winged that one. I sat near Andre and Mary while we ate, he told me that he'd never had the southern classic and that it was far better than he'd expected from the name. She said "You're killing me with all this good food." It really was good, the best chicken and dumplings I've ever had, and she meant that as the highest compliment. It was something I would have also said before camp, but an elder had pointed out to me at some point that there is always a more positive way to word something like that. That while we mean words in that context to be positive, like killing it, or love it to death, those words can still carry a negative energy, both in the way they are delivered and in the way there received. So ever since then, if I catch myself, I reword my statement. Sometimes you don't realize how a seemingly innocent word or statement may affect the ears it falls on. I continuously learn this lesson, a lesson in humility. Catching myself once I open up and get a little mouthy, a little careless with my words. Saying things to be funny that might not be as funny to everyone involved. It's hard when you pride yourself on a quick wit, to have the ability to bite your tongue and determine if it's actually worth sharing. People are all on different points of their paths, and their paths are not the same as yours. Having an understanding of this helps you to treat people with the love and compassion that we should all strive to treat every single person we meet with.

James was even starting to come around to me, "Thanks for dinner chef." He was one I didn't have to go easy on though. We could give each other grief endlessly and not worry about stepping on each others toes. His toes were probably a lot bigger than mine anyway. He did step on a few feet out there, running into a similar problem as I had experienced in the past. Speaking his mind, not much of a filter, and not the most gentle bedside manner for those that aren't as thick-skinned as the Lakota. And that seemed to be pretty much across the board. Indians are tough. They could take it, go ahead and dish it out. Man, woman, kid, elder, didn't matter, they liked to laugh and give each other a hard time. That's why we got along so great, that's how I was raised too. But I've been able to put it in check with a two second delay, gives me a chance to think before I speak. Just because I think of something funny, doesn't mean I have to say it. Took a while to get that one built up. James would fall back on "Well, this is just how I am, how I've always been." On the surface, I get it. I agree. That's how I am. How I've been. How I was raised. But that leaves little room for growth as a person. If how you were is how you are is how you will be, then how can you ever become a better version of yourself? How can you ever learn anything? How could I ever feel the humility that I'd been praying for? How could I humble myself if I couldn't see anything about myself that could use improvement? How could I ever evolve. It was certainly nice though, to have James and a few others that I could be my old self with and not worry about hurting anyone unintentionally.

I was trying to work on humility, for real, and would face several lessons that put it to the test, but for now, just accepting compliments on dinner was hard enough. I'd remind people that everyone works really hard, plus I get to stay inside in a heated tent. "All I do is put some stuff in a pot and stir it." It's just garlic and onions or butter and lawrys. But I loved being that guy, always there for my people, just needed to make sure I was there for them, not there for myself. I was gaining a lot myself, growing exponentially introspective, but part of that was a transition into a more selfless way of thinking. A conscious focus on the greater good. A way to exude love in everything I do and inspire others to do the same. I couldn't do that if I was still thinking of myself. I wouldn't have too much time to think about anything though, Becca was gone, we exchanged contact info and favorite music the night before and she was gone before I woke up. Just like that, an era was over. Oh well, wouldn't be the last overnight change at camp.

I was all alone in the kitchen, actually not that bad though, I like a little time with my thoughts. Let my ideas simmer a bit. I decided to take it easy today, we'd grill steaks. Everyone would love them, especially James, who requested them daily. But I think it was mainly because all the bosses were gone and I had been left unsupervised. Steaks all around. Turns out that with a menu like that, I wouldn't be alone for long. Dustin stopped by to see if he could be of any help. I got him to stoke the fires and before long I had him slicing golden beets. A couple days earlier someone dropped off two fifty pound bags of the root, so obviously we were contractually obligated to make a tasty beet side dish for dinner. Dustin also had an idea for a soup for the next day's lunch, beat stew too electric boogaloo.

We sliced a bunch of golden beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions and turnips and got them cooking with the mandatory garlic prerequisite. As they were nearing the point of no return, we piled on the cheese. Right there in the pan, with no oven, we essentially made potatoes au gratin, or more like five root au gratin scramble, or a dish inspired by au gratin, or root au gratin camp style or super good beat casserole thing. Whatever, it was rather great. I'd have never bought golden beets at the store. This place gave me such a great opportunity and an equally great challenge, a chance to push myself to the limit and learn just what I was capable of.

That's what it was doing for all of us. We were out here surviving in ridiculous conditions that made all of us so much stronger. Those that were trying to get rid of us often spoke of how we were in danger, danger from the weather, that it would be so cold that we couldn't survive the winter. The winter that the Lakota people had been surviving just fine for a long long time. North Dakota cold is nothing new, the part that made it scary was the not as traditional water cannon that threatened us from the other side. They were right, we weren't safe out here. Never safe, always careful. We were doing pretty good though. We laughed about how people at home felt sorry for us out here, but here we were eating steaks and pizza. We were surviving with style. But that's because we weren't surviving, we didn't even struggle outside of building a wet fire or thawing water. We had everything we could possibly need and then some. What true survival scenario includes ribeyes and golden beets? We were doing great work, and sacrificing so much to be here, here for the right reasons and doing our part in a good way, but we were living the life. We became stronger and more confident, but we were still a ways off from being able to make it in a true life or death blizzard situation. This place showed us what was possible and gave us the faith to believe that we could survive anything. But it's a fine line between that and a false sense of security, thinking that you know what surviving in a blizzard is really about. Baby steps.

The next day I got the night off in the kitchen, Tina was leaving any day now and wanted to make a special ginger chicken dish for dinner before she left. Sounds good to me. I'll do burgers for lunch and have the rest of the day to work on my new tarpee. Oh yeah, that's right, got my own pad. Summer was in charge of logistics, including housing, and I had worked my way into her heart through her stomach. One day I was at her house, a really sweet wigwam, and James was giving me a hard time about smoking weed. Summer was quick to fire back, "Out of anyone at camp, I want to keep this guy happy, he's keeping us all alive." Becca had lived her last days at camp in the wigwam, so Summer had heard firsthand what I was working on with love and intention and was one of my biggest supporters. So when she came into the kitchen and asked where I lived, I had a feeling something might be up. The answer was in the mash tent, a great place because I was with my gear, but I didn't have a quiet place to unwind during the day. No place to really call home. She felt that I needed a peaceful place to keep myself healthy. She wanted to make sure I kept my energy going strong. The more we talked about it, the more I agreed. So that settled it, we had successfully housed another Rosebuddy and I was a proud tarpee dweller.

When writing that last sentence, I had to fight the urge to write "Rosebud homeowner's association," thought it would be moderately clever, but that isn't the way I've come to speak. Ownership is a trait of colonization. Something that exists in order to keep us hungry for money. Never satisfied. Always searching for more. That's what capitalism is all about. The rich have all the money, but if you work really hard your whole life, you might just hit it big one day and get to be one of those rich people. Keep on hoping. Keep on working. Keep on being a pawn in a corrupt game that you don't have a chance of winning. You can't see that from the inside though, they have you too focused on the mighty dollar. Constantly making life-changing decisions based on money. Money that isn't even a real thing. It's only value is what they tell us it's worth. And we believe them. We need money. We crave money. We worship money. We need money for the basic fundamentals of life. We want money for all of the extras, luxury items, bonus things to help pass the time. Worst of all, we desire money for nothing but the sake of having money. Hoarding cash, not even spending it on things to better our lives or the lives of those around us, saving it, amassing wealth and waiting for something better. Investing in stock, or land, for the sheer purpose of making more money. Money that you can't eat. Can't breathe. Can't drink. Trading our mother's precious natural resources that are capable of sustaining life, for this essentially useless disposable paper product. Although it does burn.

So "homeowner" or "property" used to be in my vocabulary, I used the terms as often as anyone else in society. Then one day I was talking about some land I knew of and called it property, Dylan gently substituted the word land, not correcting me, but showing me how he thought of pieces of our planet. Sections of Earth that are home to far more than just one species. But then humans began trading this made-up currency for ownership of what should be available to all. Trading money for a deed of ownership of the ecosystem. A piece of paper certifying control of the land. Wait, didn't the Lakota have a piece of paper issuing property rights? In case you're lost, I'm talking about the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which coincidentally included incentives for the indians to begin agriculture, commerce, and civilization, as it simultaniosly ensured a trail to oregon full of golddiggers. There was no such thing as "property" before the introduction of words like "my" and "mine." There isn't a translation in the Lakota language for these words. They're not needed. Everything is "ours" or "the." It's hard to do, try it, no my or mine. It's the hardest when simply describing something like "here, use my lighter," try instead "here, use this lighter."

At camp you really felt that we were a community. All of us regularly sharing items that would have been easy to hoard for oneself out in that other world. I guess not everyone figured it out as fast as the rest of us though. I do remember a few times that I'd visit a friend's tipi and I'd notice a stockpile of food and supplies. Now, we were trying to survive in deadly weather conditions, I get it, they wanted to be prepared just in case something went down. And yeah, keep some extra food rations in case you get snowed in, maybe a couple extra pairs of socks. But a case of socks is a bit overboard. People had donated so much to our movement. There was an abundance. As long as everyone believed that we always had everything we needed, then it was easy to give away most anything. Then you realized that the more you gave away, the more came back to you. Then you started to believe. When an entire community puts the interests of others above themselves, what's best for the community itself, it's a magical thing to experience.

It's not unlike that of communal animals, like an ant colony, all selflessly doing their part in the grand scheme of the colony's survival. The ants know that it works. They've been living this way for a long long time. They believe. If one ant decided that they may not have enough food for themselves and took some of the colony's supply to save for their own consumption, then the equilibrium of having exactly what they needed would be thrown off. Some ants would go hungry. Because they didn't believe that they had everything they needed. So at camp, if you hoarded a big box of socks, a woodpile sled or genuine liquid water, then you took it away from the community supply. We always had everything we needed, as long as everyone believed. If they started to doubt that they'd be taken care of, started a personal stash instead of freely giving, that's when the equilibrium would get upset, which would make it harder to believe. Downward spiral.

Of course, this way of thinking has been ingrained in all of us. Indoctrinated from the time we're born. Supplies are limited, so better stock up. Resources are scarce, so the price of this oil we've become dependent on goes up and we rush out to fill our tanks. So now the cost goes up more, and we fill more, and so on. The oil company paid the same price for the oil and just made out like bandits as our mass hysteria drove their profits through the sunroof. If we could act as a single unit, like the ant colony, we could have calmly gotten just enough fuel to get by until the supposed shortage had passed. But enough about big oil, for now, they didn't even start this way of thinking. We've been convinced that this is the one true way to live since the dawn of the agricultural revolution. Revolution, as in rewinding evolution.

You see, for millions and millions of years, every species on the planet lived by the same rules, including us. Every animal always had everything they needed, none worried whether or not they would get to eat next week. They ate last week and this week, so why wouldn't they eat next week? They believed. Sure, sometimes there were food shortages, so either the creatures adapted to their environments, migrated to environments in more habitable zones, or the population lowered to a point that could be sustained. This is the way it was since the dawn of life on Earth. These were the rules. We always had everything we needed, as a colony, and if supplies ran short, the colony adapted. The weaker members might not adapt quickly enough, but this would make the colony as a whole even stronger. This is how every species that ever evolved came into existence. Including us. We share our planet, the land and the food supply, with an almost infinite amount of other lifeforms. It is this diversity that compounds and provides each member in the community of life everything that they ever need to survive.

Until humans decided that they were above the law. They were in fact the lawmakers. They were now in charge. No longer believing that he always had everything he needed, man began growing his own food. A seemingly innocent act, just trying to survive, creating the very agriculture that our entire race credits with our rise out of the primordial ooze and into humanity. The agricultural revolution, it was a revolution, a war, a war against our planet. We didn't want to live by the laws of the land so we revolted and attempted to defeat our great mother. We won a few early battles, seemed to conquer the community of life and seized their land to make it our own. Hoarded it. Decided it would be for our own food production and no one else's. The rest of the planet's lifeforms would now have to compete over an ever dwindling energy supply while we squandered our surplus. We didn't stop there however, we also determined it necessary to murder the animals that like to eat the same things as us. It wasn't enough to have all of the rabbits we could eat, we needed to have all of the rabbits in the world. We had to kill any animal that might want a bite of hasenpfeffer. We were the deciders after all. Of course any plant that was not essential to the rabbits diet, well they had to go too. Can't have the rabbit population drop because a better stronger plant wanted their share of sun and earth. That would never work. So we farmed our food, we farmed our food's food and killed off our competitors, our food's competitors and our food's food's competitors. We were in charge. And don't even try to sneak into Mr. McGregor's garden. Now the chosen species could live unencumbered by the need to adapt and survive. No need to improve upon themselves. They had made it. Of course, it was all at the expense of countless species from every level of the food chain.

The more we hoard for ourselves, the less everyone else gets to share. But also, the less we have to struggle to survive, so it must all be worth it, right? Sure, no more struggle means no more worrying about the future (because all those other species seem to be so worried about it), no more having to adapt to their environments, no more learning new ways to survive. Not only did the strongest members of the colony survive, but they got to be lazy, no longer had to try, and the weakest of the group had the same odds of eating daily. 100%. So great, everyone eats, that must be the ultimate in the survival of a species. Survival of the weakest. No longer forced to be the best that they can be, the colony ceased to better themselves. Stopped evolving. Eventually began de-evolving. It's a shame too, this whole time we thought that the revolution was over, but while we've been sitting around getting fat, the planet has been gearing up for round two. Good thing we know how to make all that useful money out of wars over homeland security. Of course, those were wars over the planet, not against it. You know, we really shoulda picked an easier opponent for our first attempt at world war.

We all know greed is a bad thing. That's why we're here, why you're reading this book. Corporate greed that places the value of the almighty dollar above life itself, is wrong. Is evil. Obviously. But our greed began long before the first LLC, long before the first Rockefeller, long before oil and long before the sliced bread delivery truck. We've been feeding our greed by feeding ourselves, with blatant disregard for any other lifeform that we share our home with. We are the bad guys. The megacorporation called Humanity. The ones who think they should get to decide. Decide what's best for the world. Choosing what's best for themselves. Opting to increase the wealth of less than 1% of the Earth's population at the expense and often death of the other 99% of life.

So I no longer use the word property. Or ownership. It's not my land. It's the land. Our land. As in every single living organism's land. Their home. What makes me think that I can trade some made up thing called money for the exclusive rights to control a piece of the ecosystem? Sure, they'll give me a piece of paper that says I'm in charge. That I know what's best. That I no longer have to better myself. That this is as good as it gets, as good as I can possibly be and this paper verifies that I'm the chosen one. I'm the decider. It's just too bad all the other plants and animals haven't figured out how to read it yet. Give it time, they're still evolving. Wonder if they'd be interested in a treaty for the upcoming do-over?

But for now... I would be moving from the mash tent into an adjacent tarpee, still close to everything and with only one catch, it had been Tim's. So what, Tim was a carpenter and had outfitted the place with a breezeway and a double hot tub door entry system. Probably counted as hoarding, two hot tub doors for one house, but that's not on my karma counter, I just had to not let them go to waste. But, he had also left camp after being hospitalized with a staph infection. Oooh... yeah... about that...

It was sweet though, wasn't really winterized, but it had a rockin woodstove and I was slowly getting acclimated to the extreme temperatures of the winter. I don't really remember which weather went where in the timeline, but it had been getting pretty cold by now, like winds at negative forty-five. A few of those early nights in the tarpee, it was too cold for cardboard to burn. The frozen green pine had to be really small to get going, so I'd split up as many small pieces of wood as I could before frostbite had a chance to set in completely. You could feed a fire tiny pieces for an hour and never get it to really catch. And when I lit the cardboard, it just went out. Pfft. And I had already peeled the layers apart to get to a thin, super flammable piece of paper. Paper that wouldn't burn. Funny that the cardboard didn't burn, but the snow did. I guess that's not really funny, huh?

One night I remember struggling with some cardboard, one of the few times I ran a propane heater, it was for emergencies only and this counted. I'd split a bunch of wood with gloves on, but the fire starting was a bare hands operation. Quickly I realized that frostbite would set in faster than ignition and I was rapidly losing motor function, so I went for the heater just to thaw my hands while I got the stove going. The small green propane tank was empty, and super cold. Finally got it off and grabbed a new one, but I couldn't get the plastic cap off of it. Fingers locking up, fingernails too cold to pry, no knife on me, realizing that if I didn't do something quick, I'd have to run back to the mess hall for the double barrel heating action. I went back to the fire for another try. Only lasted a minute before I surrendered and decided to give the plastic cap one final attempt before fleeing the scene. Somehow I got it off and got the tank threaded into the heater with the last few moments of mobility left in my frigid fingers. They started locking up as I turned the knob and got it to ignite. Ahhh, warm, not dying, whew, and still gotta build a fire. I fought it for a while, eventually getting a fire just big enough to thaw my hands the rest of the way. I had essentially just built a fire to warm me up from building a fire. And I burned propane.

I just got under the two fuzzy blankets that I had snagged while I was at mash. They were so warm. Didn't even need a proper sleeping bag. Turns out, it wasn't the end of the world if a fire never got going. I had the first pillow that I used here too. I had just been using coats or blankets before. I had a pillow that I loved back in NC, in my car parked at Barry's house, a total stranger until we met on the way here, who had left a month ago and not heard anything from me. My pillow was there still, maybe? Hopefully. I had only planned to come for a week, I could do without it for that long. Longer though? Oops. Big mistake. Wish I had known. Tip#30 Bring a pillow. I'd had mine all summer couch-surfing, always felt at home and always got good sleep. But we always have everything we need. Maybe I'd have ended up losing it out here. I procured a similar enough facsimile, one you can mash around and make a really thin spot in. Seems funny now that my worst injury at camp was a stiff neck.

I also didn't like burning up firewood in a home that I was in alone. Despised burning the gas, but wood was scarce sometimes too. I could be in a communal tipi with three or four other guys, I'd been offered some good spots and I knew that this would be the most efficient and community minded option. Even Pete had a spot for me, but I really liked the personal space. I liked having a quiet place to gather myself, nap if I needed to, smoke, pray, think, chill. So I made concessions to minimize my needs from the community and I never winterized the tarpee, so if anyone wanted to move in, they better be warm blooded.

Dustin would end up sticking around in the kitchen for a while and we arranged ten am wake up meetings at the tarpee. I suggested he bring coffee, weed or food, but hardly got any of it. Though if either of us ever had a bud, we were quick to share it. We were all quick to share a buzz. We'd all been looked out for and wanted to pass that on. Dustin was a character, he did fluidly flowing dance moves, talked about adult summer camp for pushing personal boundaries, and in general liked to talk and analyze situations. Not always with the tact of a... well, not always the smoothest. I have to give him credit though, his methods instigated the first time that we smoked with Neil and Smokey in the kitchen, but today was just his first day of training on aisle three, frozen meats.

We had several big coolers full of unmarked five pound packs of ground something or other. Suzy thought they were ground buffalo meat from Jane Fonda, I had seen videos of her visiting camp back in the fall, so I called it "maybe buffalo." At least until later the same day when Smokey came in. "What you cooking?" His next question would be "What's the meat?" and my answer better be something off the approved spreadsheet of protein. But, he wouldn't come check, and most likely he wouldn't even eat in the mess hall, so it was more than feasible to pull one over on him if I had wanted to. He was my leader though. All of our leader.

Rosebud worked so well because we were all leaders working together, under central command that we all admired and respected. Nobody's perfect, he was a curmudgeony old dude with a sharp tongue, but that's why I loved him, just like my grandpa. Old-fashioned certainly, but that was the Lakota way. That's what we were here to be protecting. I didn't think I came here to learn, certainly I knew I would, but I really just wanted to help. But that's what this thing was, a way for everyone to learn, to learn how to live in a good way. A way for the natives and the rainbow people to share ideas, merge minds, learn from each other and discover a way to live in harmony with the Earth that created them. The living breathing organism that has provided for countless species of life. Species that play vital roles in an amazingly complex ecosystem. An ecosystem that man has decided is no longer suitable. A system where every form of life can thrive and share in the abundance that our planet has been providing for millions of years. A system designed to push those species to be the best that they can be. Pushing the ecosystem to grow more and more complex and harbor more and more intricate forms of life. Intelligent forms of life. But then we got too smart for our own good.

We decided to take ourselves out of the game. Well, we decided that the rules of the game didn't apply to us. Then we decided that we had won the game. The game was now over. Man had won the ecological game of risk. He had taken his species to the next level. He had reached consciousness and his transformation was complete. Now, just slowly start eradicating every other species and soon the entire planet would be under the rule of man. At first we didn't adhere to the rules, then we started changing them. Cheat codes to the game of life. Genetically modifying foods, controlling weather patterns, even breeding dogs based on cosmetic appearance with no regard to health. As any gamer knows, you have to play the game to get good at it. If you only ever play with cheat codes, then you'll never actually gain any skill at the game. You'll never complete missions on your own. You'll never get to see the storyline unfold. You'll never upgrade your character and increase your abilities. When you use a bunch of cheats without really understanding the real effects it will have on the gameplay environment, most of the time the entire game start to go a little wonky. Falling apart at the seams. Parameters that usually guide players in the game, begin to fail. Players begin to die from no fault of their own. Become extinct in the game of life as man becomes one step closer to being the sole inhabitant of a desecrated eden.

So why should man care? He has the cheat codes. Up, up, circle, down and he's got another acre of corn. And he already used the code "Corn can substitute for any other item in the game", so he's doing pretty good for himself. Sure, the world is falling apart and facing impending doom, but man's got so many points. Trading the integrity of the game itself, for points. Taking all the fun out of the game, for points. Points that don't mean anything. Just a made-up thing. A number designed to remind you how good you're doing in the game. You're doing so good. So many points. Everyone else is losing left and right. You are so good, easily surviving in an almost uninhabitable environment. You're so good, you're the best, you've almost won. Only one final boss left. You have to defeat the only force that you haven't completely dominated yet, the very force that spawned your existence. The force that you thought to be weak so you tried to bend the rules. Luke, I am your mother. You have to defeat the Earth itself. You have to use more cheat codes than ever, then other codes to counteract the side effects of those, just gotta find the right cocktail and you'll eventually gain invincibility.

Except that's not how the game works. All the codes were doing was modifying elements within the framework of the game. They were never actually acting outside of the rules of the game. They did, however, destroy the playability of the game, but because man quit playing a long time ago, he was in no shape to beat the final level anyway. His hit points and special moves hadn't developed as the players around him had, so it would be hard for him to survive a true challenger. If he had been playing this whole time, he'd be a far superior opponent. Not relying on destructive cheat codes to get ahead, but actually becoming a better player and more knowledgeable about the game. Using the environment to his advantage and even creating a tutorial on the proper way to play the game. Showing other players a way to play that will allow the game to go on forever. Taking the traditional knowledge of how to live in accord with the tree of life and combining it with the knowledge of the future. A way to use modern technology in a way that is non-destructive. A way that is repairative and responsible. A way that changes the course of the planet's path in a good way. Replacing the traumatic and wasteful use of limited resources with a more sustainable solution. Hence, the solar-powered tipi.

And my answer? Meat. I'm cooking meat. Burgers to be exact, "maybe buffalo" burgers. Who knows really, but definitely meat of some variety. I get it. I know the rules. I want to play. I want to get stronger. I can see this as a lesson in the dear humility I've been praying for. A reminder that I don't know the one true way to live. I still have a lot to learn. I'm still very colonized. I've spent my whole life with the doctrines and propaganda of a race on a collision course with disaster. Congratulating themselves every step of the way because they're convinced that their free fall is actually flight. Smokey did a quick diagnostic scan, an ocular pat down of the unknown protein source. "That's beef, that ain't buffalo." Well, that sucks. So either Suzy was mistaken or Jane Fonda punk'd us, but with no official test results in, I decided to keep the mystery alive. Unknown meat burgers for lunch.

If you're just cooking the whole block of frozen ground meat, it's easy. Only has to be thawed enough to get out of the package, then it can defrost as it cooks in the big pan. I've got a pretty good two-butcher-knife method of breaking apart the frozen meatwad after it starts to soften a little, looks a little psycho though. But for burgers, that's not an option. Need it thaw and raw. So you soak it in water for a while until the outside is soft, and then hand mash the still icy chunk in the center. It's such a cold job, you're fingers get so frozen, but in the end, sacrifices must be made in the name of fine cuisine. Mash the meat, crush the cornflakes, thaw the eggs, garlic, onions, lawrys, burgers.

We ended up making way more than we really needed, awesome, we'd save them for tomorrow and do it all over again. I love grilling out for the fam, especially for lunch. Everyone is all about. Hustling and bustling. Happy and wide awake. The smell of burger fat dripping on the grill is permeating camp, drawing relatives out of their houses from the far reaches of Rosebud. Everybody loves a cookout. You never really knew for sure when dinner would be served. I pretty much always had it out by eight, but you might miss the occasional six o'clock meal if you weren't nearby. We always talked about getting a dinner bell. It's a great idea. We would yell "Dinner" or "Breakfast is ready" in a couple directions, but a bell would be less intrusive and carry farther. I hated yelling because we were in a prayer camp. There was ceremony all around us. People were walking in prayer. There was an inipi right behind the mess hall. Dinner wasn't the most important thing here. Praying was. Dinner was just here to help facilitate it. The more I prayed from my heart and entered into ceremony with the great spirit, the more I felt compelled to honor the sacredness of this land, and the more grateful I became to have been called to be a part of this incredible thing. I mean, we were cooking burgers out on a snowbank, delivering juicy meat to the wood splitters and snowmobilers, grilling out in snow pants and an apron.

Oh yeah, I had an apron all right. I'd been trying to manifest it for a week, dropping hints to the universe that I'd like one, all the flour from pizza dough was starting to turn my jacket into a flaky crust of its own. Then one foggy new year's eve (I think it was actually before new year's sometime and was probably just the dapl fog) three appeared on my path. Wendy had scored a selection for my perusing. I picked the green one, lost it in two days and ended up using the orange one for the duration of the season. Covered in remnants of all of the meals I created, some that never even got released, and a pretty sizable grease stain where I always wiped the grill tools. Orange had always been my favorite color, often appearing in my wardrobe, but for some reason, I had changed it up and gone green. Perhaps feeling unlike my old self and my clothing option reflecting that, but it wouldn't be the only time that I'd consider giving up a style from my past only to have it push its way back into my life. Just reminds me that there's a way to transform into a greater person while still hanging on to who you are. Not changing into something completely new, but instead evolving into something more adapted to survive.

But those burgers tho? So good. It was probably the combo of garlic, lawrys and low standards, but more often than not, I heard it was the best burger that my loyal fans had ever tasted. Harry pointed out that it almost tasted like meatloaf, which made me realize it was pretty close to the same recipe, so more like grilled meatloaf sandwiches, shhh, still counts. And just wait until we come up with frybread burgers. I did get a report that because I was sending them in waves as I cycled the grill, some of the chatty cathys keeping warm by burning wood instead of splitting it, were grabbing a burger from each delivery. Downing three burgers before the hardest working members of the team had even smelled the grill. No reason to get upset. Just something to consider when planning meals. I want our people to get full. We have plenty of food. It's easy to forget that just because you only ever see someone sitting around the fire talking, that doesn't mean that they don't work long cold nighttime hours somewhere else. A couple of times I judged people a little, preemptively thinking them lazier than most, the long lunch takers and talkers. Then I would run into them while I was out and about after-hours, just to see them doing late-night construction that I had no idea about. Hey, you guys want some pizza?

So we made as many burgers as we needed, mystery burgers, and still had a heaping tray. Made like twenty-five pounds or something, a bunch of frozen eggs, mandatory garlic and onions, crushed a few bags of corn flakes and the simple lunch plan turns out to be quite the outing. But Tina had dinner covered and I decided that a nap was in order. Got a little fire going, warmed up my fuzzy blankets and passed out. Got up sometime at night, still didn't have a watch and now I wasn't near a computer or Henry, so I was definitely in the dark on this one. I had begun to mention a watch, to Johan mainly, figured I didn't really need it yet and one would arrive when I did. I thought it did make sense for the chef to have some sort of concept of time, although, it had been working pretty good without one. Disappointed that I had probably missed Tina's dinner, I went to coffee up, saw that it was a little after ten, oops, guess I needed some sleep. No food left. Tables empty. Wasn't concerned about going hungry, obviously, but I had wanted to catch her favorite meal.

As I started to come to, a cup and a half into the second morning of the day, I began to assess the crowd. These people were still hungry. They were what was left of the dinner diners. Like sharks still circling the woodstove, waiting with astonishing patience, at least for the first couple of hours. Dan came in, fresh off a kitchen recon mission, they were still thawing chicken... It was going to be a late one. Yeah, thawing stuff was no easy chicken feat. I was starting to figure it out, at least figured out that it takes a ridiculous amount of time to get meat from -30 to +165. Especially inside of a walk-in freezer. Tina and Thomas we're making a ginger chicken thing. Using the chicken breasts that came frozen in a huge block. The ones that took me hours to thaw during the sunshine part of the day.

Um... I don't want to step on anyone's toes... but... I have a tray full of burgers prepped and the grill is still set up outside. We could be eating in fifteen minutes. The consensus on that one was pretty unanimous. If they thought the burgers at lunch we're good, just wait till late dinner and see how they do. I normally didn't have food on deck like that, I intentionally didn't plan ahead, but I happened to "accidentally" prep too much for lunch and it was there when we needed it. We always had everything we needed. By this point I was really starting to believe it too. I had just made what felt right, thought I had made too much, but turned out to be exactly what we needed. My energy had been rocking. Suzy and Becca had been so great for me. Dustin was cool, creative in the kitchen, but not necessarily the chillest. But Tina, dear Tina, I loved her so much, but she could be a little nerve-wracking in the kitchen, hurried, scatterbrained. She had a way of taking over the energy in the room, in an overbearing way, pushing her frantic energy onto the kitchen crew. It had been fine with Becca and me, I was working on humility and she already had it, but Dustin's bedside manner wasn't quite as passive.

Tina was also very outspoken about the patriarchal system, the male system of thinking that has our world in turmoil. The feminine energy makes right brained decisions based on instincts, love, and compassion. The matriarch led tribe lives in a good way, respecting their precious Grandmother Earth, Unci Maka. The patriarch philosophy is much different, even more so now that we've discredited all of the wisened elders. Now it's war, greed and money. Game on. Oh, there is a cure though, a miracle elixir that converts that masculine battlecry into a sea of understanding, to pure love, makes everybody always want to get along. The Lakota word for it is peji, ending with an i because of it's feminine status. Peji, pej, medicine, pot, weed, herb, green, bud, smoke, nugs, OG strawberry diesel kush. Hard to get a country that's always happy to go to war, but peace doesn't turn a profit, so yet another reason to demonize the plant. If only we could smoke corn, what a game changer that would be.

I get it, I'm the straight white male son of a straight white male capitalist. I've been indoctrinated by a colonized agriculturalist who undervalues women, discriminates against those who look different than him and condemns those whose beliefs don't perfectly align with his narrow, closed minded view of the world and the one true way to live. And he's part Cherokee. I get it. The patriarchal system in charge of the country, and all of the history of civilization for that matter, has done a stand-up-to-piss poor job from day one. Even the women who work their way into the system have to conform to the laws of money and greed. It's no good. But not only was Tina not about our male lead camp, she also had issues with my position in the kitchen. She did not want to leave the place in our hands and stayed a few extra days hoping that Suzy would come back. It was me and Harry, plus Dustin, Thomas and sometimes Conner, all dudes, but we had a really good energy going on. We'd always had a good energy in the kitchen, regardless of the demographic of the crew. I just assumed that this would continue, guys or girls, kids or adults, water protectors or dapl. We weren't governing the kitchen with patriarchal politics, we were just cooking, and doing a bang-up job really. There was only one day that it got to me, her frantic energy threw mine off, as a matter of fact it was the only time in all of camp that my energy went downhill.

Dustin had gotten me up promptly at ten and we smoked two cigs in the mess hall pantry, back by the second woodstove. We'd gotten another stove after Christmas sometime, a single protector had been knocking out stove installations all week and got eleven done in three days, or something like that. It was a big tent to try to heat from a single stove at one end, especially with smoldering wet wood. We'd also only began smoking tobacco in the mess hall recently, at first just late at night, and then pretty much anytime as long as you were near the stoves. It was cold outside. Plus, upwards of 92% of us smoked, including the bosses.

So we were toying with a few ideas of what to cook and I found a bottle of orange chicken sauce, my favorite, and chopsticks, yes, love it. A single bottle would never be enough, so we'd be making our own sauce from scratch, but the inspiration was complete and within minutes we had a pretty impressive menu planned. Orange chicken with rice, venison dumplings, butternut coconut curry soup, a chai drink concoction and maybe some spring roll kind of things with these rice paper wraps I found. It was a lot, but not really. Dumplings would be the most time consuming, but I could easily handle them with Dustin heading up the sauce.

As per the usual, everything was frozen. It was barely afternoon though, so plenty of time to get it all whipped together. The first trick is remembering, or at least rediscovering, where that choice cooler with the meat you've planned your day around is located. You stomp around in a few feet of snow, find a new prospect, get down and use your gloves to begin excavation. Definitely felt very archaeological when I was digging around the edges of the lids, just enough clearance to barely pry it open, only to figure out that it wasn't the right cooler. It had good stuff though, so you try to log it to memory and move on. Eventually I had a somewhat reliable cooler radar slash mental map thing going on. Within three dig attempts, I would normally find my target, unless it wasn't meant to be. Today was easy enough. Already knew where some whole chickens were and found the deer roast on the first shot, so just get them thawing and we could chill for a bit.

We swarmed into the kitchen in a fury, arms loaded with icy ingredients, ready to get this thing going and probably not the calm energy that I was generally pretty adamant about maintaining in the tent. Dustin definitely had a different vibe about him than anyone else I worked with, but he was always very positive and energetic and I was digging our workflow together. His energy was not necessarily a good fit with Tina's however. I often forget that I vibe with most everyone. I have a high tolerance for people and don't let their energies affect me, normally, but not everyone that I connect with will immediately connect with each other. We dropped off an armload and I went to grab the squash that was buried in a snowbank behind the pantry. Wendy and I had left them outside during our renovation and didn't get them in before the christmas blizzard hit. Oops. But at least I kinda knew where they were, kinda, like looking for a vegetable in a snow stack.

Dustin comes up to me a minute later and says he just got scolded in the kitchen. Oh boy, let's hear it, this should be good. So Tina and Harry were working on breakfast when we dropped off our first load. Breakfast used to be served at a breakfast-like time, but ever since christmas, it was regularly at noon or later. It would take some real dedication to get up early enough to knock it out any earlier and I wasn't about to criticize my way into the responsibility. They were trying to wrap up an already long morning of cooking and he probably didn't give them the space they needed. So Harry shared a few words with him. I'd never heard anything but the most gentle, positive comments from Harry, so I had a hard time imagining him truly upset at us. I sent Dustin to chillax in the mess hall while I set out to smooth over whatever feelings might be bruised.

It was all good. Always was. If anytime you encounter an interaction where there's a possibility of someone becoming frustrated, take a second and put yourself in their shoes. Pray for humility. Maybe throw in patience and understanding too. When you pray for these things, it's not about the Creator simply granting you a wish. It's a way to remind yourself who you want to be, so that you can strive to embody the qualities that you admire in others. A way to push yourself to grow and live in a good way. Even if they'd have laid into me, I'd have kept it cool, not getting defensive, not saying something I'd regret. Just let them vent a bit, collect your thoughts and work on a resolution that keeps everyone happy. But it was all good.

Harry mentioned that if we wanted to help, we could knock out a few dishes, or he could use a hand wrapping up breakfast. But his main gripe was just that we were barging into their cooking environment, throwing off their flow with our energy. I get that for sure. I know more than most how important their energy was in here. I could have taken more consideration. Honestly, if I'd been by myself, I'd probably have read the energy of the tent and fallen right in, but that wasn't Dustin's strong suit and so our back and forth was probably a bit overpowering. In our defense, it was afternoon by this point, we would need to get started soon to be able to pull dinner off, but like I said, I don't get defensive. I helped them get breakfast together and kept the vibe light. I agreed. I could have used a little more tact and consciousness of my surroundings. Respected the space being held by my friends. Maybe exercised a little humility.

I had successfully dissolved whatever tension had been building earlier, now breakfast was done and we could get to work. Nope. Tina was now making lunch. Grilled cheese and soup that would keep her occupying most of the kitchen until 4:45, and we serve dinner by 8. I think she was trying to make a power play or something. Like she was downplaying my role by doing more meals and making them more complex than she could handle, causing an entire day of frantic energy in the kitchen as hungry campers waited by. Dustin and I shared the one free prep table, not letting the situation bother us and reminding ourselves of whichever one of the mantras seemed to make the most sense. I had managed to gain access to a single burner to thaw the chicken and the deer, but we'd just have to get everything prepped and ready to rock for whenever the kitchen was officially allowed to start dinner. We made our orange sauce, a bunch of half-frozen oranges and zest, brown sugar, vinegar, items, things, maybe cloves and somehow it actually turned out as something that almost resembled orange sauce. It was orange at least, kinda.

We also had to make the dough for the dumplings. Like I know how to do that. I did find a bag of rice flour which seemed appropriate. I was going for something like pot stickers, but I was just making it up as I went. Flour, water, salt, egg, something like that. Was gonna do a few versions and experiment a little, but with our current limited space that would be tight, so I tried a couple different ways and picked the recipe that might do okay. This was even more made up than anything I'd done before, so we'd see.

Finally we were ready to start. The unspoken tension was weird. Energy was off in the kitchen for the first time in my tenure. I obviously kept my cool and kept Dustin right there with me, it was comical when you looked at it all from the outside. It was taking her an absurd amount of time and space to make such a simple lunch, wait a sec... was she dapl? No way. There was no way that I was going to let her throw my energy off. I had a big day. Orange chicken. Nothing anyone could do was going to stop us. We had plenty of time. Exactly the time we needed. No worries. All the work was in the prep anyway and we had been knocking that out. Orange sauce reducing, wasn't there a soup or something?

Butternut coconut curry. We boiled a pot full of squash, seven or eight crammed in there, then peeled, cut and smashed. Added it to the pot of warming coconut milk, a big glob of green curry paste and let it cook for the remainder of our kitchen speed challenge. We never added anything else. Just the three primary flavors. Figured we would spice it up a bit later, never needed to, it was most excellent just as it was. No butter. No lawrys. No salt or pepper. I think it was the best soup I've ever made. Either I was learning how to cook or I was learning that I didn't have a clue, either way, it was so good. And no meat. No pork fat. No bacon grease. Just coconuts, butternuts and currynuts. No beef, bison, boar, bunny or bologna. We were doing it, even had a vegan option that passed the test, may have had to sidestep curly a bit, but eh...

He came in as I was halfway through the venison roast with a cleaver. "What you cooking?" I rattled off the menu, highlighting my use of actual honest-to-god meat. "What's in the soup?" Oh, well, that's something that Dustin's working on, probably some of that hippie california stuff, but "I'm cooking meat" I assured him as I held up the chunk of bambi.

I wasn't on a mission to cater to those with special dietary concerns, in fact, I adored the meat policy. I love the stuff and wanted to be able to use it to cook all of the vegetables. There's a reason that those were the best brussel sprouts you've ever had. As we were all getting close though, I started to be a little more conscious of my family. When I could, I would start keeping noodles separate, or a side dish of sauce without meat, or maybe I wouldn't put pork in the beans. If there was at least one thing they could eat with some ramen or something, then I didn't feel too bad. Not that I ever felt too bad. We ate meat. Dinner might be a single pot of chicken and dumplings. Oh well, here's some peanut butter, I'm eating the meat.

I think Jess was really the only veggie who stayed all winter, and she was so nice and understanding, always so grateful for anything that I cooked, just made me want to make more stuff with her in mind. So Jess and Bill, they were this super chill and always so appreciative couple. Always thanking me, praising the food and telling me how grateful they were that I was at camp. I assumed this was how they were with everyone, and that was so inspiring, such love poured out of them both. They worked together on all sorts of constructiony kinda jobs, a hobbit sized team with tools and trades. They even lived in a little hobbit shack that Bill built out of scrap wood. They each had a dog, and of course Little Girl and Sonny were two of the higher-ups in the ranks of the pup brigade.

Bill had recently been working with some kind of sustainable treehouse project, talking about it just made me want a treehouse though, flood resistant and everything. And Jess, she was a lot younger than him and me, but the way that she carried herself said something different. The way she oozed with patience, and compassion, and knowledge, an old soul to say the least. She was a vegetarian, but so very polite about it. Not wanting any kind of special treatment, always happy with ramen and beans or whatever she could piece together. We always had everything we needed. If I happen to have something up her alley, I would get so excited as I saw her approaching the food. "Hey you, tonight you're in for a treat, meat-free butternut coconut curry soup, rice and this thing that was going to try to be kinda like spring rolls, but..." Bill ate meat though and he was from the south too, so all of my comfort food had been hitting his spot pretty hard.

Word to the wise: Be friends with the chefs. Be nice to them, care about them and let them care about you. Let them make you a midnight grilled cheese, give them cigarettes, listen to their music, bring them chocolate, smoke a bowl in the kitchen, give them snow cleats and tell them how good the onions smell. Stoke their fires, get water, do dishes, bacon. I'm not going on so that I can get taken care of, I work in the kitchen, so I for sure always have everything I need. No, I have known these secret techniques since long before I was cheffing it up myself, always be friends with the cook. I took care of everyone. Anybody who was here with us, enduring the elements for the greater good, you were getting hooked up. But the insiders club has perks unknown to the wanderer, like in-home late meal delivery or favorite birthday dinner or verifiably vegan veggies. Or wedding cake. I did always seem to have a lot of friends on pizza night.

You're going to catch way more flies with honey than with vinegar. You're not going to have much success guilting me and trying to push me into cooking your way. I was acting by the law of the land, anything I did outside of that law, was at my own risk. I was still going to do my best to provide a diverse menu, but tonight might not be your night. If people came in and started asking for detailed contents of a dish, my response was "If you have to ask, then it's probably not for you." Half the time even I didn't know what some of the ingredients were. Sometimes we'd have a veggie dish, maybe even without delicious animal fat dripping from it, but we were never really vegan.

One night a young visitor was asking, I was stoked because we had some options that night, except that I use butter. Every single dish had at least a little butter in it. I'm already making it up as I go with substitute foods, you can't make me not use butter, I don't know if I could do it. Now that's no way to think. I know I could do it. As long as I believe then it would work. We always have everything we need. But we had butter, so I used it.

She had been sweet and understanding about it, but that same night there was another newbie, Simon, who hadn't had quite the same bedside manner. He wasn't mean or anything, but could have played his cards a little better. And he had the pickiest diet I'd ever encountered. No meat or animal products obviously. No butter, cheese or milk. No wheat, no corn, crazy guy was probably against agriculture too. Nothing cooked in coconut oil, but I love coconut oil and we had so much of it, plus it's way healthier than most. And tastes good. You want me to use canola?

Tina was adamant about the not-goodness of canola oil. Olive oil comes from olives, vegetable oil comes from vegetables, corn oil comes from corn no doubt, baby oil comes from babies, but what exactly is a canola? It's a rapeseed, it is rapeseed oil that got a bad rap for being unhealthy but it was cheap to make, so canada started manufacturing it and renamed it canola. And it was originally an industrial lubricant. It was also way healthier before the 90's, when Monsanto genetically modified it. Back when it was actually natural, it was low in saturated fats and high in Omega-3, which is what it's marketeers still tout. But now the new made up hybrids are linked to a large number of health issues, including destruction of the blood and a breaking of the heart, and then the refining process they undergo destroys any slight benefits that were still left. Eh, just drink some onion tea, should fix ya right up.

But they taught me with the food pyramid scheme that canola is the same as all of the healthy fats... And it only cost them fifty million to get their GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) rating and begin cheating their way to the top of geometry class, they simply had to copy off of sugar's homework. Sugar is another one that we acknowledge might not be the best for us, but it's certainly better than that corn syrup stuff. Maybe, but any refined sugar is bad, even if it feels so good. They release dopamine in the brain so that you get addicted as you get diabetically obese and your elevated insulin levels provide the perfect landscape for cancerous tumors. Sure would be sweet if america invaded a country with a huge stevia field instead. The plant provides clean energy, lowers blood pressure and blood sugar, promotes oral health and protects from cavities, builds bones, enables weight loss and prevents some cancers. So pretty much the polar opposite of sugar. But we all know that oil and fat and sugar are bad, it's the kids in the back of the class that you need to look out for. Milk and bread.

Oh no, there's another blizzard coming, impending doom... better go out and get some milk and bread. Eleven servings of carbs, whew, that's enough to make anyone doughy. Especially when bread is strategically in a category with more expensive alternatives that lower income families won't be able to afford. Bread is super important to human survival, the backbone of civilization, so what exactly did we eat during the other millions of years of human evolution? Probably baby formula from some completely different species I bet. Milk provides the most amazing supply of nutrients imaginable in a concentrated dose... when it comes out of your mom. Cow's milk is not healthy for us. But it does a body good, which is obviously why the National Dairy Council spent half a billion dollars in one year to make sure that we "Got Milk?" Never seen any high profile celebrity endorsements for the uber healthy cucumber. But everything we've ever heard about milk is how important it is, helps us grow big and strong bones. Now true, it does have some calcium, but it's animal proteins break down the same mineral in humans, yeah, it actual causes osteoporosis and elevated risk of bone fractures. And acne, allergies, arthritis, asthma and that's just the As. And of course there's cancer, especially when its pasteurized and homogenized, but even organic raw milk has elevated hormones due to the cows being kept in a state of perpetually impregnated production. Oh, and multiple sclerosis, but that comes from gluten too, and the medical industry is jumping to treat M.S. with the millions it brings in every year. Or you could just try the herbal remedy, turns out that smoking pot is a natural treatment for the paralyzing disease.

So you expect me to believe that that this whole food pyramid was a scheme to try to sell me an inferior diet? You know it's USDA approved, right? The united states department of agriculture is a department of our government instituted to guarantee the highest profits for the agriculture industry, at any cost. Sixty percent of the nations politicians are financially supported by milk, good thing since most of them don't have backbones of their own. Makes that whole oil business seem like way less of a deal. Maybe we can drink it after all.

So no coconut oil, but Simon could have coconut milk, strangest thing. I wasn't trying to go out of my way to feed him, maybe I should have, maybe it was my job to feed the camp regardless of the camps protein policy, so I was really stoked to tell him about tonight's soup. Finally he could try something I'd loved on, I even thought of him while I had been stirring it. I wanted to take care of my people. One sip and and he froze. "Does this have curry paste or powder?" Paste, green curry paste, from a tub. Oh, sometimes it has anchovies in the paste, and ingredients drum roll please... ours used the fish to give it a little extra umph. Oh well. I tried. I know without a doubt that every other brother or sister would have been so grateful for the attempt. Over-the-top excited because they would know that I'd figure it out one day. I'd have gotten the biggest hug for this thought that counts situation. But Simon had a different way about him, like he was entitled and I owed it to him to bend the camp's diet to something more of his liking. I definitely felt the vibe that he was more than satisfied to find something unsatisfactory with the dish, he wanted to be able to make a stink about it, in a passive-aggressive sort of way. I just smiled, took the passive at face value and pretended that I didn't catch the aggressive part. Sorry brother, we'll figure it out one of these days. Here's some peanut butter, actually, maybe his diet was no nuts either.

A couple days later, bless his soul, he walked right into the lions den with a veggie tray. He just did not know how to choose his battles. It was pizza night, I was getting it down, the once daunting multi-step process had been so streamlined that we could make dough, sauce and sixteen pizzas without much thought at all. Pizza was here to stay. I would make six or eight and send them over so that everyone could start dinner, then fresh ones would come out every fifteen minutes. People were eager to be the delivery service, grabbing a slice on the way and occasionally bringing back a tip for the kitchen crew.

So I was finishing up the last two pizzas, talking about who-knows-what with Smokey, Neil and James, I worked in their office remember. I often served them sweets and meats and treats and better have coffee on hand. So, James and Neil had been around for some of the late night pizza tests, they were believers. But Smokey was a naysayer. He would often claim, and honestly was right, that all I made was junk food. Pizza, burgers, fudge... yeah, I see your point. Although the burger was in the approved protein database. I made a lot of good, hearty, meat heavy dishes, but I did like to spoil my peeps with familiar flavors from that babylon we used to live in. What was it again? Civilization? Colonization? Capitalization?

So Smokey is rattling on about my stoner food, watching me crisp the crust with the torch, pouring my last drops of love onto this truly artisan, innovative and beautiful creation. Even he had to be impressed. I knew that he and tomatoes weren't really friends. He didn't like red sauce because the acid upset his stomach. I'd occasionally try an alternate sauce, but my recipe was where it was at, this sauce made the pie. I cranked one out for him to try, forgot to do light sauce but remembered heavy meat. Put a hot slice in front of him and waited for his eventual gripe. I knew I only caught grief because I was on the team, because I was in, because he counted on me and I'd never let him down. But his face lit up. "Dang. This is pretty good. Why don't you make me one of those before you're done." Yes sir, gladly, light sauce this time? Nope, just like this one. The pizza was good. Approved protein spreadsheet worthy and everything. It would make me feel really good when I would be grabbing something from outside and overhear Smokey bragging on our food, always starting off with the pizza that he once scoffed at.

So here we are, kickin it in the kitchen, I'm the new guy, the low man on the totem pole (that's pretty misappropriated, never even saw a totem pole out there), currently enduring initiation, but I was on the team. It was known that I follow the rules of the team. I followed Smokey. I also had not kept it a secret that Smokey had a stern conversation with me about meat. We both often alluded to it in a light-hearted, but still serious way. So, not that I'm too into telling people how to live, but this was probably not the best venue for critiquing the meat policy. Simon might not have been at the right place at the right time;) So he pops in, doesn't know Smokey from Adam and I say "What's up?" I assumed that he wanted a no cheese or gluten-free pizza, but he had actually been able to eat a slice. So maybe I was wrong about his exact dietary constraints, or maybe they varied depending on what was for dinner. He liked it, but felt like I didn't prepare a large enough ratio of no meat pizza. Perhaps I didn't, I would later prepare more because even meat eaters love a good slice of cheese.

I acknowledged his constructive criticism, right about the time that Smokey said something like "We eat meat." He continued to introduce himself, and his protein policy, and I was glad to be on the safe side of his stare for once. Glad that although I get more flack from Smokey, it's coming from a good place because he knows and respects that I'm a vital part of his team. Poor old Simon never had a chance. He got caught in a bear trap, I would have warned him but it wouldn't have worked. This was his style and he just kept wiggling. Simon had an ace in the hole, a trump card (different than the trump card dapl had), one last in-your-face that would surely put Smokey in his place. Sway him to the dark side and make him denounce red meat forever. After Smokey was done with his op-ed, Simon very... maybe... snidely, introduced himself, "I'm Simon, your new herbalist." That oughta do it. Who's winning now old man?

Now, I'm so appreciative of everyone that came to donate their time and special skills; bodyworkers, medics and most definitely herbalists. I never used the medics or herbalists, I was pretty solid, but I was relieved to know that they were there for me and my family, and definitely should have spent more time learning in the herb tent. There's a plant to fix just about anything, not just mask the symptoms until your bank account is sufficiently drained. We've used them for far longer than we've been addicted to western medicine, and plant remedies are not only the way of the past, they're the way of the future. My future at least. Smokey on the other hand, could give less than two anythings about acupuncture, reiki, massage, salt foot baths, california hippie stuff and certainly not the herbalist. At least not when this was his first impression. Plus he was backing me up. I didn't need it, but it meant a lot to know that he had my back. Always be nice to the chef. Needless to say, Simon didn't quite best Smokey in the debate, so we ate meat.

And we had two meats on asian night in fact, orange chicken which we all know hardly even counts as meat in some circles, and deer dumplings. They were going to be weird, meat none-the-less, but very time-consuming to prep. Would have been no problem except that we didn't get the venison fully cooked until six. Deep breath. We got this. I spent the next hour hand dumplinging chunks of deer until I couldn't handle it anymore, this would be as many as they got. I wasn't even sure they would be edible inspired, but eventually dinner was finally ready, we had done it. Threw it together in a few hours with the expected consistency of our previous kitchen shenanigans, and got it done before nine. Less than an hour late and the only time I ever served after eight, plus lunch was just out at five anyway, so we're cool. Orange chicken was spot-on, crispy and orange and just really good. With rice. The soup we already know was fantastic. We had made some spring roll things but Dustin tried to crisp them and they fell apart, so we had a bowl of sautéed veggie shreds instead. The dumplings were weird, good, but not dumplings. Too bready, but pretty nice with a dab of Sriracha. Donation Tip#39 Sriracha and Tapatio.

I'd given up on using all of the deer for dumplings and we had tons of orange sauce left, so we tossed it all in another tray and had orange venison too. I liked the chicken better, prob because it is a classic, but we just "accidentally" made orange venison out in a blizzard camp kitchen. Pretty effing cool. And chopsticks. We actually pulled it off. In record time. It seemed like a lot, but really, making the dumplings was the worst of it. Minds blown. Again. All in the face of an opposing energy, not a helping vibe but a blaming one, and we didn't let it get to us. We rose to the challenge and continued to believe. We got stronger and more equipped to handle any situation because we evolved in the face of adversity. We could do pretty much anything. We learned a valuable lesson about respecting boundaries and space, both by stepping on toes and then having ours stepped on. A lesson in humility. Got it. I saw anything like this as a much prayed for lesson in humility, a chance for me to exercise the muscle and build the character trait in a good way. I couldn't be humble if I knew that I was always right. I had to believe that others had important points of view. Especially in this fine collection of amazing people. So now we were good, right? We won't try to take over the kitchen with our energy, we'll actually be conscious about it, and... you'll do the same? Well... no.
Step Seven:

Dustin and I sat by the stove after dinner, celebrating in the day's accomplishment. We really had no idea what we had been doing. He would talk about his newfound full-time salary position in a camp of anti-capitalists and freeloading hippies (my words, not his) and I agreed with most of what he had to say. He had been helping wherever he was needed before, wherever his day happened to take him, as had I, and as were many of our team. A perfectly fine way to protect the water. But it's not always the happy-go-lucky lifestyle often portrayed in the big-budget hollywood movies sure to come, the films about that time the hippies and indians saved the world. It's tough sometimes, out here surviving, not knowing for sure what you'll be working on tomorrow. Is this raid threat real? Will I have to go into the city? Will I miss dinner? Am I really helping enough? Am I making a difference? And they all were. But in the kitchen it was different.

We had a definite purpose with instant results and gratification. Every day I had an important task that I could finish and feel that daily sense of completion. If camp politics, or raid threats, or corrupt tribal council meetings threw the whole camp into a headless chicken style frenzy, I could just go to the kitchen, smoke a cig and start working. You guys figure out what we're doing and let me know, I'll be in here peeling garlic. As great and awesome and inspiring as this place was, there was a lot of either mixed signals or ever-evolving plans, it was common that a task would be completed, just to then be asked to undo it or abandon the project. Having one final authority, our trusty leader who certainly had an opinion on the matter, helped a lot with this problem, but even he didn't always have all the info. So not jumping the gun and packing my entire camp up at first threat of an armed invasion saved me a lot of unnecessary energy use. Plus it made it easier to decide to stay. Working on something that everyone was looking forward to all day. Something that was keeping them all going. It felt really good. So good. It just made us feel needed and useful to be working all day, like from ten until eight. And then clean. Maybe. Big maybe.

We briefly discussed possibilities for tomorrow's dinner. I hadn't firmly stopped planning ahead, but I was pretty much there, so this was just a brainstorming session. Some thought for food that we could dream up later. We'd make a proper plan in the morning. He was thinking spaghetti. What? Spaghetti? That was what they were doing before we changed the game. That's so... basic. Sure, we'd do it right, no doubt it would be good, but we had a growing reputation to keep up. We had to top last night. That's what we do. What if this was the night Anthony Bourdain stopped into camp. See what I mean about the humility? Got it, I've been stewing on an idea for a couple weeks now, think I almost have a plan, but plans are for the morning. Time to sleep on it.

Lasagna. Spaghetti and lasagna. With no oven. Maybe buffalo spaghetti, yeah, now we're getting somewhere. And that's how it was done. Come up with one thread of an idea and soon an entire outfit was woven. Our outfits were always a little mismatched around here though. We still started early, but with a new resolve to give breakfast plenty of space to be balanced. We'd even signed up for a bonus lunch duty, cranking out a quick soup that only took one burner and little attention, but provided us the space we all desired and agreed was necessary. Thought we agreed at least.

Soup was served and we were deep into the R&D phase of lasagna 1.0, just now really getting the meat thawed, plenty of time. Done earlier than normal. A nice calm experiment day to help recover from the hectic nature of yesterday. And... then... walks... in... Tina.

She was here to make beef stroganoff. Daria, her tarpeemate, had requested it, so she was going to make a big pan for a snack before dinner. An hour before dinner. Beef stroganoff as a snack an hour before we served spaghetti and lasagna. And it was going to take a few middle burners and the closest prep table. And our help with finding and lifting everything involved. While we invent camp style lasagna.

"Tunkasila, thank you for this amazing day. Thank you for helping me to find my path and to know that I'm in the right place. Thank you for the continued lessons in humility that you present me with. Please help me to keep my energy in a good way as I follow my path and continuously learn to trust that everything happens for a reason. I'm so grateful and in awe of everything you have provided us in this bountiful universe. Aho. Mitakuye Oyasin."

I tried. I tried so hard to take her passive-aggressive energy and turn it into something more useful. But she was just eating at me. Absolutely zero regard for spatial awareness and what we might be doing in the kitchen. If this was an exaggerated example of what we had done wrong the day before, it was most convincing, but most assuredly uncalled for. I think instead, that it was just her way of lashing out, trying to assert dominance in an environment where there was no dominance. Everyone was an equal. All the ideas were good. There was no overarching patriarchal government over the kitchen and her aggression wasn't backing up what she was putting down. Smokey was in charge of camp, but even Tina had to be cool with it when Smokey's wife, Denise, was in town. Denise had been gone for a while, she'll be back soon though. It was Denise's kitchen really and Smokey loved to remind me of that. It was Lakota tradition that a woman be in charge of the kitchen, so I treaded pretty lightly and cooked really good. I wasn't planning some testosterone-fueled takeover, but it did just so happen that once Tina left it would be an all male kitchen staff, and honestly, we were getting stuff done.

During this time, Conner renovated our dishwashing station, swapping out the small double sink with a much more efficient cooler based system, patent pending. (insert capitalist humor here) The much bigger coolers not only made washing larger items a legitimate possibility, but the thermal properties of the cooler also made the water stay warmer for longer. Plus, we had a big round galvanized bin on a solo burner for the rough rinse cycle, the frozen burnt food scrape-off challenge. You should have seen it Becca.

The whole setup made doing dishes way less of a hassle, still really cold, but we were figuring it out. Definitely needed to do something, we were completely backed up on dishes and had to wash what we needed before each meal. Becca really had crushed it, both cleaning and cooking, but Dustin was not that person, nor was I. We'd wash what we needed to, but we were pretty busy saving the world over here, so... Mary did come over one day and wash every single dish, hours and hours and hours. She did it. Defeated the pile in one sitting (it had taken Becca a few) while we kept tunes pumping, coffee strong and snacks plentiful. And yeah, when I later looked, they weren't exactly that clean, but she had rocked it.

There had become an outcry for dish help, less a direct announcement from the kitchen and more from people that stopped in to see what we needed. Once they would hear about the dishes, they would immediately vow to go find ten dish masters for us to have our choosing. "Somebody really needs to do some dishes after dinner, if we don't, the kitchen may have to take a day off to make it happen themselves. I can't do it though, I'm busy." Which means "I'm too important." Oh no, no dishes, I'm security. I'm the builder. I'm the solar guy. I have a snowmobile. I'm the chef. I'm the bathroom attendant, dishes are beneath me. I often felt guilt for not just sucking it up and doing them all, and I did a lot for sure. Plus, I could be more aware of how many dishes I used, I was self-admittedly not a dish conscious cook.

People would assure me, "You don't need to be over here doing dishes all night, you just cooked all day." I appreciate the sentiment, but what about cooking makes me exempt from dish duty? What about working all day inside a semi-heated tent with snacks, in the only position that can curb the excess buildup of the so-called dish situation, what exactly gives me any kind of clemency? Bill built stuff all day. Andre ran security all day. Alan split and delivered wood all day. Frank just drove two states away and back. We were all busy. There were times when we had extra hands, sometimes a record six dishwashers at once, but this was the thick of it. Cold cold winter, minimal troops, we need to tighten up. All this with the dishes had really been on my mind ever since Summer came in to talk to us earlier that day, before Tina had crashed the party.

So it seemed that Tina had sought Summer's counsel, Summer being the highest ranking female member of the family under the non-present Denise. We didn't have ranks, nothing like it really, we were all leaders, so depending on what the task at hand was, we all led. Through our work ethic, experience and reliability, many of us gained clout, we were the people running the show. Not the ones in charge of the show, quite the opposite, we were doing the grunt work and we could make things happen. Make the impossible happen. Miracles. And the latest miracle, you guessed it, another much prayed for and anticipated, lesson in humility. But for real, I was becoming a better me every time I got one, and if that's not a statement of humility, then I got nothing for ya.

She went on about really needing some female energy in the kitchen and a few anti-dude talking points out of Tina's book. I was down, let's get some girls over here, we even wondered if Mary would be interested. Summer talked about how it used to be such a great energy in here and lately it had been off. Uh, yeah. I wasn't just going to blatantly throw Tina under the bus, they were friends and we're all family, plus she was leaving soon, so why cause any possible hurt feelings?

But my head was spinning. The energy in the kitchen had been amazing every single day, except yesterday, and little did I know, again this afternoon. Me and Suzy, me and Becca, and Brittany and Erica and the girls, they're all women I know, and certainly an amazing energy for the kitchen. In fact, our energies all worked very well together. I have no problem working in a female-dominated kitchen. I have no problem with the feminine energy. We get along just fine, believe me. It was just one person's overbearing, frantic energy that started giving me anxiety, something not common to my ever, and threw my normally calming energy into a tizzy. The energy in here is amazing and is complemented daily, except when Tina is trying to take over and prove something, and honestly, failing. The energy was also great when it was me and Harry, me and Jacob or me and Dustin.

Summer was on my team. I knew that. Even if it were my style, there would be no need to get defensive. We were a family and we all felt it. I wasn't going to be allowed to be unhappy. We discussed the issues of the day before, those lessons were already learned and the energy discussion was covered, so let's talk about the dishes. She didn't like how people were being guilted into doing the dishes. This time by Wendy, who meant nothing but the best, looking out for me because she knew that being the chef wasn't all fun and games. (mostly though) No, I didn't like that either, I already expressed my opinions on that matter. It did bring up some thought worthy topics though.

Can we plan more menus around pot sharing and efficiency? Should we start cooking simpler dishes? Easier to make and clean meals? At what point does it not make sense to cook for eight hours for the group? How short-handed do we need to be before we just heat up beans, ramen and roast? People will still love it. We can still put some love into it. At what point do we just say that you're on your own? There's only a handful of us left, just open a can of tuna. There were plenty of other things I could be doing. I could start meat thawing and go split wood for four hours, come back, open prefab sauce and throw spaghetti together in the time it takes to boil water. Roughly an hour.

I liked what I was doing, and I felt like I was doing more than just feeding the fam, I was keeping morale up, boosting energy, giving Rosebud yet another thing to be proud of, keeping people healthy, inspiring. Plus it was so much fun, it was art, it was a recipe revolution. It just felt right. But I thought about it a lot over the next few days, at the minimum figuring that I could start minimizing resources used. But maybe we'd start downsizing our menus. Alternating basic and hearty with epic meal time.

I talked about it later with Dustin, I knew that my ability to see things from another perspective is not something that everyone else can do, so I worked through it aloud so that he could follow my thought process as I tried to become a better me. Tried to understand what I could do with more thought and love, not fight back by defending my actions, but consciously shape my actions so that they don't create negative energy elsewhere. How righteous and justified in my actions could I be if they obviously are affecting such a lovely woman in such a negative way? Even if I still feel in the right, I have to acknowledge that I've affected this person in a bad way, and working to evolve myself into a more conscious individual is the only way to move forward on my path. I was here to grow. I didn't know it when I came, but I knew it now. We were all meant to be right here, together, learning, teaching, inspiring, growing, becoming the best versions of ourselves possible, connecting, planning, starting a movement, building the resistance, waking up a generation, saving the world. I'm in. Go team go. Whatever we need to do to make it all good in the hood. I want to be better so that we can be better. Plus, she's leaving this morning anyway, right?

Ooh... yeah... no. She's staying at least another day, can't miss this evening's stroganoff incident, and her energy got to me. Even after the good talk we'd had with Summer, or because of it. I eventually just went silent and focused on the still-figuring-it-out lasagna, a tactic that used to be standard for me. Shutting down. Not the healthiest, it had been a long while since anyone had affected me this way, I'd even been through a couple heartaches in the past few years that I'd handled with more grace. I survived, again almost comical how utterly in the way she was, hard to imagine it wasn't on purpose, but I don't think it was. Sure she wasn't dapl? Nooo... Wait, was Simon dapl?

Wouldn't be the last time I accused dapl of trying to takeover our kitchen. It made sense, they're out here trying to convince us to go home, telling us how cold it is, as if we didn't know better than them, cutting off our water hookup, stopping incoming supplies, threatening raids, using giant lights and constant helicopters as psychological warfare and poisoning us. All this and all we do is eat better than them, laugh in their faces and have the best white christmas lightning filets ever. Everything they did to try to get us to leave, backfired and made us closer. Stronger. Our food kept us happy and all that garlic kept us healthy, so I just knew they were gunning for me. And here I was worried about them targeting the media.

I did always want to charge the barricade with my apron and a pot lid shield. And maybe our massive potato masher. As for all that torrential weather that the poor protesters in ND were barely surviving, the ones forced to eat rations consisting of orange chicken and artisan pizza, the weather was the biggest thing working in our favor. You see, yeah, it was cold. It had been cold. We were pretty used to the cold. We had a tent full of donations if we needed anything. We had firewood (sucked, but it was still technically wood). Warm food everyday. Heated bathrooms. We were good. The universe knew we could handle it. We'd already proven that. We could go on like it was no big deal, through any weather, we were unstoppable. But they couldn't fly that helicopter in the snow. They couldn't drill during the blizzard. And for three days in a row, those neg forty days, they kept breaking bits. The sub-zero conditions were making the steel brittle, shattering the bits valued at more than their daily fine. Costing them money and buying us time.

Now that I had thwarted dapl for the day, a little dapl do ya, I'm a dapl dan man with a slice of homemade dapl pie, okay, now I was ready to-no bake some lasagna. That turned out to be the easy part. Lasagna is a bunch of layers, but everything really just mixes together between the noodles, so we just scrambled it all together. Scrambled lasagna. Maybe beef, sauce, motz, cottage cheese and mushrooms, gooey and melty, spread that on a few noodle layers, top with cheese and cover on top of a woodstove to bring it all together. Nailed it. Spot on. My energy had been resuscitated. Dan caught my attention and asked how I was doing. I mentioned that my energy have been off earlier, but all good now. His response was, "Tina?" Aha, so I'm not crazy.

He had only grabbed my attention to notify me that lasagna was his favorite food of all time in the history of food and maybe even predating its existence. Because of the aforementioned details, my presence was strongly suggested at his cave for a mandatory safety meeting. Jess and Bill were already there sharpening a chainsaw, James was right behind us and there were probably a few stragglers. Sometimes we'd pack a dozen smiling faces into the iceberg condo, laugh about the day, plan for tomorrow (sometimes the figurative grand scheme, but normally just the calendar day), sit quietly and breathe or just unwind and relax.

Dan was great, caring, generous, funny, not as funny as he thought he was, but who is really? Maybe because of his commanding stature or the way he carried himself with obvious responsibility or pure hard-working reputation, something about him made you trust completely. He had this. This was your guy. He could do anything himself and if he couldn't, he knew just the right person for the job. There was no real hierarchy, other than how much Smokey trusted you, but if there were, Dan would have been right at the top. Not because he'd wiggled his way into some official position that he had no experience in, but knew a guy's cousin. No, he was a leader because he worked like a leader, led by example, showed that he was dependable and valuable, irreplaceable, he could be counted on. So not only did Smokey count on him, we all did. Looking towards him for guidance and always hearing his thoughts before making our own decisions. He wasn't here to be in charge, but he was happy to share his opinions and let you know what his plan was. Plus, he had a truck, and in some necks of the woods, whoever has the truck is in charge.

Dan's was just around the corner from the tarpee I lived in (tough, I almost said my tarpee), I had a long day and wanted to get a good night's sleep, already had big plans brewing. I had a nice long prayer inside, really opened up, hadn't prayed like that in a while. Not since one night at Echo 3 a couple weeks ago. Prayed about all the challenges of my day. The humility. The solution. I slept so good. I had come out of it stronger. Had a tough day, the first one at camp, and I was experiencing myself grow stronger from it, neat.

I woke up early, no clock, so who really knows, ready to work and was hoping to split some wood. It had been a little while since I'd done that too. I walked by the pile, but there was none to be split, not too worried about finding a home for my newfound energy though. I stopped by the kitchen, real quick-like I slid into the dish station and began scrubbing away at them, nose and toes to the front, face to the grind. I quietly and humbly did the frozen dishes, with just a little more humility than I'd had before, still getting there though. I worked for a while, still itching to do some firewood, until Smokey and Neil came in. Just a quick pit stop for coffee before they hauled wood for the fire at the inipi. Hey-yo. That's right up my alley. When do we leave? Smokey tried to give me a hard time about being in the kitchen all day yesterday and back doing dishes early this morning, not really the best joke material though, let's just get some wood. Halfway to the woodpile I realized that I had a little bud and my piece on me, game changer, bonding time with the boss just got even better.

Oh yeah, I do still have to give Dustin props, up until a certain point, we only smoked in the kitchen secretly, into the open door of the woodstove. That was Tina's trick, and to to her credit, she smoked us out a bunch, and always on the DL. Then one day Neil was hanging out in the kitchen, going on about something somewhat serious, having a little bit of a moment, and Dustin walks around the table and hands him a freshly packed bowl and lighter. After I picked my jaw up, it was officially on, we now smoked in the kitchen, openly and often. We still tried to keep it just between us, full time Rosebuddies, but anytime of day was cool. Once, I had been in four safety meetings before 11 a.m., guess it's... pizza day. So I'd been smoking with Smokey and Neil, their weed, our weed, kitchen weed and now it was nice to be out of the kitchen, helping with their burdens and helping them get safe too.

Smokey and I each loaded a big sled full, he took off with his and I had mine loaded and caught up to him pretty quick. It was heavy and slid like a luge as I pulled it around corners, wished I was riding it. I get there and he's so out of breath, worn out, had seen me sliding mine all around creation and he knew something was up. We flipped his sled and saw that the runners had been broken off and it was sliding on horizontal cross pieces. How could he expect me not to laugh? C'mon guy. We took turns with the good one, overloaded it once because I thought he was behind me to help, but he had gotten called over to advise on the daily rigmarole. So I pulled and pulled and had it creeping, just had to get it through the narrow passage ahead and then it was all wide and downhill, and pull and heave and... aw, here's Bill. No problem. Not really too many problems around here, challenges, but not problems, pretty cool considering our circumstances. This was fun and all Smokey, but I think there's enough wood and I really must get back to the dishes.

I'd woken up feeling great, had another good prayer, I'd burst outside full of energy and ready to work, enough energy to do my share around camp and still cook something to my accustomed standards. I could do both. So I did. If I stopped cooking the way I wanted to, then it wouldn't have fulfilled me the way it did, so I wouldn't have been able to put all of my energy into it and I would have fizzled out. But no fizzling here. I was on a roll. Lasagna, orange venison, fried chicken, blizzard steaks, I mean, if that's not enough to make you believe, then I don't know what. Southern day check. Asian day check. Italian day check. What's left? Obviously fair food day. We're talking cheesesteaks and hand-cut fries with cheesy yum sauce plus a deep-fried delicacy of funnel cakes with chocolate drizzle. Take that dapl. Firewood, dishes and funnel cake, what's up now?

It was so many potatoes and took so many rounds to fry, but so worth it. The cheese sauce was good, a little lumpy and weird, but good, and the chocolate concoction was fire. Especially with the thought-to-be-lost but last-minute-manifested powdered sugar on the funnel cake. I looked across the room and locked eyes with Dylan, he said "I don't know how you keep doing this, every night you somehow top the night before, does this ever stop?" Nope. The answer is no. We will be the last ones here, in the blizzard, flipping burgers. I will keep you happy and healthy until the very end. I will cook the very last meal in this kitchen, and I did. I still toyed with the idea of dialing back a meal here and there, but Dustin was insistent on me keeping up my flow. He would always ask kitchen visitors what their thoughts were, but who's really going to tell the chef that they should stop making good food? Funnel cake delivery to Echo3, Echo3, come in Echo3.

I'd been inspired for fair foods from a late-night kitchen session with Neil, Smokey and James and whatever snacks we could rustle up. I cut up some leftover barbecue chicken (Sweet Baby Ray's, always, never ask again) that was laying around and made chicken cheesesteaks in foil on the woodstove. Tada. Smokey won't want one, but everyone else did for sure and I was starting to win James over. He asked "Is that all you do at home, just sit around cheffing stuff up?" Um, yeah, sometimes, I like food a lot. After we finished the sandwiches, we started passing around a bag of dried peppers, super dee duper spicy. One nibble and about ten seconds and it hit you. Smokey wouldn't touch those either, but Neil, James and I did. The best part was that they had been discovered by Tina, who I still love dearly and only laugh because of how adorable I'm sure it was, when she tossed a whole pepper into her mouth thinking it was a dehydrated apple. She had been alone, in the morning, and it lit her up. I imagined a cartoonish steam shooting out of her ears as she hovered around the room. So good. We didn't take up shop in the kitchen every night though, and there were no locks anywhere, but you had to be a pretty ballsy to go shopping at Smokey's, or sneaky, or at least have a good backstory.

Once I was just stopping in to put water in the pots before it froze and Brian was in the kitchen. Brian was cool, he lived in the camper with Wendy, so he must be alright. Hard worker, talker, smart and knew it. Really nice guy. I had met him at Echo3 when I went to score lumber for the pantry shelves. I had already moved on from security as a new generation was taking over, but I rolled in and knew where the stuff they didn't know existed was stashed, so no one questioned my authoriti. I knew the lay of the land and I was kind of starting to be somebody, even if it was "that onion juice guy." He was touting his knowledge of riddles, gave me one and I provided a perfectly logical answer in minutes, not the right answer, but eventually I had that too. I had impressed the new security detail with my wit and mental prowess, but apparently not enough to keep him from messing in the kitchen.

So I go running into the tent, in a hurry actually because it was the night of the art party at Trent's, yeah, in and out, and whoa whoa whoa, what do we have here? A double-layered bit of mischief with a shabby disguise of late night dishes. No dishes were started yet, but he had been in here helping us. By reorganizing our spice rack. Oh, yeah, thanks buddy, thanks. I did give him a little sarcasm, but in the end it was all good. I would have to reorder the eight or ten main things that I use daily and used to keep right on the end, but he assured me that it was super organized. Just named anything and he could find it. So I just needed him standing by at all times and we should be good. He couldn't find the Lawrys though, trick question, that bottle had run out. Really need to work on a sponsorship.

So dishes yet to be seen and spice rack makeover done, my eyes made it back over to something I had scoped when I first walked in. Hmm, what is this, is this you Brian? It was a big flat box with about thirty plastic forks, a bunch of fresh spinach, walnuts, two bags of cheese and the fresh blueberries and feta that we just got from the store. They had been on the shelf in the kitchen for stuff we were planning to use soon, the one shelf you shouldn't berry pick off of. In general, you probably shouldn't go into an unfamiliar kitchen and start loading out key items that could be vital to your family's breakfast at all. And if that is your plan, I wouldn't suggest the spice rack rearrangement as a diversion. Just a tip. He'd come in to do dishes and seen these ingredients and it hit him that they would make an excellent salad, I bet, almost like it had been by design or something. I had to laugh at his plan, I put the blueberries, feta and one of the bags of cheese back up. We have to play fair, but if you want to make a salad for your peeps, then by all means go ahead, just try to do it in a good way. And then he left without doing any dishes.

Another time, I had a similar thing in the pantry. I went in late at night to get something or other and caught Hank with a deer-in-the-headlights look. I wouldn't have known that I caught him doing anything bad except that it was all over his face, he gave away that he felt like he was being sneaky. If he'd have just owned it, or asked, either technique is effective. I go in and he's made a mess of the stacks of boxes staged to move to the now snowed in hoop house. He ate a special paleo diet, which you'd think would be pretty manageable out here, but he seemed to have a hard time sometimes. He also wasn't into living in a communal space, I get it, so he stayed in his own unheated camp but got sick and discouraged a few times. He was a lone survivalist trying to live in an unsurvivable community blizzard. So he needed pine nuts. Lots of pine nuts. I saw him loading a ten pound bag into his satchel. Okay, get whatever you need. I haven't even thought to use any of those yet, it's all good.

His ruse was stoking the fires, the pantry fires that had been out for a while. Controversial pantry fires that I happen to be in the know about, and the current verdict was that we don't light these. We're short on wood and the back one just thaws produce, we've been over that already. Let's just clean up all these boxes, grab your nuts and get out of here. Next time just ask, I have a whole other tent chock full of nuts. He was down with fair food though, but Simon couldn't hang, it was all cooked in coconut oil. Sucked for him (dapl) but I thought it was great. Handcut fingerling potatoes fried in coconut oil. Ribeye steak slices on hot dog buns with cheese sauce. Coconut oil funnel cakes with chocolate sauce and powdered sugar. So, not quite the square-est of meals, pretty tasty though. Ah, ok, we need another veggie. I threw in a last minute tray of jalapeno poppers, frozen jalapenos work great for most things, although some of them lost their cheesestick filling in the coconut fryer. Still counts as a vegetable right?

I'd had another great day. I was back on. Got a little thrown for a minute, but had my wits about me once more. And Tina left the next day, in a good way. We smoked one last time into the woodstove, shared a good long hug and a more than sincere "see you later." In Lakota, there is no word for goodbye, only see you later. No wonder these guys were so good at everything, none of these extra words jamming up their day. And then she was gone and I truly missed her, I learned a lot of knowledge from her, as well as gained much introspective perspective. But I was back on baby.

Johan had brought some salmon a week earlier, it wasn't enough for everyone to have their own fillet, but it was plenty to make something happen. Johan was a good one, had that nervous, jumpy energy, but always super positive and ready to help. I talked to him later about what he did before this, a fun conversation to have with any water protector. Many times it was something to do with the Earth and green living, or Bernie campaign, or running a hippie business, growing weed, playing music, or living in poverty on the rez. Strung out on alcohol and meth while dealing or not dealing with the depression of oppression. Trying to survive in a world designed for your extinction. Understanding that it will be the extinction of the entire two-legged nation if the overwhelming majority of its members continue to live in a bad way. Seeing the future of your mother, this precious planet that no matter what your faith or belief or lack thereof, we can all agree is amazing and magnificent and out of our comprehension. To see a future of havoc, despair and destruction for such a phenomenal creation and your oppressors, the colonizers, cheering on the chaos. Yeah, makes me a little depressed too.

But Johan surprised me, he was so gung-ho and organized, had a team and a network. Surely he was doing something like this before, at least sitting at a desk ordering pens. Not exactly. He said "Ha, I was sitting around smoking weed while I played video games and disc golf. Everyday." This was the first time he'd done anything like this. Me too. Most of us. We got the call. We had no choice. Once we were here, we had to stay. We had been preparing our whole lives for this. This gave us purpose that we didn't even know we were missing.

Many people got the call to help us and did, thank you so much, we would not have survived without a support team. Many people got the call, felt the pull to come, but couldn't. People have commitments. Being a good person means honoring your commitments. Keeping your word. Being a loyal friend/employee/taxpayer. I get it. I only had one music gig scheduled after I got here, so once I missed that deadline, I was in it to win it. But people have jobs, careers, own businesses, have families, car payments, mortgages, cell phones, netflix, gas bills, electric toothbrushes and I don't have time to answer a call for me to save the world. A little busy here. And I'm close. I'm almost busy enough that I won't even notice the industrial apocalypse that I absentmindedly ordered. Must have slipped through in the fine print. Well sir, I see here on your application that you checked the box for 'Complete annihilation of everything sacred and good and of the Earth', perhaps you should have selected the 'Sustainable greed free' option. The best part is it doesn't cost any more, it's actually cheaper and less work, how do you think I have all this time to write? Overhead at the cave is pretty low. Four feet.

Then many of us did answer that call, and we decided that this was the most important thing we could possibly be doing with our lives. We didn't even decide it really, we had no choice, we could feel it in every vibration of our bodies. We were staying. This was the rest of our lives. We were the people we'd been waiting for. We were the lucky ones. We would be able to inspire a generation. The Seventh Generation.

Crazy Horse and Black Elk's prophecies spoke of the seventh generation, but first they foretold a giant black snake coming across the land and destroying our world. The waters will run black. Sounds a little like this three foot oil pipe slithering across the country as we speak. This is why we were here. We have to defeat the black snake. Their visions showed them that in seven generations from their time, the rainbow people will gather, as in all of the races of the world will unite and work together to live in a good way, as they right the wrongs that mankind has perpetrated on the planet. Maybe just a hallucination from some crazy indians, but their prophecies from the 1800s also told of automobiles, airplanes and both world wars. The younger Ikicita that I knew claimed to be the seventh generation, in their 20s, so I'm not sure if I'm in it too or if my teenage son is, either way I'll do whatever I can. Can't do anything else really.

Some water protectors had prospering careers and mortgages in good school districts, and this was still the most important thing they could do. They knew it before they came, didn't realize the scope, but knew that they had to make the pilgrimage to ND. They were being called. Once we were there, I think everyone felt the same calling to stay, but most had only limited time to commit and the camp thinned. Those of us that stayed, realized the importance of what we were doing, we saw that the time is now, we have to make a change, now. We have to wake up the world. Whatever it was that brought us here wanted us to stay. Everyone that left and returned, talked of severe feelings of needing to return to camp. Anxiety about reinstitutionalizing back into the broken system.

We were here, cheered on by many, doing the work that others would tell us they wish they could have done. They felt a call, but they could never do anything like this. We truly were the lucky ones. Learning and growing at unheard of rates. Transforming into new beings on a higher vibration. Finding a meaning to a life that may have been great and at times fulfilling, but now has a much deeper purpose that compels us to be the best we can be. Compels us to work for the far greater good, our planet, our Earth, or water, our mother. We were going to save the world. We are going to save the world. We are saving the world. Read on. And listen to yourself. Your higher self. Be perceptive to how you feel. Do what feels right. Listen to your heart. If a conversation inspires you to look into something, do it. If a video makes you think, do it. If an article makes you question, do it. If a book wakes up a desire to save the world, do it. Please. We need you. We're ready for you. Doesn't matter if you're ready for us, we'll teach you. If you get the call, it's because you are needed for a necessary role in the survival of our planet. Listen to it, at least if the planet is something you're into, I'm kinda digging it.

Tina had been feeling a call to be at Two Rivers camp in south texas, the protests were getting not-so-good there too. A fourteen year old girl was arrested after handcuffing herself to another protector through the tracks of a bulldozer. Another was ill-advisedly shooting a firearm at an unmanned section of the pipeline. They shot and killed him. Probably far too many of them at once with an F-ton of bullets, but after you see how they're treating protesters in prayer, the gratuitous violence enacted by a government on its peaceful citizens, what could he possibly have expected? I'm certain he was prepared to die, but not in a good way. He did not become a martyr for his people. He would become ammunition for the other side when they want to claim falsities about the camps, the only ones with the guts to stand up to the tyranny, to get in its face, and love.

That's the only way to win, to love, unconditionally. To love and forgive. To love and understand. To pray for the future of the Earth, and for the well-being of our misguided brothers, who are also doing what they believe to be right. They've been indoctrinated since birth and it's hard to let go, hard to let go of the past that you thought you knew, the list of who were good guys and bad guys. It's not as black and white anymore. Or red. It was obvious from their reactions, both physically and emotionally, that they didn't know what to do. They didn't know how to fight against love. They were heavily trained and armed to deal with enemy combatants, freedom fighters, militias, rebels, terrorists and insurgents. Well, insurgents are just civilians standing up against the invasion of tyrannical oppression, so...

They were ready for anger, hate, rage, fury, bombs, missiles and nukes. Ready for most anything. Scared of no one. But it was so obvious, we scared them. They were terrified. You could see it in some of their eyes and most of their jumpy demeanors, they hadn't trained for anything like this. How do you use the excessive force you've proudly been learning in the name of God and country, how do you justify using those cruel and unusual tactics against real people, not just faceless foreign bad guys who look different than your children? How can you perpetrate your nations shock and awe campaign on fellow citizens of the great and mighty america? Citizens in prayer. Humans peacefully asking their creator for mercy on their families, their homes, their mother, their future. And then they pray for you, your family, your home, your mother and your future. They weren't out here risking their lives and freedom in the name of greed, selfishness and general evil-doing. They were giving up everything they knew to save the world, with love, love that would inspire millions.

And why were you out here again? Oh yeah, the money thing. Just doing your job. Just supporting your family. Just doing what's right. Protecting america. Protecting america's oil industry. Making sure the oil is safe so we can still ship it to china. Gotta get it in the pipe. Too bad we can't just send it down the river. Too bad there's not just a million dollar water industry and we can forget about this pesky oil stuff.

Well, actually, Nestle has a pretty good racket going on with that one already. They've committed a gamut of evils that span the board, but we'll just stick to the water in today's lesson. So in other countries, which we all know don't matter as much as ours, nestle moves into impoverished areas and buys up water rights. They provide some jobs, but remove whatever vitality still remained in the land, which only perpetuates the poverty. In canada, nestle negotiated with the corrupt government, against the public outcry of the citizens, to pump millions of litres of water per day out of a single aquifer. The citizens are against it because they are currently in a drought and are forced to ration water. Yep, do that math. Oh, here's some math for ya. Nestle pays them less than $4.00 per million litres of water and turns around and sells it in single-use plastic bottles for around $2,000,000.00. Whoa, must be a typo, there's no way that math can be right, silly metric system. Hey, I told you the world is messed up, they should really get somebody out here to protect all this water.

But at least that's not how it works in the US. Nope, you're right, most of the water they suck out of the US they get for absolutely free and only have to pay $200 a year in paperwork fees. Yeah. Including in michigan, where they pump 400 gallons a minute and turn around and sell it 100 miles away to the people in Flint. People whose government has instructed them to drink only bottled water due to extreme levels of lead in the municipal water supply. Kinda like how made-in-america bottled water is the only way to survive on reservations whose water is contaminated with the uranium dumped on them by the same united corporations of america. There's like a whole flow chart of corruption, greed and conflict of interest that I can't even wrap my head around. But at least we know that nestle will be there for us when our pipe leaks.

How can this be legal? How can it even be profitable? They're not even making any money, michigan I mean, nestle's making plenty. Water is free. Public domain. And to instate a water usage tax would cause a revolution, excuse me, I meant inhibit a revolution. Two in fact, our wonderful eco-conscious industrial revolution is pretty dependent on the stuff and our old buddy agriculture is responsible for an overwhelming majority of the water globally pumped out of our mom. So tax them, that sounds great, tax the megacorporations that are making all the money and maybe the city can afford to buy us bottled water when ours gets contaminated. Yeah... That's not really how the world works sweetheart. They sign the checks. They own the country. The America Corporation. So they get to use the company card anytime they want. There's not really anything we can do about it though, so just keep your nose down, stay quiet and do your job. Doesn't get any better than this, plus, if you keep working all this overtime, you might get a quarter an hour raise and that's almost enough to buy an extra bottle of water a day. Water is life. Water is ice. And so was the salmon.

It thaws out quick though and by the time it was done we had the entire menu ready. Blackened salmon ramen with white mushroom sauce, experimental seafood fettuccine and banana shocker. We still weren't messing around. After a wake-up keef bowl breakfast meeting, Dustin and I went into the mess to seek further inspiration on our less than solid salmon solution. The place was busy, hustle and bustle, Jess and Bill were reorganizing the pantry in the back. Ever since our numbers shrank, no one had really been in charge of the mess hall. We all picked stuff up, but in general, it was sloppier and no type of organization system was in place. I could have tried harder to maintain that space, but as much as I'm a dreamer, I'm also a realist, it was tough enough to keep the kitchen out of disaster.

No worries though, it was currently getting a much overdue revamp. Theyd found a whole box of frozen brown bananas, "Can you use these?" Yep, was just looking for inspiration. "Well then, try to use peanut butter too, we have so much peanut butter." Copy, copy. So salmon something, banana something and something else... hmmm, not enough salmon to go around, found some random cans of clams and tiny shrimp and I knew I had some frozen buffalo stew meat, so surf and turf camp style something, cool. I love it when a plan comes together. The salmon dish would be my sophomore attempt at super fancy ramen surprise. I'd already experimented with the speedy preparation of the noodle squares on a night when dinner went way far down the rabbit hole.

It was back when Becca was still here. Harry had brought these two rabbits in from the freezer, skinless and not-so-lucky footless, presumably from a hunter I imagined, and they sat on the table thawing by the fire for a few days. Once they were ready, I asked what he had in mind and he gave me the go ahead to make something up. He mentioned soup, an easy way to stretch two bunnies, but I didn't really do soup. I was going for that wow factor, some rabbit ridiculousness, but first I had to figure out how to cut them up.

I got to the kitchen right after eating breakfast, knowing it would be a learning experience and may take some trial and error. Slight emphasis on the error part. So I lift it up by a back leg, look at it for a bit, consider my incision point, set it down and smoke a cig. After a few rounds of that, it was time. I still had no clue, just had to believe. What was the worst that could happen? Cut off the biggest pieces first, seemingly with confidence, and they actually looked like they could be food one day when they grew up. I also wanted to get this done early for Becca's sake. I wouldn't ask her to prep raw meat, but she would help cook it and I bet that she would have been there to help with the dirty work if I needed her to. But I'm no animal. I thought it thoughtful to not conduct the experimental dissection of the watership down cast while she was in the kitchen, they might still be a little too animal farmy for her.

James came in while I was starting on the second one, he inspected the subject of my investigation, commenting on how big they were and concluding that they were farm raised. At least according to his professional opinion. There was a lot of knowledge in camp, on any subject, and a lot of foodies. Expert knowledge on herbs, spices, plants and of course meat. I wasn't an expert on any of it. I had no real training. I just had a knack for making stuff taste good. I had been a big proponent of onions, speaking on their effectiveness, but I didn't really know the science behind them. Just knew that they worked. Science is overrated anyway. Not really a real thing. Better to study economics, english language and american history, that's how the world really works.

I was always eager to learn. I soaked it all in and never shied away from a cohort dropping information bombs on me. It would have been easy to not be open to feedback, criticism and new ideas. We were doing pretty good on our own just winging it. But it was a no-brainer and a continued practice in humility, as long as I acknowledged that I was weak, it gave me the opportunity to grow stronger. To expand my knowledge. To develop my skill set. To evolve. I had already seen results, so I was a believer. My prized onion tea recipe had already been improved tenfold. The recipe that I would have entered into any miracle elixir contest before, was now obsolete. The strength of our family was making our family stronger, smarter and more prepared. We were becoming a well-oiled machine. Fight dapl with dapl.

I offered James some rabbit bones for his troubles, he could do what he wanted with them, but I meant them for Buddy to enjoy. James and I were almost starting to get a little tighter by now, but I think he still thought I was dapl, or at least just another white hippie bruh. Food bribes were working though, even if it was just a bag of bones. Hank had also put in a request for a piece of bunny, with him I could easily see it being for his own consumption, but this time it was for the ferret he had up his sleeve.

With all of the animals satiated, I started my first attempt at this particular widening of my forte, and I did it the only way I could think of. Cooked it like chicken. At this point, I didn't have much more of a plan, I'd only planned ahead enough to get the bunny in the oven, so what now? Rabbit, maybe some white sauce, pasta, ah, rabbit stroganoff, yes, yum. Looked for egg noodles and didn't find enough, always have what we need, plenty of other pasta, what would work? What was epic enough to team up with the rabbit? Duh, ramen. It was so basic that it circled back around and became fancy somehow. The hipster's gourmet pasta. And it seemed like less work. Just boil water, add ramen and done. No watching a boiling pot. Turns out that opening forty ramen packets is not as simple as a single industrial-size bag of macaroni.

The best part about the choice of ramen wasn't how delicious it was with the sauce, or how unheard of the combo with the small game was, the biggest highlight was the name. Rabbit Ramenoff. The gamey dish was a game changer. People who didn't know or didn't want to know the contents ate it up. Those with wilder pallets like Parker were into it and I received a new compliment that night from an actual rabbit connoisseur. The Alabamas we're still here at this point and Drew came up to me, mid-mouthful, looked me in the face, wide-eyed and mouth still full he said, "This is the best rabbit I've ever had." I knew it was probably the best rabbit that most had eaten by default, but I assumed and then later confirmed that Drew was no novice, he'd eaten thumper a dozen or so times. Now I felt good about it, someone in the know approved of my hack job. He also said it was the best ramen he'd ever eaten. Double winning.

So I had big shoes to fill in the legacy of camp style ramen, yes, even the survival ready pasta had undergone a Rosebud transformation of its own, and now it was time for blackened salmon to give it a go. No official blackened seasoning, but a bottle of cajun powder, some pepper and of course a little lawrys should do the trick. Salmon would be in white sauce, so the other pasta dish should be red. I blanched the last of the fresh tomatoes and started the standard all-purpose sauce that I'd gotten pretty dialed in, but this one had a few bonus items. I had been looking at cans on the tuna shelf and ran across items that I didn't realize had been brought into existence (the pantry was good for that), a few cans of tiny shrimp and little clams, packaged like tuna and I almost overlooked them. These were too good of finds not to develop a dish around, so add buffalo and noodles and donezo, surf and turf fettuccine. How would I ever have come up with that in society, from a grocery store, in a kitchen? This place was great.

The double pasta dinner was on autopilot by this point, our focus now directed at the third member of the trifecta, the fruit based dessert that we liked to consider the healthy portion of the meal. There was a split second debate about the viability of the darkened bananas, uh, we're using them. You should see some of the stuff I've been serving you guys, floor sprouts notwithstanding. So a solid bottom layer of slushy brown bananas, I was also told that it's best to freeze them brown, probably gets the most flavor that way. Then layer after layer, we globbed on sweets and treats and yummy goodness. Peanut butter, leftover chocolate drizzle, sweetened condensed milk, unused marshmallow cream pack from scrambled brownies, caramel sauce, other herbs and spices, a final dusting of carob powder and a perimeter of chocolate chip cookies. Top that. Banana Shocker, aptly named because it was so rich that it could single-handed bring on a diabetic coma. Great dessert for an indian reservation. Wait, was I dapl?

Dustin's energy had been off since the whole Tina thing, we were still rocking it, but he was feeling a little angst about being in the kitchen. I assured him that I was good and he should take the next day to get back out there in the world, split some wood and take some names. I'd been getting more offers for help (and experiencing firsthand the disappearing dishwasher routine) as the word was getting out about our next level menu. People were coming to check out Rosebud for all sorts of reasons, energy independence, sweat ceremony, cozy bathroom conversation, but mainly just the overall vibe of the camp. Our family. And everyone was welcome. We didn't have to eject people that didn't fit our mold, that didn't share our views, our beliefs, our dreams. We were all like-minded, which attracted more like us. Gave those who felt out of place in another camp, a place to call home. To feel at home. To feel the love. They had come to camp for many reasons, to help, to inspire, to be inspired, to be healed, to be saved, to save the world. No matter which camp you slept at, you could feel it, especially at first. But what we were doing was different. Felt different.

All of Standing Rock was peaceful and prayerful, but there was a level of aggressive undertone in some places, frustrations with contradictive leadership and conflicting views on how to proceed with the grand plan. But we were good. Solid. We knew why we were here. We knew what we had to do. We were doing it. And it was working. We were here to pray, sure, and we did, a lot, multiple sweat lodges a day. But we weren't just praying for dapl to stop. We were also praying for continued unity and determination, and when you pray for those things, you're not hoping for a drill stopping miracle from an all-powerful deity, you're asking from within. Just the mention of the wish makes you stronger, and if the whole camp is also looking inside for these things, then pretty soon you're all standing around feeling pretty unified and determined. Determined to make a difference. Everyone was there to make a difference, but it was easy to feel lost as you tried to find your role in an ever-changing environment of what amounted to be politics. Camp politics. Tribal politics. Rosebud didn't have that. We just worked really hard and loved each other. Not just "like-loved", but actively sent love through the airwaves. We were here to inspire. We were here to show the world that there is a better way. We were the example. The guinea pigs. The crash test dummies.

People have known for a long time that we are screwing everything up. They've known that the government is not looking out for us. Even the most patriotic know it. Show me a single person who doesn't think that at least half of the government is nothing but corrupt, lying, cheating con-artists out to take our rights and money. People know that we've been trashing our planet, that's undeniable, there's a giant garbage island floating in the pacific ocean. There are differing opinions on the more long-term global effects of our pollution, but none of them include the part about mother nature just loving it and basking in her newfound glory. It's either kind of bad or really freaking terrible, either way, people have known about it for a while. They know that we have to eventually get off oil, even if only for the sheer facts, we're running out. That's why they've had to resort to fracking it out of the ground. The wells are drying up, so they use harsh, destructive methods to extrude a grosser, dirtier version of the black gold, leaving behind a wake of ecological destruction and probably being mean to puppies too.

So if everyone already knows this stuff, if they've known for a long time, since before the first time the hippies tried to start a revolution, then why are we even here? Why haven't they changed the world yet? How could all these people be existing out in this madness? It's no way to live and they all know it. But what can they do about it? Sure, they can do their part, and many try. Turn out the lights. Burn wood not oil. Don't flush every time. Reusable diapers. No styrofoam. Yes, doing your part is important. Thank you. Living with as little trace as possible, is crucial. If everyone could lower their ecological footprint to a manageable level, that might just be enough to save the world. Enough to tip the balance on the scales that are currently determining the status of our planet's future.

But everybody is not going to wake up tomorrow and do that. I am very much in the camp of "think positive" and "just believe", and I'll stand by those until the end, but logic has also made me a realist. I know how hard it is going to be to even get like-minded people on board, those that claim to be conscious, woke, on a mission to save the world. The millions of organic eating hippies that are still driving everyday across town to a capitalist business so that they can afford to pay their gas bill, gotta spend dapl to make dapl, I guess. So it's an uphill battle, but I am positive and I do believe. I believe that what we are doing out here will inspire. Inspire a generation, not to wake up (they claim to already be awake), but to stand up. We have the solution. You've been struggling to get by in a fractured system that you knew was no good, what else is there? What choice do you have? What could you possibly do about it?

This is what you do. Look to us for guidance. Look to those that we inspire for innovations. Look inside for a capacity to love that the broken system has all but extinguished. There is a solution without destroying the Earth. There is a solution without greed. There is a solution without war. We created a utopia where the work you did was fulfilling and important and probably took fewer hours than whatever is currently paying your nuclear electric bill. A place where you always had what you needed. And more. Things you didn't even know you needed. Things you didn't even know existed. A place that could mend broken hearts, minds and spirits. A safe place. A place where you could feel the freedom. Feel the love. Feel the power. And we did all this in a forty below, winter long, poisoned blizzard, surrounded by armed mercenaries and chemical warfare. You can do this anywhere. You can literally do this anywhere.

Our first step was complete. After we'd inspired ourselves, we began to inspire the other camps. They'd come visit to see how we did it, and a lot of times if it "just felt right", then they'd never leave. And if it wasn't their vibe, if they wanted more drama, if they wanted to stir up emotions and get people riled up (dapl), if they wanted to trade prayer for violence, then they quickly learned that this was not the place for them. Less so that we would ask them to leave and more that their rant would simply fall on deaf ears, we weren't having it. We know why we're here. After a half-hour of an instigator getting nowhere with a tough crowd, there was little reason to stay at that point. Except maybe the pizza.

And pizza it was. The once overwhelming menu, the multi-step recipe with sauce and dough had now become my go-to, no-think, easy meal alternative. If I couldn't think of the next camp kitchen innovation, but was still concerned of Rosebuds growing reputation, I just made pizza. It was still an arduous process, many tasks to complete, but I had gotten it down to a science. Didn't have to think about it. I could meditate and make pizza. That was just what I needed. Sixteen dough balls, pot of sauce (san marzanos by now), meat and non-meat, torch for crust and the recipe was spotless. No room for improvement except for the two minute cooling period before we could load it up for transit. But if you were lucky enough (or nosy enough) to get on the taste test crew in the kitchen, then you got to try it hot off the press, unscathed by the blistering coolness between here and the mess hall.

That day I'd have a full crew of onlookers, all the regulars, Dan, Smokey, James, special guest Wendy (she was far from a guest, but not a regular at the 'stand around and watch the food' meeting) and even more special guests dundundun... Wendy's parents. In town for the weekend, they were exactly what I'd expect. Hard workers to say the least, it was even her dad that hatcheted together the smokeshifter at Echo3. It was after they left that I started to accuse her of being a robot, perhaps a daplbot, perhaps a goodguybot, and her parents were straight out of langley. CIA higher- ups, her handlers, not sure if that means good or bad. She preferred cyborg, but I later determined when the winter got tough that she was indeed human. Though I still think she might be some secret experiment where her brain is stuck in the on position, 100% of full human capability. Her parents were impressed at their first visit to the kitchen as I'm micromanaging the grill controls and torching the crust, I can probably get a pretty sweet desk job back at the base anytime I want.

Finally the crowd thinned and Smokey, James, Neil and I smoked and ate the last two pizzas, hot and fresh, and I never even made an appearance to collect backpats and upped thumbs for another pizza success. I was deep in conversation with Smokey about Bigfoot. He was a believer, as a lot of natives are, because he'd seen him twice. Apparently he's a regular visitor to the energies of the outlying woods around sun dance ceremonies. His personal sightings were very compelling and I'm certain this wasn't just him messing with me. I took it with a grain of fancy sea salt, he told me all sorts of stories of bigfoots and yetis from different regions of the world, but he without a doubt believed. Which made me kinda believe. It actually seems way less crazy to me now than it used to.

When I did eventually make it back to the mess hall, I walked into a whole pile of mess. I opened the hot tub door, pulled back the canvas flap into the dimly lit tent to find a whole crowd of people circled around the door and a weird energy waiting for me. So maybe not for me, but I'd walked right into the middle of it, essentially an intervention. A brother who had come back to camp drunk, with a bottle, currently being loved and insisted that he go home and sleep it off. No good could come from being awake in this condition. A brother that I knew, that I loved, that I could help, that I was meant to be here for all along. My brother Jacob.

He saw me and gave me the longest, most intense hug. I assumed that everyone watching had gotten something similar, but I knew that mine was different. They were all trying to usher him out the door. I don't know what had just transpired, but I assumed he had made a drunken fool of himself and created enough of a scene to cause his family to cut him off. Alcohol. Brought to you by the makers of oil. Yet another wonderful product designed to destroy you and those around you. Aptly named "spirits" because of the negative spirits that surface and thrive off of addiction and the destruction of everything good in your life. But hey, if it's that bad for you, then it must be fun.

I could help. I could at least get through to him on a level that they couldn't. I could get him home safe and quiet, but no one else there knew that. They were all trying to help. Wanting to be the person who could get through to him. But sometimes the best thing you can do is walk away while the right person handles it quietly. As we were wrapping up our hug, I was working on getting him out of there, just the two of us, and someone hungry for their turn jumped in for a hug. They hardly knew him. Sure, maybe just shower him with love from all sides, but there was a reason our hug had been so inspiring. There was a connection on another level and I was about to diffuse the situation, then their hug caused me to lose my chance.

I'd lost his attention to the crowd talking at him, they had to get him out of here, Neil had come in and seen, so presumably Smokey would be here soon. None of us wanted him kicked out of camp, please go home Jacob. The entire group escorted him outside. Erica had helped him with getting his coat on and it was her, Trent and me almost holding his hands on the walk. Then he turned around to see the entire group following closely behind and was once again distracted with hugs and professions of love and pushing and loose threats of more than pushing. I tried to express the need for the crowd to dissipate and I could handle it. But no one got it. Everyone wanted to help create a resolution but couldn't see that they were hurting the cause. I tried to let Dan know, he could get a message through to everyone. "I just need everyone to leave him alone, I got this, we have a special bond." Maybe that would do it. Maybe at least Big Dan would be big enough to walk away, to see that sometimes someone else is more qualified to handle a situation. "We have a special bond too" So nope. No such luck. So I walked away. One less face crowding him at least, even if it was the one that could actually get through to him.

Finally he spoke up and asked for me. I was there. Trent, Erica and I walked him back to Trent's tarpee, they were neighbors and Josh's sleeping mom might not be any happier than Smokey, so he could just crash there. Apparently Jacob had a bottle in the mess hall and Johan took it from him, emptied it out and threw the bottle into the recycling bin. Jacob thought there was another bottle at Trent's, he looked for a while, but we assured him that he was better off not finding it. If I was here when it popped up, I'd be promptly dumping it all out, and Jacob knew I was for real. He was a little too handsy with Erica, not quite crossing a line, but not not crossing a line either, so I kept reminding him of her seventeen year oldness. He kept hugging me, telling me we were brothers. That he wouldn't let anyone hurt me. That he would beat up anyone that ever messed with me. I told him that he was the only one hurting me. That it hurt to see him putting himself through this. Putting everyone he cared about through this. But he'd been through a lot more than me before this. He had a lot more reasons to drink. Reasons to forget. Things to forget rather than deal with. People don't get stronger from forgetting though.

He shared more stories of oppression, living in a country that has zero compassion for the unjust way they routinely strip native rights and culture. This treatment leads to the depression of entire communities which leads to the abuse that he had suffered, the meth he was overcoming and most of all, the alcohol that he was currently losing a battle with. Soon he would lose friends, family and home if he didn't figure out how to deal with it. Finally got Erica out of there and he convinced me that we could go get a coffee without event. He actually convinced me that he was going either way, so I'd better tag along. We got to the mess hall and Erica was there, arg, got coffee, got her out of there, headed back to Trent's, Pete showed up and we all talked, cuddled and slept.

I'd gotten through. He'd seen the error of his ways and was sober by the end of it. Everything would be okay. That's how alcoholism works. They just didn't realize that it was bad for them, that it hurts those around them, once they know that, they'll never drink again. It's all in their head anyway. No physical addiction telling them to drink from every part of their body. Yeah right. It's even more depressing to know that the thing you're relying on to curb your own depression is only depressing others around you. Good thing you're friendly national food and drug administration has approved countless synthetic remedies to cure said depression. Well maybe not cure, there's no money in cures, so more like highly-addictive band aids for depression. Don't worry, we're in good hands. And luckily for us, they demonized and outlawed the non-addictive natural plant that safely treats the symptom without uncomfortable side effects. Sure, we have a pill for depression, but it causes anxiety. No worries, we have a pill for that too. And then you're going to need a third script for that pesky new side effect, anal leakage. Good news, you'll forget all about the depression.

And I forgot about it. Woke up and went to work, thinking that I had gotten through to him, spent a few extra garlic cloves on him and moved on. Another life saved, all in a day's work, next thing.

As I served dinner Johan pulled me to the side, presumably to discuss his removal of Jacob's bottle the night before. Turns out the recycling bin was not a suitable place for the contraband item. Someone not in the family saw it and had bad things to say about us as they tried to make a molotov cocktail in retribution for our sins. But no, Johan did speak of removing a bottle from Jacob's possession, but he was talking about tonight. Ten minutes ago. Jacob had been in a car in Oceti and was looking for his bottle. Johan saw it, stashed it and Jacob was convinced he'd lost it in the snow. Johan pointed up the road at a flashlight coming up the bridge to Rosebud, "That's probably him right there, still looking for the bottle." Luckily Johan was perceptive enough to see my connection with Jacob. He wanted advice on how to properly dispose of the bottle, but I had to leave it in his hands, I had to get to Jacob. I arrived at Echo3 right as he did and convinced him to sit by the fire and warm up for a bit. There were others there, but we were able to keep our conversation between us for the most part.

We both acknowledged that he wasn't as bad off as he had been yesterday, but still in no condition to run into Smokey, or dapl. He had been in Oceti with his girlfriend, Miranda. I'd met her very briefly before, they had met here at camp and all I knew about her, was that she was the person getting Jacob drunk. He talked about being in Oceti and almost getting into a fight against four guys, all working at Echo2. There had also been a previous altercation at Echo3 with sober Jacob and others. BIA had shown up but it was all diffused before I heard about it, I just knew that some Oceti security was over here threatening to beat up Pete. Looking for the dready, Big Dan volunteered himself as a dready and invited all takers, otherwise go home. Now through Jacob, I got more detail, though I'm still unsure where Pete came in.

A presumably drunk Oceti security guy came by and caused a scene, when Jacob talked to him about it, the guy picked up a stray 2x4. Pulled a weapon on a fellow water protector. Jacob was a warrior, not one to back down, and he didn't. He drove the troublemaker away, but with a promise of returning with his boys. And sure enough, he showed back up with half of Oceti security. So Jacob got prepared for a twelve on one snow battle, grabbed a board of his own and readied himself. They rolled in ready for something, but they didn't know what either. He hadn't told them the deal, hadn't mentioned that he started it and now he had nothing to say with his head hanging low. So no battle royale today. But it's still messed with Jacob's head, and his sobriety.

Then today, there was an altercation at Echo2, but I think Jacob was less innocent with this one. Someone was honking for his mom to move her car out of the way of the exit, he flipped and got in their face and it was on. It didn't escalate beyond words, but after it was over, he couldn't find his bottle. He searched the snow, searched the bridge and that's when I ran into him. I kept to myself that Johan trashed his bottle, I wanted to rub it in his face, but thought that continuing to think it was divinely hidden would have more impact. Who says it wasn't.

And this girl. This Miranda. Pressuring him into drinking. Bringing him down with her. Hurting my brother. I didn't know her, but I tried to convince him of what he was already saying. She was no good for him. I talked him into going back to my house, then on the way we saw his mom sitting in her car and he wanted to stop so that she could yell at him. And she did. We both did. Didn't actually yell, but we teamed up against him to talk some sense. He got it. He knew that what he was doing was no good for him, but it's hard to stop. He couldn't turn it down if he was in the same room as a drink. He knew that. Which was why camp was so good for him. Camp was also good because of firewood. Splitting firewood was his most successful way for releasing aggression, getting rid of pent up anger and darkness, converting that negative energy into something positive. Trent showed up, Miranda was in his tarpee sleeping, so we all made a plan to go to my house and chill. But first we agreed to ride to the gas station and get his mom a pack of smokes.

My first trip out of camp. I didn't like it. I had refused many trips before, some from Jacob, but I couldn't let him leave my side in his condition. So Trent drove us and Johan to the store. Jacob and I didn't go in, I still wasn't ready, still might not be. And soon enough, without incident, we were headed back. So we pull in, pass Echo3 and we see a big fire across the river. A whole army tent was on fire. OMG. I can never leave camp again, they'll burn the whole place down without me. Trent jumped out and ran across the river. Johan went to do recon on our side and I stayed with Jacob as we moved towards my house. Johan came by after checking in with a group of onlookers who didn't seem too worried about it. Turns out it was a controlled burn, at least that was the rumor. Rumors rumors, we assumed this one to be true, but there was no official Oceti leadership or protocol or official anything. How hard would it be to light a tent on fire and simply say over the walkie "controlled burn"? Trent reported that it wasn't so controlled after all, melting the surrounding snowbanks to reveal tires and other flammables near the blaze. Leave it to the burner to be the most fire safety conscious.

We finally made it back to my house where we chilled and talked some more. About his serious issues and my not as serious girl issues, yes, even I had managed a regular snag by this point. Eventually, I couldn't stop him from returning to Trent's where Miranda lay, so I walked him there. I left him with plans to get up early and split wood together. If I could spend the day with him, we could talk with clear heads and hopefully keep him from the firewater, the choice had to be up to him though.

I left, and later on spoke about it with a friend who knew Miranda. When I had mentioned my opinions on keeping him away from her, the bad influence who kept bringing him down, my friend asked "But what about Miranda?" I hadn't known her, she had been a faceless enemy on the well being of brother. I hadn't considered that she was just as deserving of my compassion and help, or that it would be the only way to really set him up for success. They both needed to be healthy. I felt ashamed for the urge to simply remove her from his life, and it wouldn't even be the best thing for him anyway. He will have plenty of bad influences around and he needs to want to be sober. Even in the face of temptation. It's easy to be sober when there's no alcohol around, but that's not how the real world works.

I went home and prayed. I felt the weight of helping him because of our unique relationship. I felt responsible. My unnamed snag was there and tried to tell me that it wasn't on me. It would take all of us. It wasn't my job. But I didn't agree. I was better at counseling than most. I knew him the best and could call him out because of it. And I knew for a fact that if something devastating happened to him, it would affect me the most. Would leave me forever feeling responsible and knowing that I could have done more to save my brother. So I'd do all I could now, rather than later.

The next day I woke up early and booked it to Jacob's house. He was already up, in fact, he had already been splitting wood. I worried that this meant he was free to party, so I invited him to come cook with me. And her. They should both come help me make none other than the very dish we had cooked together last year, salmon patties. I went and got started, hoping that they would actually show up, and they did. And it was really good and healing for everyone involved. I had them doing garlic, which was meditation and prayer more than cooking, and we just talked. Not about anything serious really, though the conversation did make it to alcohol a few times and both acknowledged that it was not good in either of their lives. They also talked about their favorite drinks though. She had an abusive ex who was stalking her, plus a handful of other oppressing issues to work through. It was healthy conversation, and in the fashion of any noteworthy day in the kitchen, we were taking it to the next level.

I had been formulating a plan for a new camp delicacy, a staple if I would be able to pull it off, and it was time to give it a whirl. It was actually Thomas's idea, not how to do it, but the notion of having them at all. A southernality that I should have been all over, but we didn't have an oven, for biscuits. We were always short on bread. If we could start pulling off biscuits, we could change the game, and of course we figured it out, we believed.

I set Jacob to making the biscuit dough and his mom stopped by for a visit. She was proud that they were both hard at work and sober, I think I got a few scrambled brownie points, but I generally do pretty well with moms anyway. I let him cook the salmon again, it's starting to seem like I don't like cooking them, but really I just had bigger fish to fry. I heated the grill, oven away from home, and got to work. Biscuits on a pan, put them in the super hot grill, turn to low, six minutes, flip and smush to ensure no doughy spots, rotate and cook for another five. And voila. Grilled biscuits. Two golden bottoms instead of a flaky top and just as delicious as any I'd ever had, and I was in the know. Of course my standards were a little lowered like everyone else's, but it worked. Pretty much perfect on the first try. Camp biscuits were now a thing. And simple. And so so so good with the complementary required side dish of ginger honey butter. So freakin good.

Biscuits were so spot on that we made them again the next night, this time with cheddar cheese powder. Cheese biscuit entree with a side of salisbury steak, plus collard greens and butternut squash. And still with Jacob and Miranda's help. I got to spend two days with them in the kitchen, so perfect. Plus, they were most excellent Sioux chefs;)

I was so grateful. Grateful that I had prayed on it. That I had opened my mind and heart to Miranda as well. That I gave her the chance and the help that she deserved. Grateful that they both realized that they needed help and needed each other to be strong. That they both knew that I was here for them and that they could come to me for support. Jacob and I's relationship had been built on me being a friend without condition, without judgment, and now she knew it too. Without judgment, but there was only so much I could take, only so long before I could no longer condone the inappropriate behavior. I could help, but only if they were ready to be helped.

Another perk of working in the kitchen is that you get to see Smokey, I considered it a perk, but Jacob was due a good chewing out once the word got back about his drunken scene a couple days prior. Who knows what Smokey would say? He was certainly not happy about any alcohol, but he understands the issues that the people of his culture experience with it. He gets it. It's hard to see your family deal with it, which is why zero tolerance was the policy, to keep the rest of our family living in a good way. So Smokey was cool, he gave him some grief, but Jacob had come out first with sincere apologies and a promise of never again. I don't know for sure, and I kinda doubt it never happened at all, but I never heard of Jacob being drunk at camp again.

While I was cooking, Neil stopped by to let me know that the sweat would be late that night. Like after nine sometime, which meant that I could actually go. I had been mentioning to him that I would like to sweat, but it was always while I was cooking, so I couldn't pass up this personal invitation. It might not come again. I wanted Jacob to go, thought it would help and he agreed that it would, but he said that he wouldn't sweat with Neil. He thought that Neil and Marty both faced their own issues, which made him not want to sweat with them or seek their spiritual leadership. I felt that he was using this as a crutch. I had seen both demanding respect more than giving it, and certainly they had their own healing to do, we all do, everyone is walking their path, they're not at the end any more than I am. But I could still sweat with them and get my own healing out of it, regardless of who was pouring.

I had been to a second sweat at Marty's a while back with Pete and Jeanie and even Wendy. It had been almost as powerful, although the first definitely took the cake. Then we went back to his place afterwards for counsel, food, smoke and this time drumming and singing. Sun dance songs. A single horizontal kick drum on the floor surrounded by drummers, all playing in sync and most of the vocals repeated by everyone each round. Each round opened up with a lead vocal started by the next in rotation and repeated by the group, Pete even joined in. Powerful prayer. Entrancing.

Tonight's sweat was at the other inipi, the one right near the back of the kitchen. I hadn't been in there yet, but knew it would provide the calm and clarity that I was looking for. I served dinner and ate two plates full due to the evolution of biscuits, see, even food evolves when faced with limiting conditions. I decided that a crazy full stomach might not be the best approach to the sweat lodge, I had to lay down for a bit. I had an hour, I chilled, smoked, composted and drank a bunch of water. I had learned not to go in dehydrated, but don't go in too hydrated either. I now added to the list not to go in on an overfull stomach. I'd get the hang of it soon. I recovered from the food coma just in time and cut off a pair of donation pants to wear as shorts, then I ran into Bill on the way and convinced him to go.

We took it as a mission to get people to go to sweat, it was why we were here. Some never went, but those that did, didn't take much convincing. Just a mere mention really. Once you realized that this was the most important work you could do, it made it way easier to make the time. It was my first time in the inipi that Neil poured at, he wasn't pouring tonight, although he would still be there and help facilitate the ceremony.

Tonight would be run by a young man from Oceti, a first time pourer who was here seeking spiritual counsel about a family member's struggle. His sister had been sexually assaulted, at camp, and he wanted to take revenge but knew that wasn't the answer. Prayer was. So we all prayed for both her and him. This time was much more mild than in the other inipi. I had heard that Neil's was easier than Marty's, more touristy, but this wasn't even Neil pouring, so who knows. Either way, after being humbled by the heat and healed by the songs, I came out feeling good and refreshed after an emotional few days of dealing with Jacob and Tina. I slept good. Real good. And the next day was so beautiful. I had a big plans to cook alone today, I would love Jacob's help, but knew that he had commitments, so solitude sounded pretty nice. I could stand to peel a few heads of garlic myself. A little much-needed meditation. Some zen time. Some peace while I worked on a new dish, another seemingly easy one-pot meal, chili mac.
Step Eight:

Chili mac had actually been Dustin's idea, it wasn't a dig that I was making it without him, if anything an homage, but really it was just too easy to make with his help. Perfect for a quiet solo dinner though. So chili mac would be super simple. The only time consuming part would be making chili, easily a one person job with time to spare. Might even have time to enjoy a little bit of the not so blizzard happening outside. Still cold, that part didn't go away, but not sideways snow falling by the foot. When the sun was out, it felt pretty good. I remember this one time, I was outside of Echo3 without gloves when someone gasped and explained that it was negative two, where were my gloves? I felt fine, I felt good, the sun was doing it. I love you sun.

The Cannonball river between here and Oceti had been frozen for a while. People built a rope bridge to hold onto as they crossed it, but you could walk anywhere really. Snowmobiles rode on it, atvs, and then eventually a pickup truck. That one took some real... something. Once, I did see a truck get stuck trying to drive up the river bank on the Oceti side, nothing scarier than that out on the ice. Except maybe the time a young woman was found out there, halfway to frozen, after going off alone for some space when a situation hadn't worked out in her favor.

I'd first heard about it from the person who found her, but then later from my brother who said he was the reason she wandered off in the first place. Now he held guilt for what could have happened to her. He had been with a group at Echo3 and she had wanted to engage romantically with him. Now, he was a lover of all women and saw beauty in everyone, which often got him into trouble, but he deflected her advances and provided three reasons why it was not a good idea. One, he already had a person, not here, but a significant elsewhere. Two, she was obviously hurting from another situation and not making sound decisions. And lastly, he was pretty sure she had been drinking. A solid adult way to handle the situation, certainly better than inviting her over for coffee, but what if she had died out on the river? Someone should have been there for her. It's hard though, even recognizing when someone needs help, let alone knowing what to do for them. But we were Rosebud. We could do it. We could know everyone. Love everyone. We could keep everyone safe and healthy and happy. We didn't mess around.

The slight break in the weather, coupled with the countdown to the impending doom of inauguration day, had some people in motion. And emotion. One of them was Christopher, a long-haired traveling hippie who had some powerful things to say and always in a very articulate manner. He was a writer, and you could tell it in the way he'd present an argument or tell a story, his book is certainly way better than this thing. He didn't write much while we were there, he liked to work on a tablet and electricity was scarce. That's why I trust a trusty pen and pad, although I'm already on my seventh pen and my arm aches. He was also doing like me, living it, being there, I can write when I'm dead. We had a lot of similarities and got along really well, notable because I obviously clash with most, he'd even traveled through Asheville and we'd actually once been at the same concert.

He had also been raised conservative christian and gone atheist because the christian doctrine was all or nothing and just didn't add up. He traded it for science, then through life experiences and the people along his path, began to see and believe in the power of love. To see that the universe is made up of energy. Fact. No matter which faith you adhere to, it's black and white, everything in the universe is the same energy, including each of us. For those that would be willing to call it faith, it's easy, we are all made up of the energy of our creator. Us and everything around us, here to experience the beauty and complexity of life and grow towards enlightenment. There are plenty of differing beliefs from that point, but we agree that we are all the same energy.

Then there's those that don't have "faith", which was me for a long time, not willing to believe an outlandish rural myth over the overwhelming amount of research and study that modern science has provided us. Science is real. It's here to stay. I'm sure we don't have everything right, but we've figured out a few things so far. For example, we've figured out thousands of ways to destroy our home, hopefully we can come up with at least one to save it. I'm a believer. I believe in science. Hardcore. Have for a long time. I've read far more books on science then on God. Quantum physics, string theory, the cat in the box and I've even been halfway through the Origin of Species for a few years now. I believe. I have faith in science.

I know that we are all made up of particles of matter. Everything that there is or ever was, has been made of those same particles of matter. We are all made of stars. Literally. Big bang, stars, explosions, stars, explosions, billions of years, stars, explosions, stars, planets, long long time, us. Those same particles of matter have undergone countless transitions to now be comprising every living thing on Earth. That's science. Those particles made up the earliest of lifeforms on the planet, which consumed other particles and converted them into a wider range of elements now consumable by a wider range of life. Life which was slowly growing stronger and more complex through a system of natural laws that our science has long acknowledged, but civilization has determined that we were exempt from, we decided that we could use that same science to beat the system. We could win against the house. We could outsmart science, with science. We could fight dapl with dapl. But enough with the dapl stuff, yeah, they're bad, but they're are made up of the exact same particles.

Every particle has always existed in some form. Everything has always been. Nothing is new. Particles equal mass. Mass equals energy. E=MC₂. Is that still a thing? I've been out of the loop for a minute. Everything is vibrating. There are vibrations happening all around and inside of us with an infinite range of frequencies. Now zoom all the way out or all the way in, except that there is no "all the way", only infinity in either direction. Macro to micro to mini micro to USB. Other dimensions outward and inward that function like ours, through vibrations, it's just that we are only capable of perceiving a limited amount of the good vibes. To the dimension one size up from here, we are but mere ants on the surface of a decaying planet, unable to fathom the existence of that which is too big for our tiny eyes to focus on. Like, why everything that has worked for eternity on our globe seems to be falling apart. (Cough, dapl) And the inverse, is us as an elephant attempting to understand a microchip. With sheer size and design, the feat will be impossible. But the elephant never had a chance without a basic understanding of, let alone how electronics work, but science at all, or language, or anything that concerns anything smaller than a peanut. You're not going to get it. People won't be able to see it. But we are getting really far down there.

We have come up with insane contraptions for splitting atoms and attempting to discover the truth within. And they're figuring it out. Particles at their most fundamental are all the same thing, a tiny little string that is vibrating, a particle that is also a wave. Depending on how fast it vibrates, it's frequency, that determines what type of particle it is. Vibrations are all around us. All the time. Even in our dimension they are plentiful, it's just that we can only perceive a slight percentage of them. Another, much more massive creature, could hear deeper and slower vibrations than us, just like the goldendoodle that can hear higher and faster frequencies. Humans can hear from 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz, or 20khz, and not nearly that high if they've ever stood next to a speaker at a late night jam show. So hertz is the frequency, or cycles per second, and a cycle is every time that the waveform makes a complete revolution around its spiral of energy. That's all that a sound wave is, just a push of energy through all the matter around us. You have to have the matter because you need something to vibrate. The energy is not matter, it only manipulates the matter of the universe, hence, no sound in the vacuum of space.

So the slower the frequency, like 100hz or 100 cycles per second, the lower the pitch, or at least that's how we've evolved to perceive it. Our eardrum vibrates, then three little bones rattle, they pick up the vibrations and send them to our noggin, which in turn sends a vibration to our feet telling them to get up and get down. Speed up that same wave, maybe to a 1000hz, the pitch chosen for ambulance sirens because it is the tone most sensitively heard by homo sapiens. That's smart, that makes it easily noticed over the incessant radio babble and pop music that fuels our daily commute. Every animal can hear a different range of sounds. Size does matter. Just like it requiring a bigger guitar string to get a deeper note. And why is 1000hz so important to us? Well, that's the pitch of a baby's cry, certainly an evolutionary advantage to be able to hear your offspring scream over top of anything else. (Or a god given miracle if you're not buying the whole evolution bit)

So we can hear a pretty good range of the vibrations around us and we can see a bunch more. Light and colors are just a faster frequency of the same vibration. The same wave. The same energy. Sound at the speed of light. We started evolving simple sensors that perceived the sun's energy and told us to go towards the light. Those that did, received the energy they needed to survive. The others didn't, and our ecosystem got stronger. Then, over the course of the entirety of evolution of modern man, we slowly developed a much more refined vibration perception system. The miraculous human eye. Capable of seeing six or seven colors out of the infinite rainbow, another simple push of energy through the matter around us. Although, if we hadn't decided that we were done, if we weren't so sure that we were as good as it gets, maybe we'd have evolved the ability to see a new color by now. Able to visualize ultraviolet or infrared or maybe even gurple.

But we're done. No room for improvement. We're smart enough to beat the system. We don't have to follow the rules. We'll make up our own rules. Our own system. It'll be way more perfect than this... this... eden. Sure, we're done, complete, finished, over, as perfected as is humanly possible, but we're only human, nobody's perfect, to err is human, we all make mistakes. It's so fundamental to who we are that many creation stories include the caveat that man was designed to be weak. Meant to disappoint. Destined to fail. Well, at least we succeeded at something.

We are not designed to perceive the higher frequencies of radio waves or x-rays, but with a translator we can convert this energy into a color spectrum that our brains can interpret. Our brains of course create their own waves, brain waves, alpha, beta, delta and let the hazing begin. Delta is the sleep frequency and beta the conscious, so then who's the alpha dog? Alpha waves are 8hz-13hz, way too low for anything clever to ever be heard out of me. They push waves of energy out into the universe, mind bullets, and pretty coincidentally, they are also the brain wave created when we pray and meditate. And during those states of mind is when we are most receptive to the subconscious, to Jung's collective unconscious, Frued's id, our inner self, our outer space, our ancestors, the great mystery, it's the frequency of the Great Organizing Dynamic. You should tune-in sometime. Science.

We can feel even lower frequencies then we can hear, like the rumble in the ground from an earthquake. If you haven't felt that before, just hang tight, should be a good run of those coming soon enough. Vibrations. We are all vibrations. From the most fundamental building blocks of who we are, to the unique combination of vocal cords that when vibrated make your own specific tone. Your voice. Your factory-installed device for making waves. For pushing matter around, or for creating energy for that matter. A way to affect the world around you. To have impact on your environment. To change your life. To put into the universe your desires, your hopes, your fears, to ask for help, guidance or bacon. Knowing that as you speak aloud, from the heart, your vibrations are not only affecting the eardrums of those close by, but they're affecting every single particle in your immediate universe. As far as your wave travels, it's leaving a trail, remnants of you, your path and your intention. Words are powerful. Especially to our own bodies made up of particles, each vibrating individually, but also part of this larger being that has its own unique vibration. Our vibe. That's why when you "vibe" with someone, you just click, it just make sense, it just feels right. You're vibrating in harmony with their frequency, literally, and sometimes you just don't vibe, you're out of tune, not in sync. Science.

Your body is so in-tune with itself though, in ways we can't even comprehend. We don't tell it how to pump blood, breathe, grow or heal. Though we do encourage those under the weather to stay positive, hang in there, laughter is the best medicine. Yeah, duh, it's a way better frequency than the depression of the hypochondriac, constantly in belief that they've got the next big thing in the mysteries of medical science. Belief is powerful, covered my beliefs on that, but I forgot to specify to believe in something good. If you think you're going to be sick, you will be. If you think you're going to be sad, you will be. If you think you'll never be able to make a difference, then you won't. You won't even try. And that's what they're counting on. They have almost successfully beaten everyone down, forced them into complacency, even with the knowledge of all of the evils of the world. To a point that we joke about how bad it is, yet we all agree that there's nothing that can be done. That's just the way it is. It is what it is. It is. Is. No sense in even trying really. Too late. Lost cause. This world wasn't fit for our greatness. The Earth was flawed from the beginning, it wasn't us this time, but we can fix it, with science.

And honestly, we probably could fix a lot of things with science. For instance, if we could convince the massive chemical conglomerates to try less to find ways of making the planet more hospitable to us and put more focus on us being hospitable to her, that might even buy us a few years. Might get us on a different vibration.

So now we get that we're all energy, vibrations, pushing matter through time and space. Regardless of your faith, your fear of God or your fear of science, we're all moving at a frequency capable of affecting the universe. Just like the LRAD sound cannon that dapl blasted our way, emitting a frequency meant to cause physical pain, nausea and hearing loss. They get it. They understand science. They also get that if we all rose together, with a single voice, a unified universe changing energy, that we would win. We would make a difference. Things would change. They get it, so they've oppressed us, especially those closest to the vibrations of our mother. The ones least affected by the brainwashing of civilization. The ones who truly believe. Who believe in the power of our almighty planet and hold her the most sacred. Those who believe in prayer. Whose most powerful prayer ceremonies were outlawed until their numbers dwindled to near extinction. Prayer ceremonies that unite a group of spiritual warriors with one unified voice. One unified energy exploding into the universe. Changing the vibrations of every particle that the sound waves come in contact with. Changing their own vibrations. Focusing their internal energy in such a way that they walk in prayer, exuding love and compassion for all of life in everything they do, believing, inspiring, inspiring to believe. Now why on this great big beautiful Earth would the money hungry powers-that-be, the militarized corporations intent on consuming the planet, why would they want anything like this "love" stuff floating around?

There's no money in love. (discounting of course valentine's day) No profit. No margin. No markup. No taxation. No Deal. But they see that the prayer thing works, the science is there somewhere, so they just convince people to pray for something other than love and compassion and our precious mother's well-being. Who do you think gets more prayer points nowadays, our life giving planet or the good old american dollar? Yeah. What a waste of energy. Worshiping a man-made deity, sacrificing dearly for it, putting others at risk, doing whatever it takes, it was just business, I was just doing my job. Merica.

So long story short; I don't worship the dollar, I don't worship science and I don't worship the stars. We are the stars. We are the same energy as the stars is the same as the dirt is the same as the trees is the same as the cats and the rats and the bats and you and me and God. God, the Great Spirit, Tunkasila, Grandfather, the same energy that has always been. Endlessly composing the universe, the matter all around and the energy inside each of us.

And science? Well that's certainly nothing to worship. I believe in science most definitely. But I believe in marshmallows too. Science isn't some almighty being, it's simply a way of understanding how the universe works. The small fraction of the universe that we are capable of even perceiving. It's a way of explaining how things work. It doesn't cover why they work. Not yet at least. Why. Why is the sky blue? Who knows? We know how the sky is blue, it's just light vibrations refracting off of varying molecules in the atmosphere. (Maybe if we blow enough carbon emissions out there we can even get it to change colors.) But not why. Like why is love? A ridiculous question. Or why is ice cream? Well that's easy, because it tastes good. So why is love? Because it feels good. It feels good to love. It feels good to be loved. When you put love into everything you do, it affects those around you. Affects those around them. Love is contagious. There is power in love. Love is this energy, this vibration, pulsing through you. Radiating from you. Spreading into the particles that make up your path. Infecting every living spirit whose path crosses yours. Even more so, to those that run parallel. We are all paths, not points. Ever-changing. Growing. Evolving. What feels right today may not tomorrow. That's okay.

Those whose paths share a common route, travelers together, kindred spirits, peas in a pod, it was like they always knew each other. They just vibed. An energy is exchanged between them and a new energy built from the individual vibrations of the lucky participants. Love abounds. Love heals. Love can conquer all. The energy spreads just like sound. An upward spiral. It's a vibration. That's why you can have many different types of love in one life. A love between any two people is just like two keys being struck on a piano. A relationship. A relationship of vibrations. They all sound unique. Feel unique. There is energy combined. A singular vibration pulsing forth. Some combinations resonate more than others. Some sound special. Some just feel right. Science. Science is music is math is the universe is God is love.

Vibrations. A frequency of 440hz, or 440 cycles per second, produces a tone that we know as an A on thousands of vibrating instruments around the globe. (432hz is actually the true A, in accord with all of the math of the universe, but the colonizers took over music too and changed everything to 440hz. Now that I think about it, probably just another way to keep our vibrations from changing the world. Look it up and check out some music in 432hz.) Up an octave, to the next A on the keyboard, is 880hz, exactly double. The notes sound great together. Like it is one tone. For every cycle per second of the lower A, the new one beats exactly twice. Vibing. Synced up. Each energy propels the other. So in-tune that everything feels right.

There are far more energies that can be created on the ivories though. At 1320hz we find an E, the perfect fifth from our A. Called a perfect fifth because it is the fifth note on the A scale and the math of its vibrations works out perfectly. Each cycle of our original A vibration is exactly the length of three cycles of our new E tone. They vibe. They don't compete. They make each other stronger. They complement each other. They make beautiful music. They make love. Love is real. Love is relative. There are no wrong notes on a piano. Just notes that are more in harmony with others. Everyone has a perfect fifth out there. Every note can sound great with any other note. It's all in the context of the song. There is no wrong way to love, as long as you truly love from a selfless heart.

The song is your life. Your path. Filled with thousands of relationships between notes. Family, friends, foes and dentists. Anyone that played a role along your path. Shaping your song. Some creating beautiful harmonies, entire choruses of jubilee, many in-sync vibrations, a catchy hook that others can't help but hum along to. Others may not create a cheerful major chord. They may have dissonance. Their vibrations may not harmonize. That's not to say that they don't still make beautiful music. It's all in the context of the song. When you're one of the two energies involved and you're isolated from the rest of your timeline, you just might not understand. But to the listener, the creator, the observer outside of the song, outside of the constructs of time, listening from a distance, another dimension of macrocosm, it all makes perfect sense. The harmony and balance in your song needed all of those parts in order to grow, to develop, and to resolve.

Although your song may be happy and full of love, it is the bridge section with discord that adds depth to your path. Crossing that bridge allows your vibe to grow, to overcome the atonal dissonance and bring your entire vibration back to a stronger, fuller, more powerful energy. To evolve. And just like any species in the circle of life, you may not understand everything around us, how everything works, why is love, why have I been hurt, why have I hurt others, why does bad stuff happen? But we don't have to. It keeps working whether we understand it or not. As long as we believe. As long as we love. As long as we continue to play our song, even through the dark parts that we don't understand. Always knowing that we will overcome our paths, we will find a resolution and our harmonies will become more powerful than ever. We just have to love. There is power in love. It's science.

The camp's song was magnificent. All this amazing energy coming from the corner of every tipi. The love. The vibrations. Everyone playing their own little tune. Their own little path. All interweaving with one another. Helping each other as our paths ran parallel. Rosebud was all tuned to the same vibration. Our love was unified. A single voice. And when you came to camp, if you had a similar vibration, then you felt at home. And if you didn't... dapl. You can fake a backstory, you can't fake a vibration. Can't fake love. Can't pour love into everything you do in a malicious manner. Can't compassionately perpetrate ill-will towards another life. Can't survive the night at Echo3 without humility. Can't successfully cook for your large family without patience.

Can't hold the space at the compost toilets without a whole lotta love. Providing those that you care about a warm, comfortable, friendly, clean place for all of their numbers. And Christopher was the best at it. He was already good at sitting around the stove in the mess hall conversing, the one good excuse for anything here. The one place that "Sorry, I was having a conversation" was a valid alibi. The conversations I shared changed my life, opened my ears, my eyes, and my heart. Inspired me. These conversations, these relationships, this energy, it's why we were here. It was prayer. It was us putting our energies out into the universe. Hoping for a better future. Desiring a change. Manifesting a way to save the world. And then you realized it was happening. We had all been brought together for this very moment. To connect. To combine. We are the better future. We are the change. We are the people we've been waiting for.

And Christopher was there waiting for you in the bathroom, fire stoked and stalls at least eight degrees warmer than the snowbank outside. There was a "take a log, leave a log" firewood policy. So if you have to potty, bring some wood to make it hotty. The bathroom tent had a similar situation as the mess hall, a minimal light motif, which doesn't play well with the snow blindness that we were all dealing with. Often, when you would walk into either tent, it was a shock coming from the bright white of the great outdoors, whiter than a snowman in a snowstorm, whiter than oreo cream stuck in Kim Kardashian's teeth, whiter than the colonizers who have made a long series of hyperbolically bad decisions which got us into this mess in the first place. It would be much darker inside, so it took about a minute for your eyes to adjust to a point where you could see all of the smiling faces staring back at you. They of course having been able to see you clearly from the moment you walked in. It was a little disorienting, definitely to a newbie not expecting it, but then you heard a friendly voice, perhaps Christopher, "Hey brother, your eyes will adjust in a moment. We've got a warm fire over this way."

But today, Christopher's song was not playing in the bathroom, although it was a good room for music. There was a crank radio in there for a while, turns out not everyone likes to share their own bathroom melodies with the world. I knew of at least one flute player that played there, certainly guitars, where there's a fire there's a guitar, and where there's smoke there's fire, so let's smoke and play a guitar. And I had loose plans to put a piano in there, once I manifested one. Free pianos are easy to find, just gotta move them, no prob, will a fifty person team do? Would have been great in the mess hall, but would take up valuable space, that bathroom though. Soft jazz piano ballads while business was underway. Improvised jams as you get unjammed. And the piano there would make the place a musical hub, the place to be, a place for the movers and shakers to unload.

But no piano. No music in the bathroom this day. Christopher's song had him on the move. On a walk. A walk along the river, blue sky, sunny day, didn't matter where he was going. He walked along the edge of the river all the way around Turtle Island. The US government had decided a while back that we wouldn't be allowed on the sacred burial ground, pretty nice of them to protect the sacred for us, and it was an easy one to enforce at first. A few bundles of razor wire around the shoreline and no one will ever be able to make it out of the water, over the wire and up the hill. At least not before the guns show up.

I'd seen a video online before I came out, a group of protectors in the water, protesting the hostile takeover of sacred ground, unarmed and without gas masks, not happy but peaceful, being shown a taste of what the other side was willing to do for a paycheck. All in a day's work. A job that called to them in the first place because of their strong passion for doing what is right, a willingness to put their own lives in peril for the protection of their people, their land, their family, their community, their country, their planet, their species. They were good people. Good God-fearing, tax-paying, hard-working patriots fans that were doing their best to help while making enough money to support those that they love the most.

Got to get that money. Got to have it. It doesn't grow on trees. (Although, I heard it was the root of something or another.) And by every single standard in our current grading system, every measure of success used by society, the civilized, the colonized, the educated, the very smartest that should be able to see through it all, money is the king. You've got money? You win. You can now buy happiness.

Good thing too, because that dream job protecting and serving the greater good might not be all it was cracked up to be. The fine print was catching up to you and the true modus operandi of your infallible leader was becoming more apparent. Your leader, the previously mentioned US government, has been combining energies for years, just like we were doing at camp. Get a group of followers ready to make a difference, get them to believe, believe unconditionally in your doctrines (ours was love), focus their energies on a common goal (or enemy), and send them out into the world believing that they are making a difference. Believing that they can save everyone. Believing that they are the good guys. It was easy back when our opponents were evil-doing government regimes using their military and propaganda to oppress and murder their own people. Yeah, I agree, somebody should do something about people like that...

The ones who blindly follow a system they know to be corrupt. Thinking that if they can just cut off their brains, cut off their emotions, that they'll somehow be able to deal with the feeling that what they're doing might not be the best thing for the good of the human race. But the human race doesn't sign their checks. The megacorporations that own our country do. The military industrial complex who are exempt from the rules. The laws of the country, sure, they're exempt from them too, but they wrote those anyway. I mean the laws of the universe. The guidelines of a way to live that allows life to flourish all around you. The rules of a way to live in harmony with every other organism that you share a home with.

You want to be king of the Earth? You want to be at the top of the food chain? The master of the universe? No problem. Honestly. Not being sarcastic. That actually fits in with the parameters of life. Man can be king. We can be in charge. It means being a good leader. Leading by example. Thinking of the well-being of our kingdom over that of our own lives. Not ruling over a conquered population forced to crumble under our tyranny, but leading a loyal following that believe in us because they can feel love in everything we do for them. And if we do prove to be the prophesized heir to the throne at the helm of life (on Earth at least), the first species to reach self-awareness (that's what science says at least), true consciousness (it's a start at least), then we will have performed quite a feat.

Especially considering the handicapped scorecard we're starting out with. We took a bunch of swings before we knew the rules and now we have to make up for it. We need to work as a species to develop a system to live in a good way, to treat our planet and our relatives in a good way, and to retain enough of who we are now that we won't have to make the same mistakes again. If we're unable to figure it out in time, something cataclysmic will eventually happen and figure it out for us. No worries, some of us will survive and we'll form tribes, but without knowing what went wrong, thousands of years down the road when civilization starts back up, no one will remember the past and it will happen all over again. Wait, has this all happened before?

Anyway, if we can manage to pull this off, use our fancy science stuff to save the world before the world saves itself, then it's all camp style biscuits and gravy from here on out. We'll be the leaders, the role models, the walking talking examples. If we can manage to survive for the millions of years that our predecessors did, then we will see some amazing things, and we'll be in front of it all. We'll evolve a lot physically, but I bet our minds will grow crazy smart. They are our most recently evolved feature which distinguishes us from those lowly animals, the silly little living breathing creatures pulsing with the same energy and vibrations as us all.

Give it a few million though, and we'll see some more intelligence spring into life. We were all close, the race, we won this round but unless we cancel the event for everyone due to acid rain, there will be other sentience on Earth. And we will have the most important role in the history of the planet. The legendary rulers of Earth. King of beasts. The chosen ones. We will be charged with the greatest task ever assigned. It is our responsibility, our destiny, to live in a good way, to lead by example, to prove to the tree of life that we have figured out a way to live in peace with it. As we empower our fellow lifeforms instead of slaughtering them, they will look to us for the answers. We won't be gods, or parents, we will be the older brothers and sisters helping consciousness along in its infancy. Saving them from making the same mistakes that we did, from hurting themselves and others, showing them how to live in a good way. A way where everyone can grow and learn and live and love. Uh, so that sounds pretty amazing, but what's behind door number two?

Just so happens, I had watched a video of it before I came out here. Unarmed humans, in the water, standing up for what they believe is moral, within their constitutional rights, trying to protect life itself. And in the video, the dapl cops were safely on land, behind razor wire, armed to the teeth with tear gas and an entire arsenal of "less-lethal" armaments. Not in any semblance of danger, yet spraying thick streams of throat tightening, eye swelling, breath removing, high pressure pepper spray, directly into the unprotected faces of those simply trying to protect their mother. From only a few yards away, blasting fellow human beings with the deadly spray just for speaking up against the poor decisions of their bosses. I know, the manufacturer doesn't officially guarantee that it is deadly, they can only classify it as "less-lethal", but don't worry, as long as you're shooting people in the face as they're trying to swim in their precious mni wiconi, no problem. Especially if you've been poisoning them too.

But alas, the river froze and now anyone could just walk right up and encompass the island without ever touching the land, and that's exactly what Christopher did. He said that there were dapl cops yelling at him, no further acts of aggression though, he was keeping on the move and alone, nothing to see here. He was a writer remember, a voice, a powerful wordsmith, and occasionally he said some things to the dapl cops to spark a look inside, to make them reconsider their actions, an introspective assessment of right and wrong. Why were they here? And sometimes he got a reaction. Sometimes even conversing with the humans on the other side, but more often simply seeing looks of doubt, guilt and pain as his words struck a chord.

Plucked a string. Vibrated an energy inside them. Woke up something they'd forgotten about. They felt his love. They felt their love. But that vibration doesn't play well with their orders to mace their brothers and sisters for sharing that very same love. So they felt conflicted, confused, scared and who could blame them. They were all in. Pot committed. They'd picked a side and pledged allegiance, the most loyal of fans, cheering for the team after loss after loss. Watched the whole movie thinking that they were the protagonist, only to find out that they were pawns in the villain's master plan. It's not their fault that they chose to do what the entire world was telling them was the most good and noble thing that they could possibly do. They were supposed to be heroes. It's not their fault that they were cheated. They were used. They were lied to.

That's why words alone won't be enough. Christopher's words were powerful and will possibly change a few hearts, which may change a few more, but words aren't enough. We can't tell anyone how to live, we have to show them. We have to show them that there's a better way. It's okay, don't be scared, we love you.

Christopher made it back that day unscathed, unmolested, unarrested, and told me this tale as I was in the mess hall gathering cans of not-as-frozen beans for the chili. I also caught wind of a rumor that there had been some type of action at the bridge. I didn't know anything else about it and rumors were whatever, but it was just a few days before the America Corporation's new CEO was sworn in and there was something in the water. People were antsy. Anything could happen. They were already capable of so much, what could they do with a free pass all the way from the top? The camp was on edge. Rosebud was a little more put together and I kept the levelest of heads. I had the easy job after all, worry free, no matter what happens, my people need to eat, supreme job security. So I got the chili going and took a break from the kitchen for a bit.

I decided to stop in at the mash tent and throw a camera battery on the charger. I hadn't touched my camera bag since before I moved into the tarpee. I'd essentially forgotten about it. Once I realized that I wasn't here to document the water protectors, I put it away and joined them. My imac had been getting some good use though. The brutal cold could take a toll on most anything, living or not, and especially technology. Phones often breaking up and down. My computer sat in the first super cold tent for weeks, but luckily powered right back on when it was time. My external hard drive loaded with my careers worth of work even powered on, at least the first time I tried it.

I came home one night to an empty mash tent and a brand new solar powered home studio at my fingertips. I decided to dump some footage from my Echo1 days, but the hard drive would not cut on. I unplugged and plugged it a bunch, nothing, no noise or hum or fan or light coming from the aluminum box. I set it next to the humble fire that I had going on in the woodstove, our hotspot, thinking that the extreme cold of that particular night could have the drive taking it's regularly scheduled union break. As I warmed the device and stoked the fire, I came to terms with the fact that the drive might not ever cut back on. Vamoose. No data recovery possible. Your account has been frozen. Dapl.

It would suck. But it would be ok. I had already been preparing myself for the computer itself not to cut on, although this drive contained more irreplaceable content. But I would be ok if it never drove again. I was learning that I always have everything I need. Giving up ownership. Dropping the word "mine." It would be ok. I didn't "need" it. Obviously not, I'd been surviving just fine without it for a while now. Maybe it was a sign. A reminder that there was more to this than documenting it. More important to be living it. A lesson in humility. But hopefully it warmed up and came back to life.

I was picking it up to have another go at it when the second sign of the night crossed my path, this time successfully sidetracking me. The solar system lost power. It was tapped out and wouldn't be back up until a few hours after the sun reappeared. No more hard drive experiments. See what happens later. Maybe tonight was just not the night. Maybe there was something more important to do, yeah, sleep. Maybe the cold or frozen condensation would have damaged the hard drive if I had cut it on. Maybe something was looking out for me and stopped me from destroying it, stopped me twice when I didn't catch the hint the first time. Everything happens for a reason. Or it might be fried. Kaput. Game over.

Nah, it was all good, just talked to the universe about it and agreed to be ok if it was a goner, gave it a shot a few days later and it fired right up. It was time. But... Henry hadn't been as lucky. One day he tried to cut on his macbook, the machine that the entire recording operation was built around, and nothing. I told him about my hard drive debacle and hoped for the best, but nothing. It just so happened that I had a perfectly good mac with the exact music software that he had already been using. We always have everything we need. Of course he could use it. Without blinking. No hesitation. He'd invited me into the space he was using, so openly, without question (sounds secure), and I'd already been giving up attachment to personal possessions anyway. So yeah, use it all you can, at least somebody is.

He was stunned. Floored. Couldn't get over how quickly I'd given him the keys. But he was no stranger. He was a friend. A pal. A confidant. A roommate. A brother in arms. Plus I respected and trusted him professionally. I'd seen enough to know that he was solid, dependable and knowledgeable, the gear would be safe. Even safer perhaps because it would be more closely monitored now. The camera still sat untouched in it's bag though. I stopped by and got it started charging. Just in case. Just a feeling. Just felt right. Just an energy. Just a vibration. And then I headed back to the other mac.

Chili mac is simple and a crowd pleaser. Just make chili and mac and combine, unless simple just isn't your style. I started some water boiling, because I knew it would be an hour, and then I started thawing the secret ingredient. Cheese sticks. Another of the great Organic Valley donations, boxes of mozzarella blocks and boxes of colby jack cheese sticks. We'd have other cheeses along the way, but until the very end, we always had a fallback option. Of course it was frozen. Frozen cheese is funny. Not funny haha, funny strange, but not bad. You have to thaw it first. Sometimes in a bowl of water on the woodstove or on top of a stack of cans defrosting there. If you're in too much of a hurry to wait all day, just do it like the meat, a pot of warm water and wait. Everything is wrapped in plastic though, so I'm always worried about getting it too warm and releasing Bisphenol A, or BPAs into the food. They only destroy your brain and your heart and your behavior and your hormones and give you prostate cancer though, now will that be paper or plastic? So not hot water, and not too close to the fire. Once I wasted a magnificent block of white cheddar by getting it too near to a piping stove. Shame.

It varied based on variety and brand, but the cheese was different now, a new consistency, it wouldn't shred, it crumbled. Some crumbled really easily and was actually more convenient than shredding, but you'd never cut slices out of it. Others you could half shred and half crumble and half cut up... What? It was a big block. I had a bunch of cheesesticks in a pot of water, ready to break up, and Jim walks in to offer a hand. I'd first met Jim maybe a week earlier, he'd heard about what Rosebud had going on and had come to check it out for himself. He was immediately taken with us and wanted to join the team. He offered to do the dishes after dinner on his first night, I was stoked and wanted to get him started before he could disappear, but it was really cold and I couldn't do that to the young protector on his first night in a kitchen that he didn't know. I told him to stop by tomorrow and do them, he didn't, but he was here now.

When we started getting more dinner visitors from other camps, I came up with a plan, really just a joke, but maybe it could work. Anyone is welcome, far and wide, but if you don't live here, if you don't contribute your time to the community, if you don't help make this camp happen, no problem. Just bring a few pieces of firewood, or do some dishes or score a bottle of lawrys. A small price to pay to feast, but it was still a price, and we weren't even paying for the food. (We did buy a little ourselves, but most was donated.) Everyone was working hard somewhere, all working towards our common goal. Plus, when I mentioned it to Smokey, he said "Dang, remind me not to come to your house for dinner, gonna make me split wood before I can eat." Good point. So we just started making more.

Jim had arrived in Oceti back in December, I had actually already heard about him. He had walked to Standing Rock from several states away, through the inclement weather that we were fortified against and still struggling to survive. He probably encountered less dapl snow though. We were all burning dapl oil to get here and to stay, but he spoke with actions, oil free and in prayer the whole way. Do keep in mind though, this pipeline has already leaked way more fuel than our entire movement used throughout the entire year.

Jim was a christian, quoting the bible and eager to engage in discussion of various beliefs. He was also very accepting of the Lakota belief system and traditions which allow for freedom of prayer. Pray however it feels right. There is no one and almighty doctrine to show you the only acceptable terms of enlightenment, just pray from the heart. It's just energy. It matters less what you say and more how you feel. How you vibe. So you gotta mean it. You gotta believe. Otherwise you might as well be talking to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that controls the multiverse. The ironic part, is that if you actually believed in him, prayed from the heart and lived in a good way, you might just start to feel his influence in your life.

Jim was young, like nineteen or twenty, very polite, overly really, full of excitement and wonder, and a talker, to me at least. He got the sticks cubed and then crumbled while I filled two trays with hot macaroni noodles. We sprinkled on half the cheese, poured chili all over, too much really (they were bulging), the rest of the cheese and then mashed it in so that it would melt into little colby pockets of yum. Cover, carry and serve. Basic, easy, fast, warm, filling and a definite crowd pleaser. Highly recommended.

As we had been getting everything put together, Dan stuck his head in to check on the eta of dinner. This was at about fifteen til seven and we were early today, soon, by seven for sure. Just what he wanted to hear. Good day to eat early, something was going down at the bridge. There were protectors there, probably been there since earlier in the day, and now there was a line of humvees forming on the other side. They were gearing up for something more than a snowball fight. It was the National Guard.

The National Guard, guarding the nation. Not the people of the nation, we were the ones they were shooting at, but the money of the nation. The money was in charge. Money called the shots. Money signed their checks. The National Guard's job is to protect the interests of the nation, and they did, just turns out that our country is pretty interested in money. Interested in protecting the wealth of the few at the cost of the many. Corporations over humans. Money over life. No worries though, once the water is trashed, they already have a treatment facility in place, so they'll be plenty of "less-dirty" water available, now will that be cash or credit?

And my camera was charged! I hadn't touched it in forever, but it was ready, just in time. I'd have been right there on the bridge without it if that hadn't been the case, I wasn't here to film the water protectors, I was here to protect the water. I was on my path, feeling it, knowing that I was in the right place. The Creator had me where I least expected to be all winter, cooking with my coat on and every second felt so right. I knew I was in the right place. So did everyone else, about me, they knew that I was always meant to be their chef. It was obvious. It just made sense. It's hard now to imagine me being anything else. But I hadn't forgotten why I came, I'd given up a lot of the original reasoning, but understood that the camera could still play a vital role from the inside. Now I had a proper workspace for the editing computer, I had a family to look out for me, Dan to give me a ride and generally a much better chance of surviving/saving the world with all of my newfound resources. Everything happened for a reason. It all fell into place, the camera was ready and everything in my life up until now had been preparing me for this, training me, including my film career. I was ready.

He was leaving in ten, pick-up bed full of protectors, James on his three wheeler and Rosebud was reporting for duty. I ran to mash, I could actually run in the ice, which was nice considering our current deployment. Johan had been talking about them here and there, Yaktrax, and one day he arrived in the kitchen with two pairs of the snowcleats that you strap on over your boots. Life savers, mainly figuratively, but probably some of the other one too. Being the chef definitely had its perks, including the majority of camp not wanting you to fall on the ice while transporting fancy ramen. He brought us two pairs, so I threw one on right away and set the other aside for Harry, he was in charge after all. They really do work very well, a must have item for sure. I'd gotten pretty good at controlled sliding around camp, but with these on I had complete traction everywhere. Icy hills were no problem, they gave you the confidence and control to do far more, stuff I wouldn't have even attempted otherwise. Better grip for pushing out stuck dapl cars or running from breath stealing tear gas and plastic coated metal bullets.

Camera, check. Battery, check. All of my other frontline survival supplies... oops. I had been super prepared on missions back in December, back when I was a professional media pass holder, but that aspect of camp had been pretty chill lately. My bag and jacket pockets had been loaded with supplies, handwarmers, snacks, socks, tape, rope, items, things, stuff, but I'd since raided the bag and switched jackets. I was traveling pretty light these days, now I was geared up with chopsticks, yeast and cigarette butts. I always had everything I needed, why carry all that other stuff, plus the tarpee was super close if I wanted anything else. It was go time, so I stocked up on a few sets of toewarmers that Henry had in the foyer, and went.

"Remember why you are here. This is not a vacation." We heard this often over the loudspeaker in Oceti in the morning, accompanied by indian music, an alarm clock to all the hippies and slackers, it's time to wake up. We were wide awake by this point, no need for the black sludge that generally powered us through the night, we had a different black sludge on our minds this evening. The truck loaded up to the max, my heavy bag hanging over the edge and we were mobile. On the way of course, I realized that I hadn't forgotten something, quite the opposite, I had forgotten not to bring something. My illegal weed pipe, oh well, don't get caught I guess.

We got there and parked on the side of the road in a line of cars. Mission Tip#14: Back in, or in our case, turn around. Take the time up front when you have it, prepare yourself for a hasty departure. You never know. I also had the forethought to make some yellow snow here, rather than in my pants when whatever happens happened. Mission Tip#6 Pee first. We all headed towards the barricade at our own pace. I had to gear up first, wanted to have the camera at the ready in case the situation escalated before I got there.

There were a couple hundred protectors out there, pretty spread out over the bridge with a concentration up front at the barricade and another group down the hill in the snow on the western side of the bridge. The barricade was on the north end of the bridge, the dapl side, and was just a big stack of concrete construction barriers stacked up with razor wire all around. The razor wire that had covered our side had been cut away, leaving little footlong pieces sticking up out of the snow throughout the twenty feet leading up to the wall. Just enough to snag a pant leg with a single misstep, careful. Never safe, always careful. There were giant bundles of the stuff on both ends of the concrete pile, which essentially extended the wall a hundred feet in either direction. There was a crew of protectors down on the west side cutting away the razor wire, carefully balling it up and getting it out of the way. Didn't look fun.

There was also a group standing on the barricade. The way they were stacked, you could climb up and stand on the top of the bottom layer and see over, or you could climb all the way to the top and be the front line. I got the camera rolling and tried to squirrel into a position between the west end of the concrete and the start of the razor wire extension. There was a thin spot, but it was hard to clearly see what was going on over on the other side. I worked my way back towards the center and found my hole, set my bag down and climbed up the barricade. Stuck my camera between the calves of two water protectors up top and we were at the frontline.

An hour ago I was mindlessly cooking dinner and now here I was, risking safety and freedom for something that I didn't really even care about 3 months ago. Something that now I was sure was the most important thing I could possibly be doing. I had no idea really what I was getting myself into, not when I first came to camp or today when I hopped in the truck. No idea what to expect. No clue what it would feel like. No concept of how the energy would be. No idea what I would do. How I would react. Would I be scared? Would I stay at a "safe" distance to film unnoticed, especially knowing that they target journalists? Nope. Pretty much first thing I found myself at the front, pointing my camera directly into the face of the terror mounting on the other side. The oppressors gearing up for something big.

"Get off of the bridge, for your own safety." Perhaps they meant our safety from the giant tactical battle humvee tank looking thing that was parked less than fifty feet back from the wall. It stood nearly twenty feet tall, enough armor that it might even be able to stop our prayer vibrations, and if not, it also had a manned turret on the top. Yeah, a gunners head sticking out of the top with a subatomic machine gun aimed right for all of us evil good-doers. To the right of it, my right not theirs, was a crowd of ten or fifteen baddies, I'm thinking they were morton county. You couldn't really tell who was who, no one was required to wear a name or number, no identification necessary, so you just had to guess based on their demeanor and the amount and size of the guns they carried. Like the guy in the group on the other side of the tank thing, our crowd called him Hothead and we were getting to him.

Now, we were peaceful, and many were loving and prayerful towards dapl, but we weren't happy and there were all sorts of protest methods besides words of compassion. There was someone at the front on a megaphone talking to the dapl cops about the destruction that will undoubtedly be upon us. Talking about all the pipeline leaks last year in this state alone and how only one made it into the news, the dapl gazette. Talking about the lies that have been told by our government to all of us, and especially to them as they were convinced to take part in such a despicable act. About the US's history of oppression of those indigenous to the land that we took possession of. The broken treaties. The massacres. The "boarding schools" designed to assimilate kidnapped native children into colonization, forcing them to abandon their spirituality, their connection to the Earth and their connection to the vibrations of the universe. About the laws that kept them from praying. Or the laws that allowed for involuntary sterilization of Lakota women. And even the current laws in several states, including south dakota, that give legality to shooting any group of indians numbering five or more. Yeah, any five, anywhere, five indians equals a gang, a terrorist cell, shoot 'em up, still, in 2017.

The megaphoner also wished for compassion to find its way into their hearts, wishing the best for their children, for their safety, for their future. Some were very well spoken, I got a lot of good stuff on tape, really powerful words. The megaphone wasn't on all the time and the crowd would fill the space with shouts to the other side. Some trying to shame them, "Does it feel good to be pointing a gun at an unarmed woman?" I heard that from a protector sitting right out front with no protection other then her belief that she was in exactly the right place. Still others trying to agitate them, antagonize them, get them to act out of line so that it could be facebook live streamed. Not the epitome of peaceful, but not exactly violent either.

Dapl would sometimes say something in response, the most common notion was for us to just wait until inauguration day and see what happens. Wow. They knew exactly what was up. They were just biding time until they could do whatever they wanted without the slight restrictions that they currently faced. Our words were working though.

When I first got up front, they were calling out old Hothead, he'd apparently been one of the more aggressive troops at previous actions and was already starting to steam when I got my camera focused on him. In his defense, stuff steams at a very low temperature out here. I'd go to drink a coffee, must be hot because you could see vapor rising out of it, nope, cool to lukewarm, the air was so far below zero that it was still relatively hot, so it condensated. Hothead was ready to get to it, just waiting on the word to attack. We would have a hard time getting through to his heart, he had truly convinced himself that he hated the evil scum that we all were. I guess sometimes you just have to buy into all of the propaganda to be able to sleep at night.

I don't know when or where they slept actually. I'd heard a rumor that they were setting up their own camp over there, they'd almost have to. Nights like tonight would go late and take a lot of forces, and they always seemed to have no less than an army at the ready. There wasn't a constant patrol at the bridge, only if we started showing up would you see the endless convoy of hummers line up down 1806, but they got there fast. So they musta been somewhere, resting, eating, playing Call of Duty:DAPL Edition. Unless they just sat in their vehicles all night burning gas and waiting for impending doom.

They were all pretty well geared up for the weather. We thought we had an abundance of supplies, they had an oil empire and a corrupt government backing them. They weren't cold, they had nice expensive heated tactical snow gear, but did they have an acupuncturist? A massage therapist? Even an herbalist? And certainly no pizza. I never did it, but I often thought about setting the grill up out here and serving fresh slices to the warriors standing up front. That would have sent a sure message of we are strong, we are unstoppable, we are here to stay, we have pizza.

Even a warm slice of buffalo and broccoli wouldn't have gotten through to our Hothead though. He couldn't take it, he was ready to snap, it was obvious. Not a master of containing his emotions at all. He wore a vest, that in a Rambo style of obscene armory, held twelve canisters of tear gas. He'd probably been reprimanded before for use of excessive force and had his gun taken away, only a guess, but he did get called off of their frontline shortly thereafter.

His superior could see that he was starting to lose it. Even owning the media wasn't keeping their injustices completely unseen, so it was probably best not to have an officer experience a tear gas fueled psychotic break while little brother was watching. Or sociopathic break, whatever, I'm a cook not a doctor. Our side cheered as the opposing player got benched, a success, I guess. Not sure what it actually accomplished but at least we had made some type of impact, affected the other side a bit and forced them to acknowledge that maybe they weren't so perfect after all. He retreated into the darkness, through the mob of uncivil servants to the left of the tank. They were more heavily armed than those on the right, guns and gas masks, bulletproof vests to protect them from... prayers.

Down the hill to the left a little, an even more geared up crew was getting staged, all wearing matching masks and riot gear, big fire extinguisher sized bottles of pepper spray and other various weapons of terror. I filmed from here for a while with nothing much happening after Hothead's eviction. Made friends with the protectors above me and smoked a few cigs that someone was handing out to everyone out front. Hot soup and handwarmers were also plentiful. I had tried to use a toewarmer on my battery, but I hadn't quite gotten the procedure down yet, it was quickly losing juice.

I turned to scan the crowd and Trent was right behind me, he hadn't ridden with us in the truck and this was the first I'd seen of him out here. Sure was nice to see a familiar smiling face with such a stark contrast in the other direction. He held the camera while I got down and we fell back to hug and regroup. I shoved the battery into a pocket with a fresh handwarmer, took a seat on one of the concrete barriers that sat parallel on the bridge and rolled a smoke. We watched the group down the hill, building in numbers as they continued digging through the mounds of razor wire. A protector came by offering ginger tea, yes please, then Trent and I had the same thought, dapl. Laxatives in the frontline tea. But it was only paranoia, this time, I saw her throughout the rest of the winter serving food in an Oceti kitchen. If you can trust the chef that is.

Another protector came by with a smudge can. Burning sage. Walking from person to person and letting them waft the spiritually cleansing smoke over their face and body. I already knew about the power of sage before camp, it makes a place just feel better, cleaner, healthier. Clears any negative energy that may be hanging around. Here I learned that sage is a part of ceremony. A part of sweat. I burn it every morning when I pray, and more often than not I smudge more often than that. "Smudge me, don't judge me" I gladly took a dip in the healing smoke, we needed all of the good juju we could get, especially after that dapl tea I just drank.

Nicotine craving curbed, battery rejuvenated, time for round two. I worked my way back up to the barricade, this time farther to the right and saw a Rosebuddy up top. She was sitting on the concrete, behind an orange metal fence gate that was cabled to the wall. I got her attention and worked my way up beside her. Front row seat. I was right there. If they hadn't noticed me before, they definitely had me now, up close and personal. Big camera pointed directly into their faces and no mask covering mine. I guess I wasn't here to hide. You never really know until you're in that situation, but I wasn't scared, I was too honored to be one of the people.

I filmed from there for a while, little action, just the other side gearing up still, more and more forces. I would later hear from someone who flew a drone over the action that behind everything, past the bright dapl lights, in the shadows, there were what looked like hundreds of reinforcements just waiting to be called to action. I guess we just didn't pray hard enough for them to be needed.

It looked like something was going to pop off soon. Something in their nervous twitches. I imagined that their in-ear communication devices were declaring blast off in 10, 9, 8, 7... And then there was movement. Towards the left flank, a group of the most heavily armed marched down the hill. I filmed them moving, then filmed our side trying to prepare for the incoming attack. Linking arms, holding the line, protecting our people from getting snatched up one by one. I moved the camera back to the baddies in front of me, they were amping up to move, back to the left, dapl's moving in, front, getting in formation, right, clear, left, snow atv things swarming in, front, any second.

I wanted to be ready to film the onslaught directly in front of me, but a final check to the left saw twenty-five foot streams of pepper spray erupt into the group of unprotected water protectors, from the other side of the razor wire. Those that were close and didn't run, got slammed down, yanked up and arrested while pepper spray continued. Wait, wasn't I supposed to be filming those other guys?

Now. Right now. Here they come. Methodically advancing from their position in front of the tank, about forty feet away. Thirty feet. Guns drawn. A couple of them were those big bright orange toy looking guns, no doubt made by nerf with soft foam rubber bullets I'm sure. Twenty feet. Nope. Not a toy. Real guns. Metal bullets with hard plastic coating. The other guns looked like straight up assault rifles, I don't know what they were, but they didn't even try to pretend to be toys. Ten feet. Still on the wall, I'd repositioned myself for a quick departure, backed it in so to speak, but I was right up front. The guns were aimed directly into my face. Probably more like they were aimed at my camera. As it became apparent that it was going to get bad, I grabbed the Rosebuddy to my left and made sure that she was ready to get the camera out of here if something happened to me. Or get me out of here if something happens to the camera, either way. I had already shown her how to remove the tape and memory card, you never know.

I use a Panasonic HVX200 which is a really excellent camera, it's used a lot for documentaries and other films, but not the best in low light. Lucky for us, those dapl lights are as bright as can be. The shots on the left are dark, but up front you can see the nervous sweat (quite a feat in this extreme cold) building up in 1080HD. It's an older camera, was the industry standard ten years ago and is now certainly outdated by many standards, it even still has a dv tape port. It also holds a memory card with forty-two minutes of space, so I would switch between card and tape and hoped that if I didn't get away, at least maybe they would only know to destroy one or the other. Now that's freakin teamwork.

Five feet. I'm filming through the bars in the orange gate as they get closer. Who even knows what's happening on the sides? They could be surrounding us by now. I can't exactly take the camera off of the barrel of the weapon pointed directly into my lens. Seeing it all through the viewfinder doesn't make it any less real. Some type of national police mercenary guard is pointing a "less-lethal" gun at my head. That's a new one.

I've never been a big fan of police, especially in the rural south as a pot smoker, I've even had a personal experience with dirty cops, but nothing like this. I've gotten out of more tickets then I've gotten. Never been to jail. Should have gone twice but my path somehow got me out of it both times. I may be a dirty hippie pothead, but I'm still a white southerner. I can turn on the good old boy when I need to. If I'd been black in those situations, I'd have certainly been arrested, but maybe also been lucky enough to have gotten the experience of having a service weapon aimed at my brain. But I'm not, so I didn't, so this is all new to me. I've never had any gun pointed at me, nothing that doesn't shoot paint at least. I've been around guns, shot some, even shot an AK one time, but nothing like this. I was a good kid and the worst I did as an adult was catch a buzz. Why would I ever see this end of a cop's gun? I may not have liked to talk to cops before, but I respected them, I knew that they did an important and dangerous service for us all. I've liked a lot of the cops I've interacted with, even one recently as we laughed while he wrote me a ticket.

This was different. I don't hate cops. I've always accepted any punishment they've issued me with the utmost respect, I had broken their law, I got it, and generally my cooperation earned me compassion. This was different. I hadn't done anything wrong. I had only filmed their over-the-top battalion. My brothers and sisters had only spoken up for what they believed in. Stood up for the sacred ground that their ancestors were buried in. Stood up for everyone on the planet. Stood up for the planet itself. And now the cops; public, private and national, were quieting us. Stomping us out. Violating our civil rights. Our freedom to assemble. Freedom of speech. Freedom of the press. All for the interests of a corporation. For profit. They weren't defending america, the oil wasn't even staying in the country, they were defending a ceo's bottom line and that's the bottom line.

Our numbers were low, their media had viewers at home thinking that we were all gone. Nothing to see here. They just had to keep us at bay a little longer. Just had to finish drilling. With more cops than protectors you'd have thought that they'd be a little less scared. Scared and aiming their weapons at us, as we stood unarmed and in prayer. The prayer scared them the most. Four feet. I didn't see it start. I didn't notice them throw anything. I was a little preoccupied and they probably attacked us from the side where I couldn't have seen it coming anyway. Didn't see it coming, but I felt it. Felt it about the time the oncoming forces hit the four foot mark. Not scared, but probably breathing heavy, and before they hit 3'11", I couldn't breathe at all. I had taken a deep one just before I saw the thick white smoke roll in over the crowd, the noxious chemical that burned and tightened as I felt it creep down my throat. Ironically though, it didn't make me cry. So yeah, tear gas was cool. Another one of those things I'd have never imagined on my path.

I'm still up front, maybe three and a half from the onslaught of impending doom, only the orange gate and a row of concrete between me and the assault weapon (certainly not for defense) pointed at my thinking cap. I didn't know it was coming, didn't realize what it was that I'd just inhaled and didn't understand what was happening to my inside parts. I coughed it up, instant reaction to the hazardous film landing on my bronchial lining, but turns out that you can't simply expel it from your lungs. Apparently, once you cough out all the air you can, your body needs another deep breath. I had to retract. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. Only coughing and wheezing and drooling. I could now see the intruder, the caustic cloud that had settled over the bridge. And I was out front, where could I even go to catch a rogue breath of fresh air?

I started falling back, caught a tiny puff of less foggy air, but I couldn't turn the camera and run. I was the one here filming. The one documenting the things that they were trying to squash. I was here to stand up. To protect the water. How could I do any of that if I just turned and ran at the first sign of aggression? How could we ever make a difference if their bullying tactics worked? If all they had to do was scare us a little and we'd tuck our tails and hide, then why were we even here? They would have won. Successfully suppressed not only the media, but oppressed the citizens of their own country who were only trying to stand up for all of humanity, no, for all of life on Earth. If they win, we all lose. But I couldn't breathe. I had to make moves. I backed up while trying to keep the camera rolling but all I could really see were waves of smoke floating by. Then a Rosebuddy shouted to me, "Here they come. Don't stop filming. They're going after Pete."
Step Nine:

Pete! No! Brother! I had seen and hugged him earlier before the chaos had begun. He hadn't ridden with us, he'd already been here when we arrived, singing and praying. He wasn't directing his attention to the other side, wasn't looking over the barricade, wasn't socializing with other protectors. He was praying. Singing Lakota prayer songs. Not agitating, instigating or even as much as casting an evil eye at dapl. I'd lost track of him during the course of the evening, but now I hear that they're moving in on him. My brother. My most peaceful, compassionate, inspiring brother. One of the most loving souls I would ever meet. I found him in my viewfinder through the thick fog, kneeled down and face to the ground, right up at the barricade, just a few feet to the right of where I had been. Choking out prayers through the tear gas. Singing the best he could with dwindling breath. The emotion he always prayed with compounded by the trauma that he was enduring. I was hardly surviving and I was on the move. Pete was stronger than us all, unwavering, giving everything he had to stand up for what was right, to stand up for our great mother.

And here they come. A long line of dapl jacks. (Later someone would point out that none of us had ever met a protector named Jack, definitely a dapl name.) They came around the wall on the left and marched along our side of the barrier towards Pete. Peaceful, prayerful, Pete. Knelt down, head to the ground, arms extended in front of him, hair full of tear gas, sure signs of aggression if I've ever seen them. They find their target, some surrounding him and the rest forming a human wall to block whatever vision we still had through the smoke. And it worked for the most part, the crowd was in a frenzy and an iphone live stream would never have caught enough detail to be admissible in court. But I have a good camera. Good zoom and focus, although they're a bit tricky to adjust in five below. And I was close.

I was finally doing what I'd come for over a month ago. I was filming the inhumane actions of our tyrannical government in the name of corporate greed. But I could hardly breathe. Burning my throat with every attempt. Chemicals closing my lungs. Then another wave of national dapl guards got into position against us. I took a step back to prepare myself for fight or flight, trying to keep the camera on Pete while keeping my other eye on the troops preparing to charge. Every once in a while, actually catching a short breath, and then I felt something pulling at my pants. My right leg was caught in a piece of razor wire.

I'd never really looked at it closely before, but it was just how I'd imagined it. Shiny silver wire with razor blades sticking out of it. Shaped so that either corner of each blade could slice into and entangle an escapee's clothing. Escapees wearing orange presumably, at least that's what the people just doing their job at the wire factory probably thought. Honest people just making ends meet, proudly manufacturing a product that their great country would use to do great things, like protect us from any number of bad people capable of such violent acts as possessing marijuana. They would use this product to protect us from bad guys, and the checks were guaranteed to clear from the privatized for-profit prison system making hand over fist regardless of the serving size of justice. But what product could possibly protect us from them? Nah, I'm just kidding, they've got a machine that makes that stuff in mexico nowadays.

It had me. One corner of one blade. If I hadn't been filming whatever was about to happen to Pete, if an armed wave of countrymen weren't preparing to move in, if I could breathe, I would have been able to calmly kneel down and gently remove the snag without fail. One corner wouldn't have been a deal breaker, but I tried to kick it free and another blade dug in. That's how it works, like quicksand, the more you struggle, the more jammed up you get. I was in a jam.

The cops around Pete were in position, still he prayed. More tear gas canisters went off. The next wave started advancing towards me. With my glove on, I bent down and tried to free myself. I knew that my glove could easily get snagged, but I wasn't ready to try it unprotected in this climate. Can't breathe, coughing (it's all you can hear in the video), wheezing, snotting, eyes irritated but not tearing, nose burning, throat scorching, chemical taste overwhelming and got one razor free. Hit squad approaching and targeting media. Guns drawn and gas masks protecting them from the "less-lethal" chemical compound that had me in agony. Unable to move. Unable to think. Unable to free myself completely. Swat team approaching... and then... then they start to mace Pete.

Pepper spray directly into his face from a few feet away. Into his dreads, which just soaked up the hazardous chemical weapon so he could save some for later. He told me that he felt four different chemical agents sprayed at him, I don't doubt it, but it could also have been different reaction phases of just one or two, plus prolonged tear gas inhalation. Either way, WTF? He was kneeled down praying, circled by eight gestapo and walled off by twelve more, weak from oxygen loss, and then they hosed him down with mace as they shouted for him to stop resisting. They were scared of prayer. So I couldn't exactly stop filming that, could I? I needed to bear witness to the undeniable use of excessive force and cruel punishment. All in the name of oil. In the name of money. But I also couldn't stop the wall of fury that was marching my way. So I decided to get my leg unstuck, even I can come up with a good idea every once in a while. I reached down with my right hand while my left tried to steady the lens, grabbed my pants and tore them free. Turns out that stuff's pretty sharp, I'd hate to see what it would do to skin.

Now free, I got Pete back into frame and turned away for the first time. I made my way back to where our repositioned frontline had posted up, carrying the camera backwards over my shoulder so as to not get stuck in any more razor snares. I got back far enough that I could actually take a breath and found our first line of defense, a group of young warriors holding 2'x4' plywood shields. I got between two of them as I popped my head and the camera just over the top of the shield wall. Turns out that not only does this camera get me an all access pass to no-name jam shows, it also gets me a seat in the front row of the most important gig of my life. To the beginning of a movement. A resistance. A revolution. To the beginning of the end. To the beginning of the beginning. And the men forming the frontline were as eager to have me join them as I was proud to be there. They made space for me behind their shields and vowed to protect me. I told them to worry about themselves, I'd work around them, I'd be ok. I knew the risks, plus, I couldn't film through their shields anyway. "Ok, be safe brother, they're targeting journalists out here." Yeah, got that memo.

They were busy targeting Pete still though. It took me a minute to get into position and get stable enough to zoom and focus through the now fading tear gas. He was still on the ground. Still being assaulted. Still in prayer. It was harder to see from this far away, harder to keep it steady when I zoomed in, harder to catch a glimpse through the wall of armed guards blocking the illegal action, but they were still at it. I heard the guys in front of me shouting to one of our own, Mario, one of the leaders of Oceti security that I'd known at Echo1. He had been maced earlier, narrowly escaped capture and retreated for treatment. Now he was back with a vengeance, still blinded, and busted through the back of our line on a direct warpath for theirs. We grabbed him and talked some sense into him, turns out that with maced shut eyelids, the row of officers facing us looked similar enough to the line of water protectors that had stood in the same spot just a few minutes ago. He was about to run right into the lion's den, but hey, at least he wasn't praying. He ended up getting arrested before the night was over.

Pete was right now. It took four riot geared officers to manhandle him back across to their side of the barricade. With what they were willing to do in front of witnesses, I hate to even think about how they treated him on the other side of the wall. Yeah, remember that we're all on our side of the concrete barrier. Dapl's on our side. Glad somebody is.

The entire continent was once accessible to its original inhabitants, then we came along and pushed them into small pockets of unfertile land, but at least we offered treaties which made it all fair and just and moral and decent and human and all. Then we wanted some of that land too, once we discovered that there was gold buried in them thar hills, so we took it. Where'd the term "indian giver" come from again? This happened many times on the reservation where I currently reside and countless times across the country. Now it was happening again, right now, this very second, in modern day civilized america. The government once again claimed ownership of sacred tribal land for the exploitation of natural resources. For money. Then they set up this barricade and told the tribe that they couldn't cross it, those that have lived here all of their lives, all of their parent's lives, their parent's parents. This was now US government property. Or the oil companies. Whatever, they're the same thing. But even the barricade, that they installed, wasn't good enough. We had far too much room for activities. Too much room to kneel and pray. This just wouldn't do. They would keep pushing, eventually seizing the entire camp, eminent domain over reservation land. A sovereign nation. But from what I hear (I'm currently not that connected to society), the new administration is wanting to do away with reservations altogether. I'd imagine they'll be trying to send them all back to where they came from soon enough. For now, they would be happy pushing us back on the bridge, and yanking up Pete, four deep, pepper spray soaked hair in his face as they drag him across the barricade to their side.

I lost Pete as they hauled him off, when the next round of tear gas and military advances headed our way, but I got more of his story from a reliable eyewitness. He sang. And prayed. The whole way to the car. The whole way to jail. You could hear his prayer songs throughout the halls of the jailhouse. He prayed all that time with pepper spray in his dreads and on his face. They denied him a shower. Denied him a change of clothes. He prayed. Mace soaked into his clothes. Mace in his hair. Mace still on his hands so that he couldn't even wipe his face. Still praying. Finally they moved him into a room with a small sink. He washed his hands and then his face, but it only intensified the burn when his extra spicy hair got wet. Still he sang. Eventually they had to let him go, we joked that they just couldn't take the singing anymore, maybe that's the new go-to technique. They're scared of prayer. The first sweat that Pete went to afterwards brought it all back, steaming the pepper residue out of his hair and back into his face, it was rough and would take several sweats to get it all out. Still he prayed. Now take it to the bridge...

Incoming. More tear gas. Whatever, my dependency on oxygen was waning by this point anyway, it was the gunshots that I wasn't quite ready for. The smoke was thick again, so I couldn't really see where they were coming from. There wasn't an obscene amount of them (assuming that one can consider even a single firearm discharged at a fellow human being as "not obscene", but obviously some people are with it), just enough to get our attention in case any of us had drifted into daydream mode. We held our ground for as long as we could, until the fog eventually drove us back. The plywood shields at least offered a perceived level of protection from the bullets, an illusion of safety, but they did very little to subdue the burning air all around us. There were only a few gas masks on our side and none in the group I was stationed with.

The people shooting and spraying us would claim that wearing a mask was a sign of aggression and warranted aggressive measures in retaliation. Any kind of mask, in sub zero facial frostbite conditions, wearing a mask equals a target on your head. Say what!? A strictly defensive tool whose only method of attack would be to take it off and throw it, and that commands gratuitous violence against your own? Actually, I guess it makes sense considering the harsh penalty for praying.

We fell back, repositioned and repeated. They eventually pushed us back to the other side of the bridge. It already seemed like a lifetime since I filmed Pete getting... yeah. Now I imagine the actual lifetime that many endure in the same position, but without the comfort of a utopian camp or a safe place to return to as a privileged white male in america. Instead defending their homes with a makeshift defense system against the tyranny of the US government. An evil empire out to destroy life for the almighty, the good old american dollar, the one true ruler of the land. Can't they just print that stuff?

We were regrouping on the south side, expecting anything by this point, considering a possible side attack as they could have been surrounding us amidst the confusion. I scanned the crowd for familiar faces, who had we lost besides Pete? We almost lost the camera, well not the camera itself, but the tape was down to its last couple of minutes. I couldn't very well switch it during the thick of all that, but now I had just enough time to make the transition happen. The viewfinder also had a big frosty spot inside of it. Turns out it was cold out there. Then through the tear gas we saw movement. Movement away from us. They were retreating. We moved forward as they moved back, stopping a few times along the way for the occasional face-off and soon they were back on their side of the wall. We had won. Forced them to retreat. We'd taken back the bridge. The crowd was pumped. Dapl would not win this day. The good guys would prevail. Wait, what?

What had we done? We watched them come over the wall, arrest our family members, push us back with force and fear, gave them an opportunity to recover evidence of their evils (we recovered a few different tear gas canisters ourselves), showed them our hand, how we would react to just a small fraction of the things that they are capable of, gave them a training ground, a tutorial of how to quiet the few people willing to stand up, showed them how much they could get away with and just how malicious they can be without america even knowing. Or without caring at least. Oh, it's just another one of those protests. Those people just need to get a job. Sure, everything is corrupt and broken, but that's just the way it is. Always has been, always will be. Can't beat 'em, join 'em. Money is a necessary evil. This program has been brought to you by viewers like you.

So they made us think we'd done something. A strawman victory. They puffed their chest and showed us that we stood no chance in a street fight. We weren't the underdogs, we were but ants that they could stomp out at any moment. We brought plywood to a gunfight. But ants are underestimated because of their individual size. They're insanely strong. They put the colony ahead of themselves. They're unanimously unified and if they band together with a common goal, they can take on most anything, especially if it's threatening their mother. Maybe they messed up by bringing guns to a prayer circle.

And then we'd won the battle, no reason to stay out in the cold, we could all go home, nothing to see here. Luckily the strongest people I'd ever met were also the smartest, we weren't falling for it. We weren't going anywhere. Pretty soon I was back on the barricade. This time in the center, which had an open spot between barriers to see the other side more clearly. Battery was severely low, but I was starting to figure out the right combination of toewarmers and heavy breathing to get me through. Johan was there handing out frozen snickers bars, always the love merchant, he tried to give dapl some but surprisingly no takers, I ate theirs.

There were agitators, a couple of times people crossed the barricade to stand on their side, close enough to the wall that they could climb back over if they started moving in. And they did. But as soon as the trespasser fled, they backed off. They'd already shown us what they were capable of. Not sure what going over there proves. That you're tough? That you're an idiot? Hoping to get a reaction? Another round of violence against your loved ones? They could have just shot you right there and arrested you before you could retreat.

We were there for hours, like six or seven from start to finish. We were all getting tired, us and them, and cold. I looked down and Johan had climbed down next to a bundle of razor wire on their side, he was picking up trash. Our trash I would assume. Taking away at least one thing that they could use to sway their own media against us. Look at these hypocrites, leaving trash at a pollution protest. And we were honestly. But most of us were working to fix it, I was at least. Styrofoam plates used to serve genetically modified food brought in by gasoline engine to be fried in canola oil on a propane stove and some kitchens even powered by generators and yadda yadda yadda... We could do better. We will do better. This was the trial run. This may have been dapl's training ground, but it was more so ours. They learned one skill, we learned countless. We'll figure it out.

Johan had it handled this time. While he was near the very front, in front of the front really, a negotiation was sparked between a few protectors and the apparent decision makers of dapl. The dapl guards would often claim "That may be so, but I can't do anything about it. It's not my call. I'm just doing my job." So who knows what real authority these two had, but they were who we had. Throughout the last hour, they had tried several times to talk us into going back to camp, we'd really been hearing it all night, but now at least it was a little more personal. Earlier, over the loudspeaker we heard "Get off of the bridge, for your own safety, you're trespassing, go back to camp." Now it was at least human to human contact.

"It's two in the morning, you're tired, we're tired, it's cold, why don't you just go back to camp so that we can end this for the night?"

"We're not leaving until you leave."

"We'll leave right after you."

"No deal. We're staying until you leave."

It went on like this for a while. Seemed like there was a compromise a few times, but then it would fall through. Troops and vehicles would back up a bit, but just enough to give us hope of a deal, and then they would stop. But this time, these two negotiators were trying their hardest, up at the barricade, having a legitimate human interaction with us. They were tired, cold and probably hoping not to have to test their morals when another command to strike came over their earpieces. These were human beings, with families, we weren't a faceless foreign enemy, this was not easy for them. Not all of them anyway. Our lead negotiator went as far forward as he could. I heard shouts from the crowd to hold him back, protect him from being grabbed and arrested, possible for sure, but probably not in the best interests of dapl getting any sleep tonight. Still, we were on our toes. James was in position too, standing on the wall, overseeing from above and ready to pounce at a moments notice. Probably in a few scopes himself at the notice of this moment too. And I was right there, camera up high and proud. Go ahead and do something, I dare you.

Several protectors mentioned to me that they thought my presence at the barricade diffused the situation a little, as bad as it may have been, they knew they were being watched. Plenty of people were filming with their phones, at least as long as their batteries could hold up. Many could live stream the goings-on, unlike my film camera's capabilities, though some phones mysteriously lost videos and got completely wiped, hmmm... My camera looks legit though, if you know it, then you know it is quality, and if you know nothing about cameras, it looks even more impressive. Far too much of a piece of equipment for some jobless hippie to have, know how to use and be willing to bring out in a blizzard. Little did they know... No, he must be somebody, obviously not major media, they all work for us, but somebody. We can still do what we do, no real people get their news from the internet anyway, but maybe we shouldn't blatantly shoot unarmed women and children tonight... unless they're praying of course. Or we could take him out, smash him and his gear and charge him with inciting a riot like we did the other ones.

I was hoping they didn't go for that option. And it seemed to be chilling out, everything was calm, I couldn't hear every word, but they seemed to be coming to an agreement. And they did. A true plan, genuine from both sides, a way to end tonight's conflict. I guess this is how treaties are made. We all know the survival rate of treaties with the USofA, but this was our shot to be able to call it a night, somehow a victory even in the face of all that had transpired today. It would still be a win.

The deal? That they would pray with us. We were here to pray, maybe not a hundred percent of us, but at this point in the excruciating winter, the overwhelming majority were here in faith. It's the only way we could survive really. Believing that we could make a difference through our love. Through our vibrations. And now we could bring our brothers on the other side of the razor wire into our prayer circle, hopefully bringing calm into their hearts and maybe, just maybe, affecting their internal vibrations. The thing about prayer, about the vibes, is that you have to believe them, that's what gives it its energy, otherwise they're just hollow words. So they could just go through the motions, laughing it off inside, but even so, they would feel our love. Our energy. And hopefully feel compassion for us as we humbled ourselves and prayed from our hearts, for not only the planet and future that we all shared, but for them and their families as well. We could see that they were not bad people and we hoped to show them the same of us.

The two officers had agreed to the terms and we invited any others to walk up and join us, none did. That doesn't mean that they were the bad ones, scared to pray, it would be a tough spot for anyone. Surrounded by your fellow tough guys, you'd certainly face ridicule or worse by your peers. Plus, to even get through their work day, I'd imagine that many had to demonize us, convince themselves that we were in fact deplorable terrorists out to destroy the Earth. Why does that seem familiar for some reason? And then some were just scared of prayer.

The two were still in though, and all of the protectors pulled in tight, removed our hats in the sub-zero night air, closed our eyes and prayed. A leader from our side did the speaking, sage smoke filled the air, clearing energies and lingering tear gas, and then it was done. It ended with a big group "Aho" and we all thanked the officers for working with us. I dismounted the wall and worked my way back to the concrete barrier on the bridge where I had seen a small group of Rosebuddies coalescing. Hugs. Laughs. Tales of heroism. People who had no idea that I was here to film, expressed their shock at seeing me up on the barricade with the camera, I was just supposed to be their chef. Had some mni, smoked some cigs, gathered our crew, but Jess wasn't there.

No one had seen her get arrested. She had been on the barricade behind the orange gate when I first got up there, but not when everything went down. I was the last one to see her and I didn't even know when she left. So Bill was a little worried. We were all concerned, but we also knew that we were always in the right place. Bill thought she might have headed back, I doubted that though, not without checking in with one of us first. I think the best hope is that she got arrested, otherwise she could be somewhere out here in the snow, tear gassed into unconsciousness. I assumed her and Pete were chatting it up en route to any number of holding facilities they were using up to two hundred miles away. Think that was mainly when large groups of people were getting arrested, so they'd probably just be in bismarck. Fun fact: Before I came out here, they were putting the influx of arrestees into dog kennels. Look it up, they were literally packing us into dog cages, treating us like... animals.

She's good. We'd feel it if she wasn't. We were ready to go. Tired and cold. Just like the dapl cops told us we were. But we were waiting for the crowd to dissipate, which is what the crowd was waiting for, but there was still a group of protectors up on the barricade. "They don't speak for us. We're not leaving." Our side tried to talk to them, didn't work, so we left. I think they stayed for a little while longer, but ended up leaving when their backup disappeared. Just showed dapl how ununified we all were. Rosebud was all together though, in the back of Dan's truck, headed home. I don't know who mentioned it, maybe Dan or Johan, but we all agreed, "Well, at least we know who's not dapl." We became closer that night, the handful us at at bridge, now even more of a family and unified in our commitment to why we were here. It was the people that you'd expect, the hardest workers, and now we all knew that we had each others backs no matter what. Unless there was a super deep cover daplbot... JK.

Still amped, it was a joyous ride home and a big "Mni Wiconi!" as we pulled into the gate. Echo3 was glad to see such a reckless bunch returning home safe, most of us anyway. Brock jumped out and skied behind the truck, Dan parked at his house and we were home. I wanted to celebrate our survival, but was too tired to hang out, maybe some did, but first everyone had to do some personal hygiene. Our skin, hair and clothes were covered in tear gas, or worse. Summer had told me to roll around in the snow, that gets it off, probably the silver nitrate or something. But I had that breezeway that Tim had built in the tarpee, so I just derobed there and left the contaminated clothes in the cryogenic airlock. I hoped that the extreme cold would do something and I wasn't trying to spend anymore time fooling with it tonight.

Whew. Well, that was something. Not too shabby for my first real action at the bridge. For the first time, I felt like I was finally doing what I came to do, what I thought I had been called here to do, actually filmed something worth the risk that we were all taking. I'd somehow "randomly" charged my battery and with some help, it lasted right up until Rosebud was gathering to leave. I saw what I was made of. What I would do in the face of whatever it was we were facing. Saw what they were made of too. What they were willing to do to us, well, just the start of it really. I bore witness to injustice, not just to a fellow water protector, but to my brother, and I'd been there to prove it. Through all of that, after hours of stand off and civil liberties being trampled on, human rights violated, big guns in our faces and chemicals in our lungs, a campaign of fear and terror that only made our resistance stronger, we still ended the night in a way that put hope into all of our hearts. Hope that we will make a difference. Hope that those who do not yet see the change that we must all make, will start to open their hearts and minds. Hope for the generations to come. Hope for mankind. Hope for our mother. Hope for life. Mni Wiconi.

And another beautiful morning in "Staaaanndding Roooccck." Another chance to be thankful for this place, these people, and everything that felt right. Another day to cook for my peeps too. Oh yeah, I was the chef still, almost forgot about that part. I had a lot on my plate today, so I was going to try to keep dinner simple and quick, or as close to that as I could manage and still meet my minimum standards of camp style cooking. I wanted to wrap it up earlier than normal though, we all had a feeling that last night wasn't going to be the end of it. We were counting down to inauguration day and tension levels were rising. This might be our last chance. Who knows what will happen once the new regime takes over. We were already ashamed of the actions and inactions of the current leadership, who most of us had probably helped put into office, so it was unfathomable what was in store for us next. I not only wanted to be done early, but I also needed to make time during the day to dump the footage off of the camera, maybe even look at a little of it, charge the battery and repack my bag with items and stuff. I got lunch served and headed for mash.

When I had stopped in yesterday, Henry had been talking with a new face, Jerry, today he was here alone so I got a chance to get to know him while the camera was doing its thing. Jerry was a radio guy, he'd been running the on-camp station that we could sometimes pick up from Oceti, and now was moving his operation to mash. Cool. The station featured tribal songs, interviews and just good old american rock'n'roll, it was a really diverse and fun to listen to format. Jerry and I had a long talk, he spoke of the oppression that he and his relatives had all experienced, the boarding schools, the colonization, the forced assimilation into a broken way of life. He wasn't really that fond of colonized white people. I have thick skin and am not easily offended, plus, I was with him. We wrecked the lives and culture of an entire continent of people who were living in a good way, in accord with the natural laws of how the world works, and forced them to join our designed-to-fail system built with blatant disregard for the future of all living organisms. Especially humans.

I don't get defensive and I know when to bite my tongue, so we were more than cool, but a friend of mine who popped in had a harder time with him. He was talking about some unethical treatment or another and she chimed in, not in disagreement, very much the opposite and related it to her own traumatic past. That was one of his problems with a lot of people though, not really listening and just relating tales of oppression to their own experiences, feeling like that gives them insight into what he had been through. That they understood. That they weren't like most of the hippies who wanted just a taste of indigenous culture and spiritualism so that they could feel like they were on the red road. Those not prepared to truly humble themselves and sacrifice to learn how to live in a good way.

She didn't quite have the tongue holding ability that I had developed and things got slightly escalated, not anywhere near a level where I felt the need to step in, and in the end he acknowledged that she had some valuable insight and could be an important voice for our movement. She had been through a lot and had done a remarkable amount of healing and work on herself, had experienced PTSD for a long time, which undoubtedly prepared her for this leg of her journey. The government kinda screwed her over too, big time.

Anyway, I got the camera dumped and had to head back to the kitchen, but first I made a pit stop by my house and hid last night's tapes under my bed. I was only mildly paranoid about big brother before, more joking than anything, I didn't really have anything to hide, at least not any more than anyone else. I did always consider that the mash tent could be a possible target, one of the key spots to hit when the regularly threatened raid finally came to fruition. I always tried to keep it on the DL, but word was starting to get around about it and we could assume that they had more reconnaissance of camp than we could ever imagine. They weren't even trying to hide the helicopter constantly flying super low over camp, or the drones out night and day, so even without infiltrators, they knew what we were up to. It was cool though, I wasn't that worried, obviously, everything always works out. But I did stash the back-up tapes from what I'd loaded onto the computer, just in case, something easy to grab and close by if I needed to make an emergency exit.

Today though, was the first time that I considered that they might know who I was, or might want to. Before last night, I was just another hippie water protector, drinking onions and working unskilled labor in the kitchen. I'd filmed a little bit before, but only when there was an influx of media and nothing ever really happened anyway. But last night I had been there, in a time when they thought that all of the media had gone home, most of the camp had left for that matter, yet here I was with a real camera pointed into their faces. And they could clearly see mine. I wore no mask. Didn't want to seem too aggressive. They had a camera very similar to mine pointed back at me and catching my image in even better lit high definition, they knew I was there, they just didn't know who I was yet. Maybe. We also knew that TigerSwan was using facial recognition software, which the government is trying to implement all over, including airline boarding passes, so...

Last night I had been wearing the same outfit that I'd been rocking for a couple of weeks, the black north face jacket that Johan gave me, some black snow pants that Australian Alan pulled out when I mentioned wanting to shed the oversized carhartts, and the same hat that I'd been rocking since december when I lost the one I came with. It was the only piece that stuck out of my sleek black snow ninja look, a brown and tan patterned knit cap with dingle ball strings on either side that I generally tied up over my head while I was cooking. So a generic solid black outfit and a very recognizable patterned hat, if any of this paranoia was legit then it would be easy enough to find me with the daplcopter. But those clothes were in the cooler with a crust of tear gas settling in, today I was omw to the kitchen in my old coveralls and a random hat that I found in the tarpee. Wait, is staph better than tear gas?

So what was on the menu tonight? For the sake of time, it made sense to make something I'd made before, you know, save the R&D phase. But what kind of book would that be? We needed some comfort food. Southern comfort. Talking bout that soul food. How about meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green bean casserole? With no oven. Easy day indeed.

Now we are in a hurry, don't want to miss any action, so I better keep this montage quick. Meatloaf was no problem, my burgers are almost meatloaf already. I hadn't made that connection, but when Harry did, I realized that they were super close, that's why they were so good. Couldn't just make a loaf of meat though, would never be able to cook it all the way through with the grill technique, but I had a plan. Jacob came by and helped me for a while today, we made five loaves of meat and cut them into slices while they were still raw, then we cooked them on the flat top and reassembled them back into loaves. Worked so good. We could cook so many at a time on that thing. The flat top is crucial.

Green bean casserole is another oven dish, one of my holiday favorites, and I made it with french cut green beans just like my mommy does. And how? Come on, you can figure it out, I've shown you enough by this point that you can wing it, just believe. Scrambled green beans, duh. Made a creamy mushroom sauce and mixed it with the beans, still hoped to find some crispy fried onions for the top, I'd seen some at some point, who knows when and where that was though. I had a back up plan, but I was gonna give it one last peek in the mess hall before I got started.

And who might I run into in the mess hall? Why Jess of course, fresh off of an overnight adventure with some of morton county's finest. Green beans could wait, I wanted to hear all that she was ready to talk about. Now that I'm going through some trauma of my own, I get it, take your time, no rush, whenever you're ready, but I was a homie who had been right there beside her, so I got the full scoop.

After I had been near her at the front, she made her way down to the group on the western side of the bridge, down the hill where I filmed them spraying long streams of pepper spray into the crowd. What I didn't see or film though, seems that I was a little preoccupied with my own good times and fun activities, was the synchronized attack on my people down there. Jess was tackled to the ground. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but she is a short little tiny micro woman, however, in the offenders' defense, Earth loving vegetarian hippie prayer terrorists come in all shapes and sizes. The part that really sucked, was that when they slammed her down on her chest, her favorite dear and precious cup was attached to the front of her coveralls and broke/bruised/hurt her ribs. Shoulda used styrofoam I guess. Then, while handcuffed behind her back, two cops picked her up by her arms, which stretched them backwards and pulled apart her damaged rib cage as it made her chest feel like it was on fire. Through the non-chemically induced tears and pain, she pleaded for them to just let her walk to alleviate the torture that they were unknowingly putting her through. (we'll assume unknowingly) Eventually, they did put her down and walked her the rest of the way, such gentlemen, humanitarians indeed.

She was also my inside source on Pete's endless singing through the jail experience. She could hear him echoing down the halls and it kept her spirits high, reminded her why she was there and that she was not alone. She was there with team water protector. Somebody later told me that the other inmates loved the water protectors and we got taken care of. Many natives wishing they could join us and everyone there understanding the corruptness of the system, both in and out of the joint. She had no horror stories of mistreatment once inside, no mace filled hair to contend with and then they let her go free today. And here she was, safe and sound... for the most part anyway.

Well, hi, bye, glad you're alive, gotta go cook some meat, love you. I loved to mention cooking meat to the vegetarians, the ones that could take a joke at least. I also liked to capitalistically market my new product inspired by meat shaped tofu - "Vegetable Shaped Meat", a produce substitute for carnivores trying to cut veggies out of their diet. Ridiculous enough that it might just work, especially if Monsanto gets the patent for broccoli shaped steaks.

So loaf shaped meat, check, instant potatoes, shhh we're in a hurry remember, check (This was my second go with the instant version and I was starting to get it, I quit measuring and just started winging it. All I ever do is put stuff in a pot and stir it anyway.) and scrambled green bean casserole. No crispy onions, so I just fried my own. Talk about freakin old school, and so good, it's probably how I'll make it from now on. Most of my camp recipes inspired new ways of cooking stuff that I will carry forever, like, I don't see myself making brownies in an oven again. And another southern dish prevailed. "I'll be your southern man."

Right on time. As predicted, we were returning to the bridge. I decided to put last night's clothes back on, I didn't want my uncontaminated wardrobe to get tossed in the mix. I'd just risk the irritation of yesterdays fumes, figured it wasn't the biggest risk of the night, grabbed the camera and it was deuces. Round two, here goes nothing. Or maybe here goes everything.

We loaded up and Hank decided to hitch a ride, literally. He had a dogsled, a really cool one, and hooked it to the back of the truck. Dan took off and wasn't messing around, thought he might take it easy for Hank's sake, but he took off full speed ahead up the frozen 1806. I was nervous for him, but Hank had it down, perhaps he did have a slight look of terror creeping in, but we were all a little unsure of what the evening had in store for us. Hank couldn't see it, but several times there were sparks flying off the back of his sled, freakin sweet, wished I'd have been filming but the camera was packed up tight. We were stopping by Oceti to grab a pot of soup from one of the kitchens, we pulled in and I worried about Hank slamming into the back of us, but he was a pro. Brakes, sparks, unhook and dismount. So good. Soup was up, a super full pot that we tried not to spill on the rest of the trip, dropped it off at the bonfire on the south end of the bridge and we reported for duty.

The barricade had been built up since our last visit, taller and deeper, not as easy to climb up or stand on. There were a lot of wills and ways on our team though. There was more prayer and song tonight, including a group of four drummers and singers who played for an hour or so. A calmness had replaced the angst of the night before. There were still people up front with shields shouting to the police and tactical movements by our adversaries, but it wasn't escalating beyond that. A group of protectors was up at the razor wire on the right side of the barricade and a line of forces marched down in full riot gear, uh oh, here we go again.

But it was ok. A few protectors spoke with their leader, he asked us to go back to camp where it was safe and warm (it's not that safe and warm) and when we asked for concessions, he claimed no authority to make decisions. Can I speak to you manager please? Negotiations to end the night almost worked out, but kept falling through. One protector had a bundle of papers for the officer and he was willing to come close and accept them through the razor wire. A stack of letters from around the country pleading for their understanding and compassion. When the officer tried to back up from the wire, he hit a snag, for real. His military grade armored snow pants got caught in the razor wire and he fell down. Def funny and gratifying, but no laughs, our side quickly reached through to help untangle him. That stuff's no joke, better be careful over there.

We were there until way late again, hoped for a prayer resolution but ended up tiring out before we got it, but tonight had been good. A much needed change of energy. The only clouds had been as thirty or fortyish bundles of sage filled the air throughout the crowd, a little easier on the lungs for sure. And we were done. Rejuvenated in our passion to be here. Proud to be a part of the movement. Here to pray. In a good way. Peaceful.

Last night we were proud to be there too. What they were doing was wrong and we were called to stand up against it, but there were those trying to push buttons and hoping that the situation would build, wanting to be the martyrs that sparked a revolution. That's not the way. Peace and prayer and love, those are the tools to start a revolution. Instigating a riot, even if you're unarmed and they show obscene amounts of inhumane force, gives them enough justification to convince the mainstream media informed public that we were the bad guys. Now, if we were truly all in prayer, with genuine love in our hearts and kneeling beside my brother Pete, asking for compassion from the universe instead of trying to guilt those that are only trying to do what they've been taught their entire life is the right way, if we did that, and they still committed egregious acts of violence upon us, that's how you become a martyr and spark a revolution. Can't fight violence with violence. Can't fight dapl with dapl. Can't fight at all. Just love.

Dan left earlier than some of us, so we walked back and stopped back by the soup kitchen for a little late night frybread. This stuff was thin and crispy though, still really good, but not the filling frybread that we all dreamed about, so we were still a little hungry. I ran into a friend there, he was based over here and was excited to run into me outside of Rosebud, I don't get out much and here I was in his neck of the plains. We came up with a late night grilled cheese and salmon plan, yum, and drove back to our kitchen. He dropped me off and never reappeared with the salmon, but the wheels were in motion with our three am grilled cheese extravaganza, plus I had a little herb.

I got everything together, stuck my head into the mess hall and whispered "grilled cheese in the kitchen", within a minute I had a tent full of hungry frontliners. Gotta feed my people. We didn't go hungry in Rosebud, that was for sure. Smokey and Neil got the memo too, never ones to miss a midnight snack, plus they wanted to debrief me about how it went up front. Smokey was relieved when I reported that it had been completely peaceful and prayerful and had way better energy than yesterday's chaos. Then we proceeded to gorge ourselves on double cheese sandwiches on big wide slices of hawaiian nut bread, all cooked with my new mayo trick. And you know what? They were so good.

Just like that, another day in the life of a water protector was over. You can probably start to see how it would be easy to lose track of days out there when each one contains multiple life changing events that range the gamut. And then compound that with an iffy sleep schedule. I quit trying to keep up with it. Didn't much matter anyway.

The next day brought the return of Pete, hooray. He filled me in on all of the details and I let him know that I had filmed it all going down. He was grateful and we made plans to watch it at some point, when he felt right about it. It might not be the easiest thing to watch. While I was in the mess hall I also heard about an arrest that happened today at the barricade, somebody named Chris, maybe Christopher, and the reporter thought that they had heard he was a Rosebuddy. Our Christopher? Oh no. He had been pushed off of the barricade where he sat talking to the dapl cops. He'd been pushed onto the other side... by a water protector. Wow. That's all we knew. At least until tomorrow, but we had a pretty good guess that tonight wasn't going to be a night off.

Fast forward to after dinner and we were right. There was action at the bridge and with another one of ours down, another of the very least threatening of us, we had to go. Not the calm energy of the night before, I think they had been going strong since lunch when Christopher got got. The barricade was even taller this time. Now the protectors up top had no back up. Nobody to push or pull them to safety in the heat or cold of the moment. They were standing ducks lined up along the eighteen inch wide top of the icy concrete pylons and surrounded by razor wire. There had been a couple of training and strategy sessions to give our side a little more unity, a plan, the confidence not to run at the first threat of push back. It's hard when you can't breathe though. They had managed to procure enough gas masks that everyone on the wall had one, and shields, so aggressive. They were pulling shifts and rotating people up and down as needed, motivationally speaking to each other to keep the morale and endurance strong. They had this, at least as long as the heavy artillery didn't come out to play. For right now, rotating the masks would work because the air was clear, but once the gas was released, they wouldn't be able to take them off. If you broke the seal against your face, the smoke would flood in and get trapped in the mask, leaving a caustic residue inside that would take a deep clean to reconcile.

A Rosebuddy was given one a little while later and thought of me, wanted me to be able to keep the tape rolling as long as possible, but I just couldn't see out of it. At least not enough to be able to work the camera and use my peripherals to ensure what limited safety I still clung onto. So I passed it on to another Rosebuddy who had been up on the wall when we first arrived, young Carson. I'd first walked up to the wall and climbed up enough to look over it, between the feet of two protectors, and Carson tapped me on the head from above, hey brother. He'd been hanging out in Oceti a lot, spending time with the young warriors who were anxious to stand up for their people, the Seventh Generation. I gave him the mask later on, when I was halfway up the barricade with my head and camera poking out through a gap between the barriers, about ten minutes before the first tear gas canister exploded.

There were a couple of protectors who were agitating, hundreds in peace and just a few who were putting us all in danger. They were throwing snowballs at dapl. A snowball fight would have been great. If we could have convinced dapl, and our people for that matter, to lighten up tensions for a day and have an over the wall friendly snowball fight. Wouldn't that have been cool? A symbol of us both acknowledging that we understood that we were all humans. Two legged nation. Just doing their jobs. Just doing what felt right. And capable of fun times too. Several people would mention it, but we never asked beyond an over the wall scream, hardly the time for that deal to be brokered. I assumed that certainly they would never go for it, and with that attitude I guess they never had a chance.

But some of us were taking it into their own hands. Whatever their motives, these agitators were not helping our cause. Were they just fed up with peace and prayer? Were they hoping to incite a riot? Were they drunk? Were they dapl? The dapl consideration wasn't a thoughtless joke this time. One well placed infiltrator posed as a protector, on film throwing projectiles at officers, could be plenty of just cause for unjust behavior. Plus, turns out that we may not have been as paranoid as you're thinking after all.

Since I left camp, a TigerSwan employee has seen the light and gone public with some of the unsavory practices that he was hired to carry out, and yeah, there were absolutely infiltrators at camp. TigerSwan had come in after the other private security firms unleashed attack dogs on water protectors and caused a media cover-up nightmare. So now this cousin company of BlackWater, the hired assassins that our government sent to other countries to do the illegal dirty work that they didn't want to have to wash off of their own hands, now they're who we're up against. In addition to the national guard and the untrained-for-anything-like-this morton county sheriffs. Hired killers, the epitome of trading life for money, which is what the government has been doing for a long time but had to be a little more discreet about it. So I guess at least with these guys we know what we're getting. The converted soldier admitted that they had been instrumental in causing turmoil when the vets arrived, the one time that we may have been able to get actual press coverage, it also happened to be the easiest time to send in undercover soldiers on the payroll of big oil. So yeah, there's that.

The guy throwing snowballs was native, which bought you instant street cred at camp, but not all natives were against the pipeline. Or Money. One protector I met had hitchhiked to camp with a semi driver who was Lakota and pro oil. He'd worked on pipelines before and currently used a lot of the stuff to get around the country, so low oil price was good for business. It's just business. Too bad he doesn't drive in china since that's where all this oil's going.

Other reservations had made deals with oil companies, selling the mineral rights to the sacred lands that their own traditions told them that they didn't even own. No one owned it. The land was part of our dear Mother Earth, meant to provide for the infinite amount of life that she makes possible. We weren't here to master it, to buy and sell it for our own greed, to choose which life gets to live. We were supposed to be the guardians, the protectors of the sacred, protectors of the water. But even those that are the closest to our mother can be tempted by the shiny glitter of capitalism. Especially when their once abundant way of life was destroyed and they were left for dead while the gentrification of america spread like a disease.

So how do we handle agitators at the frontline? Especially those that are indigenous and claim more of a right to be there than most. We would try to talk sense into them, but that was generally as effective as talking sense into dapl. Sometimes the internal reprimand would even result in an altercation. I knew of at least once that a protector punched another because of loud aggressive music that he was blasting over the top of prayer and drumming... dapl. Certainly that had to be dapl. Some thought that the answer was to push them over the barricade into the arms of arrest, sounds familiar. Nick thought that we should just tackle them and carry them away from the scene, banned until further notice, maybe write a hundred sentences of "I will not agitate dapl."

I had first seen Nick early on, in the asheville yurt during the ceremony/meeting with Carmenia, he'd seemed to be in the know and well spoken about projects around camp. He had then left and only recently returned sometime in the last few days. I would have several down to Earth human conversations with him, but a lot of people's experiences with him, including mine, weren't quite as smooth. He was sandpaper. Rubbed people the wrong way. Opinionated and outspoken, not that uncommon, but he did so in a way with little respect, bad attitude, belittling nature, cynical approach and his idea was always better than yours. He was always right. Now, he had good ideas that were often right, great points, experience and knowledge across the board, a valuable resource to our community, he just could have carried himself with a little more humility. But you gotta remember, we're all on our own paths. Who knows what things he needs to work through. I would see him in sweat and I believed that he was here for the right reasons, and my path to humility was pretty fresh itself, so I prayed on it for him.

The best agitator removal plan that I heard was to abandon them out front. They always agitate from behind the line, at a safe distance (if there really was such a thing), protected by the protectors that they were putting into danger. Cowards. So what would happen, if in the face of what we were up against, as they were trying to provoke the onslaught of the other side, what if we all just move back from the line and left the agitators alone in front of our peaceful movement? Come and get 'em dapl. I bet we'd see a quick change in their behavior.

Something to work on in the future, it only takes one bad egg. I did successfully help stop one person acting out of line. I saw a protector light a flare and start walking towards the front. I took off after him, grabbed a couple of unknown faces for back up and we talked him into giving us the flare. He claimed that he wasn't going to throw it, but he looked like he was on a mission and I doubt it would have gone over very well. How selfish to risk your movement, your people, your planet, for your own personal gratification. So that you can brag about being a tough guy. A real tough guy can humble himself and work towards the greater good. Get up on the barricade if you're feeling so tough.

The current agitator in question was standing right behind the wall where he was launching snowballs and chunks of ice at dapl's frontline. He had an accomplice who was actually up on the wall and giving him directions on his unseen trajectory. I don't think they were an official team, just a frontliner who was into it. A lot of people didn't really seem to have a problem with it, or didn't speak up at least. If everyone had turned and stared at him with unity and asked him to stop, it might have worked. But true unity with the diverse crowd of opinions was difficult.

The projectiles were getting awfully close to their targets, even pushed them back a few feet at one point, but the dapl cops seemed unphased. Not budging. Not letting it get to them. On the surface at least. Perhaps they knew that it was just a single frosty snowman, but most likely they were just waiting on their orders to proceed. Even though we were harassing them with aggressive actions, wearing face protections and everything, it probably wouldn't look too flattering for them in the news. (Haha, like it would ever be in the news) The imaginary headlines would read "Standing Rock, snowballs vs. assault rifles" So yeah, it was probably way better to stick to the battle against prayer, it's not like they're praying to little baby Jesus or anything. It's just a bunch of yayas, heys and hos. Eventually, enough would be enough though, and my head was sticking through the barricade when they started to move.

The same Rosebuddy that I'd sat up front with on the first night, had taken an even more ambitious position this time around. The much larger pile of concrete had one pylon laid down and jutting out into the other side. So of course she was out on it. Sitting on the dapl side. Shouting at them. The only one without a mask or a shield up front, way up front. Another one of those deals where I'm not sure if she was brave or dumb. Helping or hurting the cause. Certainly better than throwing things. Either way, she was out there, so we were there for her. She was far enough out there that if they started an attack, there would be little time for her to take cover. And it would be a tricky descent off the wall, especially through a cloud of rubber bullets. Apparently I wasn't the only one concerned with her well being, another Rosebuddy appeared, climbed the wall and took a seat right next to her. Unprotected sisters in arms. Unified. Wendy. Of course. Freakin robot.

So they're out there, five or so feet away from me, out of reach, so I kept them in the edge of my frame and here they come. A line of guards with shields moved in unison towards us one step and regained formation. Then another roman empiresque advance. And another. Then the waters parted and a fully geared up daplcop of intimidating size and speed charged at us. Most of us scrambled backwards faster than you could say brownies. Including me. They were coming right for us. Right between Wendy and I. Our frontline was breached, everyone on the wall screamed, jumped and ran. So everyone standing near the wall took off running without even knowing what they were escaping. Then the crowd panicked, which led to a frantic mob trying to escape between the rows of concrete pylons. I only jumped back two feet and turned to film them coming over the wall, or around it, or both, or maybe from behind, I was ready for whatever. I looked everywhere, but nothing. No invasion. I ran back to my peephole and they had all returned to their standby positions.

They had punk'd us. Showed us just how underprepared, undermanned, underarmed and underarmoured we were to even consider a serious conflict. We were a joke. The only reason we stood a chance was because some white people's kids were out here. We all know that killing a bunch of indians is no big. If this was happening to another country, like it does all the time, the only american familes involved would be rooting for the oppressor. It would be no problem to shut them down with any force necessary. We were hopeful that it wasn't possible to enact some sinister camp removal plan on US soil. A war-for-resource tactic that would erase the camp and also eradicate the most strong and outspoken leaders of an intimidating movement. Hoped, but the more we saw, the more we second guessed our illusionary safety. Always careful, never safe. I began to believe that they were capable of anything. Not a good thing to spend my energy believing. Not something I want to manifest. So I focused on believing that we could make a difference.

The wall slowly filled back up with protectors. Not sure if we were stronger or weaker than before. Maybe stronger because we saw just how weak we were. But then again, the same goes for dapl. They were stronger than us, physically at least, and both sides knew it, so what were we really going to do? But we had taken the bridge just days before. Sure, our plywood and megaphones forced back their array of smoke and mirro... I mean bullets. Or do you think that maybe that's just what they wanted us to think?

The real kicker though, is that the bridge itself was just a decoy to begin with. A distraction. A subterfuge. There was nothing even going on there except a stand-off. No construction. No drilling. Nothing to do even if our shields push them back farther. All of the much despised pipeline was currently being installed at the drill pad, an area northeast of the bridge. Heavily guarded and any who dared to get anywhere close were hastily removed, in the most kind and courteous fashion of course, as per dapl standard protocol. Rules and regulations. See, they're not animals. They're way above animals. They're americans, the other white meat.

So what were we even doing here? This was the battlefield that dapl got to choose. The pinch point that would be to their tactical advantage. And it was. A small battalion of heavily armed and over-trained soldiers could keep any number of defenders at bay. Those standing up for their homeland. For their mother. Protecting the water. They were set up like three hundred spartans against the world. Should be easy considering we're only armed with words.

Hey, don't underestimate the power of prayer. Or the power of water, which solidifies into ice with just the right ecological conditions. Ice which turns out can support human life. Like, I mean can hold the weight of a human life, essentially unpinching the dapl strategerized pinch point, hence the wall of additional razor wire and the government's big guns. This was still just a symbolic battlefield. The closest we could get to the bad stuff in a large enough group to do anything. So what were we doing? Being distracted. We weren't slowing anything down. We could take the bridge back and forth every night. Even gain ground and hold the line, unwavering through clouds of chemicals and barrages of bullets, and they would still be right on schedule. They were still working on the drill pad. They couldn't even hear us at the bridge over top of all their heavy equipment burning dapl to make dapl. They had us convinced that this was where the fight was, arguing at the rent-a-soldiers that they hired to "just do their jobs" at some strategic off-site location. Whatever it cost to hire cops, private mercenaries, the united states national guard, tanks, guns, humvees, snipers, riot gear, "less lethal" weaponry, or Obama, whatever the cost was, it was way more important to them that they keep digging. At any cost.

Worth the $50,000 daily fine for digging without the mandated ecological review. We had been hoping to stall them past january 1st originally, that was the date that they had projected to be completed and if they didn't hit their target, their investors could pull out penalty free. We hoped that our presence, what little bit of coverage we were getting and a mass divesting from wells fargo and other banks that supported the pipeline, would lower stocks just enough to make it too risky of an investment. No new years reprieve though, and now with the impending doo... I mean inauguration, they were just biding their time until everything went back to the normal that they had been guaranteed with their proof of purchase. Don't you worry about those pesky protesters, it's just some indians and hippies and we've got most of the country convinced that we're the good guys out of the bunch. Plus, get this, they're not even anywhere near the drill pad. So no worries at all. What if we could set up camp on the drill pad, handcuffing ourselves to equipment and occupying a strategic point of our own? That might slow progress. What forces would they call in and be willing to unleash on us if we were actually a threat to their bottom line?

I was back on the barricade, had just handed off the gas mask to Carson before they tried charging us with their scare tactic, and as I stuck my head through to the other side I saw the cloud of my old friend tear gas moving in from the left. It poured in over the crowd, but the wind directed it back just enough that I was able to catch clean breaths through the wall. They'd built it up enough that it acted as a windbreak, enabling me to film through the invading hazardous spray. I don't think they were too happy to see me chillin through their attack. Invading their privacy. Little brother was tough to shake. It eventually started seeping in, but was thin enough that I could breath through my coat and scarf, kinda.

Turns out that the wind was not in their favor that night, or maybe something out there was in ours. Repeatedly they tried to gas us this evening, but each time, as soon as the canister exploded, the wind would shift directions, pushing the smoke away from us and sometimes even pushing it over the barricade, into their controlled environment. Most of them didn't always wear gas masks, just the geared up goons charged with spraying us down, so when the cloud mysteriously went after them, they had to back up and take cover. Forced to experience just what they were putting us through, except for the heated seats in the tank I guess.

Through all this, they still couldn't shake me, but eventually, after the wind was pushing smoke their way, my sanctuary of fresh air was compromised and I had to retreat. I had been in front of it all though, so when I sought cover behind me, I had to run through an even denser fog than I'd experienced yet. Took a cold minute, but finally I could breathe. I turned and saw more canisters coming our way, still filming, but no longer capturing the frontline of their assault. I could now see the wind working in our favor and then a protector managed to pick up a live canister and eject it back over the wall. Now their side was properly christened with the constricting fumes of the poisonous chemical.

They were forced back. Now we were doing something. Making them mad at least. Was it time to advance our line? They were driven back. We had a few masks. What was the next move? We were here in prayer. In peace. Crossing that wall would only push them to execute an even more drastic move than they'd already proven capable. It would be impossible to escape, and in the end, the bridge didn't even mean anything. Taking the bridge would only be a tactical success if we had the numbers. Enough people willing to take the risk of flooding the narrowed pass and push through the violence to take the drill pad.

At some point, there is a number of unarmed humans who can overpower a government backed hit squad, we just need the unity of the two legged colony. Don't just need people to wake up, many are already supposedly woke, we need people to stand up. A majority of the country not happy with the way things are does zero good if they only object from the complacency of their living room sofa. We can make a difference, but it will take all of "we." And we have to believe that we can do it, otherwise we'll never try. We believed that we could do something on the bridge, but we never had a chance at a strategic victory. We were victorious however in reaching the hearts of some of the dapl payroll and inspired hundreds of thousands of people around the world. People are standing up for what they believe in. We are making a difference. Then we heard a familiar voice over the walkie, "Squatch, this is Smokey, tell Rosebud to come home."

Squatch? Oh yeah, a while back everyone came up with radio handles, mainly for anonymity, but they were fun too, except that I didn't have one. They hadn't been a thing when I was a regular at security and I never needed one in the kitchen, although Dan and I always talked about how the kitchen should probably have a dedicated walkie. It was an important hub of the camp, pretty crucial to our existence and feasibly a target of whatever. Plus I was the cameraman. Maybe I should have one, but I always had everything I needed, so I figured I was good. And I was the first to get updates since I worked in the bosses' office anyway.

"Squatch to Delta Force, what's your twenty"

"I'm with Ripcord and Scrapyard at Echo3"

"Copy that, Squirrel Master's en route"

I thought about using "Chef", but that wouldn't be very anonymous. Maybe I'll use it at the next camp if I'm not in the kitchen again, yeah right. My proper nickname was "DJ Jazzy Chef", so if you hear me on the radio come say hello. So much for hiding I guess. Eh, not really my style anyway. Smokey was Smokey. No ducking behind a pseudonym for him, his gravelly voice was pretty recognizable anyway and now it was telling us to come home. We made a few laps through the crowd to let our people know that we were outtie five thousand. We weren't going to force anyone to go, but for the most part, we were always on the same page, so we gathered up.

We didn't have any details though. Why did he call us home? Did he know something that we didn't? Inside info about the next wave of attack? Word that troops were coming up 1806 behind us? New chemicals making a debut? I followed Smokey, he was my boss, without question or argument. Others weren't as devout and considered staying, but when most of us started to leave, all but one loaded up and went home. This was one point when all of the other camps saw our unity. Our family. One radio transmission and Rosebud was together, moving as one. No one else had that. Nowhere. There was no central leadership. No voice to follow. They were all on their own. And then we left.

We hadn't liked the energy of the night. The aggression shown by our side. The instigation. Trying to get a rise out of the other side and putting us all in danger, just to get another war story of assault and desecration. This was not why we were here, not Rosebud at least. Johan said that he would no longer visit the bridge for night actions, only peaceful daytime prayers. I agreed. I might still go to document, but I would keep myself separated from anything beyond prayer. That didn't mean that the bridge wouldn't visit us though.

Smokey met us at the truck as we pulled in and thanked us all for coming back so fast. He was our leader, our caretaker, our guardian, and he didn't want us getting hurt to hang on his conscience. I reminded him that I worked for him, at his command, and that bought me an honorary promotion in the kitchen, no pay increase though. He asked if I got shot, I told him only with tear gas and he asked if I cried, then he exclaimed that I probably cried like a baby and we all got a good laugh. It felt good to be back home. One late night snack and a nap later and it was same snow different day.

Make lunch, dump the camera, charge the battery, simple dinner and go. Turns out simple just wasn't one of my specialties. I'd been ordering eggplant for a while and my shipment had come in. I was thinking either grilled with Lawrys or now I was leaning towards eggplant parmesan. But we eat meat. So chicken parm, if you can even count that as meat, it's not like Smokey runs the place or anything. But we just got the eggplant, gotta use it. Make both? Keep it simple remember. Aha, chicken eggplant parmesan. Ok, next thing. Not having an oven wasn't even a consideration at this point in my career. You just gotta believe. I did. The food part was easy, cook some garlic and onions, cook some chicken, cook some eggplant, cook some sauce, shred some cheese and scramble. That might be a tad more simplified than it felt at the time, but the real story isn't what I made, it was the situation that unfolded in the kitchen around me while I made what would prove to be the last meal that I ever cooked in this tent.
Step Ten:

There was a Smelly Drawers incident. No dirty clothes here, that was his radio handle, and honestly it described most of us pretty well. I still had not taken a single shower. I had zero desire to go to the casino, it was not a healthy place. People did not come back from there in a good way. I didn't want to leave camp at all. I had left once, just to the gas station, and the camp was on fire when I returned. I wasn't going anywhere. I had a few full contact baby wipe baths, especially to clear the tear gas from my pores, but I had only recently changed my bottom layer of thermals. I'm a hippie who knows when he smells bad and the cold we endured truly did keep the stench at bay. I also never slept anywhere that topped thirty degrees, so no night sweats from an overheated tipi, a surprisingly common situation. Plus the sweat lodge didn't make you sticky and gross, it made you sweat out impurities and you emerged feeling clean and refreshed. Ok, so maybe you could smell a difference as you peeled off layers, but with my air tight north face, no one would be any the wiser.

Anyway, Smelly was having a whole thing. He came into the kitchen having some kind of moment, I didn't know him but he knew my helper, so he was on the list, and then he went to talk to Smokey. He came back after what seemed like a productive conversation, but his condition only deteriorated. He was a vet. A US veteran, not an animal doctor, and he had PTSD. Like real PTSD, not whatever this is that I'm going through. He had traveled overseas to unquestioningly do the bidding of his great country. To save the world. He believed. Then he saw first hand just how great our country is and what exactly motivates their meddling in the affairs of other nations. Greed. Money. And in his case, oil. He had seen the villains of the world disguised as the heroes and was strong enough to admit that he'd been fooled. Naive. Lied to. Tricked into joining the wrong team. He had been strong enough to break away and stand up to the corporate military that he had once served proudly. But he was broken. My mild symptoms are from what I learned, what I experienced and now know as reality. I can't imagine suffering from the trauma of coming to the realization that I was actually working for the bad guys. That I was the one enacting this oppression of innocents strictly to line the pockets of the wealthy. Those sitting comfortably back home calling the shots while I was stuck with my newfound hired killer status. And then when you finally do get home, no one understands and the underfunded VA that is supposed to heal you, turns out to be a joke.

But now he was here, with us, making up for lost time, healing with the rest of us, but this was a tough place to deal with a war related disorder. There were constant helicopters flying low and secret night planes all over camp, no escape, but you eventually got used to them. The frontline, however, was a harder one to shake. He'd been up there for the last few days of actions and yesterday afternoon he'd been the one to get shaken. Yeah, I bet. Tanks and snipers and assault rifles and body armor used by a heavily trained and armed army to oppress peaceful civilians. I bet it did bring some suppressed memories to the front. Who knows what triggered him exactly, but a switch flipped at the barricade and he began throwing snowballs at dapl.

So the snowballs had been going all day I guess, or at least had resumed by the time I arrived later that night. Wonder if he started the trend or just joined in? I didn't feel it too appropriate to ask him mid panic attack. I was busy scrambling to get dinner done, so I wasn't consoling him directly, but he had a couple of sous chefs attending to him as well as Katy from medical. I was still there, offering words when he spoke to me and fetching a paper bag for Katy to get his breathing under control, but I didn't know how to deal with anything like this. I'm good at counseling at love and heartache, but I know nothing about the demons that haunted him.

The snowballs weren't what was getting to him though, but he knew that they had been the catalyst. He'd gotten into an altercation with a fellow water protector, right there in front of dapl. Must have been an infiltrator, that was the only logical explanation, they were here to instigate. They were sitting right there, right up front, right on the barricade, some wannabe hippie rolling american spirit cigarettes and talking to dapl. The culprit had been wearing a red flannel jacket that was just too clean and new to be one of us, too LL Bean like I had noticed at Echo3, and then he started in on Smelly Drawers. He questioned why he was throwing snowballs. What good could possibly come from it? Didn't he realize that it was putting his family's safety at risk. Was he himself an infiltrator tasked with inciting a riot worthy of the surplus of armaments burning holes in their pockets? Way more fun to be burning lungs instead. Let's get this party started. That was it, this guy was definitely an infiltrator, how dare he question SD's offensive measures at this supposed peace rally. So he did what several people had suggested to do with infiltrators, he pushed him over the wall, right into dapl's arms, and handcuffs.

Wait, repeat that last part. You pushed a long haired hippie who had powerful words and rolled spirits, wearing a new flannel coat recently found in our plentiful donations tent, right into the hands and scopes of the very people that you know first hand are not as angelic as they'd like to have us believe? Holy moley. I'd been sitting here listening to the story unfold from the other side about the betrayal of a close friend. Smelly-D had pushed Christopher into the furnace. Woah.

Christopher hadn't returned to camp yet, who even knew how ok he was, and now his Judas was sitting in the kitchen freaking out because once again he realized that he had not been as innocent as he had hoped. He was very remorseful before the freakout, thinking that his actions had led to all of the events of the night, which included the super fun chemicals and bullets being targeted at his loved ones. Then the panic set in, an anxiety buildup that exploded, and then out of the other side came the insistence that the hippie must have been an infiltrator. It was the only explanation. I can imagine that with a real case of PTSD, you sometimes have to rationalize, make sense of your actions, it looked painful and I have the deepest sympathy and compassion for any victims of the disorder. But Christopher. I bit my tongue. I let them handle his recovery and not until he left did I speak aloud my realization that it was our brother that he had pushed, a Rosebuddy (SD was from Oceti), and we didn't see him return until a day later. He thought it funny that I had gotten the story first from the other end and he eventually crossed paths with Smelly Drawers again, who sincerely apologized and just like that, they were good, united in their shared disinterest for dapl.

Through all that, I had managed to keep right on schedule and chickplant parmesan was less than an hour away from it's california hippie debut. I was still planning on seeing the frontline tonight, being ready to at least, but perhaps now a little more conscious of others and what they might be going through out there. Certainly more cautious climbing the barricade. Then the tides changed and Smokey came in with big news. News that would cause me to all but forget about the recent attack in the kitchen and put the entire frontline on the backburner. (lol, kitchen humor)

The tribe was coming to repo the kitchen tent tomorrow. So tonight after dinner, we had to move the entire contents into the mess hall. Seriously? Over the next hour, several visitors stopped by to discuss the news and the plan. Summer suggested moving into the free space in the Food Not Bombs kitchen, they had space and would certainly be happy to have us, but they were currently away from camp and we couldn't get ahold of them. Plus, it would be a much farther move than just across the street to the mess hall.

It would be a tight fit though, we were already limited on space and the addition of an entire kitchen wouldn't help the matter. There would be way less room to hang out, which was a plus in Smokey's book, he was tired of coming in and seeing the same faces keeping the woodstove company. I couldn't argue with that one. But we did need space, people needed to eat. He said that they could take their food home and eat, but I couldn't get behind that solution. The reason that Rosebud worked so well was because we were a family. We knew each other. We talked and laughed together. And cried. And we ate together. I didn't stress it, everything will work out. It was really just a hassle because I'd been planning on filming at the bridge later, at least being prepared for it, but this was a pressing matter and required my attention.

Wait, now that you mention it, it was a perfect distraction. Maybe a little too perfect. Dapl. Or could Smokey have fabricated it to keep us from going to the frontline? A mission that required everyone's help, an emergency kitchen move? He had just called us off of the frontline last night for some unknown reason. Or maybe not him, but the tribe throwing wrenches into our operation. Them taking the tents at all was a dig at us, withdrawing support to set up a camp in south dakota. All during a time when tribal councils were getting bought off left and right. I'd later find out more about the lack of tribal support to their members, but at this point, I still thought that they were on our team. So definitely dapl. Had they figured out that it was the kitchen that was keeping our morale and strength up? Did they piece together that the unknown camera man was Rosebud's jazzy chef? Were they just plain mean? Phone in a kitchen emergency and the chef will be unable to cook or film, two birds. Well, either way, there was no frontlining for Rosebud tonight, but we never missed a meal. Even in a hectic kitchen relocation, Rosebud doesn't go hungry. Not our style.

After dinner I was ready to get started, ready to get it over with. Still not sure of the plan though, so I stopped by Smokey's and he told me to start clearing the mess hall and get some people on dishes. No sense in moving the dirty ones. I got started, but the crowd had thinned and all of the eager kitchen assistants had disappeared, so I just got to work moving stuff. Wendy was there too, but she was busy with Hope, Anya and Trinity. She'd been getting pretty close to the girls and helped Grant out with keeping an eye on them.

I had most of the dining area cleared when Australian Alan offered his help, and now Wendy was free too. I'd already recruited Jim to wash dishes, but not alone, I needed one of these two to do dishes. I told them both about the help I needed, here and in the dish pile, but for some reason, neither volunteered for dishes and they made me choose. Blah. I chose Wendy and I don't think she was very happy with my choice. Not because she didn't want to do the dishes, she would selflessly do anything that we needed without hesitation. But I think she thought that it was where I thought that she would be the most valuable, stuck in the old and cold kitchen with dishes while I designed the new one with an... australian. Of course she would have been valuable with me, I'd hoped Alan would want to do the dishes honestly, but I knew that if I sent anyone else unattended, the post would be abandoned. I'd seen it so many times. I needed her to lead the B team, I could get Alan to move whatever I needed over here. But that's not how I came across and I think I hurt her feelings a bit. We were close. I knew she was valuable. I should have wanted her by my side. I was also under a little stress at the moment too, things were kinda hectic in case she hadn't realized.

Brock and Dan and I called a safety meeting to get our thinking caps on straight. We met in the kitchen, but it turned into an actual meeting, boring. Wendy was already there, a few other smokers arrived and then Summer, who promptly called order to the kitchen meeting devoid of any actual kitchen staff. I was nominated to go first, like I was in charge of the kitchen or something. So I opened up the meeting of a bunch of white hippies deciding what is best for a Lakota kitchen. It was gonna be crowded if we moved to the mess hall, but it would come with added convenience as well. Food not Bombs would work and be plenty of space, but it would be farther away from the mess hall and would be way less fun for a midnight move in the snow. My thoughts were to temporarily move into the mess hall, with the plan to put up a new kitchen tent on the existing wooden platform once the tribe removes this one. The group liked this idea and started talking about where to find another tent. I tried to assure them that we needn't worry about that right now, the right solution would manifest as long as we just believe and do what feels right. Just start moving tonight and everything will work out just as it is supposed to.

Then they started proposing a several day kitchen shut down to provide ample time to get our affairs in order and a proper kitchen set back up... I don't think so, my people need to eat. I could simplify meals and some people would take time out of their daily daunting task list to cook for themselves, but a lot of people would just eat junk. We need some love up in that food. We don't go hungry in Rosebud. Dapl is not going to shut our kitchen down. We got this. We would face adversity head on and rise above it even stronger than before. We would evolve in this place where survival was not a guarantee. Where we had to work and learn to get by and we all grew in unimaginable ways. The weak were thinned out with every blizzard or raid threat and only the strongest remained. We were adapting individually as we were evolving as a tribe. As a species. Becoming the best that we could be. Better than we ever thought possible. We believed.

And I believed that Harry should be here. He was in charge after all. About two minutes after mentioning his name, he appeared with Smokey and Neil. Oh yeah, we were pretty much manifesting people by this point too. I reminded him of his in-charge status and he shook his head as he denied the position. The room kept chattering, but I dropped their conversation to have a side chat with Harry and Neil. The word from the top was that it was going in the mess hall, so we'd better just get to moving. Fine with me, I'd already been working over there and had a loose plan of how it could work. I grabbed Harry for a private planning session in the mess hall so that we could determine what things we wanted first. It would be easier to think alone, without ten people's constant babble and their new idea that Smokey wasn't going to approve tonight anyway. We were the chefs, we could probably figure it out, and if we didn't, we'd be the ones dealing with it anyway.

We were getting a plan together. It was going to work. Feeling pretty good about it. Then the chaotic mob started bringing kitchen stuff over with no rhyme or reason or thought of our new plan. Like utensils without a shelf moved to set them on, or items that we never used, or a part of a crucial something and not the rest of it. Our plan was to leave one of us in the kitchen with an idea of what to send and the other would stay here to put it all into place, not whatever madness was randomly unfolding here. I tried to stop the influx of items while we prepared for them, but got the same weird attitude from every person. I would ask them to stop transporting and help with something else and I felt the same strange energy. "You're the boss." Even Wendy said it, still possibly butthurt about the dishes, but I wasn't the boss. I wanted my input heard since I would be dealing with it the most, but I didn't want this chaos. Fine, if I'm the boss, then everyone stop, just chill, and let us figure out a plan. It was ridiculous. Like they were doing it to spite me.

Thomas brought a silverware tray first thing and asked where I wanted it, we had no tables or shelves and the space wasn't even cleared out for them yet anyway. He helped in the kitchen and knew more than he was letting on, like he knew that we should bring the shelves that this stuff goes on first. Thomas had actually been giving me weird energy for a while, maybe like he was jealous of my cooking position, like it was a competition. Reminding me about his cooking experience and critiquing my ingredient lists, in a good way though, we were still friends for sure, but something not quite genuine about him. We're all on our paths. Plus, I'm all about some constructive criticism. That's how I get better. I don't know everything, I don't even know that much really, so I'm always down to listen. Because I realize that I'm not the best that I could possibly be, it opens me up to better myself and continue on the path to get there. And he loved onion tea, so I of course invited him to stop by the kitchen. Eventually he started helping Tina with breakfast, about the time that breakfast started becoming more complicated, as if it was competing with what I was doing, but often not being served until after one. I always like the idea of an early breakfast, maybe just like oatmeal and/or granola and/or fruit and/or yogurt for the early risers, those starting their workdays during the actual AM hours. Then make a more intricate breakfast, brunch we'll call it (New word, I own it, ownership is cool.)

But I don't do breakfast, so I'm not going to try to run my mouth about how I think it should go. Thawing ingredients was a difficult, time consuming job, and was easily and often underestimated, which made lunch a bit harder when breakfast was still frying at one. One day, after a messy kitchen reprimand (not undeserving mind you), Dustin and I decided that the next night we'd do an all night clean-a-thon and maybe a reorganize-o-rama, there were all sorts of unused items taking up valuable space. I mentioned it to Thomas, feeling the urge to include him, he was kitchen crew just like us. The next day when I reported to the kitchen to start lunch, the revamp was well underway. He'd gone and gotten the morning crew to do the project without me. Excluded me on my own idea and created a chaotic workspace for my shift instead of doing it in the unused nighttime hours. Breathe. It's all good. I don't even like cleaning anyway. Thanks fellas.

Thomas's motives at camp seemed a little off too, def doubt that he was dapl, but he was one of the ones that I didn't think was as passionate about saving the world. He didn't go to the frontline with us, not a big deal, many didn't go for various reasons and I think he may have gone on days I didn't. He didn't go to sweat, also not a dealbreaker, but we were here for prayer and I never saw him even acknowledging its existence. Then again, a month ago, I hadn't been near as sincere with prayers as I was now. The thing that got to me the most was when someone who left, gifted him a camper, sweet, except that he stayed in it alone and heated it with a big propane heater. I couldn't not mention it. Burning propane to heat for one person when there were plenty of open beds in communal tarpees heated with wood. I felt bad enough if I hogged firewood at my spot, how could he be burning propane? Plus, we were low in the kitchen, scrambling for enough tanks to scramble enough green beans. We were still friends though, I love everybody, so I pretended not to notice his weird behavior towards me and showered him with kindness. And he was always kind to me too, at least on the surface, the silverware thing was kinda getting to me though.

It wasn't their fault, certainly the undertone of animosity couldn't be intentionally aimed at me. Sure, I was taking the lead, but I was the chef that they all loved. Why was I getting all this grief? I assumed that after Harry and I left the kitchen, the meeting continued and Smokey wasn't having it. He'd already put his foot down, no more chatter, just start moving stuff, everything goes. Shut up and get to work. Just speculation, but I imagine that could put the group into their current state of duress, but they were taking it out on me. Smokey was a strong leader, but lacked the tact that is sometimes useful to get the wanted results out of a group of dirty hippies. I should have realized this and not abandoned the meeting without setting up a plan first. I speak hippie fluently.

Harry and I finally got the frenzy under control, requested the items that we were ready for and the new kitchen was starting to take shape. Smokey came in to give me my own personal earful since I had missed his address to the rest of the crew. He reminded me that this was Denise's kitchen and she'd be back soon. If she wasn't happy with what I'd done, then she'd be whipping me into shape. I looked him in the eye and took his venting. He went on to remind me that we eat meat, chicken was not meat, even if I do cut it with eggplant. Yes sir, no chicken. He said that he didn't care about my jokes, in a tone that said that he cared. I wasn't in full force, but I had started to pick back and forth with him, about meat mainly. I didn't stop after today either, I was just a little more mindful of time and place. We would joke about this conversation soon enough. He went on like this for a while, and I took it, no need to get defensive, he was the boss. He could refuse service from anyone for any reason. I was still a newbie figuring it out. Yes sir.

Conner came up to me right after and "Are you ok with that? The way he talked to you?" All I could say was that I'd been praying for humility and this was just that, a lesson, he had humbled me and reminded me that I was but a cog in the machine of Rosebud. It operated fine before me and wouldn't stop if I left. I wasn't above the rules, I was subject to them. Just like man on Earth. Not a decider or ruler, but a shower and a doer, a leader, and I have to do so as to not inhibit the growth of those around me, but instead help them along their paths with love. I also tried to put it into perspective for Conner; I felt stressed and overwhelmed with the situation, those on my team felt stressed and overwhelmed too, so just imagine how Smokey felt. He had the weight of what I was dealing with, in addition to so much more. He'd actually been having to deal with the tribe and their withdrawal of support, plus so much other classified leader work. He needed to vent, he knew that I could take it, and it gave me the chance to realize that maybe my minuscule discomforts weren't the heaviest thing that anybody was going through tonight. A little humility to bring me back to Earth. Then Summer appeared a few minutes later to further humble me.

She'd stopped by Smokey's tipi and came out of it with a new plan, well, same plan, but now she was in charge. He told her to set it up however she wanted. Ouch. Summer liked to be in charge and it was Lakota tradition that a woman runs the kitchen, that included first and foremost setting it up. I get it. I'm here on Lakota land and living the Lakota way. Wonder if this was Smokey's intention or if he just wanted Summer to leave him in peace so that he could forget about it? Either way, I wasn't checking back in with him. I'm all about honoring women. The life givers. The compassionate beings most capable of spreading love. It's a tough one to swallow when tradition is followed to a tee on some things and ignored on others, like choosing which bible verses to adhere to as the literal word but dismissing others as myth or outdated. But I was cool with it. I was ready to get out of here anyway. She wanted a shelf from the pantry, so Dylan and I went to empty it. I was still a little riled up, not as cool and collected as normal, although my riled up probably looks like most people's chill. Dan stopped by and invited us to smoke, but I declined. I needed to be present. I needed to know where all of the important items were. I needed my input heard for the sake of a functional kitchen.

"Why?" he asked. I can take a moment to get my head right, to calm my heart and my mind, this will all be here waiting when I get back. He was right. Then I reminded myself that just weeks earlier, I had walked into a kitchen where I didn't know where anything was or even what existed and I had been just fine, more than fine, I had risen above my environmental challenges and evolved. I could do it again. Let's smoke. Thank you Dan. Just what I needed.

Tonight was the second of two times that my energy ever got off, though this one wasn't as bad as last time, and neither were due to dapl or frontlines or raids or helicopters or chemicals or even infiltrators. As far as I know. And then one magical outlawed natural living organism provided free of charge by nature/science/God straightened me right out. Connected me to a healing vibration of the universe. Helped me with the compassion and understanding to see the situation from a few different perspectives. Gave me peace and reminded me about that whole love thing that everyone's been talking about. How are the drug manufacturers ever going to get their teeth in with this plant on the loose? It does grow like a weed remember.

Much better, Dylan and I went back to our shelfish work in the pantry, zoned out and had one of those conversation things that I mentioned earlier. The kitchen could basically put itself together. Autopilot light. I had been through a few lessons in humility tonight and come out of them stronger, in a much more peaceful state and even more so believing that everything was working out just as it should. Definitely couldn't find a lot of things though.

The next day I clocked in and continued setting up, this time with less crowd and less headache. Last night we had gotten a good bit moved, the necessities, but still plenty left. Most important at this point was the dish station. Wendy and a few others pulled long hours into the night, poncho clad and everything, and washed every single dirty dish in the place. Maybe it was all just Smokey's grand plan to get the dishes done. I scoped out the dish sitch and determined that it would take more than a bunch of hands, it was screwed in. I needed Jess. I found her surprisingly quickly, don't know why I wouldn't see that one coming by now, and she started dismantling while I kept moving stuff. I was going for things that I knew we needed, instead of grabbing randos and piling things up out front, which is how they had been doing it last night. To each their own I guess. Many ways to build a fire. I learned that sentiment from Pete and Jeanie, in their case it had been an actual firestarting scuffle, but it really pertains to a lot of life's headbutting matches.

Jeanie knew how to start a fire and was getting it done. Pete knew how to start a fire and tried to show her how she should do it. He had seen it work countless times, so obviously it was the right way to start a fire. He would wager his life on his firetending abilities, which was essentially what we all did for months. But so had she. Her fire would be just as warm and vibrating as his. Wet green frozen pine, so they were all a little off, but everyone at camp could get a fire going, and probably in more different styles than similar. There is no one way to build a fire. What may work for you might not even work for someone else. You can't tell someone how to build a fire. You can show them your technique so that they can learn from a new perspective and adapt their own personal style with a broader pallet of vibrations. I was secretly talking about belief in case you didn't catch that, try to keep up. I don't know the one true way to live. None of us do. It's different for all of us. Our path. The only thing I know is to love. There is certainly a lot of absolutely wrong ways to live, and if you can't name at least ten by now, you probably shouldn't read when you're so high. You should probably go do some dishes actually.

I cleared the space for the new dish station, hoped that it would squeeze into the area to the left as you walk in, got Dylan to help move it and it just didn't fit. It all physically fit into the space, but it didn't create a good workflow, we'd have to try too hard to make it jive. We hated to give up on the main wash table that the final rise cooler perfectly dropped down into, especially since Jess just spent an hour working on getting it free, but it just didn't feel right. So we moved on.

Harry made breakfast in the new kitchen, looked easy enough with the trusty flat top in position. You could pretty easily make a wood fired flat top, you could use the same top piece or any good chunk of iron, build some type of fire containing apparatus, just stones and the ground really, and then you're cooking. But back to cleaning. As you walk into the mess hall now, there's a big metal dish tub by the door and a row of coolers on the front wall. There's only two empty tent bays for congregating, including the space taking and making woodstove, just a third of the room that was there before. The next few bays were kitchen, the stoves down the right side wall and the rest mirroring the old setup. Denise would have to approve, it was still her design. Then past all of that, was still the shared pantry area that Bill and Jess had reorganized.

It was super convenient when it was, but it was a pain in a few places when it wasn't. I was now super close to a cache of unfrozen, well, less-frozen items and the fire was always tended. I was around all of my friends. Helpers. No commute. No FOMO. But it kinda still sucked too. Long lighters always missing, we'd had ten or so at the old spot, not all of them lit, but it just took one spark to light a stove. Gone. Possibly just thrown away because the movers were hired guns and didn't know any better. I was constantly having to track down our last one, normally used somewhere near the woodstove, so young Carson tied it with a string to the stove line for me... except that it didn't reach all of the stoves:) It's the little things.

If we thought that we battled missing ingredients in the old, more long standing and steadily evolved kitchen, this was a whole new beast. Just like an ecosystem. If it's built slowly and organically over time, then everything has it's perfect place and there's enough room for everything. The most useful things are central to the operation and the less used items can be tucked away under a rock somewhere. We knew where every utensil was, spice rack was a little iffy, but the kitchen ecosystem was a well oiled machine. Systems to maintain a liquid water supply were in tact. Butter supply was in abundance. There was always meat when I went to look for it. It had functioned for a long time and became a better version of itself everyday. It evolved. People could feel its vibration when they came inside. The kitchen was alive. The ecosystem is alive. The planet is alive. And then some people who didn't understand any of the inner workings of the environment just clear cut it and an underevolved facsimile was left in its place. A long run of proven success and slowly dialed-in function was destroyed and reassembled with the things that people thought should be in the new version, with no understanding of what was actually important to its success. Even I forgot if I was talking about the kitchen move or the destruction of everything natural with that one. Either way, there were stoves in backwards and you couldn't get to the knobs.

And now with the old pantry in the back, everyone had free reign of the whole kitchen and would grab stuff that wasn't quite meant to be grabbed. No rules kitchen, well, the chicken rule is still on, eh, Harry's in charge anyway. So we had an inferiorly designed ecosystem, plus people were taking with no regard for the rest of the species. Def talking about the planet that time, right? But I thrive in adversity. I'm good. We got the dishes figured out and I checked with Harry to see what he thought I should work on moving next. "Actually, you can cook dinner..."

Freakin sweet. Pep returned to my step. I jumped over to the freezer to get some ground unmarked and I passed Jess, "I'm back on" as I tied my apron. Bring it on dapl. Rosebud didn't go hungry. Burgers. Grill 'em outside, nice day, keep the kitchen open for organizing, boost morale, dry rub it in dapl's noses that we were here to stay. I always forgot how long burgers took to make, considered it super quick and easy, but I still had to do a massive pan of garlic and onions, crush cornflakes, thaw three giant ice blocks of meat and a dozen eggs. And then I could start cooking.

All the prep was done, it felt good in here, good energy to be around my people. I'd worked in here a bunch, all that tea, pizza dough, grilled cheese, this room was familiar, but now I had more space in here to work freely. Less quiet though. Less zen time. Space. Meditation. Silent cigarettes as I stare at a pot of something that I don't know what it is yet. Less room for garlic, but more people to teach about it. Sometimes you just need to be alone for a minute though. And sometimes you just need to hang out with Smokey for a bit. But he doesn't hang out in the mess hall. Wait a...

When and where are me and Smokey going to hang out? So I had lost my inside connection. My ticket to the top. I was way less in the know than I was twenty four ago. Like a minute later when someone barged into the mess hall kitchen and announced "The camp's going to be raided tonight, Smokey wants everyone to leave." Uh huh, you sure about that one? See, if I'd have been in the old kitchen, I'd have found out the deets first hand. The word was that we were going to be raided sometime in the next three days, probably tonight, so he booked a bunch of rooms at the casino and it was time to go. Rosebud out. That was the rumor at least, and I trusted rumors about as far as I could throw them, which was probably about from here to Smokey's tipi, so I just went to hear for myself. Found Smokey, he confirmed the three day window and the feeling that it would be tonight. He didn't reveal his sources and I didn't ask, some tribal insider somewhere, or dapl. They were going to be coming in, guns drawn, live rounds, National Guard, TigerSwan, Team America, so anyone that stayed was not to resist or run, only surrender, they would shoot you. So... you're not saying that we have to go?

"I can't tell you what to do, you're all adults, but I'm going to the hotel and I think that you should at least get the families out of here." He wanted to stay, but he knew that he was too mad right now, whatever tip he was going off of had him upset and you could see his worry for all of us silly white people. Maybe he did actually have feelings. He knew that if he was here and they pulled in, he might not simply surrender peacefully, he'd have to defend his family. So he knew that the best thing he could do for us, was to leave. I told him that I was with him, whatever he wanted me to do, then I reminded him that I could film if I stayed. It was settled. Plus people gotta eat. Denise had just come back too, but they were both leaving in a few minutes, she asked me to at least stay long enough to feed everyone, they didn't have the cash for an entire casino buffet. No prob. Already got burgers ready to throw on.

A bunch of people were taking off to the casino. Trent and Jacob begged me to go. Just this one time. "Can't, just cut the grill on, sorry." All but less than twenty of us left camp. I was getting the grill heated up and Wendy came by, she had been there when I first heard the rumor and she wanted an update. She asked what I was doing, if I was staying then so was she, and so were Jess and Bill. They'd have all stayed anyway, but it felt good when my plan made theirs a no-brainer. I was starting to become a leader of the camp, not through politics or official orders, but through love and compassion and helping without ego and always being there, always solid, by showing not telling.

Some people were running shuttles to the casino and asked me each time if I was ready to go, nope, I just put burgers on for dapl. One such shuttle was Australian Alan, who couldn't risk deportation if he got arrested, and he'd gotten a very special visitor in the last couple days. Well, I guess less of a visitor and more of a returning loved one, he had met Heather here, back before the rain solidified, and they were madly in love. Or he just needed a green card. Either way, now she was back, another vegetarian for me to occasionally impress when I decided to take my chances against a far scarier opponent than dapl. And she had a van.

I grilled and flipped and served right there, buns and condiments in the snow on the dish table that didn't fit. Perfect. A serving table just so happened to be "accidentally" set here for this very occasion. "Get 'em while they're hot." Which meant within thirty seconds out here in the ice. My family was standing all around the grill, making final departure plans and I decided to make an exit plan of my own. Not for me, I was pretty resolved in my decision to stay, felt right, but I had a dear friend that could use a safe location and transport, my computer.

My computer, the computer, it was really the last personal possession that I was having a hard time letting go of. I'd already prepared myself for it not cutting back on, and then the hard drive, and without question I would let the community use it, but I still couldn't really let it go. It was less the computer itself, but the years of files, bands that I'd recorded and filmed, my own projects, frontline dapl vids, so I sent it to the casino. I held on to the tapes just in case the casino was a setup, getting all those hiding with warrants wrangled into the same building.

Was this even a real thing? A vague three day window of threat. The day after an overnight emergency kitchen move, the day after a three night gig at the bridge, sounds like a sweet concert series. Our minds were successfully away from the barricade at the moment, forced into a defensive formation and the night time dapl aircraft fleet could see every move we made. They knew how many strong we were, how many of our already minimal workforce would actually stay when the cards were on the table. They would soon know our emergency plan. We didn't even know it yet, didn't have one, we just believed, so not even the daplest of infiltrators could have gotten it out of us. But now they knew. They knew that most of us would scatter and where the rest of us would post up. What if this was their chance to clear the camps while it was at its lowest capacity? Fifty guns could certainly arrest fifteen praying people... or worse. Quietly. But you better believe that it was the best of the best left at camp. Allstars. Every time we faced adversity, it made us tougher and brought out the best in all who believed. A lot of them had been the same brothers and sisters who had been up at the bridge and this would be another night that would change us. Would bring us all closer together. We were willing to risk it all for our family, for our tribe, for our mother, for our future. Plus, if they're coming, then we gotta get rid of this meat, we don't let any part of it go to waste.

In between burger flips, I ran to mash, grabbed the computer and carried it back through a slippery icy blizzardy snowy snow maze. Who does that? It's as white as an imac in a snowstorm. And my trusty data exporter? Someone I knew I could depend on in the weeds. The recently returned Suzy. She'd come back the night before, but I hadn't seen her until earlier this afternoon, when I tried several times to put her in charge. Here's the woman running everything folks, nothing to see here, we're traditional round these parts, we eat meat. But she was only staying a few days and was currently on the way to the casino with the computer.

It was so great when a familiar face reappeared, especially one so influential in my new full time career as Rosebud chef, but there were others too. Like Freddie, he was a vet, maybe five or ten older than me, and I had met him during my first week in the mess hall. He was super cool, very down to Earth and had stayed when most of his veteran friends left. That's right, didn't we already win this thing back in december? I'd only planned to be there for a few more days back at that point, which explained the surprised shout of my name when he saw me in the mess hall weeks later. It was the day after I'd moved into the igloo, I had been working security all night and just stopped in for a quick breakfast before testing out the new super dark ice cavern. He had been in Oceti working and was going back for more, he'd just popped in to see if he recognized anybody, just for a second, and there my path was too, just for a second. Spooky. We caught up, he had come back to help clean up what had been abandoned and/or donated when the vets made their hasty departure. Seemed like most of it had already been reappropriated faster than you can name a sports team. I'd see him a few times over the season, but for now I was tired, and then like candy to a baby, or to an overnight echoer, he asked "Do you want some bud?" My man. And I'd only been in there for five minutes, and him for less, right place that day for sure.

I was in the right place on this night too, protecting our home, making a stand, plus it would be a pretty lame book if I left now. Smokey wanted to talk to everybody in the mess hall before he pulled out. The new kitchen arrangement did make it easier for me to attend meetings which was a big time plus. This meeting was different than most, an address really, from the top dog. He was shaken. You could tell that he wanted to stay and protect us, but it had been decided best for him to leave. He was worried about us and had to hold back some emotion to get through it, those silly california hippies. He loved us. And we loved him. I teared up a little myself as I watched him choke back his. He didn't want us walking around alone, more than two was ideal, apparently they'd already snatched up a couple of snowmobilers from the river. Snatched from a pretty publicly domained water source, just ask nestle. Over and over he reaffirmed "Do not resist, they will shoot you, with real bullets this time." And then "Stay alert, I'll be back tomorrow, James is in charge." He left the tent and so did the members of our newly reformed security team for their first red alert raid threat meeting. I avoided an official security position all winter, but I was no doubt attending this conference, I was the chef, I was the cameraman, I had clearance. Plus, I was one of the few people left in Rosebud. We were all security.

Smokey milled around for a minute and a few of us got to have a more personal see you later, another reminder of the obviously forgotten impending doom, then when he went for a shake, I forced him into a hug and an I love you brother. We were now on our own. As the group circled to strategerize, I walked up to Wendy and asked how she was doing. "Fantastic. This is the moment I've been training my whole life for. I can feel it" Everything had been leading up to this. We were the people we'd been waiting for. I felt it too. We all did. I wasn't scared in the least. We were ready. We wouldn't fight back, but we would proudly take whatever they dished our way. We were Rosebud. We don't operate in fear. We operate in love.

Not scared, but I was a little unsure of me getting the camera out in whatever heat the moment brought, so I just kept it on my back and ready to go throughout the dark night. It was extra dark, had they taken away some of the massive absurdly bright dapl lights? Blinded us with them for months and then cut them the night of the invasion to conceal their own movements, man, these guys should do this for a living. There were a couple of times that the light were completely unseen, rumors abounded, but it was also on nights of thick dapl fog, so I think that was a factor in hiding the lights. Dapl fog wasn't a joke, I'm serious about that one.

The grill was right beside the mess hall, so central to Rosebud and a great vantage point of both our camp and the assumed to be hit first Oceti, we'd just have to figure out how to get the memory card out of here later. We worked on a heightened threat and low manpower security plan. No problem. Beautiful, sweet, mesmerizing April had left us a box truck, presumably for moving stuff, but we thought it would make a mighty nice road block. Sure, they could easily move it, but it might buy us a little time to get ready, maybe get the camera out or something. At least if we could get it started. And dug out of the snow. That happened to be one of our specialties.

We'd park it in the main entrance with a couple of protectors at Echo3 and two others would park their trucks at the other end of camp. There would be a roaming patrol or two keeping a look out and of course there would be a team guarding the coffee and woodstove. Where would I be? I was right by the grill, camera ready to go, but I was working on James's first official decree as temporary captain of this iceburg while we awaited our titanic's arrival. "Cook that chicken." So I did. Bbq chicken, sweet baby rays, leg quarters. If the drones had microphones then maybe dapl even heard their dinner invitation. Wonder if they could smell it. Gotta love some vibrations.

Once I got them sizzling, I had a mission to run before I had to be back to flip them, I had my back up battery still charging at mash. It had quit working good back at its first exposure to extreme cold, but it still held a few minutes of charge which might come in handy tonight. On the way, I passed the currently but soon to not be stuck box truck, as well as Bill and Jess. Someone had asked if Jess could help them man the east side and she signed up, always wanting to help, especially if she was asked, but he didn't think that she should be stuck at that far away of a vulnerable location. That far away from him. She'd already been taken away from him by dapl once this week, wasn't that enough? Who knows, tonight could be the end of it all. I got out of that conversation with the old barbecue chicken in a blizzard excuse and went for my battery. I'm good at relationship advice and would later provide counsel to both of them as the three of us got closer, but this ain't the time sweethearts. We got some meat to cook.

Back at the grill, I flipped the foul and sauced it up. Chicken takes a long time to slow cook in this kind of cold, so I had every piece from the pack crammed onto the grill and it was looking good. Then a van load of roaming security on a manhunt pulled in. Apparently a list of infiltrators with pictures had surfaced and this was the posse out to track them down. How was I supposed to be able to keep up with everything if all of the chaos of Oceti was spilling over here? They probably just smelled the chicken. Although... we did have a new arrival today...

The first day of the raids. When dapl would most want to know what was going on behind closed hot tub doors. And her energy just wasn't that of your average water protector, if there is such a thing. I'd met her when I was setting up the dish station, I hadn't thought dapl yet, just annoying. Even her name, Aintcha, like aintcha business. Dapl. She was not chill, a little too militant, well, maybe not militant, but like she was trained. She did smoke weed at least, it would have been just a little too obvious if she hadn't. But her vibration just didn't match the rest of ours. The rest of camp. Somehow even Frank vibed with us more. Maybe. It was like dapl had just picked their least obvious agent and assigned them to be cool, but without having any idea what that really meant.

They don't understand us, that's why they're so scared of us. You can't pay somebody to be one of us. There were reports that the water protectors were just paid protesters, double conundrum, one, who paid us? The water? The planet. Our mother? There's no wells fargo supporting this movement of life that is currently spreading throughout the globe, but it's got everything that we could ever need and then some. And two, you couldn't have paid me enough to do all that stuff out there in the cold, are you freaking kidding me. You can't pay someone to be a water protector. It's just a vibe man. You just have it or you don't. You can grow it, nurture it and attune yourself with a frequency more harmonious with nature. The frequency that called us all here. But you can't learn it from a wikipedia page. She could have just been weird though. We were all outcasts. Didn't fit into the machine. She could have just been on her own path to self discovery. We'd been pretty isolated since christmas, not many new faces, so we might have been extra leery of anyone who didn't feel right. Perhaps even paranoid. But it was the first red alert night, so yeah... And she had a three legged dog, definitely dapl.

Bill came by to catch a peek of the smell that was permeating the permafrost and keeping first shift on their feet. He was heading home, his energy had already been off and the rest of his conversation with Jess must have not gone as he'd hoped. We were all short on sleep, any of us who had been up at the bridge all those nights anyway, plus we had volunteered to inhale chemical weapons up there. And we were all dehydrated. "Do you need some water?" It's supposedly burning man's "screw you." Aw, do you have a headache, here, have some mni. It's the common first solution to any problem, the reset button to the outsourced technical hotline, and it really does fix most things. All of the bodies processes require water to function, without it your systems begin running inefficiently and you do a piss poor job of pouring piss. Water is pretty important. They should make up a sweet catch phrase about it or something.

I let him vent for just a second, then I diagnosed him and prescribed a snake oil that was sure to set him onto the right vibration. You just need to smoke some weed brother. He agreed, but neither of us had any, the chicken wasn't ready yet, he was going home. I vowed to keep my ear (and nose) out for some medicine and I sent him on his way, alone in the dark, against protocol, but then again, I was alone in the dark too. Umm. Like anyone would let them kidnap the chef. At least not before dinner. I tried to catch Johan at the box truck, but they got it free and he rode past me as I walked up. He woulda known who had some. No luck in a hopeful weedar rendezvous and it was time to unload the grill.

As I had the grill halfway emptied, the Oceti posse was departing and they swarmed the tray. I tried to explain that these were still quarters, intended to be split into two, and then still hardly enough to feed our overnight security. I told them that they could grab two or three and split them up, we were all here fighting for the same thing after all, and then they quickly grabbed one leg and thigh combo each, all eight of them. Breathe. They're hungry too. And out in the cold. Getting into who knows what kind of danger and when they will eat again? We have plenty of meat. Some people just won't get chicken, no worries, hardly meat anyway, I volunteer the people guarding the woodstove. So I loaded up the rest of the chicken and took off, the first annual #nodapl grill-a-thon extravaganza, with free delivery.

I tagged up with a big roaming security crew by the sacred fire, and if you thought that three am elk pizza made people believe, try doing it during the middle of a blizzard lockdown. James approved. His first tactical command a success. Rosebud eats good. James and I made sure of it. We were unstoppable. Summer offered to take a few pieces to the east side boys, the next stop on their route, and in exchange she put her hand out. "Here, take this, you might need it." A walkie finally? A flare? A weapon...? Nope, it was a big bright green crystally nugget. "Thanks a ton, I know just the person that needs this." Manifest and... go.

It was great when you got to be on the other end of someone's manifestation. When creator is working through you, when you don't know why, but you do what feels right and unknowingly set wheels into perpetual motion. That's why manifesting worked so good out here, everyone believed, everyone did what felt right, even if they didn't quite know why, they still did it. They drove twenty-four hours to get here because it just felt right. (It seems that we were twenty four hours from everywhere, at least NC, OR and TX.) They donated their favorite handmade quilt because it felt right. They sent fourteen cases of tomatoes because it felt right. They carried a three pack of yeast in their pocket because it felt right.

Once, I was in the pantry, sometime in the carhartt coverall era, gathering supplies with some cohort or another, when an unfamiliar face stopped by. She wasn't new, I'd actually seen her in passing, but some people just didn't hang out at the mess hall, natives that cooked for themselves mainly. We had a very mixed crowd of diversity, but I'd say the majority were like me, white colonists just beginning their path to understanding spirit, oppression and how to live in a good way. We'd been woken up. We thought we were awake before, but we were just caught up in that last dream after the snooze button, trying to pretend that you can stay there forever and reality won't come crashing in on your utopia. It's coming.

You didn't have to hang out to be family though, really, we were here to back them up with whatever they needed. We'd been called to come support the indigenous people as they stood up for their home and all of us. We were here doing great things, working hard, spreading love, teaching, learning, praying, but... eighty percent of what we were doing was only supporting the influx of us. I worked "hard" all day cooking, for mainly us, Smokey didn't even eat it half the time. We maintained bathrooms, for us. Thawed water, for us. Sorted donations, shoveled snow and guarded the fire at Echo3, for us. But we did it in a good way. And we prayed. We learned how to pray. I'm out of contact right now, but I'm sure there are water protectors all over the globe right now praying and believing and following their paths and doing great things, spreading it even farther, probably writing better books than me I would imagine, or maybe while I've been tucked away they've already saved the world. Better get back to it. We tried to help anyone we possibly could, at all times, even dapl, or like when she came into the pantry and asked "You guys don't happen to have any yeast, do you?" Mind blown. Pocket yeast. It'll get a rise out of 'em every time.

And for my next trick, I gotta make this fluffy nug disappear at Bill's house, but first I had to stop by Echo3 with some chicken. And who do you think I found at the fire? Who could have possibly been nominated to be the point person at the post on such an unplanoutable evening? Who was tough enough to stand up to the National Dapl of America Inc? Who could we count on to stand unwavering in the face of the beast? Why Rosebud's original welcoming committee of course, Pete was on shift. Funny I thought, the self proclaimed non-security personnel and now me, here in a similar boat. Welcome daplcops, you can park your tanks over here on the right and come warm up by the fire. Oh, and we have some bbq chicken for ya. There were a few others hanging out, Pete was singing obviously, good times and vibes all around camp, we were in the zone, our energy was on fire, we had this, we were the people.

And Bill. I'd managed somehow to retain the last two pieces of meat, perfect, Bill and I could enjoy a bowl and a plate together. Except that I'd never been to his house. He gave me vague directions based on landmarks that I didn't really know, so now I'm wandering around the deep snow of camp alone in the dark during a red alert lockdown carrying a tray of bbq chicken. Still not messing around. Eventually I gave up, headed back and ran into Dan. He hadn't seen me earlier either, so I traded him a drumstick for directions. Had I manifested directions or had he manifested a mid blizzard invasion chicken delivery? Felt pretty right.

So Bill's "hobbit hole" was a pieced together studio apartment, beautifully crafted from scrap materials around camp. When I arrived, I found that Jess had made it back as well, she'd realized that stress levels were high and that the crew had it covered, it was the best move. Might have just been her weedar. His was the best I'd ever seen, but this time it came to him, then a thigh and a bowlpack later and he was just fine. So I didn't actually get to taste the chicken, but I'd had just enough, the exact amount to feed my people, good thing she's a vegetarian. It was all good, plus we had more meat to come. I definitely don't go hungry. I liked to eat last though. I'd rather surprise some late night toiler with an epic snack than sit by the fire and have it myself, plus the more you give the more you get, so I should have a pretty good ship coming in soon.

I hung out there for a half hour and made it one of my regular chill spots from here on out. The three of us were on the same vibration, same wavelength, more so than most people at camp at least, and tonight had brought us even closer, but just wait. Eventually the chicken fairy was off, back to the mess hall with an empty tray. This just wouldn't do. No one inside had gotten to eat yet. At least not in the two hours since burgers. Rosebud doesn't go hungry. Ya'll want some steaks?

I don't imagine that question is commonly answered with a negative and tonight was no exception. There were still organic valley steaks somewhere, but I hadn't seen them in a few weeks. I'd looked pretty hard, James had been asking about them for a while so I was trying to produce, but they were nowhere to be found. Had someone carted off a couple of coolers full of ribeyes and filets? It was all good, we have everything we need. As long as somebody hungry ate them, then they went to the right place. Then earlier today, after I'd already given up on them, I found both coolers while I was digging for the chicken. They were in a spot that I'm certain I checked four or five times, granted that everything is covered in snow and could get confusing, but here they were, right on top. At just the right time. Sure, so they weren't manifested out of thin air or thick dapl fog, they had been around the whole time, but the piece of the universal vibration that is inside me and shows me my path, my instinct, it knows stuff that I don't, so as long as I trust and do what feels right, then everything seems to work out pretty synchronistically.

I had a pretty standard and dependable strategy for finding anything in the freezer and it generally took three trips outside. First attempt to check the obvious spots and put it out there into the universe, second to dig a little deeper until I'd given up on it all together, then a third visit to the first cooler that called me, even if I'd already checked it. Normally what I was looking for was right on top. Five or six times it happened just like that. It was like I had to give up thinking that I needed it. I had to believe that it would work out no matter what, cooler of steaks or not. The other freezer approach was to not have anything in particular in mind and let the cooler magic inspire the menu, like today, I had only been looking for a bag of chicken and found the given up on steaks. They'd reappeared at the perfect moment, when our morale could use them the most, how could I not believe by this point?

Burgers, chicken and now steaks, was dapl ever going to show up? We speculated about when they might come, it was after midnight now so we were in prime time, optimal window in the cooler water office pool, should be pulling in any minute. Wonder how they like their steaks? I know we liked ours pretty good. We were having a grand old time. A sort of end of the world party. Come and get us. Grill all the steaks. Eat all the pies. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Yeah, I found a whole tote full of apple and pumpkin pies during the move. I didn't actually serve all of them, but we devoured three inside before I took off with a fourth to deliver steaks and pie to anyone I could find on my way to check on Pete. Apple pie warmed up on our beloved fire was pretty phenomenal. We were living tonight like it could be our last. Maybe it could have been. We weren't hoarding the abundance around us, we were enjoying it. We always had everything we needed. If we didn't use it before they came in, then it would go to waste. The quicker you get rid of stuff, the quicker new things can manifest. The more you hang on to objects, the less room you have in your life and the less those around you have to share. There were so many abandoned tents full of food and supplies, we could have all shared in what was now buried under three feet of snow. Or if someone would have hoarded extra steaks, thinking that they may be hungry later, someone else would have missed out, plus they'd have missed the manifestation of fish and grits at three am. (Oops, spoiler alert.)

You have to believe. If you believe that you always have everything that you need, then there's no reason to hang onto excess. If an entire population can live this way, then the community will live in abundance, all sharing in everything instead of the majority of supplies sitting unused in storage. As easy as it felt here, it's still hard to have that mindset. It's because we are taught at an early age to do the polar opposite. We're trained, indoctrinated, brainwashed, we're colonized. Get a job, save for college, get a better job, save to buy property, you own that now, level an ecosystem, you earned it, build a house, start filling it with stuff, stockpile food, have a bunch of kids, baby buy buy buy. Food that could have fed so many less fortunate, the weak and feeble, those that won't survive without us intervening, but instead it just expires on your back shelf. That's what we do, we try to feed everybody and we increase the worlds food supply because we think that will solve all the world's problems. But that's precisely the world's problem.

We are overpopulated. Fact. Everyone knows it. At least as far as our current idea of civilization is concerned. Other countries have, with varying levels of success, tried to curb their population growth through drastic laws and various birth control campaigns. Not us. Our not-so-separated schools, church and state have done quite the opposite with campaigns marketing the fairy tale teenage abstinence, while ignoring any actual education on pregnancy prevention and demonizing abortions for unprepared parents. Just put them up for adoption. There are plenty of state funded orphanages with adequate food supplies in the US, we love to feed the needy. Not just here, we ship food to all corners of the world, areas that do not sustain life, human life anyway.

Oh, you live in a region barren of the calories necessary to feed your growing population, well here's enough food so that you can live in excess like us for a few years. The least we could do, our little way of saving the world. Wait, you had excess food, so now your population has skyrocketed even farther? Now you're out of food again? Ok, no problem, here's twice as much food as last time, should be good to go for while. Oh no, not again. It just doesn't make sense, the more food we give you, the more hungry mouths there are to feed. It's like there's a link between food supply and population growth. It's almost as if the natural laws that govern how every species of life on Earth has ever lived in harmony with every other species for billions of years, like clockwork, a well oiled machine, an unruffled kitchen, it's almost as if these laws apply to use too. Weird.

Populations grow all the time though, in all species, there is an abundant amount of sustenance provided by our great planet, remember? With enough acorns, not only could we make gluten free flour out of naturally occurring plants, but the squirrel population will boom. Squirrel City USA. However, eventually it will max out. The forest will no longer produce enough acorns to support any further population growth and it will level off at maximum capacity. This is the way it has been forever. Every single animal, plant, fungi, amoeba, protozoa and unicorn in the history of everything that is and ever was. Until us.

If we could only talk to the squirrel, we could give him the best advice, the secrets of how to live beyond his means. How to bend the rules of our dear mother to grow past what is naturally possible. What did the Earth know about sustaining life anyway? Well Mr. Squirrel, first you need to learn about ordering in, a little late night delivery. So now you can relocate anywhere you like, even if it is devoid of anything that a squirrel might find appetizing, as long as you're within the oil powered delivery radius of course. Oil, who is really just a slave itself to the agriculture industry, but no agriculture here. We'll just continue to pile into Squirrel City USA, out of sustenance a long time ago, but we figured out how to truck in acorns by the ton. The population will grow like crazy, but it'll be ok, we should have the acorn pipeline finished by the fall.

No squirrel will go hungry. Especially not the underevolved ones struggling to survive in an unnatural environment. But where are all these acorns coming from anyway? The original supply that got us going is only a drop in the bucket compared to what we now need with our artificially inflated population. Especially after we leveled an oak forest to build condos named Oak Forest. Ah, but here lies the real secret to unencumbered species expansion, just grow more acorns. Sounds easy enough, a lot more work than squirrels are used too, but if they're going to survive as an overpopulated species, then indoctrinating the importance of a lifetime of hard work is a vital step in their training. Plus, then they can invent money.

The systematic takeover of consumerism will only work if the citizens don't already have everything they need. So now with the food so far out of town, we pretty much have them by the nuts. It also means that some other species might not have as much food, as we replace their millions of years old, perfectly functioning ecosystem, with our exponentially growing single crop acorn orchards. But it's cool, their populations should dwindle accordingly. Ooh, but they might try to eat our acorns if they get hungry enough, hmm, well lets put up fences and shoot any intruders. You know what, just to be safe, lets spray hazardous chemicals all over the acorns to keep every last one of them for ourselves. Yeah, sure, we'll have to eat the chemicals too, but it's a small price to pay to be able to grow unchecked as squirrels take over the world.

Growing the population of a species is what evolution is all about, right? The better suited to survive do, and the weaker fall off, so if the population is booming, then we must be doing something right, right? Except that in this story squirrels, and in our story humans, have taken themselves out of the game of evolution, remember? We didn't want to be a part of a proven system. We wanted to design our own system with our own rules but keep the same goal. To multiply. And then when everything around us was saying to stop, screaming it, when we had to struggle to get the overgrown population's needs met, when countless species of our brothers and sisters went extinct because of our endless expansion... we were able to justify it all because we were such a huge success in the game of evolution. We'd evolved to be able to populate every corner of a planet designed for nothing of the sort. We are so good. The epitome of an evolutionary success. We have almost completely overcome the laws of the once justly governing mother nature.

We instead instituted our own biased laws as we assumed the rule of man and now we wait impatiently for the very fabric of her architecture to crumble at our feet. Then, when we start to consider that perhaps we don't know what's best, maybe we are doing more harm than good, maybe the world was better off without us, maybe human "intelligence" was the dumbest thing the Earth ever did, then we say "nah, it's only natural." We blame it on our creator, who we openly ignored, whose laws we defied and lawyered out of with loophole after loophole, and now that they're after us for tax evasion, we try to pass the buck. We're only human. God made us this way. Evolution made us this way. You can't have and eat the same cake. Really you should eat it, there will be more cake, just believe.

You can't claim to be a fully evolved, completed, final product of your creator, perfection itself, the ultimate goal of an ultimate deity or the eventual conclusion of random mutation, you can't be so sure that you're smarter than the system that you drop out of school, and then in the same breath condemn that same system for not educating you properly. The same system that has worked so perfectly for 99.999999 percent of life, ever. Countless species who have maintained populations in accordance with their environments with little effort. None actually. No thought necessary. Not a single species has ever maintained a population outside of the physics of the possible. It's just not natural. They didn't need restrictions on children per household, birth control education or eugenics. In fact, many species instinctively self-terminate pregnancies if the environment does not have an adequate food supply. They just had to believe. And everyone else around them believed too. No living organism took more than they needed and there was just enough of everything for each species to flourish.

But that was just a crude mechanism to finally get to us through the framework of the matrix that we used to live in, before we took the blue pill. The fear pill. Now we were free of the confines of the utopian program that worked so well and replaced it with this nonsensical way of life. The one true way to live. As ruler of everything. Master of the universe. Let the he-man patriarchy begin. We're in charge. There's no argument about that. I've never seen a tiger put a human in a cage. Not yet at least. No tigers here though, no worries, turns out that it's not their natural habitat and it's not comfortable to them, so they don't try to force themselves to live here. It was hard to imagine this habitat being natural for anyone, it was still pretty cold out here, but our fearless interim leader was from here, this wasn't a vacation, it was his way of life.

And James would rise to the occasion. Tonight would mark the dawn of a new era at camp. A way of living in the moment that was inspired by an invasion but carried over through the rest of our existence. I still worked for Smokey, and it was Denise's kitchen, but they weren't interested in being a part of the late night fireside social circles of camp. It really was a vital dynamic of our population and an important part of who we were. A family. Laughs. Songs. Tears. A tribe. And snacks. James hadn't been around the masses too much, but under the threat of international invasion and total annihilation, he'd set up shop at the newly added table in the renovated dish corner. A leader to lead from within the ranks, from among the people, a leader who will stand with us at the barricade, on the barricade, someone we can follow into battle. And I was his right hand man. Assistant to the regional manager. We knew that we could both take the heat up front and we were starting to see what each other were made of back at camp. I would become a friend and a confidant, but for now I was happy solidifying my role of chef in the new regime. And our official doctrine? Cook 'em if you got 'em. Eat 'em if you got 'em. Smoke 'em if you got 'em. And we did.

The second decree of the new administration? We smoke weed. Right here. No more sneaking off to a tipi for a private smoke sesh, it just wasn't safe in these times, no, so we'd have safety meetings right here in the mess hall. We were short handed and it was the middle of the night on a red alert lockdown, was dapl really going to give us a simple possession charge. Weed doesn't give you the same slow reaction time and reduced awareness that government endorsed alcohol does. It heightens senses and makes you hyper aware, perhaps overaware at times if anything. There wasn't an official announcement, James just lit it up and we never stopped.

Hey dapl, are you still coming? These steaks aren't gonna last forever. And they didn't. But I was ready. 3am fish and grits as promised. Charred tilapia and cheese grits if you keep track of those sorts of things. Maybe my southern hospitality could get dapl out to play. A normality in my world, I hear that grits haven't taken the country by storm like they have the south, surprising results from the business tycoon corn. And I was all ears. A guitar had made its way to the end of the world party and it was the first night of a concert series that lasted until the police finally shut the club down, prayer violation.

Man, we had some good music in Rosebud. I guessed that there was probably another jam session running concurrently at the post. I knew first hand that the four o'clock slot was a tough gig, even on an ordinary night (ha), but tonight might just be the next Y2K. If you were dapl, when would you raid the camp? We thought it would be about now. After midnight certainly and early enough that the empire could contain the rebels before sunrise brought reinforcements. So what did we do to prepare for the impending doom? I sat with Pete in the box truck, parked in the middle of the main entrance, and ate fish and cheese grits. Black Snake Killas.

I had my camera. I'd carried it everywhere I'd been tonight. Big heavy bag at the grill, at Bill's, back and forth to the post a couple times and here I was with just a windshield between me and whoever knocks on our front door. The conversation was deep, very personal, it was the end of times so the foxhole talk was even more from the heart. Between two brothers who already had a soul connection, who already understood each other on a deep level, which was why he wasn't mad when I started dozing off.

I caught most of it, enough to know that I didn't need to talk, I just needed to be an ear and let him work through this energy from his past. Give him the space to turn it into a positive vibration with his words. Let him manifest a light into the darkness that he felt inside. He just needed to pray. I learned so much from this brother. Such a strong spiritual warrior and I credit him more than any with how far on my path I've navigated in such a short amount of time. When he was introducing me to the oh so lovely Jeanie, I told her that he had helped me in ways that he didn't even know. The first night at the fire I may not have prayed out loud, but I worked through some stuff in my heart, started to at least. He chimed in and said that I had helped him just as much and insisted when I tried to deny it. Had I? I admired his energy and how far along on his path he already was at ten years younger, but I guess that even if I thought at the time that my path had taken me away from spirit, I'd been on a road heading here the whole time. The scenic route. Maybe I'd picked up a few things on the way.

Humility, patience and understanding. It was Bill that inspired me to add the last two to my prayers. I've always been pretty solid with them both, gifts from my mom (ooh, maybe I should call her), and of course me thinking that I'm good on the last two really suggests that I need to keep working on the first one. I understood Pete. He was a lot to handle sometimes. We all adored him, but he was definitely the wild card of the bunch, every gang needs one. I gave him a sounding board that allowed him to open up and be his true self without judgment.

You have to let people be who they are. You can't try to change them. It's their path. They have to make their own mistakes. You can't tell them who to be. Why would you want to? If you love them enough to make them a part of your life, then why would you want to start changing them into something else? Something they're not. You can't tell someone how to live. You can only show them. We're already forced into this unnatural way of life, into this system that only vaguely shows signs of functionality. You can't force someone to feel what feels right to you, it just might not feel right with where they are on their path. It's all good. If you can love unconditionally with humility, patience and understanding, then this whole "path" thing starts to make a lot more sense. And my path was calling me to get up outta here, I couldn't be caught asleep at the wheel when the Natty Gs came rolling in, that big tank thing would run us over before I knew which way was up.

The general consensus was that they'd probably raid Oceti first, so we might have a little heads up, but that was just a wild guess. Oceti was on what the army corps consider to be their property. We all know the loose standards of practice that the army corps and others use to decide property rights of other nations. We were in another nation right now. Supposed to be. A sovereign land not under tyrannical US control, but a nation allowed to continue its sacred traditions on its sacred land. A tiny sliver of their sacred Turtle Island. But then Jed Clampett came along and rewrote the deal.

So long story short, no way did we feel exempt from the long line of humvee headlights certainly backing up on 1806 as we speak. If they only took Oceti, then everyone could just flee across the frozen river to Rosebud, I knew that was the plan for many, so we had been preparing for them. Smokey had warned me that we might have to start cooking for an extended family, in our recently reduced and confused kitchen setup, and even more so dining area. No prob, we got this sir, might have to use that chicken though. (I hadn't quite dropped the jokes, not really my style.) We had been getting some housing freed up and prepped for an emergency influx. We were also ready to guide people across the river and help them to Sacred Stone where they had more room and a stronger illusion of safety. It was on the almighty private property, there was even a piece of paper that proved ownership, should be pretty solid. It's the law of the land. No money hungry government would ever deny the validity of a piece of paper claiming the rights of an individual to control the lives of the many inhabitants of said land. Wouldn't dare. It'd be unamerican.

So we were ready. We were full. We were stoned. And then the sun came up. We had survived. We had made it through the night. We'd proven ourselves, not turned and run, but stood up to the threat. Or had we played right into their hands? We'd wasted our ever dwindling energy, upset our strongest warriors' sleep schedules and ate too much meat. Nah, we came out of it stronger, closer and more prepared as we evolved in the face of adversity. And we get to smoke in the mess hall now. Score one for the home team. Dear dapl, thanks again for everything.

"Dear dapl" became a nightly radio program for all of us to express our gratitude for the never ending barrage of gifts that they gave us. Dapl listened to our walkie frequency, they had their own that you could only get with a fancy military grade receiver, but they liked to bother us on ours too. We're beyond paranoia now and circled back around to actual facts, they listened to us. If you mentioned TigerSwan on the phone, then your phone cut off. For real. But we're just the insurgents defending against the unlawful pipeline in an oppressed nation that nobody knows about, that's right up TigerSwan's alley, just less commute this time.

TigerSwan documents have been leaked and people are coming out about their surveillance tactics, which continue on prominent members of the movement even after the camp was closed. Like, they're still doing it. And turns out that they didn't even have their hired mercenary license, it's a thing I guess, but neither did the handful of other dapl security firms who were working in a joint operation with local police. Live video feeds from the helicopter, listening devices in camp, facebook stalking and I read one description where they labeled us "a jihadist movement with a strong religious element." They were scared of prayer. So they'd clog the airwaves with turkey calls and fake emergencies, and with such a big camp and a newly formed Oceti security manned by... kids, it was hard to keep up with who was who.

Rosebud was good, we all knew each other, knew everyone's handles, knew their voice, we even knew their coughs and footsteps. We liked to guess who was about to step inside after their approaching dapl hackle, got pretty good at it. We used the same channel as Oceti, we wanted to stay informed, but the walkies eventually became a toy for them to pass time with. Either boredom or a successful infiltrator snafu, to the point that we would cut them way down. Please don't play with the walkies. This is not a vacation. We were not playing a game. They were hurting our family, destroying our planet and trampling on whatever rights we were under the impression that we still had. Grow up. Maybe take this free time and pray. It's sorta why we're here. If dapl sent a transmission, we could normally call it, the appropriate response was "nodapl." Then came the nightly hit program Dear Dapl, it was just more air wasting radio chatter, but it was actually funny sometimes.

"Dear dapl, thank you for inviting me to this incredible place where I got to meet so many amazing people. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to refine my wood chopping ability and perfect the wet green pine campfire. Thank you so much for the massages and acupuncture and the s'mores and pretty girls and midnight steaks. We tried to save you one but you never showed up. "

The next day was more of the same, continue moving the kitchen by day and then an all night cook-a-thon after dark. Many of those that went to the casino reappeared for the daylight hours, glad to see that we survived, but not prepared to stay the night. And then I napped. The vibe was a little less on edge tonight. Had last night given us some false sense of accomplishment? We had survived. Survived a normal night at camp. Big whoop. Or did they just want our guard down? Fail. We were still on. A couple of protectors had even ridden to bismarck last night and bought an arsenal of GoPro style hidden cameras for the post, the group that somehow missed all the actual action (What exactly was that again?) included Three Feathers.

Remember when he had taken up residence in the mess? Well, now he was proudly living at Echo3, thinking that it showed commitment to the job when in fact it was selfish and lazy. That cot was for weary travelers or an exhausted security detail after a twelve hour shift who doesn't want to try to build a fire at home in this cold. No need to build a fire when you set up shop next to the most important one. I don't think he was being rude or even realized his offense, but please learn his lesson for him, it is rude to the community to take up permanent residence in a communal space. Write that down. I mentioned it to him in the friendliest way I could muster. "Aw, no one's ever slept in there since I've been back." Uh, yeah, because you have been. That cot saved a life the first night that we set it up and I've used it plenty. Anyway, next thing.

I went up to help them install a couple of candid cameras, I think because I was the resident film guy that I was more qualified to tie a camera to a pole or something. We put one in the Dragonball Z scarecrow that had been erected to help get people to stop or at least slow down when they pulled in. We were in a similar boat with these as I was with mine, no live transmission. You had to physically remove the memory cards. After dapl invaded us. Whose job was that gonna be again? I'm not really on the video crew. I'm just a consultant. I got transferred a long time ago from media to kitchen. It was the perfect excuse to get out of any awkward situation "Oh, man, I'd love to stay and hear the rest of the saga about your whatever, but I just remembered that I have to stir a pot of some stuff in the... later." I grilled out again. Not as epic as before, but a valiant effort none the less. I was more concerned with our new nightly pastime, spades.

I had some duck dynasty playing cards (I know) from a christmas stocking for just such the occasion. I mentioned the game and James seconded, that's all it took. This place seemed more and more like jail every day. In a good way? I don't know, I've never been. At least not til they read this thing. But I know the basics, smoke cigs to pass the countless hours that you spend in isolation with a diverse group of outcasts that you have deep, honest conversations with, improvised snacks with limited provisions and now spades. Oh yeah, and private security imposing their nonsensical will onto american citizens with guns and false or exaggerated charges, all for the sake of the mighty dollar bill, almost forgot that one.

I grilled out all night, even scrambled some brownies, but #nodapl. A group of us went to Dan's to unwind around four when we decided that the night was over with, once we were through there, James and I were both headed to the kitchen for some last minute late night business. Legit stuff, actual important tasks, but then somehow we got into the pie stash. This was the first real conversation that we ever had. We'd started getting to be friends, coworkers at least, buddies that give hard times incessantly, but tonight we talked on the real tip. About kids, baby mamas, drugs, hard times, better times, fears, weaknesses, things we didn't understand, things we thought we did. And pie. We continued late night pie alone for the next couple of nights and eventually got the whole crew in on it, but those first few nights were pretty cool. He told me that I "wasn't like all the other ones." Nope, never have been. I thought I had gotten close to Smokey before, but James and I were peers, a mutual respect between us for each others resolve and experience. Brothers. But mainly we just liked to mess with each other.

The next and last and final day of the raids, well, we'd given up really. We'd all been up for two nights with minimal cat naps and honestly, we just didn't think they were coming. If they were attending the party they'd have done it already. Or did it make just as much sense for them to come in at the last minute? Eh, we were tired, let 'em come. Dear dapl, I'll be asleep at my house, fourth tarpee on the right. We weren't fighting back or anything anyway, so being on our toes would only do so much. We didn't think too much about dapl, but we did stay up all night playing cards and music.

We were a family and we'd just come together in the most amazing way that only compounded the love that we all felt for each other. These days were the beginning of a new movement. The people right here were the best of the best of the best and I would in an instant trust my life in any of their hands. They're gonna save the world. They are the strongest, those who adapted and rose above adversity. We all evolved and this is the moment when we really became a team. We believed in the team. As it would happen, this new defensive line had it's first scrimmage tonight, day one of special teams training. Although it was an on-side kick.

So James and I were discussing which meat to get on the grill, I let him think he had a say in the menu and he let me think that I was his assistant, aw, sweet symbiosis. There is no I in "chef" anyway, if there were then I'd be his boss. Then Stephanie come's up to us with a frantic look in her eye, something was wrong, something worse than red alert lockdown mode. Oh yeah, Stephanie was back too, she had left with Denise and been gone through all of the bridge stuff, stuck watching live feeds and wishing that she had been there mayloxing eyes and just generally saving the day. She also knew that there was some reason that she wasn't there. She was in the right place. She had done what felt right. But it's hard when you're watching your loved ones in peril. I have tried to drop the word "wish", at least in the regretful context. Everything is exactly as it should be, everything is great, I don't wish anything to be different. Like I don't wish that I'd been able to be by her side on her current mission, I understood that I was needed elsewhere, but boy did I want to be there. She had seemed a little off since she got back, a little more out there. I mean, she was always was, and she was a jam kid, she had left camp which is disorienting enough and then returned to a raid and a new kitchen mess hall design, but she was a little extra loopy these days. So then she hurries up to me and James and calmly lets us know that "Um... so there's a person with a homemade bomb in a tipi. In Rosebud." Hello.
Step Eleven:

"Welcome home, oh yeah, can you take this bomb out to the dumpster please?" I think that I actually had a chance to get on the bomb squad a few minutes earlier, when Hank asked me if I would go to his camp with him for something. I think it was a ferret related task, but he seemed a little off too, a nervous energy going on. But he was also one of the weirder ones out here, that's probably why Stephanie and him got along so well. He'd never needed an escort before, he was more than happy alone, but drastic times called for mundane measures and he knew that I was solid, so he asked me. But I had just lit the grill. I could have cut it off and gone with him, I was just cooking random midnight meat, I didn't even know what yet, but I told him that I couldn't. If it had been Stephanie, I'd probably have cut it off and gone with her. I don't like that. Not just because she was a pretty girl, I mean yeah, but there were just some people I clicked with more than others.

Only natural. We vibed. We are all made of this energy, the same energy, not just the same type but the exact same ball of energy. We are all vibrating. That's what energy does. That's what matter does. Always has. In the beginning there was a singularity. Then the big bang took the lowest vibrating element of hydrogen and sent it exploding, or vibrating, to the farthest corners of the universe and it's all been vibrating into more complex forms of matter ever since. Sometimes our vibrations match. It feels like we're one and the same. And we are. We are all related. We are all the same universal energy. I call it Tunkasila, Grandfather, Wakan Tanka, The Great Mystery, Holy Spirit, True Love, God. We are all made of the same energy, but we each vibrate differently, so we mesh uniquely with the people and the vibrations around us.

But why did that mean that I treated people differently? I tried so hard to treat every single person with love and compassion, and I did, without trying really. Hank too, many times I took care of him, loved him without condition, but I had to want to. There were other people that it just felt right to a point that I didn't have a choice but to do everything in my power to help, no matter what else I had to stop. Shouldn't I be able to have that love for everyone? Let my vibration affect theirs in the most beneficial way possible. Spread the love.

People's vibes aren't the only thing that determines how connected we become. Their vibes aren't the same for their whole life. We are each just living out our song. Our path. When we connect with people who share a compatible vibration and our paths are at similar points, that's when magic really happens. It's not just about age, although it certainly comes with the territory, it's about where you are in your transformation to figuring it all out. (ps. you never will) Figuring out yourself, love, the universe, faith/science and what is really important in this so called reality. We are all spiritual beings living in physical bodies.

Ever meet someone who you clicked hard with, but the timing just wasn't right? I know I have. We vibed big time, but our paths just didn't line up. Looking back now, it is so obvious that everything before this had been leading me here. Even the things that didn't happen. And the brief time that she was in my life years ago influenced my path so deeply and was absolutely instrumental in my eventual transformation. So I'll not beat myself up for feeling stronger towards certain individuals. We just vibed. It's science. I was doing what felt right, and while I may have uncontrollably showered love onto those that I felt a deeper connection with, I still poured love into every interaction I ever had with anyone. Even dapl. Especially dapl. Kinda glad they hadn't shown up after all, we were a little busy.

So I didn't accompany Hank, who ended up on the squad, and now Stephanie was debriefing us on the situation. Bomb makes it sound really bad, I mean it was bad to have any weapon in camp, and on a raid night... c'mon man. It put us all in danger, from it inadvertently exploding in camp, to if it actually made it to the bridge, who knows what type of retaliation we'd be facing. They were doing so much to peaceful citizens already, if they had the clearance to snuff out a violent uprising, I don't even want to imagine what they would be capable of. You think they haven't wiped out villages bigger than ours before? For money. But this wasn't really a "bomb", it was a "gasoline bomb", which from the best that I could tell was a single molitov cocktail. Still not good. Still super dangerous. Could easily have gone wrong in so many ways. Now we had to not only worry about dapl attacks, but we had to be concerned with stuff like this. He wasn't Rosebud, I'd seen him once before in Oceti, but never here. So he'd come over and borrowed a tipi just for this. Thanks guy. Thanks for keeping this out of your backyard and in the middle of ours. Thanks for being brave enough to make this weapon and risk your entire family's life, yet too scared to do it in the camp that has the most chance of being raided. Valiant indeed.

This is the one story that I considered omitting from my tale. Does it cast water protectors in a negative light? Does it give opponents enough fuel to openly squash our movement with brute force? Does it not represent what thousands of people were called here for? Or maybe it does. People were frustrated. Put yourself in the shoes of a Standing Rock Sioux Tribe member, standing up for the water that your family needs to survive. Out here all year, since may, and wise enough to see that everything around you is just a distraction while the America Corporation does whatever they want. They've given you a bridge to burn nervous energy on and let you feel like you've done something, but no matter what you could possibly do out there, it was useless, it wasn't anywhere near the drilling. Not even a bomb would stop the machine for a minute. Some were tired of praying. It wasn't working, a bunch of elders and hippies sitting around wishing that it would all be ok. Hadn't that been the strategy all those other times that they'd experienced the united states steal and murder without justice. It was time for the warriors to stand up.

The Standing Rock Sioux were the only ones in the history of America Incorporated to ever defeat the US government. This is where Sitting Bull was from. He led the tribe to defeat Custer and his army. They were scared of Sitting Bull. They were scared of the Lakota. They were scared of prayer. A few years later he was murdered, guess who, but that wasn't the worst of it. His people assembled at Wounded Knee to perform the ghost dance, another powerful prayer meant to restore their way of life pre-invasion. Of course we were scared. We'd seen the power of prayer. We'd experienced first hand the connectedness these people had with the land. The only option was to destroy them and destroy the land. So the US government, what was left of Custer's old unit actually, massacred 300 unarmed men, women, children, elders and medicine people in prayer. Slaughtered them. Wiped out an entire frozen village of peaceful, prayerful humans who were just looking out for their mother. Only difference was that there was no facebook back then.

And now is the age of the prophesied seventh generation. It's time to go back to war. Are you kidding me? Are you freakin kidding me? You think you can win a war against that? We have plywood shields and they have the most sophisticated and overfunded military in the history of global domination. And you're gonna go out there not believing in prayer? Prayer and love is the only way we're gonna win. End of story. We can't fight dapl with dapl. They're better at that game than we ever will be. But they have no defense mechanism for our vibrations. For our love. We know they're scared of it, and they've been able to scare us enough to pick off some of our strong spiritual warriors one at a time, but once we can unite an entire generation and stand up to their evil with pure love, they will crumble at our feet. So I decided to include this night's event, not to show what one water protector had resorted to when he lost hope, but to show the unity that the rest of us all shared in our peaceful plan to save the world. We believed, and we saw it working, we may not have stopped dapl yet, but we were inspiring a worldwide movement. Saving the world takes time sometimes. Patience. It's a virtue.

So Stephanie was currently distracting the bombtender at her place, womanly charms, song and dance routine, I don't know, I'm a don't ask don't tell kinda guy. Meanwhile, Hank was grabbing the incendiary device and disposing of it, hopefully in a not-so-explosive manner. Stephanie needed some back up, the mixologist might not be so happy when she tells him the deal and that he had to go, so she made an excuse to come let James know and we grabbed a few hands as we came up with a plan. We weren't going to turn him into BIA, not tonight. That's what Smokey had told us to do to anyone causing trouble of this caliber, but we were still expecting company. Why fuss with the police when the national guard is coming over? We'd drive him to the casino. There were plenty of water protectors with rooms there this week, so finding a floor spot somewhere should be easy enough. We'd decide later about his re-admittance to Rosebud, it wasn't really looking that good though, he kinda made a pretty big no-no.

I was stationed at the grill. Hey, the grill was a good spot. It wasn't like being stuck in the kitchen tent and staring into a dirty green canvas. The grill was just feet from the mess hall door, which had me running interference on any wandering souls. It looked straight across main street, the river and into Oceti, plus you could see past the woodpile and almost to Echo3. This all happened off walkie, no need to broadcast any of this to the daplbots, not a tactical asset for us, but at least it kept everyone as in the dark as me. Bill had actually given me a walkie, it didn't transmit, but at least I could hear what was going on. I used it one night, then cut it off so that I could sleep through the mindless chatter and never picked it up again. I was always where I needed to be.

Everyone was right where they were supposed to be, in position for the first deportation that I'd witnessed, except for the evictee himself. He had realized that the jig was up and made a break for it. Quite likely headed for Hank and the firewater bottle in question. Wendy approached from the East, unaware of anything unusual, other than living in a blizzard and waiting for a government invasion while we grilled brats. I small talked her as I flipped the sausages and got her on her way inside, just as I saw them loading the perp into the car, way friendlier than the dapl send off committee of legend. And that was it. That was that. It was what it was. It is what it is. It is. Is. And I never once spoke of it again, to anyone, until right now.

There is no room for a campaign of violence in the framework of belief. But what about the crusades, they weren't just wars fueled by greed in the name of all that is good and holy. The one true way to live. That was a joke, of course they were. The native people of america didn't even have a word for religion, they saw no need to make it a separate thing than all of the rest of everything around them. No word for nature either, it's all the same thing. They saw the great spirit in all of this miraculous planet, felt its vibrations, why would they want to separate God and nature? God is nature. There was no religion because they walked in prayer, all of the planet was their sacred holy land, their creator, no need to section it off from the rest of their lives. That would just be silly, it was what their lives were made out of.

That's where organized religion messed up. They knew the power of believing, they didn't know exactly what to believe in, but they'd seen first hand the power of positive vibrations. When you pray with love in your heart, you can manifest goodness into your life, it doesn't matter which doctrine you follow. There are many ways to build a fire. That's why all of the world's religions have such devout followers, they can feel it working, so their god must be the one true God.

Of course, it was only after money that the gods started getting so jealous of one another. Once governments got a hold of religion. They borrowed parables from the earliest recordings of so-called intelligence and tried to build a construct that showed people how to believe. The problem was that none of them could tell what the fables were trying to get them to believe in, the moral of the story didn't line up with their way of life, so they didn't even see the point. They just kept inventing new things to believe in, like the man-made "hell" and a convenient monetary donation that will keep you out of it. All this in lieu of the one belief that every other living organism, ever, had shared. Maybe we could learn a thing or two if we had a little humility. If we admitted that maybe we didn't have it all figured out. If we'd only remembered that all dogs go to heaven.

The loosely structured belief systems left ample room for differing interpretations, pretty much all wrong, and also left room for malevolent forces to use religion as a way to wage war. Wars in the name of God, but ultimately for one purpose. Money. Ownership. Of land, food, animals and people. Most of us alive today can agree that owning another human is despicable and morally heinous. So why again is it ok to own and hold captive any other living creature?

The churches wanted their parishes to concern themselves with money, wanted them to pray about money and then of course wanted them to tithe their money. Whatever the church said was golden. The prayers and the belief and the positive vibrations were working in their own lives, so of course any new doctrine that the powers-that-be came up with must be strictly adhered to. Believed without question. Even when the government was the one controlling the masses. But that was all before we figured out how to separate church and state, so... Wait, when was that again? The more believers there were, the more money there was coming into the church and the more tax revenue its sister company, the state, brought in too. So it only makes sense to overpopulate the Earth. And none of the other animals have money or are straight white christian males, so I guess they don't get a vote either.

It is God's will that we procreate endlessly as we spread our seed over the globe, nevermind his will on all that other stuff, we'll just use science to circumvent the natural laws that we used to have to follow. Have large families please, it's God's way, plus you'll need their help running the farm. It's such an important thing that we'll even give you a tax credit per child. A government subsidy to grow our overpopulation... huh? And just to drive it home, we can use the church to demonize anything that might curb our population growth, you know, like birth control, abortions and homosexuality.

It's also God's way to spread his war mongering doctrine to all of the indigenous tribes of the world. They're living the wrong way. Worshiping the Earth and treating it as if it is responsible for all of the wonder in their lives. Heathens. We have to save them. It's just not right living day to day depending on some belief that you'll always have everything you'll need, that's no God we know. No, we'll teach you how to manipulate the system so that you have a surplus. You'll be above the natural laws that you've followed for millions of years, that's the one true way to God. By ignoring everything he's given us and taking it into our own hands. His world is broken. His greatest creation (us obviously) is of a flawed design. But we figured it out and we can fix you too. We must be right, just look at how fast we've successfully multiplied across every continent. In fact, after this winter wonderland, I might even be ready for a stint in antarctica.

Back here in north dakota, the Lakota people only had one or two children per tipihold for a long time. A practical practice since it is easier to raise two kids than nine out in these conditions, plus it promotes a stable population. If every two people only have two kids, then there's never any more people than there ever has been, it wasn't a law like they've tried to enforce in some countries, it was just a natural way of life that worked for millions of years. A population doesn't outgrow it's food supply, not for long anyway. Some species instinctively terminate pregnancies early based on lack of food supply, explains how easily some populations are maintained. We wouldn't know if our extremely adaptable human body was capable of a similar process because we haven't been without surplus for a long time.

We cultivate three billion pounds more wheat a year than we could possibly consume, also subsidized by uncle sam, and it's all Round Up Ready courtesy of Monsanto. It's genetically modified to have pesticides built into it, all of the wheat in the country. Which of course caused this gluten free hippie epidemic, turns out it's not so much an intolerance to gluten, they're actually allergic to Round Up. Gluten is an inflammatory, all of the cells in your body swell, which makes the possible symptoms wide ranging and easy to pretend they're not because of your beloved bread. Wheat is important to a destructive civilization, so important that we even put it on the back of the penny, that was the only coin those lower class farmers were ever going to see anyway. The invention of bread made for a shelf stable food supply which first enabled farther travel into barren lands.

Back when it was invented, money hadn't quite figured out that unhealthy food equals more profits, so the bread wasn't near as bad for us. There was a fermentation stage of the wheat processing which made it more digestible and before the industrialization of the wheat business removed all of the tradition, it was actually edible. Then the Round Up thing happened.

Gluten not only causes a plethora of physical ailments due to inflammation, it's real target is the brain. You have bacteria inside you. Good healthy bacteria that keep us healthy, until they become the collateral damage of antibiotics. You have ten times more bacteria cells in your body than human cells. You are mainly bacteria. There are two primary stomach bacterias, and one just loves gluten. It's the two bacterias that help digestion and the gluten loving variety breaks free way more calories than the other. Calories for you to absorb. So the more calories get turned into the less attractive parts of your body. It makes it so that even if you eat less and try to curb your weight gain, just a spoonful of gluten a day keeps your stomach acting up. Still not to the worst part yet. The "good" bacteria, the gluten free alternative, is directly linked to brain function. The more the pro-gluten bacteria's population grows due to food supply, the less gluten-free bacteria are able to live. And the dumber you get. Gluten makes your brain work slower and your body function at an all time low. All this from ingesting pesticides daily, who woulda thunk it? Definitely not someone on a gluten heavy diet.

No gluten in the hunter gatherer lifestyle though, or overpopulation, they always had the exact amount of participants in life that their ecosystem could sustain. Then the missionaries came through and taught them about the one true way to live. In constant expansion. No worries though, our government would come along soon enough and pretty effectively take care of their population boom.

But america was great, and I hear it's going to be great again soon. With western medicine, we pushed our life expectancy to an unnatural high. Survival of the all. We could end widespread disease. Sickness that used to plague our species by taking out the weakest immune systems and inadvertently making our collective stronger as a whole, simultaneously limiting the population growth that was the cause for most of the illnesses to begin with. We could now vaccinate our young for anything they might possibly encounter along their path, we believe in God of course, just not the diseases that he unleashed on the non-believers of the world. No child left behind. And just like in our inferior american education system, that policy is fundamentally flawed. Holding back the smartest to wait for the slowest to catch up, dumbs down the group as a whole. With education it works because the dumber we are, the less questions we ask about all the great things that we pay our country to do on our behalf, including whatever pineal gland inhibitors they've spiked those vaccines with just for S's and G's. But that's a whole other conspiracy in itself.

Not leaving sick children behind sounds like the ultimate in humanitarianism. Giving the weakest the same chance at a full and happy life as the strongest, I get it, everything that we've ever heard or felt about the concept screams that it is the good God fearing christian thing to do. Save all of humanity. Save the world. One sick and hungry breeder at a time. Except that humanity is the victim of its own undoing. Doomed to flatline. We've been beating diseases forever, before they could even gain much ground really, it turns out that this God given immune system of ours is pretty freakin amazing. Especially when we let nature select the best versions of itself as we fuel our systems with highly evolved localized foods. But we flatlined. Leveled off. We stopped evolving the ability to combat the still evolving viruses and bacteria and now we must rely on government provided artificial protection.

Every year there's a new strain of flu. It evolves every generation. Becomes resistant to our antibiotics, which also destroy the good immune boosting stuff. Get your shot now because you haven't naturally built antibodies against the ever changing disease because you always get the shot. I've never had one. Or the flu. And guess what? Biotics are good. They just sound good, like a necessary part of a healthy life. Biotics, heck yeah, can I have another. So antibiotics, well, no thanks. The diseases would never have even been able to make such a widespread impact on the abundant human population if we hadn't started the world's food distribution network. Let's get that disease spread all around up in it. Wait, so we made the strong sicker in order to feed the weak?

Just like how disease wasn't really a thing in america before america happened to it. We brought disease to the natives, they were susceptible to it because they hadn't evolved the immune systems to defeat illnesses born from colonized agriculture. They had been living in a natural way which allowed their bodies to be perfectly in-tune with their environment. Eating locally grown wild food naturally boosts your immune system to fight off locally grown wild illness. That's how it works. That's how a slowly evolved ecosystem of symbiotic partnerships works at least. How many natives from anywhere do you think suffer from seasonal allergies? Being allergic to your home? Why is such an insane concept simply unquestioned as commonplace? Well, science. Specifically, the chemistry of big pharmaceuticals. "We've got a pill for that." How lucky for our shareholders that there's so many sick people still kicking.

And when exactly did science start trying to "fix" the world? I thought that science was the observation of the natural world around us, not the artificial manipulation of the small fractions that we've figured out with complete abandon for unknown variables. But as long as we keep it under the same umbrella, then it must be ok. Observing natural laws now included trying to cheat those same laws. But we are natural, so anything that we do is natural, including trying to do the unnatural, it's only natural. Nature would say that if you live here, you should not get sick because of your surroundings, you should be the most comfortable when at home. Nature is an excellent host. Everything from the food most suited for our digestion, to herbal remedies just growing out of the ground, to the air not causing our throat to swell as we congest with mucus and limited breathing. No, that doesn't seem very advantageous for survival at all. Not survival of the fittest at least. Guess it doesn't much matter in the weakest survival scenario.

We already talked about mucus and autism, but an entire population with phlegm overload is sure to spawn a list of ailments related to excess gunk and reduced oxygen. Now that's gotta be rubbish, if that were true then we'd see an outburst of new diseases in modern times, like you know, asthma, ADD and about ninety kinds of cancer. But the results are inconclusive of course, due to all of the unknown variables like microwaves and toxic cell phone vibrations, genetically modified corn domination with a side dish of gluten, and... wait for it... yes, vaccines. Luckily, between all that stuff and the already underway turmoil that our planet is going through, if we can't find a way to reduce our population, the Earth will be happy to do it for us. Melting ice, rising waters, frequent earthquakes which cause tsunamis and volcanic eruptions, tornadoes, hurricanes, acid rain and eventually another ice age. That should be a pretty good start. Kinda glad I can start a fire with frozen wood now. Can you?

Honestly, we'll be lucky if we can even make it that long. We're pretty much out of food. We've been short for a long time, which is why we destroy so much in the name of human consumption. We have almost mastered the art of being consumers, which any economist will tell you is ok in their book. A blooming population of consumers is vital, without new customers, all industries fail, plus an ever-expanding workforce ensures cheap labor. Economics. The science of money. Looks like science just took a left turn. Now it includes the study of this made up thing that we pretend holds some kind of value. The only science about it is how many natural resources are forever destroyed to facilitate its printing.

Ask a child what we do if we run out of food, nine out of ten will answer "go to the grocery store." Cute. They're young and naive about how the world works. So what's everyone else's excuse. How many city dwellers really know where their food comes from? Certainly they realize that their concrete generation isn't quite self sustainable. No, but can't we just farm away another ecosystem in some less-hip state and truck it in, it's what we've been doing forever and it works great. Yeah, it'll burn gas to get here, which is bad, even we know that, but really it's the least ecological offense of this great city of ours, so no big. Plus, we'll be adding oxygen to the world by growing plants, duh. Less than the old forest did, but our pesticides will wipe out plenty of wildlife that would have just sat around breathing it all up, so I think it'll all work out. Simple economics. At least until we can't figure out how to frack another drop and we officially run out of oil to fuel the trucks, what was your backup plan for dinner again? Maybe we should have been working on a food pipeline instead.

Oh, yeah right, pish posh, all we've been talking about is a food surplus and billions of gallons of oil, like we're gonna run out of either anytime soon. If you think wars haven't already been waged for both, then we have a lot of catching up to do. I know, I said they were all about money, but I'm pretty sure that food and oil are pretty invested in the domination of our government, billions of dollars at stake with every bomb dropped.

Ever not quite understand why japan attacked us in WWII? Seemed like they should have just stayed out of the whole nazi thing. They were severely overpopulated and had insufficient fertile farmland, so they used germany's momentum to invade china and claim natural resources. Food. Soybeans mainly. Then that wasn't enough, so they continued their expansion to nearby pearl harbor, an island that we ourselves had stolen not that long ago, and I think we all know how well that worked out for them.

Actually, they seem to be doing pretty good now. They were overpopulated and then couldn't out-science what we had in store for them, which wiped out a huge chunk of their overgrowth and forced their strongest to rebuild in the face of radioactive adversity. Now they play our national pastime better than we do. Also fun to keep in mind that japanese americans didn't get a pass here either as our government locked them up into concentration camps. Not that long ago. They used a 9/11 style terrorist attack to strip citizens of their civil liberties, it happens after every national tragedy, even the ones that weren't planned by our government. Get this though, those camps still exist, are currently maintained by the government and are sitting there ready for new guests for some unknown reason...

To be fair though, we did send them plenty of food as they rebuilt their unsustainable civilization. It's kind of our thing. And why is it our thing? Why are we even a thing? America was sought out and colonized for the expansion of humankind. Simply put, that means that europe was running out of food. We needed to find an untapped cornucopia of groceries to continue our ecological takeover. Then of course we could send money back to europe to settle our account. We sure found the right place, a vast land with many different climates and habitable zones. Only snag is there are already a few tenants. No snag here, we can just write a deed, raise the rent and push them into the run down projects. Concentrate them into camps.

And so began the gentrification of the US which still plagues lower income neighborhoods as the hipsters make them popular and then bankers buy them up. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Oh right... this is your home, and has been for endless generations, even before the hipsters thought it was cool, well, I kinda have this piece of paper that says that it's not, so... You'd think the government, who regularly subsidizes patriotic contributions to our population, might have been there to look out for them. Turns out that those new condos bring in way more tax revenue though, and everyone knows that's what it's all about. So the rich expand into their homes and they have to expand farther out of town, pushing urban sprawl into the small remainder of the uncivilized. Do you see the problem yet?

Every four days, the human population grows by 1,000,000. Repeat that. There are a million additional people every four days, not a million born while some others die, no, a cool million plus enough to make up for however many departed, are born every four days. We have to feed 250,000 additional mouths every day. And house them too. Luckily, we figured out how to build up. We built up alright. To an extra terrestrial visitor, our civilization would look like a disease upon the Earth, a cancerous build up that's parasitic nature was destroying its very host. We're one of those brain parasites though, we're not happy with just sucking up resources from vital organs, no, we have to take control of the host itself and force it to work for us. The earth is our Edgar suit and we're bleeding it dry as it plummets to its death. We're so deep in there that we don't even see it coming. Divide and conquer. Multiply and conquer. Doesn't matter, as long as there's conquering we'll be happy. Even if it means we'll blow ourselves up. Us however, the water protectors, the day savers of legend, had managed to not blow ourselves up this night.

After more meat, cards, music, snacks, laughs, dear dapls and late night pie, the raids were over. Next day everyone returned, the kitchen was still half outside in a pile and guess what? The kitchen tent was still there. It stayed there for weeks. Freakin dapl. I had this new feeling about the kitchen, I had begun feeling a sense of pride and ownership of the old kitchen before, maybe not ownership but, but something. Not in competition with Harry, he was in charge, but with the rest of camp maybe. Then the bridge days happened and all of a sudden it was all put into perspective. What had I come for? How basic of a meal could I throw together to facilitate heading out? How being in charge of dinner might get in the way of the next action. It almost started to feel like a burden, almost.

Then the move humbled me. I was still a head chef, but the chat with Smokey and then the rest of the move unfolding was taken to heart as a lesson in humility. Now the kitchen was in the mess hall, a public space, the most public in fact, and people could now dig through all of the stuff that we used to be able to keep semi hidden. The only way that I would be able to get through this new arrangement was to tell myself, and then truly believe, that I always had everything I needed. I wouldn't always have exactly what I wanted, what I thought I needed for a dish, but it always worked out. Every time. I grew as a cook and adapted to so many challenges. I was in my element. In the zone. I was doing it. And now in here, I would be able to spread my garlic trick to more of my family while I got to spend more time with the crew. The crew also now included, although for just one last meal before she once again departed, the one and only, Suzy. I loved working with her and I loved her reaction when she realized that we smoke in here now. A bowl made its way back to us midday and she was in shock. What? We eat meat and we smoke weed. #nodapl.

It would also give me a chance to see which people spend all day inside by the fire, annoying me with endless chatter while others come in and out between jobs... Humility. Patience. Understanding. It had its downsides, but I really did love working in here. I could normally make some quiet time for myself, which was the biggest flaw to the design. Sometimes the narrow aisle of cookstoves would get cluttered with hungry diners, nosy nancys, snooping sallys and mainly friends who wanted me to make them laugh. Guess I can't be too upset since I moved in and displaced their ecosystem. There used to be exactly enough room in here for all of them. Funny how that works. And all in the name of food too.

One buddy that I'd started getting closer to was Ziggy. Ziggy Zag, he'd been in my first two sweats at Marty's and we'd become friends in passing in the mess hall. We'd talk about music and keyboards and good times. He was funny. He had hosted a radio show back home for the last few years and was a street musician slash local personality, not an unfamiliar lifestyle to my own. Before that, he was on the street, under a bridge, he had a few stories to say the least. He'd broken his glasses, so for a couple of weeks he was squinting and still blind. I of course liked to throw in little jabs, "Hey Ziggy, did you see that?"

He had stopped by the old kitchen a few times, I had offered him a piece of meat once, so he knew what was up if you mill around the kitchen long enough. Don't feed the animals. Visitors got snacks, helpers got more. Dried pears, 92% dark chocolate, goat cheese, doughnuts, you gotta snack when you cook. Tina was big on the kitchen snacks too. She wanted to save them for the staff only. Kitchen perk. Often things that she had personally bought, so not random donations and it was all cool, but I always loved to put some super tasty snack in the hand of someone just stopping by. It felt good to give. Oh, but do you mind filling up the water jugs while you're here? We had five or six 5 gallon water jugs, I'd have to go fill them occasionally, but most of the time we could get some work thirsty protector on it, especially once we were in the mess hall. Hey, maybe it wouldn't even freeze in here.

Now that I was handicapped accessible, Ziggy would be a regular intruder. It was our kitchen, definitely so in here, but Ziggy was trying to intrude. In a good way. He would always try to get between me and the food and pretend like he didn't know what was going on, so of course I messed back with him. Two eyes. He'd worked in kitchens before, not that I had, but we both knew that it's basically a nonstop initiation hazing ritual at best. We were both here on spiritual journeys, he'd sweat over sixty times at camp and we were growing and moving past our old ways, but we couldn't help but mess with each other. I had been doing so good. So much more reserved than my real world counterpart. Then Smokey, the boss, started a back and forth with me. Then James, jr boss. And now Ziggy, and this one got good. He was the ultimate burn out and somehow a comical genius that crafted such eloquent jokes that there's honestly no way that he could have possibly understood them. I'd also soon see his incredible musicianship, watching him play was like being at a proper concert, between song banter that was quick and clever and top notch songwriting. More to come.

Ok, real quick, do this right now. Put you hand below your waist, spread your fingers, touch the tip of your index finger to your thumb, like an ok symbol and look at it. If you've ever been a middle school boy then you know the game, if not, then you're probably better off for it. Ziggy started it up, he was really good... but I was better. I was the king of breaking the ring and just as innovative at tomfoolery as I was at wake and baking. Speaking of, I wanted to make biscuits today, so easy really, and he was in the way so I put him in charge of making the dough. A pretty standard recruitment technique. In those same post raid days, I got another new kitchen crew regular, Stephanie had stopped in the day after that thing happened and we both thought that some chill downtime helping me would do her some good. Wait? Is that what my job is? Chill downtime?

We had a great time. We both had a twisted sense of humor and it often revolved around eating weird stuff. This one day we were having deer steaks. I'd found a few bags of frozen meat labeled eight point buck, but couldn't tell how it was cut. We thawed it out and hoped for the best, and it was. So many great steaks. I marinated them while Stephanie was cooking up some crazy baby spinach and kale salad. I told her a long list of possible ingredients, berries, nuts, fruits, cheeses, items, things and she opted for all of it. It was pretty excellent. I cooked most of the steaks and we served them, but we kept a bowl to the side to grill late night. Todd also liked to come bother me until I'd have to throw him out, now that I think about it, his arm was in a sling, geez, america should have some type of disability protection program. What am I, an animal? Yes.

I'd first hung out with Todd at Echo3 on his first night back to camp in December. He'd been here off and on for most of the duration of camp and wore his heart on his sleeve. He'd fallen in love here, his first love really, and then he'd had his first heartbreak. Poor fella. He was a lot younger than her and while their paths might have crossed here, they were definitely in two different places in life. I'm good at fireside listening and offered my own experiences with love and letting go of love. Of understanding that we're all on our own path and being grateful for whatever time we do get to spend together. That each love prepares you for the next, teaches you what you really want in a partner and shows you what you can work on in yourself. If you let it. Or you can wallow in self pity if that makes you feel better. I don't see how it could, it's a pretty low vibration. The real kicker is that you already know the girl, but I'm not telling :p

He taught me stuff that night too, about fire, I thought I already knew my way around it pretty good, but I never stop learning. He showed me how to build a fire that doesn't smoke, a lifesaver at the often smoked out shack type thing. This was pre-smokeshifter, but even that didn't do much if the fire wasn't in order. Airflow. It's all about air. The smoke pours out when it's smoldering without it, so as long as the bottom is open enough and enough oxygen gets in there to make it all actually burn, then you're in the non smoking section. Where there's fire, there's not necessarily smoke. I'd known about the tipi fire building technique since boy scouts, never done it in an actual tipi until here, but I could build a fire. Now I know where it came from, and why, it hardly smokes, even with the crappy wood. He may have been a lot younger than me, but I could still learn plenty from him, he'd learned from some of the best. He was Denise's son. Cool. Had no idea until more recently. And now he was in a sling because he'd slipped on the ice during one of the raid nights. Score one for dapl I guess?

Anyway, he came back into the kitchen to bother me and I tried to get him with the old raw deer steak trick. He wanted an exclusive taste test so I pointed to the bowl of marinating steaks and told him that they might still be a little pink in the middle. They were brown from marinade and the lights were low, so he went for it. He grabbed one bare handed and was headed to his mouth, but I couldn't do it, I had to clue him in. His response? He bit into it anyway and then devoured the whole steak as he stuffed most of it into his mouth in one bite. Stephanie and I stared at him and then each other in awe, mouths agape, WTF?

Farm raised meat is what's bad for you raw, that's where the diseases come from. Livestock being inhumanely crammed into stalls and cages. Overpopulated themselves. Being fed none other than our national crop and having their biotics wiped out to combat the ailments that our ridiculous corn policy puts into their bodies. Oh, but I only buy grass fed and free range. Great, and if you do your research, you can get meat that actually is of the highest agricaliber, but don't simply trust labels. The requirements to the claims are pretty minimal. Like, they don't exist. There is no federally administered food policy on the matter. Manufacturers can say whatever they want. I guess they still get the freedom of speech that's being stolen from us. Even the voluntarily released protocols by the supposedly pet friendly farms, well, let's just say they're not quite the hilton.

Like "free-range" chickens only need a small outdoor area available to range freely in, two square feet to be exact, which many don't even use because all the corn is inside the congested barn. Grass fed cows are without a doubt better than the far from natural corn fed beef, which I've actually heard touted as a good thing before. The corn propaganda machine once again deserves a high five. But there are varying methods of grass feeding. Grass is eaten by cows, natural, I'll buy it, but cows didn't evolve in fences and neither did the grass. It's healthy for the grass to get chomped, it promotes new growth and makes the blades stronger. Hmm, seems like a familiar theme in nature. But the grass needs time to regrow, two weeks, that's how long it takes for it to absorb enough vibrations to become healthy again and ready to be rechewed, which not so coincidentally is when it's back at its full nutritional value for the cows. So beef from cows that are allowed to overgraze one patch of grass, don't have the same nutrients as those that were rotationally farmed.

So rotational farming is interesting, a farm is split into sections and the livestock are moved around in sequence. The cows habitate a section for a while and eat the grass down, then they move to a new area. The cow patties chill for a few days until worms have started decomposing them, then the chickens come in to eat the worms while dispersing the lawn damaging manure and simultaneously spreading their own nutrient rich feces as fertilizer for the grass. Then a week later the cows come home. Pretty neat. Certainly better for the animals and the grass than conventional farming, and close enough to a natural order of things that they don't even need to give them the antibiotics that the other commercial facilities require. But it's still a farm. It's still controlling a large amount of the ecosystem just to feed one species, unless you count the cows, chickens and worms. It takes over 2,000 gallons of water and two acres to raise a single cow. Those numbers are insane. How can this be sustainable? Equally insane is the notion that we can stop agriculture.

I've been very opinionated about it thus far, it has ruined the world. What it didn't break directly has fallen apart due to money and money only became a thing once the agricultural revolution created a surplus. Early on, food was even used as the first currency; salt, cocao beans and grains. Then that became too cumbersome to carry around everywhere so we had this great idea to create more manageable objects that could be assigned a monetary value. So the first money wasn't backed by gold, it was backed by corn. Now it's all starting to come together, corn's been running the show from the very beginning. Think about it, why would we ever need money if everyone always had exactly what they needed? It wasn't until we started artificially creating extra that we needed an artificially valued proxy. But how can we actually stop growing food? With our crazy population problem we're pretty dependent on farms, and unless we can fix that ourselves soon, we won't have to wait long for the inevitable lash back that our mother is preparing to handle it herself. We may think that we've outsmarted the system, but we haven't evolved that level of intelligence yet, and since we decided that we were done with that silly evolution mess, we never will. The house always win.

In the meantime, we need to find a way to satisfy our needs while living in harmony with the rest of life on Earth. It's like we're the worst kind of roommates, raiding the fridge for everyone else's food because we already ate all of ours. But hey, at least we paid rent. I don't have all the answers. The minute that I think I do, I quit learning. I quit evolving. But I know one certainty, we cannot use the dapl scheme of eminent domain to seize land as our own and evict all of those that only want to continue their traditional way of life. We can't build fences. They don't make for good neighbors. Especially when your rows of cornfields happen to cross migration routes that have been used since before we invented the word migration. Or corn. We have to share the food supply with our brothers and sisters. You don't own the land. You don't own the water. You don't own the sun. So you certainly don't own that corn, if anything, it owns you. You can't hog all the food and then murder all those that simply want their fair share. Can't shoot a rabbit for nibbling on a carrot growing in his backyard. Can't poison an aphid because they have an affinity for artichokes. It'll be tough without humility. All that hard work and precious money and some rogue rodent gets the spoils. It wasn't their idea for you to do all that work in their abundant ecosystem. They're still part of the ninety-nine percent majority that live the carefree lifestyle that we opted out of. Carefree except anywhere that humans have laid eyes on of course. It is their right as citizens of our planet who live in a good way, to eat whatever manifests itself on their path. They believed. It's not their fault that you didn't.

The thing is, biodiversity leads to a more plentiful food supply, so inviting them over for dinner helps to fill the world with food, not just their own bellies. The more animals that are eating a vegetable, the farther the seeds will spread into different habitats with different climates and nutrients. The world will not only be cultivated on its own, but we'll get to see so many new varieties of mind boggling foods that we'd have never been able to come up with in some genetics laboratory. How do you think all of our amazing produce came to be in the first place?

Destroying ecosystems and replacing them with concrete and farms (because you can't have the first without the second) stops not only the evolution of humans, but the plants that we artificially grow also slow way down on their path. Sure, any 4h club can select the strongest members of a crop and harvest their seeds, and do that for a few generations and you can witness evolution first hand. Artificial evolution. Evolution based on criteria that an organism from a completely different species, genera, family, class, phylum, order and kingdom for some reason deems important. Admittedly, we are actually pretty smart, even if we don't have much common sense. We select the biggest, tastiest, healthiest plants, much the way that nature would. More desirable plants survive because animals eat more of them, that's how fruits and vegetables evolved. Then we came along and tried to perfect God's other mistakes.

Funny thing though, it seems that all of the profit maximizing traits have accelerated faster than the more nutritious. And then we baby them. Survival of the all. Species don't evolve in the easiest, most habitable conditions, not in a hurry at least. Evolution happens in the face of adversity. Nature doesn't provide artificial light, irrigation pumps and chemical fertilization. We need every weak little plant to produce, gotta pay the bills somehow. And corn pays the most per acre, it's a huge success and through our interfering and then genetic modification of its dna, we've managed to up its bushels per acre from 30 to 120, money in the bank baby. Profit from overpopulation at its finest. But it hasn't naturally had to mutate and evolve to survive any harsher conditions than its suggested planting zone. Sure, corn has changed over the years, we've been over all that nonsense, but we only selected with one thing in mind.

Back to the cage free tomatoes of lore, they never needed cages in the wild, nope, they were perfectly evolved to hold the weight of their delicious fruit vegetables. They were smaller of course, about half size, but once man figured out how to domesticate plants, the economists said that bigger was better. We'll sell them by the pound, so lets pump them up as big as we can get them, then we'll chemically fertilize just to fatten them up even more. If they only sold vegetables by the nutrient instead of by the pound...

So turns out we actually did force tomatoes into cages, but now science is starting to realize that maybe we made a mistake and screwed some stuff up. They are starting to breed the still existent wild varieties back in with the domesticated ones, it seems that mother nature's pest deterrents kept the white flies away organically, but when we dumbed them down we had to start spraying them with pesticides. Luckily those pesticides are useful in the real world too, at least once we figured out that we could spray them on other countries and call it nerve gas. But we'd never poison our own people, hard working americans, which makes it hard to explain why today's industrial fertilizer contains nuclear waste.

There is a legal limit of parts per million of the toxic sludge that can be spread over a certain amount of land, and what better way to spread it out than to have the working class do all the dirty work. Of course, after a few years of build up, it exceeds the suggested daily value of nuclear waste and our genetically modified food gets a good dose of cancerous mutation to boot. No worry on evolution's sake though, at least not with the varieties of Monsanto seeds that do not produce viable offspring. So now you have to buy a new batch of gmo corn every year because it doesn't naturally spread its seed and send its strongest mutations out into the world, man, they really do have this whole money thing down to a science.

Seed companies do understand mutation and evolution and new varieties do appear, but humans wouldn't know a good mutation if it bit them in the dna. We call mutations deformities in our own bloodline, hiding them with expensive surgery or treatment to make them more "normal". Normal sounds like boring. Weak. Devoid of any new ideas. An endless variety and supply of food dispersed throughout the land sounds like a wonderful fairytale garden. I think I've heard of it before actually, but of course in our current vibration of reality it will never work, and for one reason alone. Yep. Money.

Money is the root of all evil, see, that's just how connected it is to food, it's the root. The beginning. Of industrial agriculture at least. No way. No one would try to sell us what has just naturally been everyone's for all of time. And who would even buy it anyway? That would be like selling the Earth itself. Or her water. Speaking of, Nestle or Kraft or any of the megacorporation food conglomerates probably wouldn't be that into a vast and free food source. Not only would their partially hydrogenated, mechanically separated, high fructose, rounded up gluten sales plummet, but their pharmaceutical divisions would take a serious nose dive too.

Just like the corn fed cows, the more artificially we feed our overpopulation, the sicker we get with newly evolved diseases. Too bad our science is better at creating stronger diseases than humans. If we just feed humans a naturally diverse supply of locally grown nutrients evolving hand in hand with us, the plagues of the world will all but disappear. Good thing they're all in the garden bed together. Big food, big pharmaceutical, big government, big money, big corporations, big problems. So they start the FDA, which ensures that corporate food suppliers have every advantage over smaller ones and guarantees that all-natural herbal remedies will never surpass the sales of oxycontin. They turned natures long proven track record of healing plants into a joke. Some california hippie mumbo jumbo. Herbalist, ha. Good thing too, if they hadn't, we'd probably be plagued by elderberry rehab facilities and st johns wart clinics on every corner.

No, it's not safe to consume food or drugs that haven't been touched by a laboratory. How can we be sure that it's safe? Anything could have happened to it out in the... the... wilderness. An animal could have even gone number two on it, aaaaah. Guess what? That's natural. It's safe. Animals have been pooping as long as they've been eating, well, shortly thereafter. Their fertilizing feces is an important part of the growth of nutrient rich food. Our very own poop used to be natural, instead of this toxic sludge we've taught our bodies to produce with a new recipe of inferior ingredients. But at least we've evolved to be able to process the pink slime filler of our beloved fast food industry, especially since it is the only affordable option for many. If you thought it silly to trade our most precious dollar bill for what is literally our God given right of food, now they've got us buying stuff that is only a fraction of actually edible content and the rest is filled with empty calories. Now, I admittedly don't know much about food, I was just winging it, feeling right, but I know for a fact that I never used the word "empty" in any menu description.

Eh, they can't be all that bad, most of the household names even have large humanitarian non-profits. Non-profit, so not fueled by that money stuff that I keep going on about, not so maniacal, they're good doers, saving all of humanity so that we can ignore the harm they do a million customers at a time. See you again in four days. Yep, the Ronald McDonald House has been there to save so many sick kids, allowing them to live long reproductive lives even though they couldn't overcome the adversity of their environment and would have otherwise not been fit enough to survive. Good samaritans indeed. Good old fashioned sunday best church goers. Saving every soul they can to help build a weakened population of... ding ding ding, I'll take consumers for two thousand. Two thousand, as in a ton, as in we consume over five thousand tons of food every second. Humans eat nearly twelve million pounds of food every single second of every day. And then we throw away another six million.

We're so well indoctrinated in the art of consuming, that we can consume far more than we'd ever be able to eat. We misappropriate so much food. We have to. All that surplus has to go somewhere. Can't let it go to waste. Little Timmy you better eat your happy meal or we'll send it to the starving children in china. So he eats it, and eats another tomorrow, and in a world filled with poverty and food deserts, Timmy somehow balloons up and joins the childhood obesity epidemic. How many guesses do you need to figure out what evolution has to say about that? Here's a hint, I've never heard of survival of the fattest. Obesity may not jive with the science of evolution, but it's a perfect fit with the science of capitalism. Simple economics. A market of consumers who eat more, wear more and are sick more... yes, please, thank you and may we have another. Million. Your transaction will be processed in four days.

No, escape from predators would certainly be tougher unless you could get big enough to scare them all off, but with natural laws running the show there would have been no surplus to begin with. Our population would perfectly match our food supply, as if by scientific design, and we'd just simply eat better. No high fructose (corn), no xantham gum (corn), no dextrose (corn), no citric acid (corn), no MSG (corn) or any of the non-corn fake foods that we've come up with out of sheer boredom, jk, it was greed. Plenty of organically growing food everywhere, so not only would we be surrounded by the most nutritious environment, so would the meat we eat. What do you suppose came first, the steak or the gas grill. We evolved eating raw meat. Organically fed raw meat. Animals that had eaten whatever felt right, their instinctual favorite menu items, and roamed the planet in the same carefree lifestyle as the rest of us. Not that there wasn't ever something that made us sick, but we evolved side by side with our brothers and sisters, so everything was good in the hood. But it still threw me and Stephanie for a loop.

We kept waiting for him to stop eating it, spit it out and have a laugh. Nope. He was loving it. Made it look so delicious. So obviously we did the only thing one could do in a situation like that. We ate some raw deer. It was most excellent. I also got her to eat some raw onion. Maybe not as epic, but a harder sell than the meat had been. I of course did it with her, I'm not an animal or anything. I'd been wanting to make a batch of onion tea but couldn't find any ginger since the move. Figured everyone was staying up all night in the cold waiting on dapl for three nights, they could all use a super boost of feel good juice.

I'd started to notice a campwide fatigue setting in today, but like I said, we were all exhausted, except that even those that went to the hotel seemed affected by it too. But we were in a blizzard in january and although this place brought out the best in all of us, we couldn't expect to be our best everyday. So onions. We'd had such a big bag of ginger, but I wasn't in the business of hoarding supplies and foodstuff, so we used most of it in tea, honey butter and any other fancy ticklers that came to mind. The last few pieces that thawed out were a weird mushy consistency, so someone threw them in the compost pile. They were probably still ok, I'd have just refrozen them, but it was all good, I had everything I needed. I did find some ground ginger that I could use if I had to, but I didn't really want to have to start messing around this late in the game.

A protector that I didn't know well, Tia, invited me to go with her to a kitchen that had shut down in Oceti, they were liquidating their pantry before dapl could. Wonder if they had gotten a similar tent repossession and didn't have the unity to recover? To fall with style. To believe in survival. She lived in a little log cabin tiny house that was the very first dwelling as you pull in off of 1806. 1 Rosebud Ln. She was notorious for taking care of Echo3 with snacks and cigs, and american spirits at that. She'd already gone over and gathered some stuff, but it's hard to know what to get for someone else's menu. Like, she didn't know that we already had two pallets of rice and one of flour.

I got up early that day, so early, early like ten am, and we rode over for a supermarket sweep. The pantry we were at was about like ours, mainly canned goods, lots of beans, peas and plenty of corn. There was some other cool stuff, that's what I was mainly looking for. I didn't have much of a list, just the always needed baking powder for frybread and my eyes were peeled for ginger. So I just looked for interesting ingredients that could inspire something fun. I found six cases of "tortas", I thought they'd be bread for the classic mexican sandwich, awesome, but they were sweet thin crispy wafers, either way I had six cases and that should be enough to do something with them. Tapioca balls for camp style bubble tea, cases of cashew butter and more evaporated milk because I had been using it a lot. I grabbed as much as I could find of the top shelf generic "baking mix" available on the reservations, right alongside the rest of the inferior food replecements that they're forced to try to sustain themselves with. It's what I'd been using for the newly blossoming biscuit craze taking over the anti-takeover of america, should be getting a check in the mail for that one soon.

We were getting our pile of stuff ready to cart to the car and I glanced down to the dirt floor beside a shelf, was that... is it... it is... it was a single piece of dirt floor ginger. The exact dose for a batch of tea. Just gotta believe. And pay attention. I also found a gadget that I'd been trying to manifest since my very first day in the kitchen, with Jacob and all that salmon, we needed a commercial table mounted can opener. So I guess special order manifestations take two to four weeks for delivery.

Funny story, I was stashing the ginger up high so I wouldn't lose it, Stephanie was right there so I asked her to remind me later, once I'd inevitably forgotten that I stuck it on top of the wire bakers rack at the end of the table. As I placed it up there, it rolled and plinko'd down, bouncing haphazardly off of each shelf and plopped into the not so appetizing compost bucket. We just looked at each other. And then cracked up for a solid five. It had been so perfect, we would break out into laughter for the next couple days anytime we recalled the scene. I of course picked it out and wiped it off, we'd served worse.

Stephanie was fun for sure and we were getting pretty tight, she was one of my absolute favorite musicians to listen to during late night jams. There was so much good music, really high quality stuff, and I would know, I used to make my living by knowing the difference. Now I make my living by living.

I was trying my hardest to manifest a keyboard, even just a toy from a kids donation box. It was in Daria's book, Johan knew and Henry was gonna try, but so far nothing. I'd also been trying to manifest a chess board, I guessed that my exceptional family had some strong players and it seemed like a fun way to pass all that extra time that we had, but no chess board surfaced. Maybe a sign that I had more important things to be doing with my time, such as, carve a chess set. Between steaks and cards during the raids, I had picked up a new hobby in my free time, I'd sit around the stove and take in all the beautiful vibrations as I just whittled away. A rook, a bishop and the most impressive knight, except that I had passed forward the pocket knife that I'd found in the igloo and hadn't gotten another since. But I was the kitchen manager, so I used a kitchen knife. Not the best, for carving or for the knife, but it added a nice level of artisan authenticity. It would be an amazing set and you would be able to feel the love and energy that went into it, but I was a long way from having a finished set ready to bring to market. Not near as close as they were getting to a completed pipeline.

Oh yeah, they're still doing that, huh? Who even knows what the new administration has in store for us, the preparty had been crazy enough already. I stayed pretty far away from any outside news, although some of the inauguration day orders of business made it to my ear, like as the swearing-in was occurring, the climate change page was removed from the white house website. And the entire spanish language. So, cool, wonder what he's gonna do about us? He already revealed that he was invested in energy transfer partners. The new president was dapl. Whatever, his opponent probably was too, the whole thing has been messed up for a long long time. Like, since the beginning.
Step Twelve:

Beginning the next day, I noticed the campwide fatigue grow stronger. A cloud of lethargy set in. I had a hard time waking up. The whole camp was sleeping in, breakfast was served at two, sure we were tired and had earned a reprieve, but all of us at once? It was like we just couldn't wake up, even with Ziggy's new role as extreme camp coffee aficionado. We were serious about our java. It would end up almost being a competition. Who could create the strongest version of the strange brew. I'm competitive. Always have been. Especially if I'm over-caffeinated. I've often considered it a fault when pointed out to me, I've even worked on curbing it, but the instinct to compete is far more natural than anything else we occupy our time with. There's even a law about it. A natural law. Not one of those absurd man-made laws trying to make sense out of the world that man decided to be an outlaw in. Laws to try to understand the right way to live. Trying to recover the long forgotten order that all other living things just feel in every cell of their bodies. Every vibration.

So what do the man-made laws say about competition? Well, they try to seem like they're helping humans over dollars, which is honestly more than most laws even attempt. They don't allow an industry to be controlled by a monopoly, one company that runs everything with no checks and balances. So how is the America Corporation not a monopoly again? Nevermind that, let's stick to oil, just like it's gonna stick to all the fishies and birdies that it touches. Instead of one company owning all of the oil business, because that would be wrong, we have a handful of separate entities that individually spread destruction with plausible deniability and still work together to gouge prices and lay pipe. Zoom out a little and see that there is very clearly a monopoly at play and they have a get out of jail free card. Oil is the monopoly. Oil is running the show. They're not in competition, they're in cahoots. Deciding new technologies, getting oil lobbyists appointed to head up environmental committees, installing leaky pipes throughout the world to up its global distribution and combining their private security budget to over $20,000,000,000 annually. It's not that cheap to buy the national guard I guess.

This is nothing new though, oil's been buying the country since the 40s, well buying science at least, and science is God, and God blessed america, so yeah, they own us. Documents have come out, through the investigation by the NY attorney general into Exxon Mobil, that show that they knew about carbon emissions way back then. Then they spent their yearly budgets on shaping science to work with their business plan instead of the other way around, hence the fraud allegations. Then in the 70s, there's documentation that they had the available technology to reduce emissions, but they already owned science, so this time they invested all of their disposable income into the marketing department. They hired the same PR specialists that worked for big tobacco. Makes since really, who better to sell a product that is highly addictive and toxic to all that it encounters? Just convince everyone that there's nothing to see here. We'll even sell them both at the same store, how convenient.

So oil bought their way to the top with an inferior product, but there are other competitors, it's just that the system is rigged against them. Solar, wind, water, bicycle, why you can even burn corn. Looks like the ultimate in plant evolution even loses to the petroleum monopoly. They control not only their own industry, but almost every other one too, as fuel prices fluctuate based on however much money they feel like making that day. I've figured it all out though. A new source of energy. Providing more vibrations per gallon than any other to date. To the point of people physically jittering. Ziggy's coffee.

I didn't closely follow the evolution of his technique, but I did lock in its latest adaptation. Never stop learning though. Big pot, cold water, half of a big tub of folgers and the trick was to put it in the cold water and then bring it to a boil. It would all sit on top for the longest time, it takes a few minutes to boil water remember. Sucked when Smokey came in to give me grief on having no coffee and I was an hour out from having a pot. A five gallon pot. "It's on the stove boss." The coffee on top will crack as the water starts to bubble and plate tectonics set in as pangea breaks apart into an eventual primordial ooze. Next secret, pour a little cold water in and it makes all the grounds fall to the bottom, it's Ziggy's secret so what do I care? Serve and enjoy. Or put a cup on the table for three minutes and charge a dollar extra for iced coffee. I'm starting to get the hang of this capitalism thing.

Thick, black, hot and strong... and the coffee was good too. So his mastery of the brew had earned him a shot in the much more complicated biscuit factory. I gave him a bag of newly re-upped on bakery mix and set him free. We weren't making them from scratch, we had a few times when Stephanie used the recipe from a bag of flour, but the premix stuff was actually pretty good. Especially if you add a little butter. So just water and mix, easy enough, I gave him vague ratios but we had plenty of both ingredients at the moment, so just do what feels right. Wing it. I don't use measuring cups anyway. I only occasionally checked on him and kept seeing the bowl get fuller as he had to comically add each ingredient back and forth to try to even out the mix. Loved it.

I never worried about a helper messing something up, we always pulled it off, and sometimes the happy accidents made for great inspiration. Serendipity. As long as you always do what feels right, as long as you're on your path, then everything is going to work out. It might not work out exactly like you thought it would, like you wanted, like you hoped for, like you prayed, but have faith. The energy of the everything, the great mystery, it's got this whole universe thing figured out. Your inner self is that same energy and can see outside of the constructs of space and time, a merely physical manifestation that allows us to feel. To experience. You are a spiritual being in a physical body, a body which inhibits the omnipresent qualities of our energy so that we may focus on the here and now, something we don't have out there in eternal bliss.

We only use 11% of our brains, and while the collective unconscious may be growing with more knowledge gained as a species, individually we're getting more shut off from ourselves, our true selves, our essence, our energy. Not just in the long term backwards evolution problem we've been going through since the dawn of civilization, but in a single lifetime of GMOs, fast food, flouridic water, soda, gluten, alcohol and all of the other mucus proponents that we've let science use to push us further from God. But that's already been happening for a long time in a different way.

As science evolved and explained the great mysteries, people started to believe in science over love. It's exactly how I fell away from my indoctrinated youth of southern baptism. But it's also how I found my way back. I was just on my path. It didn't feel right to blindly follow the backwards belief system being forced on me since birth. You can't tell someone how to live, you can only show them. So I studied science, it was real, it made sense, it tried to at least. I didn't feel the emotions that others claimed to, but I felt science.

Science didn't create us, true science doesn't create, it observes. The invention is another industry altogether, using what we learn through science to "better" our lives. Invent the next sliced gluten loaf and be the next overnight millionaire. Capitalism slowing evolution in full swing. If we had left it alone, maybe we'd have evolved bread knife fingers, or maybe even adapted the ability to digest gluten in the first place. Gluten's not even that bad for you in countries that don't allow GMOs. Only in America is pseudowheat allowed to destroy the precious microbiology intended to keep our open minds functioning. At least some people seem to be evolving a sensitivity to it's negative vibrations, the brain numbing that keeps people from having to think about it. Should make us all a little easier to round-up.

Science is also how I found my way back to faith. I still believe in science. I don't think there is a worldwide scientific conspiracy to lie about the dinosaurs and the true age of the universe. I would have hard time truly believing in God if I had to forget what I know to be true from personal observation. Science and God work hand-in-hand, science is the observation of all things natural and God is the energy that composes all things natural. So science is just a way for us to explore God. A way to try to make sense of what we've known to be true for all of time, through every carnation of our energy leading up to our current brain size.

Now we've evolved just enough smarts to question the natural world, not a sin, an evolutionary advantage like everything else that's ever come to exist. We were observing nature and God for a long time before we thought to separate the two, then we decided that we should handle the God business ourselves, we were smart enough to drop out of school. But we didn't drop out in our senior year, almost prepared for the real world, nope, we dropped out at the first thought of not liking the public education system. We are kindergartners trying to run an all-powerful planet, now the problems of the world are starting to make a little more sense. All we care about is snack time, but we had to trade recess for detention in order to get unlimited Cheetohs and Coke. If we'd have made it to upper-level science, we'd have discovered so many more secrets of the universe, like the right way to live with technology and nature in perpetual harmony. Instead, we gave up early and made up a new set of rules so that we felt like we were winning. Does sound like a five-year-old's logic when you put it that way.

It's hard to believe in the man-made God of organized religion when you believe in the wonders of nature that you see all around. It's hard to respect and care for the laws of nature when you follow the backwards laws of that man-made God. That sounded off-putting, sorry, organized religion didn't invent their God. He's real. They had a connection to him and saw the power of prayer, belief and love. They felt their connection to their own internal energy and to the great mystery of the all-knowing universe. They knew that we all have the power of God inside of us. Jesus himself said that the spirit of God dwells in each of us, and then used his connection to Wakan Tanka to learn about the great mystery and tried to show people how to live in a good way. Sounds like a pretty rad dude who was on a higher vibration to me.

The more closely you follow your path and do what feels right, which is easy because it's what feels good, the happier you can make yourself. The more you can love, the more you can believe, the more you can raise your vibration to a higher frequency and put your physical being more in-tune with your inner self, which is connected to all that ever was or will be. We are not just closer to God. We are gods. We are creators. We are manifestors. On the flip side, the more we concern our energy with stress, worries, fear, and money, the further from enlightenment we push ourselves.

Not all organized religions have everything wrong, they're all loosely based on a true story, and they have done the best they could with toddler brains and the greed of the secular world. That's where it all started going wrong, right? The non-believers. They're to blame for the evils of the world, aren't they? When I used to debate religion and science in a past life, I would often hear that a world without heaven and hell would be full of murder and rape. If people thought that there were no consequences for their actions, then the entire planet would go mad. So... fear of hell's handbasket is the only reason you don't murder and rape? We don't do it because it feels wrong. Because we love our fellow man, not because we were told to, but because we are brothers.

So where did all these non-believers come from anyway? To the traditional theist, life began with a close relationship to our creator, so who decided not to believe? To the evolutionary scientist, all of life on Earth followed the same instinctual belief in natural laws, until us, are we now above them? For the sake of differing belief systems and my disinterest in explaining this twice, let's meet in the middle when we talk about creation, the bible, the book chronicling the mythology of the most prevalent religion in our country free of religious oppression and persecution. (Ha) So let's assume that the stories of creation are allegorical as opposed to a literal play-by-play of the events as they unfolded. Considering the similarities in the creation myths from around the world, this makes great sense, the earliest of course not from the judea-christian bible, but emerging from the first written language of ancient Sumerians, a moral parable meant to guide the earliest civilizations along a path of living in a good way. So now there is no interference with the faith of science. The church of evolution. If the biblical stories don't literally propose to explain what we've otherwise observed and hypothesized as fact, then they're just fairy tales with positive moral messages and even scientists can believe in prehistoric fairy tales.

Ok, so in the beginning there was darkness, and then someone cut on the lights. Lights like a massive hydrogen bomb which created the stars and the planets and the land and the water and all of the different vibrating elements of the universe. The vibrations reached a new high and the energy of the expanding universe created life, starting with the smallest of organisms, then the plants, and eventually the animals. And all that was, was good. Everything was in perfect balance and harmony. Every life form was made up of the same energy. The same spirit. As life became more complex, the physical beings were able to experience more and more of their lifetimes on Earth as their vibrations achieved higher and higher frequencies.

The creatures developed the biological ability to sense vibrations, to see and hear and smell and feel and even taste vibrations of energy. That's why food high in energy taste good, like fructose...or skittles. The energy of the universe continued to rain down on Earth at the speed of light. Some wavelengths could be seen by animals, others could only be felt after too many hours at the beach. That same ultraviolet energy fueled the photosynthetic power plants of an entire kingdom of life. Every plant that is or ever was, by definition, absorbs energy from the universe and converts it into vibrating matter.

Then came along the animals, unable to absorb enough energy from the sun to fuel their mobile way of life (so far at least), but they could absorb the energy that the plants had stored in their vibrating cellular structure. Then even larger animals, with metabolisms that required even more energy, came out to play and the cache of energy built by the plants wasn't enough. However, the herbivores had been storing that same energy, the universal energy from the sun, God we're talking about, and their biology had packed the vibrations at a higher frequency. So eating and absorbing them provided more energy, or more calories. Yes, God is calories. Organic calories at least. And thus the circle of life was born, created, energized. And all was good. Peace and harmony ruled the land. No wars were fought. No grudges held. Everything that anyone ever needed was provided for them, from the heavens, from the sun, from the eternal energy still vibrating from the big bang. So they all believed.

The plants never doubted that the sun would be there, pouring fuel into their photo cells, herbivores never stressed out about waking up to a world void of vegetation, and the carnivores didn't fear that they would go without prey. No one was upset. No war between the lions and the gazelles broke out. No plants vs. zombies. No protests over the mistreatment of the water needed to be organized. Everyone was simply playing their part in the longest running soap opera of all time, absolutely perfect for their roles, like it was the part they were born to play or something. There was no evil. And without evil there is no good. There is only "is." No one knew of good and evil because duality had not yet entered the collective unconscious. Everything that had ever existed was one. There was no us and them. There was no mine. They all believed. Everything that they had ever observed, through billions of years of scientific experimentation, showed them that the universe is a life-giving, all providing, work of magnificence that they could never even try to comprehend, let alone control. That's a job for the gods.

Then Man showed up in the history books, only appearing on the very last page of a long series of encyclopedias. Funny that we call it "his story." Man was in harmony with nature, all of nature, one with the universe. Man, translated into some languages as Adam, believed. How could he not? How could he not be in complete awe of everything that was? This magical Eden of natural perfection, a world with so many intricate puzzle pieces playing their own vital roles in such a magnum opus. The greatest song in the world, or at least a tribute. A masterfully composed vibration, that itself was only an intricate puzzle piece to the song of the universe. Guess what, the universe is only a small vibration in an even larger song too, infinite means outward and inward, not just as far as our kindergarten brains can conceive. Our currently evolved perceptions just can't sense those vibrations because their wavelengths are astronomically larger than ours.

Luckily, a concept of the multiverse wasn't necessary for a fruitful life in Eden, turns out there's fruit everywhere, it even grows on trees. Man prospered. For a long time. Long, long, long, long, long, long, long time. Long enough to develop into the magnificent creations that science and religion can both agree that we are. We believed. Believed in God. Believed in our planet. Our mother. We had no reason not to. Everything had always been perfect. We freaking lived in Eden for God's sake. Then Adam met Eve. Translated of course into "life," or more accurately, the heightened consciousness, the vibration, of human life. God tasked man with populating the Earth, the same thing he'd assigned every other species of life until now, but we got scared. We started to doubt God's ability to provide for us as he had provided for all of life in the history of living, including us, ever since we were born.

Now, we still believed in the power of God, we were just a little worried, but we had a plan. We could eat the fruit of the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil. Doing so would give us the knowledge of God and therefore we'd no longer have a thing to worry about. If the world with one God was this amazing, just imagine a world full of gods. But, unfortunately for us, it didn't work out quite the way we thought it would, turns out that it wasn't forbidden "just because." We did, as promised, learn the language of the Gods, good and evil, right and wrong, who should live and who should die. The duality of governing the universe. But with the knowledge of duality, we lost the knowledge of oneness and the ultimate connection to the universe that every other organism still felt in every cell of their being.

Now we were gods. No longer part of nature, we were somewhere above it. But we still believed. Our ever providing mother was still the most amazing creation we'd ever beholden, even if we were now gods ourselves. Then it all started to fall apart, to "fall." With our newfound knowledge of good and evil, we began to see that we weren't so godly after all. Man was flawed. Man was living in sin, naked, destined to be a failure due to countless imperfections. Man was not perfect. God still was though, right? But we'd eaten the forbidden fruit, we were supposed to be gods now. But if we were gods, then shouldn't we be perfect? Obviously we're not, nobody's perfect. So if we are all God, and we're not perfect... then God must not be perfect. Holy corn fed cow batman, everything we've believed for eternity just got flipped upside down.

Through our newly obtained godly knowledge, we deducted that God isn't that knowledgeable after all. Too bad we hadn't eaten from the tree of knowledge of paradoxes. That was precisely the moment that we started to stop believing, but we still wanted to believe. We were still connected to the great spirit, the energy of the universe. Even if we now knew that God was flawed, we still had to give him credit, the Earth was pretty sweet. Adam and Eve could still remember what it felt like before they had eaten of the tree and undergone their transformation into duality, what oneness with the utopian universe felt like. But they couldn't teach it to their children, generations of humans that didn't have that innocence, that perfection of nature that all of God's creations share. They were only human. It's not something that can be taught. You can't tell someone how to live. You can't teach someone to believe. I can testify first hand that you can't force your kids to have faith. And just like that, the Garden of Eden was broken, to the descendants of Adam at least. It will continue to function for a few thousand years for the rest of life, until man would try to finish what he'd started and destroy the whole thing.

Eden only works if you believe. The universe works on belief. It was believed into existence. Manifested as a physical representation of the infinite vibrating energy of all that is. Belief is all-powerful and allows us to be the creators of our own destiny. To live in a perfect world. But man chose not to believe and was evicted from Eden. So what does it mean to not believe in the creator of the universe? It's scary. Anything could happen now that there's no one looking out for us. Our all powerful mother, who provides and protects, had lost her credibility. All the other creatures still believe and are cared for, in abundance, but why would we ever think that she could do the same for us? Left without the faith that he would receive enough sustenance to survive, he did the only thing he could think of with his newfound godly status, he took the reins.

He would be master of the universe. He would be the decider. He could use his new knowledge to choose who lived and who died. He could manage the planet better than his flawed mother, who had done such a bad job that she produced a creature as broken as man. He would take life into his own hands. He was now his own God. The Earth was under new management and there were going to be some changes, and as with any corporate takeover, we had to maximize profits for our shareholders. We needed to increase the bottom line. And the bottom line was simple. Food.

More food. Simply needed more food so that we wouldn't have to live at the whim of some silly natural order of things. We already lived in abundance like everyone else, but that wouldn't be enough to put our minds at ease. We no longer believed that the abundance of today would still be here tomorrow, no, we needed more security than that. We needed excess. We needed more food than Mother Nature knew how to provide and less competition for it. We needed agriculture. And thus the destruction of our planet began in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia and spread to the farthest corners of the globe.

What, that's not exactly the interpretation of genesis you remember from sunday school? No, I wouldn't imagine so. I told you earlier that organized religion didn't know what they were supposed to be believing in, they only knew that believing works. By the time they started writing down these parables, they were so deeply rooted in the over excessive world of agriculture that they couldn't make sense of what they really meant. Certainly man was supposed to be managing the world, he was populating faster and farther than was naturally possible, it was what was humanly possible.

So we adapted the stories to fit with our way of life. God asked man to cultivate the Earth... because he couldn't do it himself? We were charged with ruling over all life on Earth... because such a flawed man should rule over the perfection of God's other creatures? Other parts of the story just didn't make sense to us, but we left them in because the books were divinely inspired. Of course, they were divinely inspired by the gods of Sumer and originally belonged to the very people who fell victim to the hostile takeover of agriculture. Tales meant to explain the unnatural way that they saw their relatives behaving. It's hardly understandable to most people when they read it from the view of the civilized, that's why many suppose that it must be a literal accounting of creation, no metaphors make sense. But it makes perfect sense once you realize that we stole the story as we were stealing fertile farmland.

Why would God not want his greatest creation to know good from evil? I never got that one as a child. Why was Cain's offering of man-made cultivated produce not accepted by God, while his brother's sacrifice of a naturally produced animal was? Certainly a compassionate God would rather have vegetation over the slaughter of one of his living breathing creatures. And then Cain the agriculturalist, kills Abel the herder, very similarly to the spread of the agricultural revolution, which forced any still living in a natural way to assimilate or die. Oh, harsh don't you think? They weren't actually murdering peaceful people who were living in a good sinless way, were they?

To live in an abundant, naturally providing environment, you have to let nature take its course. If my family lives in tropical paradise, with the exact amount of food needed to feed us and all of the other life forms we share our ecosystem with, what do you think happens to us when you knock down our tried-and-true forest and replace it with a garden intended strictly for your family's use? We die. And all of the animals that ate from the now desecrated forest? They die. Wait, we also depended on those animals for food, so now more of us die. Cain killed Abel. Agriculture killed all that it encountered. Unless they joined the team.

No worries. Not as far as the future of the human race is concerned. With our new strategy of survival, we'll be able to populate way easier than if we relied on your "God." We evolved so well that we outgrew God himself. We were now the fittest of all species. We could take food from all others and reappropriate it for human consumption. Eminent domain. Because we stopped believing in the amazing ability of the universe's infinite energy, we were able to do the impossible. Some "god" you still believe in, can he do this? So agriculture ruled supreme, which led to surplus, which leads to overpopulation, which led to basically everything wrong with anything. So that brings us full circle to a philosophy that any good christian can get behind. The non-believers will destroy the world.

But in Rosebud, we believed. The duality of Ziggy's battling ingredients finally leveled out and we had biscuits. Then we kicked it up a notch with cheesy garlic butter biscuits and Stephanie tossed another epic salad. We didn't mess around. Pretty worn out from all of the theology talk, I went to bed early that night, like two instead of five, and was almost asleep when... "Aaah!"

What the what?! I jumped out of bed as I heard another scream, a female's voice somewhere on road, near the bathrooms. I was possibly the only one close enough to do anything. As fast as I could, I threw on my boots and without tying them, I ran outside. Heard it again, further away this time and right as I was stepping out of the door. I ran past the bathrooms and heard some commotion coming from a nearby tent, an argument between a man and a woman. I assessed the situation and determined that I should run for backup before I stepped in. I had no walkie and I was currently wearing just my long johns and untied boots. No jacket, no hat, no gloves, all at two thirty in the morning during a record-setting blizzard. I felt great though. Adrenaline was kickin.

I'm sometimes not actually the idiot that I sometimes portray on TV, so I ran as fast as I could to the still active mess hall for reinforcements. I threw the door open, stuck my head in, made eye contact with James who was deep in the same spades game I'd left him in earlier, and motioned for him to step outside. Like quick like. I was out of breath. I'd been smoking so many cigs, breathing all this dapl and had just run here through the ice, and in my comically underdressed winter wardrobe. Might have to quit the cigs at some point. I tried to squeeze out enough info, but eventually I just had to take a few super deep breaths. "Girl... Scream... Fight... Come..." I got more than that through really, but it was tough and the clock was ticking. He grabbed another as I took off, they could catch up, I gotta make it back to the scene asap. It was cold.

The altercation was still underway, not physical as far as I could tell from the outside, and no more blood curdling screams, but still at it. James and company had arrived and I decided that they had it covered, I had to get to a fire. I started to head out, but kept facing back and monitoring the situation. Ran into Alan and Heather, they lived in the food not bombs tarpee with Betty and Marcus, which was right next to the road near the first scream. They had heard it too and came outside as soon as they could. Fully dressed in snow gear, properly prepared, the more responsible method certainly, I could have gotten myself into trouble and compounded the situation... Nah. F that. I tracked the scream, sprinted to the mess hall and returned to the quieted scene, all before they had stepped outside to investigate. They wouldn't have been able to trace it by that point, or what if something worse had been going down? No judgment on them, more of a justification of my risky actions really. I wanted to stay out there just to make sure that it was okay, but they made me go inside, it was the grown-up decision at that point. Enough hands are on it. I could go to bed satisfied that I had done all I could do. Not knowing what had transpired, adrenaline pumping, nerves a little riled up. It wasn't the easiest to get there, but eventually I slept. And eventually I woke up.

Eventually. Apparently. I finally forced myself to get out of my warm bed and out into the climate of my new life. I was out of it. Step one: Drank a bunch of water. Step two: Drank a bunch of coffee. Step three: Smoked a bunch of cigs. Nothing was working. Mind was cloudy. Muscles were low on energy. I didn't feel sick, no achiness, just total lethargic shut down. Power failure. Energy was not flowing. I couldn't focus, couldn't put together clear enough thoughts to formulate a dinner menu. I could interact with others, just wasn't vibrating at my normal speed. And neither was anyone else. The whole camp was out of it. It had been getting worse for a couple of days now, ever since the raids, which was right after the bridge stuff, right around inauguration time. Hmmm...?

We knew the snow was dirty, just like dapl, and it was some night in the last week of the old kitchen that I had first seen the unmarked plane, flying low over camp in giant circles with not a single light on. I'd see it again and film it with Smokey's huge two million candlepower spotlight, but this night was the only night that I saw the stuff. Not a cloud in the sky, but less than sixty seconds after the plane flew over, I saw a white dust falling from above. It looked close enough to snow that it didn't seem out of place, it snowed often, but not tonight and there wasn't a cloud in sight. And now we were all experiencing a camp wide sedation? #nodapl.

I pulled myself together, as well as a menu, a simple meat and cheese and pasta thing. Just put some stuff in a pot and stir it, even this lowered vibration of my energy could handle that. I thought I would have Ziggy and Stephanie's help, they were both milling about the kitchen, but they needed some rest. They just pulled a twenty-four hour shift in here, five meals in a row. Lunch, dinner, late meal, breakfast and then lunch today, so I gave them the night off. We had all been getting a lot closer, all of us really, but us three even more so. Stephanie was still freshly back in town and with the new kitchen arrangement, I got to spend a lot more time with her. She was funny, or we laughed at the same inappropriate humor at least. In a world of prayer and respect, giggling at a dirty jokes or raw animal flesh was a breath of fresh air. Fresh air of course being something I have a newly deepened appreciation for.

And as for Ziggy, we were boys, besties, comrades in the kitchen. Allies and competitors. So happy to be able to pull off a prank and one-up each other. He got me pretty good one day though. I'd been trying my hardest to manifest some music, a keyboard to combat the jealousy that I felt (only slightly) towards all of the guitars on the scene. One day I turned around and there's Ziggy with the most personal gift I'd ever gotten, a two octave casio keyboard. Ten sounds, beats and it could even sample voices and play them back. He demonstrated it with a lovely rendition of a diddy we titled "nodapl." I was touched. Moved. He took this out of his personal studio (turns out he had five casios with him) just to give to me. My brother. Although it was missing a key. ABC no take-backs. I of course got right to work with a kitchen knife, not on unfrozen potatoes, I needed to bring this instrument back up to mint condition. Better than mint really, it was now camp style. It was an E flat, and with my limited talent, that's a crucial note, but I somehow managed to carve an operational key and it was on.

So they were two of my favorites, out of the about 60 favorites that I had, and they had worked through the fog and held it down. I could also sense that maybe they had been so unstoppable because they were having such a good time together. They were vibing. Upward spiral. "You guys take the night off, I got this." I thawed some stuff, which a surprising amount of people, even the brightest here at camp, call de-thawing. That means freezing, people. Our whole world was de-thawed. Anyway, I got over that rant, did some contractually obligated onions and garlic and it was time for a smoke.

I had just enough of the medicine that Summer had given me during the raids for one more session, so I stopped by a friends house and blazed it. His roommate was home too as we all talked about having similar focus issues and not being able to stay on task throughout the day. They both had to come home, rest, and gather their thoughts several times during the day. We were all mindlessly wandering around, bumping into stuff as we tried to collect our bearings. We were one bite of frozen unmarked human flesh away from being zombies.

Omitting the part about all of our family here being afflicted, there's nowhere I'd rather be in the event of an actual zombie apocalypse. We were surviving off grid, tough conditions, and we were surrounded by the strongest possible warriors, plus we had hatchets. Zero guns, but hey, maybe we could get dapl on board during a zombie apocalypse, convince them that mankind actually does need to work together for the greater good. But for real, if some disease breaks out that our underdeveloped immune systems and the accompanying immunizations and antibiotics can't squash, it'll start to work on our population problem for us and the world will shut down. Well, not the world, the Earth, she's good with it, better actually, but civilization will start to lose it. I know where I want to be. I know the network of survivors that I'll to be surviving with.

Zombies have been popular lately, up front in the collective for some reason, and I had friends preparing elaborate zombie apocalypse go bags. A joke at first, and a few laughable items, but their valid point was that they were now prepared for anything that might happen. Ready for zombies and worldwide disease outbreak, or even just a fire or the inevitable life eradicating flood that we keep hearing so much about. All of the personal items you need to get by and the basics of surviving, like rope, tape, matches, gas masks, shields, tanks, helicopters... oh, sorry, got a little carried away there. Point being, it was a silly premise, but it prepared them for whatever might happen. Same here, I don't actually fear an attack of the undead, but I'm ready for it. I'm ready for anything. Being at camp trained us for anything, even the unknown, especially the unknown. Especially with the current international situation.

We dropped the biggest bomb in history on Afghanistan. Blew up Syria. Again. And preemptively threatened North Korea with a nuke, the biggest current threat in the world as far as nuclear warfare is concerned (besides us anyway), and here we are poking them with a stick. And all of that happened in just two days. It's time to buckle up. What do you do if we get blown up tomorrow? Nuked? Nuclear winter. I have my plan. A lot of other people other than us are ready for it too, almost hoping it'll hurry up and happen so that they can try out their bomb shelters and assault rifles. Assume that all communication will be shut down, possibly even with an EMP, but just the nukes alone should take out cell service and internet, which would have been overloaded and crashed anyway like they did on nine eleven. So now there's no googling top ten lists of where to go for sanctuary.

I have people. I am part of a tribe. A tribe of survivors. Survivors of anything. Believers. That's where I'll be. You want to prepare for the unknown? The unpreparable? Come to camp. Build a network of superheroes. Train in and sharpen survival skills. Learn how to believe. Even if you don't do it for the water, do it for yourself, stand up for yourself, you're going to need to if enough people don't stand up for the water in time anyway.

How much oil and pollution will our mother's oceans hold before the entirety of the world's waters are corrupted? Not just the oceans and streams and ponds and creeks and springs and puddles and the rivers and the lakes that you're used to, but everything living is based on water. Okay, so we're technically carbon-based lifeforms, but I don't think that'll help us out much. The oily mni, the nukes, the dapl snow, they're all unknowns, and what will they do to our planet? What will they do to us? Nuclear fallout on a new worldwide scale is unpredictable, what if it really did create zombies? Or at least genetic mutations that over generations of mindless brain-eating became the next step in human evolution. Obviously a far-fetched hypothesis, but I stopped thinking anything impossible after the truths I've witnessed first-hand. Of course, if this theory were to play out, there'd be other beneficial mutations, a separate branch of evolution in a new direction, the duality of the homo sapien's tree of life. A new, stronger, smarter us, more equipped for survival in a new world with an overpopulation of a new predator on the loose. We'd be superheroes. Literally. Advanced powers and features. And how does evolution work?

Genetic mutation. Check. Natural selection. Check. Just gotta believe. Check. A good blast of global radiation could be the catalyst that saves the world and fast tracks our evolution, so fast that future scientists would have "missing links" in their origin of species. Just like in the movies, we'd gravitate towards each other and form small bands of survivors, the chosen ones, the believers, this would be the rapture right? Groups would grow and combine and we'd form communities, families, tribes, all over the world. Separate unlinked tribes with similar mythologies passed down over generations. No technology or advanced knowledge would survive, not long anyway, quantum science would be an ancient mystery, just like how a great alien pyramid is to us now. The overbuilt tower of babel would have fallen and the people of the world would once again be separated. But how would we stop it from happening again? Most people won't even know what had caused the turmoil directly, let alone what led to it. No one would consider that growing food undid their great civilization, so most would rebuild and begin to repopulate the world, now give it a few thousand years and here we go again. And then another catastrophe, which leads to another evolution boom... wait, have we done this before?

Evolution thrives in environmental hardships. Radiation causes random mutations. Nukes cause radiation, so do solar flares, extinction meteors and celestial alignments. Like the one in 2012 that coincided with the restart point of the Mayan and Chinese calendars and was theorized to shift our magnetic poles. Such a shift of course, sending high frequency vibrations of radiation around the globe, jump-starting random mutations in DNA and after just a few generations of picking the fastest, smartest, strongest, tallest, and coolest of us, after selecting the best in each specialty, we'd branch off from the species of sapien. A diverse new future for human life. There's your missing link. Now we just have to figure out how to share.

Okay, we're starting to get a little out there, even for me, but I'm a believer and very little would surprise me at this juncture. The point being two things; One, if something cataclysmic does happen and we rebuild, we need to understand what went wrong and figure out how to live in a good way. We will need a story to pass down generationally, just like was passed to us, except that ours got lost in translation and its credibility unraveled with the advent of science, which directly contradicted our limited understanding of creation. We know the science now, the language of observing the magnificence of the universe, so our new story, our new belief system, should be based in our observable reality, ensuring that as new technology develops, it doesn't reduce our faith and connection to spirit.

And number two? Come to camp, wake up and stand up. We might actually be able to stop armageddon if enough of us believe, and if not, at least you'll be ready to survive it. You'll adapt. That's what humans are the best at, it's our biggest strength, the ability to drastically adapt within a single lifetime in a single body, no waiting list for evolution necessary. Just look at how specialized we've all become ever since we came up with division of labor, just like our friends in that ant colony. We can train our bodies to adapt by changing environments, foods, and habits. I was used to the sub-zero cold in no time, well, two weeks and then I was good. I also grew a callus on my right hand where I hold the knife, in less than a month. I had a callus from using my camera before, it's completely gone now. Musicians, dancers, builders and farmers all get the appropriate upgrade when their bodies are put to the test. They adapt to challenges and their daily tasks are made easier. Life is easy. Should be anyway. Used to be.

Imagine what would happen if our mundane lifestyle didn't inhibit our daily improvement and things like calluses could be naturally selected. That's evolution at an observable rate. Proof. It's just vibrations. When your cells are rubbed against, it causes friction, the vibration frequencies that we can feel through our sense of touch. Enough repeated vibrations and our bodies vibrate and grow into stronger, more fit for their environment, physical beings. When you swim all day and get wrinkly, that's not your skin absorbing water, it's an evolved trait that tells your brain to contract cells and provide more surface area for improved grip underwater.

Imagine what else is fathomable if we just believe. If we stop being scared. We'll be fine. We're survivors. We're the greatest creatures to ever walk the face of the Earth, remember? King of the planet, top of the food chain, temporary president of the kingdom of life. The first fraction of this presidency sucks for everyone. Let's see if the leader of the free world can learn how to love and live in a good way so that all of the residents in the land have a fair and equal chance of survival. Our success as caretakers of the planet is dependent on the success of all of its citizens. If we're to raise our vibration to the next level, achieve species-wide enlightenment, reach the next stage of sentience, evolve, then we have to also love all of life. The vibrations of the life around you affect yours, especially what you eat, why do you think we pray on our food?

We pray over the energy vibrations manifested as matter, send positive constructive energy into the calories that originated from the sun of the universe of the gods of the great mystery, Wakan Tanka. We put our body into a state of prayer, alpha brain waves, inner peace with our inner self, it puts our own cells in the most natural state to absorb the vibrations of nutrition. "Thank you for this food and the energy that it will nourish our bodies with. We are so grateful for all of life and in awe of everything that has been provided for us. And thanks for the chefs who prepared this food. Aho."

It might have been all the extra prayers I was getting, or my growing belief, or maybe all of the onions I was eating, but I wasn't quite as lackadaisical as my neighbors seemed to be. I was slow-moving for sure, but I was handling it a little better than most. I've always been a master of my emotions, and now I know that emotions are just vibrations too. In fact, they're the most important vibrations, they're our sixth sense, just another way we've evolved to sense energy waves in the universe. The animals who came before us didn't have as developed of emotional sensors, but they were evolving, we were sensing higher and higher frequencies with each generation. Emotions, like all other senses, describe to us the experience of the physical manifestation of this reality in a newly evolved way. Imagine what the sense after emotion could feel like.

Emotion describes to us how in-tune our physical being's vibration is with that of our inner self. A scale exactly like the keys of a casio, each emotion a note, and the more in harmony with our internal vibration we are, the higher on the scale we go and the more beautiful the experience, the song. The more in-sync you are to your inner self, a piece of the eternal energy of the universe, outside of the construct of "reality," the more everything just feels right. This energy knows your path. So the more on your path you are, the more you are in-tune to your vibration. The more you do what feels right. That's your intuition. It's your physical body interpreting, through a sixth sense of feeling, that you are vibrating in a good way. And the more you are on your path, the more you do what feels right, the closer you are to God. The more you believe, the more creative power you have in this physical manifestation. The higher you vibrate, the more ability you have to control the universe. To build the universe.

So what's the scale look like? Well, the bottom looks out of tune, atonal, discord, fear, worry, hate, sadness, guilt, doubt, not really a good starting point for constructing the universe. But you can consciously change your energy. That's what praying does, meditation, yoga, eating right, I just talk some sense into myself and remember how blessed I am. I breathe. And I believe. Believing raises your vibe, believing fuels evolution and evolution fuels higher vibration sensing, which leads to stronger believing. Upward spiral. Even before I was at camp and found this unending faith, I always believed in myself, believed that I'd be just fine. I moved to new cities without worry, left jobs to pursue what felt right, didn't stress over money even when I was broke and in debt, I knew I'd land on my feet. Always had. I was good. Self-esteem is crucial, you have to believe in yourself, believe that you can succeed, trust your intuition, your inner self, otherwise with doubt running the show, you'll never succeed. Give the infinite energy of the universe that lives inside of you some credit, love yourself. Love and respect yourself, but practice humility. It's a fine line that I'm still figuring out, but I'm confident that my path will show me the way.

Believe and you can raise your emotions to joy, love and awe. Then you can create, you can manifest "reality", the physical vibration created by nothing but energy. Peter, just think happy thoughts and you can fly anywhere. The lost boys had it figured out. They also had a feast of imagined food that became reality once they truly believed. We never have to grow up to be greedy capitalists for the evil empire, we can stay innocent forever in a love based society. And we can fly.

Now that I think back, I remember as a teenager telling my mom my new life philosophy, I guess I had started realizing that it's easier just to do what feels right and let whatever happens, happen. I didn't consciously think all that, and it's been long forgotten as a motto, but looking back, I continue to be in awe of all that has prepared me along my path. I was training back then when I subconsciously realized a couple things about vibrations and held onto them my whole life. I've been chill for as long as I can remember and have been continually increasing my vibrations since my first revelation. The teenage affirmation that sent me here? "Just go with the flow." Sounds a lot like "believe" to me. Trust. Have faith. You got this. Do what feels right. So I did. And currently my vibrations were strong enough to pull me through the zombie fog epidemic, enough to realize what could possibly clear up the problem altogether. What could wipe the calcification off of my pineal gland and reconnect myself to my higher vibrations, open my mind, connect me to the universe without ego, steal my face. Yep. LSD.
Step Thirteen:

Acid. I'm a believer of psychedelics. Unlike "drugs" that make you dependent and complacent, LSD and psilocybin (magic mushrooms) connect you to the energy of the universe and you can actually feel that we are all one. You feel the power of love and you can view your physical reality from outside of the ego of your physical self. I knew this long before I knew this energy as Tunkasila or God. Way prior to me ever praying or believing from the heart. I believed in science, and tripping only reaffirmed it. It was telling my brain to release a chemical that was naturally present and caused my brain to function at a higher level. A new frequency. It raised my vibration. A kick-start on the path of finding my path, artificially induced, but I was able to retain some of the increase after each trip. A mere shortcut, the same results are achievable through meditation. A freeing of the mind, releasing your inner self from the confines of the limitations of the physical reality. It allows you to see clearly what normally just feels right, to see the workings of the universe from an objective perspective. (good band name) From another vibration, another dimension. The naysayer would tout that the experience is purely hallucination, created exclusively inside of your head. The believer however, the psychedelic cosmonaut, has seen the tangible results of connecting to the universe, which I agree is inside of each of us. So yes, the experience is all in your head, with God. I never thought of it as God before, I didn't associate with being a believer, although the more I look back, the more I see that I've always been on this path, and I've always trusted that I was in the right place, I just couldn't get behind any doctrine of organized religion.

"Acid magic," that's what I called it, now I call it manifestation. I experienced it many times, connecting to the universe made me believe, not in a god, but in the universe. When I just believed, so many things simply worked out. Synchronicities all lined up. I got out of dangerous situations, substantial gifts appeared along my path, I felt love in a new way. The timing of everything just synced up and I experienced miracles. I trusted this connection to my inner energy so much, that several times I made important life-changing decisions from the perspective that I gained while tripping. Like the realization that music is what the universe is all about. That's how I perceived it at the time. Music is just the small range of audible vibrations composed to create emotional intent, but I recognized it as the building blocks of the universe, so I devoted my life to music. Another psychedelic journey inspired a project that's focus was to inspire youth to exercise their creative energies, so I dedicated one hundred percent of mine to its completion. Which directly led me to my last acid magic, a life-altering experience that's changed my path for the better and would eventually raise my vibration to a way of thinking outside of this physical reality. I was tripping when I got called to come to Standing Rock.

We were at camp with a lot of hippies. People outside of the system. A broken system that tripping shows you is of little importance, so yeah, a few of them had had a drop or two. We started talking about it, the three of us, about how it had played important roles for all three of our lives. Then about how crazy it would be to try it here, in such a dangerous, scary, amazing, inspiring, love filled high-energy place. Purely hypothetical obviously, we had all been too scared slash respectful to even bring weed, so anything beyond that was out of the question. I had a little at home and before I left, I'd momentarily considered bringing it, just in case. But I was only going for a week, and just to work, so why would I possibly need it? The other two had similar stories and we all three looked back, thinking that we should have known to pack it. It would clear up this fog we were feeling. The unconnectedness that was slowing down our spirit. It would make us feel like normal. Just one drop of this spirit molecule is all it would take. Just days ago we had all been the strongest spiritually that any of us had ever experienced. This place had energy. We should be recharging. Something was wrong with us.

Then my friend retold his backstory. He'd decided not to pack his stash and hit the road, but before he left town completely, a friend made him pocket two hits of paper. He had enough LSD on him to fix all three of us. The conversation just became way less hypothetical.

With most discussions I have about whether or not to dose, they pretty much exclusively end with me jumping to a higher vibration. The acid calls me. If I mention it, then I talk myself into it. Looking back now, I can see that it just felt right. That's why I did it. My inner self was agreeing that I should take it because it knew that it would bring us closer together. That's why it appeared on my path in the first place. So in this place, a magical world of manifestation, paths crossing and synchronistic convergences, how could we not see this as the universe inviting us over for dinner? We debated about when, landed on tonight, felt right, we needed to get better asap. We considered inviting another, we all three agreed that we were each other's first picks and couldn't see it being anybody but us. This was meant to happen. And it would, but first we had to finish the workday, I was still cooking dinner and all.

The meal was no longer the primary culinary focus of the evening however, I had to prepare supplies for our upcoming journey. I don't mess around. I know how to host a party. Now, this most certainly wasn't a party, but it would be a very fun evening with a few close friends. A night of healing and worthy of a proper spread. Stackers. The only recipe I know that can top my family's taco tradition. An elaborate collection of crackers, cheeses, meats, pickled delicacies, fruits, veggies, spreads, jams, spicy, sweet, yum, you know... stackers. In the civilized world, I could spend a fortune on a wide range of components, but here, funded by belief alone, somehow I assembled a masterpiece paralleling any I'd achieved on the outside. There's only one condition, one rule, one natural law to eating stackers which provides diversity and pushes the creations to evolve. Four at a time. Only four items out of the twenty can be selected for each stacker. The physical makeup of the stack is the DNA chain of ingredients, whose order of assembly drastically changes the physical experience of consumption and determines the vibration of the taste. My favorite triscuits, plus fancy hippie crackers, two cheeses, meat sticks, olives, homemade with love jelly, nutbutters, dried fruits, pimentos, and, and, and it just kept going. A huge crate full of stuff. I'd outdone myself. Couldn't find the can of artichoke hearts I'd snagged in my Oceti shopping spree, looked 3 times and everything. Oh well, there was a reason, bad batch or something. The other item we would need for the expedition, which had been the biggest argument against tonight, but resolved itself once we decided to just believe... medicine.

We couldn't trip without some herb, it heightens the experience and we'd miss it if we didn't have it. I figured that it would be there when it was time. I'd just ask the universe. And then I'd ask Wendy when she crossed my path almost as soon as I set out. I wasn't going to tell anyone what we were doing, for obvious reasons, not even her, but I knew that she believed in me enough to trust. She was a little off too, feeling the funk. It was the first time she had taken a non robot form. She was not completely out of it, but she was not right. Her energy was weird and low, and for someone who was systematically on, it was strange. It did give me comfort to see that she was, in fact, human. Maybe. I told her I had a secret mission that I could not disclose now and maybe not ever, but that I needed her help. I was in luck. She had some and hooked me up with enough to get us through. More would have been cool, so I considered using the same line on Johan, but we had what we needed, it was on. I could already feel the energy inside building. It's all in your head, just the notion of connecting with the spirit molecule begins the connection. You start believing that it's coming and then it does. You start to feel the universe just by believing that you can.

I was almost done with dinner when something else in the universe wanted to say hello, someone ran in the door and announced "Hey everybody, there's a UFO outside!" A small crowd was forming in front of Smokey's tipi, behind the old kitchen, staring into the heavens at a light in the sky to the southeast. It looked like a star, but it was blinking, changing colors somehow and moving in a seemingly erratic flight path, a circular motion unobtainable by standard aircraft. There was a suggestion that it was a drone, they did fly over all the time, almost unnoticeable until you catch their movement out of the corner of your eye. Maybe. But it just wasn't moving like a drone. We determined UFO. We couldn't identify it at least. Cool, okay, let's finish dinner, I got stuff to do.

Soon it was time. We had all completed our respective tasks. For the sake of personal business, I'll just say I was with He and She. Then we heard giggling coming from the next door tipi, Stephanie's tipi. Aw, how cute, we were all three so happy for two of the coolest protectors at camp. And maybe a little jealous of both. We considered inviting them over, but we were on two separate missions at the moment.

All had come together, alien stars aligned, our manifestation had come to fruition. So we departed. We chilled. Takes an hour to really come on, but we felt it before. We had a grand old time. Laughter is the best medicine and there was plenty of that. We felt free. Clear of the funk that we'd been living in. Outside of the box. A normal trip in extraordinary circumstances. Then it started to get weird.

I had my laptop with some music on it, some stuff I'd recorded that I wanted them to hear. It was the band that actually inspired me to realize the secrets of music and the universe, after I'd already dedicated my life to it. A Zappa-esque thirteen piece experimental orchestra, so good. Ten minute songs with layer after layer composed in an intricate configuration that even Trey would have to think twice about. We listened and it got intense, especially when the song about the evils of the oil industry came on. A song I'd recorded without ever really thinking about the words, years before, just another step on my path to here. The build-up continued, the woodstove got super hot, the energy in the room got crazy intense and then the music was over. It had transformed the vibe. The music had brought psychedelic visions of the destruction of the world, the black snake pouring oil all over the face of our mother, and we were the ones here to stop it. I don't know what they saw, we didn't talk about it, but we sure talked alright.

The music had our energy zooming. It was the first time for them, but I'd heard it literally hundreds of times, and it was still the most powerful I'd ever felt the vibrations. The conversation got pretty deep right away. She spoke of the intense feeling that we were here for a reason, right here, right now, doing exactly what we were. That we were meant to use this new perspective, this new way of vibrating, to discover the solution, the answer that could change everything. We were meant to save the world. We were living in this place with such an energy about it, on sacred ground with its own heightened vibration, and we could all tell that we were making a difference. We knew that we were inspiring, we saw it daily, and we were inspired just as often. We were part of the very beginning of something big, a worldwide movement that was going to start the revolution, viva la resistance, we had to or we wouldn't survive and that just wasn't an option. We were kind of a big deal.

She was vibrating. I could feel it building. She mentioned the UFO. She couldn't even really say it, she just pointed to the southeast and said "that thing." My head went straight to a theory I'd heard before, that UFOs are actually just us in the future, tourists to the past, visiting historic events in human history. Like the moment that the tides turned and the world began to change. The instant that the rainbow people would find a way to show our race a way to survive. To wake up the world. The very second that the three people meant to experience this intense vibration were set on their paths of redeeming the wrongs of the humans they were here to protect. I felt it too. Big time. More than ever. We were the people we'd been waiting for. While she had been formulating the words for this energy we were feeling, I started thinking about LSD and the connection to spirit that it makes you aware of.

Now, let me give a quick status update on my spiritual transformation, I was just really starting to believe, to really believe. I've always believed in myself, believed that everything would work out, believed that anything was possible, but I didn't believe in a "God" for a long time. I'd slowly started understanding energies, but only in a vague sense, knowing that it's better to be positive. Don't worry, be happy. I'd talked to the universe just a handful of times and that was it. So here I'd been praying, going to sweats, participating in the ceremony, but not yet fully giving myself over to it. Still rehearsing prayers before my turn to speak. I wasn't quite praying from the heart. I was getting there, but I didn't really believe yet. Not really. I believed in loving the food. I believed in praying to affect internal vibrations. I believed in a lot of it all, I could see it all, but there was still something missing, I didn't have a personal relationship with Tunkasila. I could feel it now. Still not complete, but my transformation had undergone another crucial step, just like the first sweat at Marty's.

I was buzzing. I was connected and I could feel this out-of-body thought process putting ideas together. It was starting to coalesce. LSD connects you to this universal energy, I'd felt that many times, everything just feels right. I'd talked about it ten or so times at camp and everyone I spoke with was familiar with the experience. Granted, it only came up in conversation with like-minded people, but it was a good guess that at least most of the hippies here had tripped before. I'd made important decisions, good ones, while in that headspace. While connected. Had been inspired down new paths through the molecule. I've been doing it more frequently than normal the last couple years and this one had been the best of my life. Something was working. I had just been taking it for recreation, it felt good, it felt right, it connected me to feeling like me, I just didn't know what all that meant. I'd never thought of any type of spirituality and even this time was just expecting to have fun and heal a little. Free my mind. I didn't have a religious experience or anything, but I felt connected for sure. Most of my family here had felt this way before. Shown the secrets of the universe. Broken out of the cages that the system had forced them into since birth. Show me a kid that can talk that doesn't know the word "mine." I'm guilty of it too, saying that my nephew's shoes are "mine" just to get a rise out of him.

Even before the complete takeover of the toddler market by McDonaMartaCola, capitalism still had a hold of recess. I remember playing town with fake money as we sold goods and services. Then you upgrade to an actual business, the iconic lemonade stand. Better get good grades so you can go to a good college so you can get a good job and afford to put your kids through college. Oh yeah, you'll have to take out loans to pay for it and won't be clear of your own student debt until your retirement party, but that's life. Just the way it is. You're forced into the system of school, which doesn't feel right for many, and for good reason. School sucks. In america at least. We have one of the very worst education systems and no intention on fixing it. Why would we want to train leaders when we have a perfectly operating sheep factory? A new generation of mindless consumers every year.

A newborn is closer to spirit than any enlightened guru, freshly out of the womb and still warm with vibrations. You'd cry too if you transitioned from an infinite being into a tiny physical body. And then there was light. Kids believe. At least until they're taught and fed not to. Some kids are far wiser than many elders, I've met a few. The more useless information we pump into them, the more disconnected they become. The more we civilize them, the more we force them to be something that doesn't feel right, the more they lose themselves. The more we push this completely backwards, broken system onto their energy, the lower they vibrate. The more we feed them our crap, and I don't mean our doctrines, I mean our man-made, inferior, mucus building, third eye blocking, lower vibrating food substitutes, the more unnatural they feel. The more we try to make sense of our lives, the more we ruin theirs.

Why do you think we have more and more psychological disorders? Bipolar is a conflict between the duality of low and high vibrations, emotional imbalance, your physical body has been forced into a world that doesn't vibe with your inner self, the one that actually has a clue but the under-evolved cage won't let it out. Schizophrenia, split personalities, perceiving duality, no connectedness. Autism, vibrating at an extremely high frequency but nothing in your environment is in-tune. Can't function in society because from your perspective, it's all broken (it is), yet can achieve higher level math, art and other creation. Maybe it's not them with the disorder after all.

We aren't evolved to think inside of this mess. We were evolved to believe. We were evolved to vibrate at higher and higher frequencies, then money beat it out of us. That explains why my rising vibration over the last few years coincided with my growing disbelief in letting money control my life. Your inner self, your spiritual energy, your essence, your God, doesn't care about money. It's not a real thing, it's made up by us, it's not acknowledged as the universal currency. So your spirit is never going to try to steer your path directly for monetary gain. The more decisions you make strictly for money, the farther away you vibrate from your true self. Money doesn't buy happiness. Scientifically proven. Sure, money is a part of the physical construct of reality, so through it, manifestations are brought into that reality. Your true path may align with cash based decisions, especially the ones that feel right, and if you are following what your emotions are telling you, then you're living in a good way. Many people pray for money, more than for water or humility I bet, and many people are successful. Most of those believed they would be, believed in themselves and manifested it into their lives. Money is easy to get wrapped up in though. Greed. Selfishness. Worry. Fear of going without. Disbelief in the abundance of the universe. And because that disbelief overpopulated our world, she is now malfunctioning to the point that she is no longer abundant. Money broke the planet. The end.

But I digress. So I was feeling it. Feeling that I was connected. Thinking about all of my people being connected. Thinking about the unstoppable call that all of us had received to come here. Here, to a place that felt like home to all of us. Felt like we'd always been meant to be here. And we'd all done acid. What if... What if acid actually connects you to this sentient spirit that literally guides your path and is what brought us all here? What if it connected us to this literal energy that pulled us here? What if LSD was the key? The answer to saving humanity. Oh my.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The more it felt right. I spoke it aloud to our trio as it was turning from an abstract thought into a more concrete theory. We knew that in our own lives it had been more than influential. Changed our outlook, made us who we were, helped us follow our path and live in a good way. Taught us how to love. It woke us up. We were all plugged into the system in our youth and it helped us to break free of the artificial walls designed to keep the sheeple happily complacent. It cleared up all of the man-made toxins that clogged up our connection to our inner self. It took us out of the matrix. So that was it. It was our initial connection to spirit. We'd developed, through a simple molecule, the ability to see the world for what it really was.

This had happened before, an entire generation woke up, they saw all that was wrong with the world, the system, so they wanted to change the planet. Wanted peace not war. They didn't know the solution, only the problem, so their entire movement became a style, a way to dress, a fad. People were now awake, but they had nowhere to go, so they just stayed in bed. It was up to us now. We were awake, and we were doing something about it. We were discovering a new way to live. The seventh generation. We were going to inspire an entire generation. We had to. Oil isn't the only problem, probably not even the biggest, our whole world is screwed. The new presidency would no doubt reveal just how bad everything was. At least that should make it easier to get through to people, now they'll have to see, just look around at everything crumbling.

It was a nice idea, but people are brainwashed. How will we be able to not only get through to people in time to make a difference, but get them to actually do something about it? What if we could get them to take the red pill? All of them. What if we could flip a switch in the collective unconscious of the world? What if we could microdose the human race? Microdosing is such a small amount that you don't even trip. You don't actually feel it, but it makes you smarter and more aware, connected. Many technology professionals have started doing it daily to raise their vibrations and push innovation. What if everyone's vibration changed in unison? What if we could show an entire population how to believe? Hypothetically obviously, I'd never print it if it weren't, but how could we even pull it off? If we had a few dapl crop dusters it'd be easy peasy. But no, so gotta be food or water. Water is life. Water could save all of life. What If instead of oil, there were additives that counteracted the mind-numbing effects of government mandated fluoride? Could that work? Slowly uncrusting pineal glands and opening a new awareness among the global community. The only species to ever become disconnected from the great universal energy. Could this bring us back to our creator? Meet our maker?

I didn't know it at the time, but there were others that have been shown this vision too. Back in the early days of mind expansion there was a pair that set out to "turn on the world." They mass-produced and distributed it on a major scale, for a long time, until they got busted by the man. They still stand by their belief that it would wake up an entire culture and make the world a better place.

What would it even take to logistically dose a large area? Water supply, Missouri River for instance, it's the biggest river in the country after all, and soon-to-be petroleum based. Gallons of the stuff, right? Who even knows when it comes to those scales? How would it even survive in the water? It can't get too hot. Water treatment chemicals probably destroy it. I think it's pretty sensitive, I've always been really careful with it. So a logistical impossibility, maybe. What would one hypothetical eco-terrorist do to even pull it off? Just pour it in on the side of the drill pad? And where does one get that much of it, I've only gotten small amounts before, that would cost a fortune... you'd have to make your own. Out of my pay grade. So maybe something that crazy is just plain crazy. I was on acid remember. But what ideas could it inspire, like what if dapl could feel the spiritual connection that we were feeling right now as the energy was rising in the room? Or Kelsey Warren, the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners? Or what if the National Guard could feel the vibrations of love pouring out of our prayers?

Again, these are just the stray thoughts of an altered mind, but the goal would be to work through the concept of the idea and maybe come up with a legitimate and legal way to spark a waking up of the people. The opinions in this commentary do not reflect the opinions of the author.

We'd just get a whole new round of armored guards if their current varsity team all of a sudden had a change of heart. Realizing that harming the people they were called to protect in the name of corporate greed was not their life's passion. Plus, dapl wasn't the problem. Yeah, they were our problem, but we were just one thing of many, many travesties being committed against our mom. What happened to the world if dapl got shut down? Did we all just go home, netflix and chill? No way, we were all committing the rest of our lives to saving the planet, end of story. So how do we ever stop all of the things? So much of the world falling apart in every direction, it would take a nationwide phenomenon to turn the country around before it was too late. A miracle.

What if there were one person, one single being that we could connect to spirit, connect to the oneness of the universe that shows them what love is all about, the spirit that is inside of them and knows them better than any, uncloud their vibration and raise their awareness, show them that money is meaningless and is the broken foundation of civilization, deflate their overgrown ego and show them that we are all the same? What if there was someone new on the scene and influential enough, but somehow by a crazy serendipity, not completely purchased by a world of corruption. What if you could just get a single drop to touch that person, anywhere on their skin, could that possibly be the thing?

The energy in the room was like whoa. And then she pointed out that our subject matter was pretty out there, and there was a cellphone in the tipi. We knew that they were using our phones to listen to us. Even without batteries. The room was more than silent. She was more worried than I about immediate repercussions if the wrong ears were tuned in, I was just concerned that our hand would be tipped, but we were only delusional hippies in the thick of a hallucination, nothing to see here. She grabbed a notebook and started writing, I assumed the next chapter of our divinely-inspired brainstorm, but eventually she showed me a journal entry of last testament that ended with "If they heard us, we're dead." Well... let's just believe they didn't.

She handed out some crystals to each of us. I took two. Heady crystals. Hippies love 'em. I always thought they were super cool to look at, but powerful? Freaking hippies. But now I see, as the elements of the universe were created in explosion after explosion, star after star, they transformed from hydrogen to helium to a quartz crystal. The higher the vibrations were, the denser the matter. Just like the increased energy that animals stored over that of plants. So, heady crystals really are of a higher vibration. What that means they can do for us, I know not, but I know that they've been using the vibration of the quartz crystal to power watches and radios for a long time. Way before string theory told us of the vibrations of matter, so there's probably something to it, I can believe.

So what next? I prayed. I knelt down and laid my head to the floor with the stones in my joined hands, and prayed. I don't film prayer. It was between me and my creator. It was an intense half hour of silence. The vibrations were almost shaking the tent. I can't describe how incredible the energy was, it would take a writer to pull that one off.

And then it passed. Creator has left the building, but we were affected, our frequencies had been lifted on a permanent level. We had seen the world in an even newer way. He had been listening to the wind in the trees. It talks to you, it's a really low frequency, long and slow, and it's different with forests of varying ages. Old growth versus new. It's the wind, but it's also the energy of the forest, the animals, the leaves on each swaying plant, the song of the entire ecosystem. A habitat. Not a habitat for humanity, a habitat for all. If only it didn't have to be us and them. Our duality was currently on vacation. We were all one, sitting there listening to the wind speaking a language that we couldn't interpret, a vibration that our brain couldn't convert into usable data, wonder if we used to be able to. Could all of life that still believed, that was still in vibrational harmony with the universe, could they make heads or tails of the forest? So old growth would have more knowledge to share, right? It's experienced more time, more evolution, more miraculous happenings of the universe. It was assembled according to a master plan, and while it may contain trees aging many hundreds of years, it's true age is that of billions.

An ecosystem untouched by man is not just the small fraction of life that we can see, there were millions of generations of clinical trials that went into its development. The beta test phase refined the system, worked out the bugs... or maybe worked them in, whatever. Either way, it's still going on. We of course prematurely released the human genome, under-tested and over-evaluated. We sent it out to the global market with flaws fundamental to its programming. Destined to crash and there's no plan for an update. No Human 2.0. Nope, because we're not even connected to the developer anymore. We self-released as a third party and have no idea how to troubleshoot the system. At first it seemed that we had been corrupted and contracted a devastating virus that could possibly shut the whole system down. Now it's more clear though, we didn't contract a virus due to our underdeveloped immune systems, we are the virus. We are a plague on the Earth. Far more devastating than any exaggerated amount of locust. We destroy everything in our path, not only our own food, but everything we come in contact with. We are parasites. Most parasites at least want their host to live long and prosper, otherwise they have nowhere to reside, but we just continue to suck our mother dry. We trade the water that gives life to every known organism on the planet, for this dirty sludge that only fuels greed. One day we'll realize the truth though, we can't drink oil.

Now imagine a habitat that we'd never set foot in, hard to fathom, but still possible. That place would have been slowly built over eons of natural selection. The soil would be filled with microscopic creatures far outnumbering those in the canopy above. The insects all playing vital roles beyond our comprehension. The trees that had won the race being only the best of the best, not a mass planting by an inferior race. When we clear cut an ecosystem and replant some trees, we call it renewable, and it is, just takes a few million to start to resemble what was there before. The dumbest decision we ever made was thinking that we were intelligent. We ate from that one tree, and now we think that we understand how all trees work. We have no idea.

Yeah, we have some science on it, what small amount of their vibration is observable by the under-evolved human senses, but we don't have a clue. We figured out enough about the circle of life to not quite understand fertilization, but enough to do a botch job of trying to replicate it. We reduced it to the three ingredients we understood, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, but how could we even begin to understand how a decaying body provides enough sustenance to create life? Sure, we were able to grow stuff, but without a proper understanding of how things work, we couldn't even see how bad of a job we'd done. We were creating food that wasn't vibrating at the level that it was designed to, a frequency that it evolved over forever to operate at. So just how do you think it affected our own fading vibration when we absorbed the energy that was not in harmony with nature?

Turns out that the tree of knowledge was a sham, an old wives tale, we were not blessed with the knowledge of the gods, we only thought we were. Even before genetic modification, we created an entire menu of food whose vibrations were not in accord with the universe, with God, with millions of years of evolution. Then, as we ingested them, our vibrations became out of tune. To the point that we stopped believing that there was ever any music, we thought it was just random chaos that we needed to put in order. And that was all just vegetables, imagine the antivibrational power of a twinkie. Agriculture destroyed Eden. Agriculture lowered the vibration of the entire planet and set us on a collision course for disaster. Agriculture pulled us away from God, physically, our physical bodies are now unable to vibrate at their optimal operating frequency, because we were too smart for our own good. It's not just us, every species of plant or animal that we've come in contact with has lost a piece of their connection to their own spirit because of our sub-par replacements for the real thing.

We created the generic brand of food. Cheaper, lower quality ingredients, no patented formula, just a guess that produces something that looks similar, with no true understanding of chemistry and possible side effects. Legally, we should have to rename it. If mother nature had known about trademarks, we'd have to call it "Fud." I bet more people would prefer the name brand alternative "Food" if they were offered a choice in the aisles, but the profit margins aren't as high, so capitalism nixed that one real quick. One call to the FDA and fud was the new food.

At camp, we weren't above living within the confines of the system. We survived with what we had, the same thing billions and billions do at home, so no judgment. Honestly, most people at camp weren't even aware of just how bad our problem is, how far back it dates and what started us spiraling down this rabbit hole. Including me. We all knew that gmos were bad, artificial preservatives and msg were awful, essentially we knew that fake was bad and real was good. I would only later receive the revelation that what I believed counted as "real," was simply a "less-fake" impostor. We had some wild game and foraged mushrooms, but most everything else was agriculturally produced. Most of it processed by the machine and cooked on propane. We had a lot to learn, but acknowledging that there is even a problem is the first step to any recovery program.

By this point, our bodies and overstimulated minds needed a little recovery of their own. So we slept. Kinda. I pretty much just laid there in awe of the universe and my first experience connecting to it in this way. The first time since I started down the path to believing. Eventually, there was a knock on the door and a visitor had arrived for a wake and bake session. The stoner's alarm clock, "Hey, you wanna hit this?"

The visitor was Chuck, and his tiny dog Raisin, he was a good dude but had some energy balancing to be done. I was silent mainly, still pretty zenned out and one with my internal bliss, but he made up for it. He was going on about how disappointed he was with the water protectors, those that he'd driven from so far away to help. He had spent a few days digging the coolers out from behind the old kitchen and organizing them in the now empty tent. He chastised us for having so much food back there buried and going to waste. He had also only been at camp for a few days, no tear gas, no raids, not even a blizzard. He couldn't be understanding enough to realize that we had gone from a camp teaming with help and an influx of donations, to an understaffed skeleton crew who prioritized getting liquid water to drink over organizing the coolers.

Had I been in a state to voice my opinion, or to even care about whatever had him not as in-tune as I was buzzing, I might have spoken up. Aside from the defense of our priorities and short hands, there was one vital piece of information he was overlooking. The meat was perfectly fine in the coolers just how it was, buried in the snow. I knew where it all was, for the most part, we never went without at least. It was in my contract after all. We eat meat. More importantly, it was cold out there in the "freezer." It was cold for now in the tent too, but soon enough it would start getting above freezing during the day and we'd have to devise a system to keep our once solid, frozen food aisle from spoiling. Such as shoveling the snow from outside into the coolers. Just another example of working exponentially harder, with mediocre results, due to a simple lack of belief. I was cool though, untouchable by his lower vibration, he went on and then he was off. We ate stackers, taking turns creating our four item innovations, three at a time so that we all experienced the ensuing oral explosion simultaneously. Then there was another knock, or an "aho" rather, and we had a new visitor. Grand central station, this place.

It was Summer and she had news, big news, camp changing news, this would actually affect our day to day lives, now I was awake. Summer was leaving. For good. In forty-five minutes. Hello. She'd been offered an opportunity to help create a healing place for traumatized water protectors, not just us, but those from any of the camps that we were inspiring around the country. Now, who could possibly need healing after the stress of this trauma? JK, we're all pretty messed up, anxiety ridden at the thought of reentering society with what we've seen. The cave and writing this book are helping me a lot, but I'm far from fixed.

Now, while any that needed help would be welcome, someone pointed out to me that it would probably just be the "silly white hippies" who would need a resort to deal with the few months of oppression they experienced. The indigenous people of this nation have been dealing with it their whole lives, for generations, on a reservation that offers little help for healing or a brighter future. No wonder depression and suicide run rampant in their communities. A feeling that everything is caving in around you, that you don't fit into this world, that everything you feel inside says that you don't belong. You feel broken because you can't make sense of your environment and nothing seems in place. There's nothing for you in society, no reason to go on, you weren't meant to be here in the first place. And the system agrees as it tells you that you're the one with the disease, talk about the pot calling the kettle broken.

If you're in tune with your true self, with God, then there's no way that the world can feel right and good. If just a hundred and fifty years ago your family was living in a good way, following natural law, in touch with spirit and nature because they were still a part of it, and then they were forced into this nonsensical way of life through assimilation programs and murder, you might start to feel like you don't belong in that system too.

But we were here to do something about it, they were no longer alone to suffer the oppression of their beliefs while the country sat silent. We were here to help wake the world up to everything they were destroying in the name of humanity. But who would help us? Well, Summer would. She was having a "see you later" safety meeting in Daria's tarpee, the one I had stayed in with Tina, which was next door to my current house. We all stood up and hugged her just in case we didn't make it, but it would take the National Guard to keep us away. I got up to hug her last, and the look she gave me... and then the compliment... the first one I'd gotten that wasn't about the food, although she was one of the biggest proponents of my intentional cooking. A nicety about myself that I'd not even thought of prior, and I think of myself often (aries), she said something to me that immediately raised my frequency, especially in my current vibrational state. "And this guy, you, you are such a blessing. I've never heard you complain, not once, ever."

I'd never considered it. Certainly I had. I was fairly cynical out in the real world, sarcastic at least. Here I had set out to be extra respectful, not knowing the traditions, but wanting to be a part of them, so I held my tongue when a bit of witty repartee came to mind. Only now was I starting to form bonds with a chosen few, with who I started to let my old self come through, though even my jokes are always in a positive vibration. But surely I had complained. I'd suffered kitchen takeovers, tear gas canisters and icy toilet seats, though as I recounted the winter, all I saw was fond memories of my continued training in humility.

Complaining is pretty low on the vibrational scale. Discontent. Instead, focusing on how to make any situation better is a far more productive approach, both physically and spiritually. You can literally complain yourself into being sick, the hypochondriac's real illness is negative vibes. Pity parties are not very engaging social events. I prefer the placebo effect, if you believe that you're going to feel better, then you do. Science. So, completely subconsciously, I had been constantly raising my vibration, just by being happy, even when faced with drama. What did I have to complain about anyway? I was in Utopia, with the greatest inspirations I had ever met, and I had found a role there that fulfilled my vibration's yearning to help, plus there was cheese. I was good. More than good. I was in love. I was love. My only complaint was that the rest of the world wasn't experiencing this with me, but we were working on that one.

Summer left and I followed soon thereafter. Feeling amazing and revitalized. The funk was gone and I felt on top of the world. My body and spirit were perfectly in tune. I was me again. I set out into camp, just heading home before tagging up with the see you later party. Wasn't gonna stop by the mess hall to get distracted, plus I still needed a little more time to gather my wits and put my brain back together. I could already feel a hum about camp, and not just my internal buzz. I could sense the whole camp glowing and I knew then, but would confirm later, that the funk was over. The camp was healed. Was it possible that our personal self-medication had connected not only us back to our natural vibrations, but had we channeled enough energy throughout the camp to wake everyone back up? I like to think so.

I scooted past the mess tent, but Johan caught me before I could make it home. I was just the person he was looking for, he'd manifested me, with my extra high vibration I didn't doubt it. He wanted me to walk to his car which he kept parked behind the mess hall. Old hoopty two wheel drive grandma/gangsta mobile that he drove all the time and never once got stuck. He believed. He said that he had something for me, cool, he was a connector after all. I'd been dropping hints about a watch, plus people gifted me ingredients daily, and then he pulled out an 8" x 4" wooden box and handed it to me. I gave him a look of "what the?" and he told me that he had this sent from home. It was his personal belonging that he called his brother for and had him mail it here, just for me. I was already touched before I even opened it. Everyone here was special, but he had felt the urge to go above and beyond to make whatever was in the box appear along my path. This moment would raise not only my vibration even higher and certainly his as well, but the relationship between us grew exponentially and a wave of love would replace the "strong like" that we already felt.

I opened the box, no clue what I would find, and inside was the most elaborate exacto woodcarving set I'd ever seen in my life. Three different handles, ten shapes of blades, a small hand plane, leather thimbles and then some. He'd seen me carving (complaint free, actually rather proud) with kitchen knives and felt compelled to have his own personal carving set sent here for this very moment. For this vibration that we were now creating and sharing. I cried. Not much, just wet eyes really, but that counts. We hugged a long hug and I tried to express how important this was to me, how much I appreciated the level of thought that he put into it. There's no way I had done my emotions justice, plus he had no idea that I was still tripping a little. I ran home and put it beside the casio, quite the collection, and headed for the end of Summer festivities.

There were a lot of faces crammed into the space, a lot of happiness trying to mask whatever sadness there was. We were all so glad that she had been gifted such an opportunity, and although no one wanted to say "see you later," we all knew that we would. We were brought here for a reason, called, we all answered that call and followed our paths to end up here, our destiny, which only instilled an even stronger urge to always do what feels right. So I have never worried once that these people won't cross my path at exactly the moment I need them. We all believe. Then she was off, and with her stay at camp coming an end, a new beginning had begun. We were getting married.

Not me and Summer. The whole camp could feel the love around the couple who had just arrived back from bismarck with a marriage license. Australian Alan and Heather. I ran into them when I left the great american going-away smoke out, just as they pulled in from their matrimonial errand. Hugs and congratulations and then I confirmed that it would be cool if I threw them the best wedding celebration party they'd ever had. Who could turn that offer down? Besides, I was doing it either way, you know I don't mess around. So it was off to the kitchen to get this party started and figure out how in the heck I was going to do it. I one hundred percent believed, but had no clue yet how it would work without an oven. I was going to make a wedding cake. Camp style.

How lucky were we? So lucky. Some people call it luck anyway, I bet it's more like seemingly coincidental outcomes due to positive energy and manifestation when someone is listening to their intuition and following their true path. Odds are that we were the lucky ones though. Wasn't there a casino nearby...

What an awesome thing to get to make a wedding cake for such amazing people. When in my life, besides here, would this ever be a possibility? I'd done a few birthday dinners here too, but nothing this epic. The closest was when Dustin and I made pad thai for Conner's birthday, nearly a month earlier in the season. It had been Dustin that convinced me it was possible. He had been more than an assistant, he was a partner, and his belief in us had taken our creations to another level, maybe even another vibration. It had been camp style at it's finest, peanut butter, hot sauce and several bottles of randoms that we confidently poured in, knowing that whatever we came up with would be most excellent. Or at least edible. Turned out close enough to the classic that inspired it, that my family knew what it was right away. I think it was Summer who said something like "Man, you're blowing my mind with this pad thai right now." So if we could do that, then this cake should be a piece of pie.

Denise came in to let me know that she was arranging a proper ceremony the next day at the sacred fire. She knew I was planning a party and didn't want to step on my toes, that meant a lot considering that she was my boss and could do whatever she wanted. But I have toes of steel, especially by this point in my journey. That would actually be a way better schedule, everything happens for a reason. I decided that we'd have the reception with cake after the ceremony, which gave me the middle of the night to experiment in the lab. Since I currently had a party on the mind still, we'd have the rehearsal dinner tonight, vegan dinner for Heather and everything. Vegan dinner on the side, we eat meat. Everything for a reason, but it would have been cool if Summer had been able to stick around for a combined party, but it's all good.

That's what I say now, "It would have been cool if..." instead of "I wish that..." I don't wish that anything happened any differently than it has. It's my path. I've lived without regret for a long time, for the most part, but certainly there are things that I've thought about doing differently if given another chance. Now, from my new perspective, I can see that some of those things were the most influential in bringing me here. Regret is the polar opposite of belief. I don't dwell in the past, I'm too busy saving the future.

The party was proper, the guests of honor arriving late, we all assumed that they were handling some marital paperwork in their tarpee. There was music and dancing and general merriment all around, and then finally the happy couple left. Harsh I realize, but I had stuff to do.

So how does one bake a cake in a blizzard with no oven? Just like two newlywed porcupines consummate the nuptials, very slowly. It can't not be epic either, it was a Rosebud wedding for Tunkasila's sake. Well, I had a couple of ideas, but my money was on the all purpose grill I'd used for so many other unconventional oven purposes. (Wait, I had money?) Yep, that's right, grilled wedding cake. I rounded up nine boxes of cake mix, whoever thought (aka: was called) to donate cake mix to such a camp, was surprisingly spot-on. I ran a test batch through the grill, but only after I thawed eggs obviously. Piece of cake, is what I was grilling in an aluminum cookie sheet with high walls. Pour in the batter, super heat the grill on high, load the grill, cut it back to low, few minutes, spin the tray, few more minutes and then it gets complicated. Not really, just use a flipper to cut four inch wide strips and flip like pancakes across entire tray, then repeat baking process. Works great, ish. Since I was building a cake, the sections would be perfect, as opposed to one solid piece. The second technique I tried was a similar pancake style approach, but on the flat top, too runny, not as good, grill it was.

I had found nine different cake mixes, so it was going to be an everything cake. Awesome, no matter what kind of cake you liked, there was something in there for you. German chocolate, red velvet, carrot, confetti, plain old yellow and a few others. Lot to do, so I cranked up the cake factory. I had eight more cakes to pump out plus I had to assemble it all, and I'd only hallucinated that I slept the night before. But I was in the zone. I was powered by love. I also had a full house of entertainers. Just because the dynamic duo had retired, the party didn't stop, we had a great lineup that night. Nick sang and played, it was such a shocker, such a beautiful voice and song selection, it definitely made you want to forget that he was a pain sometimes. I even played a little casio (get it), although I mainly played drums on the plastic body of it with my chopsticks. Yeah, I'm sort of a multi-instrumentalist, a tunesmith if you will.

The biggest star of the night though, blew my mind even more than Nick had, or even me playing chopsticks on the keys. Others had probably heard him play before, but this was my first, and he was by far the best musician I would hear at camp, at least as far as colonized music goes. Frickin Ziggy Zag. This crazy burnout with jokes and drum machines had a radio ready voice, prolific and genius lyrics, and such an incredible stage presence. I was at a legit concert right in the mess hall. While I was grilling a wedding cake. Now I was living.

He had been surviving as a street musician for a long time, and that requires a quick wit with your on-the-spot songwriting, so he had a whole slew of original material. There was one song that would take the heart of the camp by storm as it continued to evolve throughout the duration of our jamboree. Hmm, evolve, common theme... The Evolution Revolution? His number one hit was about his rider when he opens up for Neil Young, and the long list of ridiculous items he'll require before he goes on. Two pairs of wool socks, heated up on a woodstove, and he'll know if you use propane, nodapl. Due to copyright infringement, coupled with my internal desire to keep as much money as I possibly can so that I can buy property and make it mine so that I can grow a big garden and raise a bunch of sick kids, that's all I can give you. Plus, I was stoned and don't remember it all. His in-between song banter was the best I'd ever seen. He was truly a next level performer. The camp was mesmerized. Oops, pay attention to the grill, almost lost one.

But I didn't. Some varieties did better then others, and eventually I had two trays full of cake layers, now for the fun part. I had four cans of icing, whoever sent the cake mix must have known that we wouldn't be messing around, although one can was pink lemonade flavor which I only used sparingly for accents. I didn't know the plan yet, I guess that means there wasn't one, so I just started. I had thought about designing a proper two tiered cake, but as it came together, it took on its own shape. I started with the red velvet because it had held together the best, so I had more of it then the others, and I was able to fit it together into a giant circle. Icing layer. Next cake, which had a little less material and made a slightly smaller circle, just barely tapering up. More icing. And this is how it worked all the way up. Each new layer just slightly smaller than the last and making a seemingly planned, circular, massive pile of cake, like it was meant to be or something. I started icing it and felt myself finally fading, so I enlisted Wendy's help to finish up for me and I went to bed. It'd been a long day to say the least.
Step Fourteen:

Up and at 'em early, big day, lot to do. Hoped the cake was okay, certainly no water protector would attempt their own four am raid, and it was all good. I used the lemonade icing to decorate the edges, and some chocolate medallions that I'd scored from Oceti to add flourishes on the sides and top. Work of art. Work of love. Eh, it wasn't really work at all, just love. But we needed a cake topper. Dan had mentioned that he may be able to carve something, I would have, but I'm only one man, so overnight neither of us had come up with anything. I have a rook and a knight... nah, I could draw pictures of them... nope, just didn't feel right. It'll work out, think, believe, aha. We had the perfect size of action figures that suited the union of this dynamic duo perfectly, batman and robin. I placed them on top, arranged them to be holding hands and bam, the cake was complete. My first and possibly only attempt at a wedding cake was a success. For now at least, we'd see how it tasted later. The day was far from over, the cake was really yesterday's project, the wedding is at noon, better get to it. I knew that the cake would go fast, it was massive, but we had a big family, unless it was gross. Either way, we needed an auxiliary buffet of extravagance. Stackers. Desert stackers. Almost makes me want to get married. Nah.

I had six cases of those sweet torta crisps, circular semi-sweet wafers about four inches around, I love this place. I opened a bunch of those, but they were individually wrapped, which felt like such an injustice to my dear mother. Waxed paper sleeves clogging up a landfill somewhere, out of sight but not out of mind. That is if our dumpster ever made it to a landfill. We had one of those long construction dumpsters out by the wood pile, it would get crazy full before they would eventually come and empty it. We'd fill it up in a day with the next wave that was on standby, and then it would sit full until next time. Until there wasn't a next time. In the thick of winter, we tried to get it emptied after it seemed like they'd forgotten about us, trash heaping and piling up all around it. We were informed that they would not be coming to empty it anymore. It seemed that they were refusing to service it because it had been dropped off backwards and couldn't be maintained. If we managed to turn it around ourselves, a twenty foot dumpster loaded with garbage and snowed into an iceberg, then they could come empty it. Here's the kicker though, they are the ones that dropped it off. They installed it, and had emptied it before, and now were claiming that they would no longer do it because they had set it up wrong. All during a media smear campaign whose goal was to villainize the environmentalists as litterbugs who do more damage than good. Talk about dapl.

Oh, you're just being paranoid, they wouldn't use money and political power to influence the operations of private company just for oil. A company that already was challenged by the road closure and the overabundance of snow in our two mile radius. Just like it was mere coincidence that our porta johns were removed a week before our compost toilets were finished. Or that our propane supply was constantly fluctuating with its availability. Or that our water delivery guy mysteriously disappeared without any further contact and we had to make individual runs with five gallon containers to a church who hadn't been bought. Or that big wood delivery truck that always dropped its load off in the center of the main entrance, in the middle of the night, and when we would occasionally catch him early enough, it seemed like a huge inconvenience for him to dump it a few feet to the left. Or that an oil company could hire the National Guard to shoot peaceful civilians who just want to preserve the most precious natural resource known to man. (hint: it's not oil)

But no need to be angry, anger is a very low vibration and won't do anybody any good. I just laughed at the ridiculousness of the whole situation and took it as yet another lesson in humility. We were lovers of the Earth, environmentalists, hippies, indians, not the mindless consumers of the mainstream. Why did we have so much trash to begin with? Why were we using disposable plates? We were hypocrites. Maybe we weren't polluting the water directly, but where did we think that dumpster was going once it finally got picked up? There was so much stuff thrown away that could have been repurposed. Some people started making bottle bricks, plastic bottles stuffed with trash and old hand warmers, to then be used for construction. A novel idea, but without a campwide plan, it just turned into a novelty.

What choice did we have? The items that we needed to survive, all came in plastic packaging. The food I prepared, all came in plastic packaging. Or cans. So recycle. Nope. No recycling program in north dakota, at all. Closest was in minnesota. We would have some people take bags of it when they left, but again, with no campwide program it seemed almost pointless. I was advocating for, but never personally sought to install, a proper recycling removal program. A tent at the gate with bags of recyclables, and as people dropped off donations, they could easily pick up recycling to take home to their own, more eco-conscious states. Wait, are you saying north dakota isn't eco-conscious?

Even if we somehow managed to have a trashless community here, the Earth would still be plagued by the waste of our species, and not the waste that is part of the circle of life. Even if agriculture itself hadn't destroyed the world, the bags and boxes and cartons and bottles that it created would have. Not only does all of that packaging use up valuable resources to produce, and not only does it create unvaluable pollution to manufacture, it destroys almost as many ecosystems as we do. It's even evolved into an island floating in the Pacific Ocean larger than the state of Texas. Once a species evolves the ability to consume plastic, they'll be successful worldwide, because that's the extent that our pollution has been able to populate the Earth.

But what can be done? Humans can't exist without plastic, we evolved side by side, right? Even the most organic california hippie whole foods aisles are full of the stuff. It's here to stay. Forever. At least for a million years, long after we are gone, and with that attitude that's exactly the case. But no, we survived a long time without plastic containers, even after the agricultural takeover of nature. It wasn't even around a hundred years ago, back when we first started tasting oil, and wasn't brought to the mainstream until the 50's with a partnership between Disney and Monsanto. No joke. What a team. Who even knows who profited more from the polymer's takeover.

In current times, with the plastic revolution in full swing, there are an enlightened few that are trying to make a difference. There are wasteless grocery stores currently operating in america, so maybe not all of us are oxymorons. You bring your own containers, baskets, jugs, bags, pockets, hands, and you fill them from bulk containers of food that has never touched a polymer in its life. I'm sure that once the FDA gets wind of this, they will be a thing of the past, so shhh.

Plastic is not only not good for the future of our planet, it's not good for the present of your food, especially if it gets warm. So your precious mni, your water that nestle bought at a discount during a drought and filtered out some of the contaminants as they added some fluoride of their own and then packaged into plastic bottles, is now getting man-made molecules leached into it every time it gets warm. Like, if the sun beams down on the truck delivering it to your local walmart. (And please, whatever you do, don't ever microwave it.) Knowing all this, we were still trying to thaw water out of frozen plastic jugs by the woodstove. If they visually melted, we wouldn't drink it, but it was contaminated long before the jug started shriveling up. What could we do though? If we were out of water we had to do something, so we prayed on it, used our positive vibrations to hopefully change the frequency of whatever it was we were drinking. So, metal water jugs, it's important, in a polar ice camp at least.

Also important... That I outdo myself once more. I would settle for no less than twenty toppings on the dessert stacker buffet. Chocolate syrup, jams, powdered sugar, almonds, walnuts, granola, dried berries, raisins, fresh fruit, pie filling and anything else that I would possibly be willing to eat on a tiny dessert pizza. Since this was a wedding of abundance in a survival situation, there would be no limit of four items per, feel free to load 'em up.

I was rushing to get it all together before the big event when I got a slight reprieve, Denise came in to tell me that we were running on indian time, perfect. I got it all together, removed my apron and put on my camera bag. I was pulling double-duty. How could I happen to have a professional camera and a steadicam and not film their special day? Might be a little blurry from tear gas sediment, but whatevs. No filming the sacred fire though, which is where the ceremony would be held, but as long as I stayed zoomed in on them I should be good.

The ceremony was officiated by Marcus from food not bombs, their roommate, who happened to be ordained for such the occasion. I won't bore you with the most beautiful wedding I've ever witnessed, just mainly love and vibes abounding as our family helped them start theirs, you know, mushy stuff. It was magical, which was a big step for me considering that before camp I didn't believe in magic, or weddings. They were gifted a giant bag of sage which they distributed to all of their friends, I prayed with and cherished it right up until the last piece, when I burned it on the day we left camp forever.

Now that all that gooey love stuff was over, it was time to party. The cake was a smash, except that Australian Alan was from australia, where are they don't have a cake smashing in the face tradition like we do. Each tall slice had nine layers composed of all the different cakes. Something for everyone. Your favorite cake was guaranteed to be there. Honestly, I'm not the biggest fan of cake, but the slice I had was... (cough, cough, shoulder dusting) ...amazing. As if the nine layers weren't enough, the crowd decided that the topping bar wasn't just for the crisps and piled the items up on the cake too. Turns out I'm not alone in my desire to kick it up a notch.

As predicted, the monstrosity of a cake was demolished quickly, to the point that people were scraping icing off of the serving tray within ten minutes. The celebration from the night before picked up right where it left off, after only a few hour reprieve, and they shared a newlywed dance and smooch routine. When I asked Alan what they were doing to celebrate the day (other than the obvious), he replied "Probably splitting wood." He was notorious for splitting wood shirtless in the elements, and today was a day like any other. We still needed firewood. We still had a world to save. I still had to cook dinner.

Meat. Fried meat. Crispy deep fried buffalo bites dipped in sweet baby ray's. Win. Since the oil was hot, we did onion rings too, well we had to have something healthy to balance out the dessert we had for lunch. The meat wasn't the only thing to be thrown from the oven into the fryer that day, we were all in hot water yet again. Man, it doesn't sound so blistering cold out there with all these warm words. But for real though, believe it or not, we had another situation.

Rumor had it, I know, I know, but this time it was coming from the top, we were getting kicked out of Rosebud. Oceti was supposedly on army corps land and Sacred Stone was supposedly on private property, but we were supposedly on the reservation, land governed by the tribe, and now they were going to be serving us an eviction notice. Didn't we just do this? They tried to take our kitchen to get us out of here, that didn't do it, so now this was next? Now dapl had gotten to the tribe that was hosting us? They'd already bought the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, so a few tribal council members should be a piece of grilled cake. Hadn't we proven that we weren't gonna run? But that was all before the tribe was trying to evict us. Smokey's boss was putting pressure on him, and if Smokey said to go, I would, but I wasn't ready to cave and neither was he.

There was another possible option, a new camp up the hill past Sacred Stone, Black Hoop camp. The "owners" of that land were coming to dinner to tell us about it and about their conditions. It would be opened up to almost exclusively rosebuddies. They wanted to ensure that there would be no plans for anything other than prayer, no aggression, no snowballs and no molotov cocktails. Yes, that's us, we are the ones you've been waiting for. They would have their own leader overseeing security, with our team running the day to day. I didn't confirm the kitchen status, I'd just go with the flow. The location would put us further away from the bridge, but closer to the drill pad, and the new vantage point allowed us to see the drill pad as well as the intricate system of roadways that dapl had in place. No wonder they could respond with a line of humvees within minutes.

The camp would be built with more organization then our pieced together arrangement, that's really where we could have improved the most. When the crowds showed up en masse, they all just set up, and then they all just left. So much gear was buried deep in abandoned tents because we didn't know about the "donated" supplies that they left in a hurry. Some type of organization would have helped, you don't want to start telling people how to live though, so more of a cataloging system which makes the camp run more efficiently. At one point, when the winter really kicked into high gear and so did the evacuaters, Summer was passing around a list for everyone to write down where they lived, we might have to come dig you out at some point, hopefully sooner than later. I didn't put my name on it though. Didn't feel right. Didn't even know Summer that well, could be dapl, or dapl could find the list when they raid us.

This was also back in the igloo days, and even up to the end, I thought that the igloo would be a perfect hidey hole from dapl, you never know. It looked like a super abandoned tent under a five foot snowdrift, probably couldn't even detect my body heat through its walls, but I also probably couldn't have dug my way out quite as easily as it goes in my head. I probably needed the rescue squad more than any, but I knew that Summer wouldn't want me to stay there anymore, definitely not safe, so I just didn't say anything and moved into mash soon enough.

This Black Hoop camp would have a central mess hall surrounded by tipis, a design that retains heat and blocks wind in the community spaces. And even an inipi on site. Sounded like there were a lot of pros, the cons being our natural fear of change, the task of moving, and the unknowns of anything that ever happened here. After the meeting, everyone was all abuzz about the next step, what was the plan? Denise spoke and said that Black Hoop was a go, we just needed to work out a few details. Everyone asked about my thoughts. I don't freak out. I just gotta cook dinner. You guys figure it out and let me know. While that technique may have left my family without my guidance, I felt like jumping to decisions before all of the facts were in was no good, and this kept my vibrations high. I didn't worry. Never. I believed. It would all work out. Always does. It will feel right. Black Hoop didn't feel wrong, but it didn't feel right yet. It didn't feel right now. I wasn't packing until it was time to go.

Dylan, Thomas and I we're having a candid kitchen convo about what we would do if we had to leave completely. Where would we go if we had to leave tonight? Dylan asked what we thought about starting an eco-village in spain... Um, yeah. That sounds freakin sweet. Escape the tyranny and backwardsness of our government and whatever the next four years are going to bring. Maria and I could cook, she could teach me about all the local produce, I'm in. But...

Yeah, it sounds cool, way better than living in the states, especially if we sailed there, but would that just be running away? I'm not above admitting defeat if I've been beaten, even if it wasn't exactly fair and square, but it wasn't a matter of pride, it was a matter of duty. A call of duty. Duty to my mother. I couldn't desert her. Spain would certainly be a kingdom far far away, out of the America Corporation's jurisdiction. But it wouldn't be safe from the terror that they would unleash upon the world. Global destruction wouldn't care that we were living in a good way in that distant land. Poisoned oceans or nuclear proliferation or earthquakes and tsunamis or zombies, we'd suffer them all the same as here, but we could do even less about it from there. No, we were called here, all of us, for a reason. Many of those reasons may not include leading a revolution against the evils of the world, but they don't include running and hiding either.

Now, starting an eco-village and living in a good way could inspire a movement of its own, especially if I documented the process, so I'm not knocking any of my people that do that very thing. But it's not for me, I'm here to stay. I was called here to learn and to connect, to amass knowledge and resources to save the world. Turned out I was also here to be humbled and shown how to believe in the wonders of the universe, to save myself, but that was an added bonus that made all the other stuff that much more possible. And necessary. Now that I had a close relationship with the Earth that created me, there was no turning my back on her, we were doing this, together. And just when we thought the pollution of the planet couldn't get any crappier, we were yet again humbled and shown that we don't know poop. Literally. Poop.

Trent burst in the door and in two minutes used sixteen synonyms for fecal matter to describe our current conundrum. Oh crap. So remember when I told you about how a farmer uses our human waste compost on his farm? Well... I'm not exactly sure where that rumor came from, I'll assume dapl. Nobody seemed to know anything about it, but apparently someone had been picking it up and loading it into a dumpster in Cannonball, near the community center. So far so good, especially with it all frozen and probably not even that stinky. The issue was that it was an end loading storage container and the unloader had only been throwing it as far as they could from the end. So now there was a primarily empty chamber with a pile of colostomy bags packed into the rear entrance. Trent had been helping an Oceti supply crew and they had worked for several hours trying to alleviate the back up, but realized it was a bigger blockage than they had assumed, so they returned for help. I don't even know if it was Rosebud's mess, but we'll assume it was all of ours, and in the end it doesn't matter, we were all here together. We would not try to assemble a *hit squad tonight, but we would need a few brave souls soon. A few more poop jokes ensued before we finally convinced the excited crowd that it was inappropriate conversation for the food tent, plus they were being overly vulgar in a prayer camp where yelling profanities was frowned upon. Then we gave them the stink eye.

I semi-jokingly mentioned and was immediately backed up on a thought. A thought that in the days leading up to the completion of the cleanup, everyone agreed on unanimously, so I didn't argue. "We don't want the cook handling feces, right?" And they didn't. So I didn't. Whew, I was never so glad to have a full-time job.

The next day brought more turmoil with Black Hoop, now it looked like we couldn't go there. I don't remember what it was this time, but for a few days there it seemed to change hourly. Couldn't go because of some paperwork proving land rights, then it was a go and we needed to move soon, then no again. Denise was at the casino working on paperwork, proof of residency for all of us, the tribe couldn't evict without notice if we lived here more than thirty days. Then Black Hoop was back... You want to know how much I stressed about it? Make a zero with your index finger and thumb and put it below your waist, that's how much. My only concern was that the National Guard would roll in and I wouldn't have the grill warmed up. Talk about first world problems.

A day or two later we were told about a meeting at the community center, in Cannonball, concerning the new camp. I was almost done with dinner, so I served it and hopped in the car, just the second time I left camp, but I don't really count it since I was only going two miles away to a camp meeting. Anything could happen though. We got there and it was packed, so we piled into the back of a stuffed room, full of mainly residents of the reservation, for a meeting that had nothing to do with Black Hoop.

As you could imagine, we were still in the right place. I wouldn't have come except that my people wanted their cook there to help plan the new kitchen, but here I was a spectator at a Cannonball town hall meeting, a meeting about why they were evicting us from Rosebud. A bunch of residents spoke. A couple of them talked negatively of the camps, their main complaint was that the bridge was closed on 1806 and they had to drive farther to get to bismarck. The only other complaint was that one citizen didn't want "tweakers" in his yard...? Sounds more like the meth addicts that would have been way better off if they'd made it to camp to heal. The overwhelming majority of people that spoke were in support of the camp. Far more of the Cannonball citizens that we heard speak, wanted us there. Believed that what we were doing was good. Realized that what was happening illegally on their reservation not only affected their own community, but the entire region, country and planet.

So then why were they trying to kick us off of the rez if they were all on our side? Well, it was a four letter word starts with D and rhymes with apple. There had been another meeting like this one and they took a vote, the meeting wasn't advertised and all that spoke said they hadn't heard about it. The rez has over 800 registered tribal members and the secret vote determining their official stance included a whopping 28 of them. So less than 4% of the residents voted to evict, and even they weren't unanimous.

The council members made excuses and a few slips of the tongue, the funniest (kinda) was when someone who was supposed to be representing the people and keeping their interest in mind, didn't even know their simple motto. "Water is.... good?" Yeah. It is. It clearly showed how the council was not a part of our movement, but it also gave us a new catchphrase that I've already snuck in a couple of times. Not as funny, was when someone was speaking about being reimbursed for the cost incurred due to camp, and then spoke about how dapl would reimburse them if they sent an invoice. What? She didn't retract it as an error and added that she'd gotten a several thousand dollar check in the mail. Quite possibly just a slip of the tongue, but really?

But enough funnyish times, there was another thing that came up at the end that was not at all funny. Several people, including Ladonna, the founder of Sacred Stone, spoke out about the calls they'd been getting from anonymous callers with numbers from around the country. Death threats. She had gotten over twenty and other residents had been getting them too. I've since heard of another that received similar calls after posting a video of an interaction with a daplcop. Maybe that's why it hadn't felt right to release anything yet. The couple of people speaking out about us cited these as reasons to remove the camp. It was working. Dapl was threatening the lives of locals for allowing us to stand up against them. Yep. Now, maybe it wasn't dapl, could have just been overzealous supporters of the pipeline from all over the country, we certainly had ours too. But all things considered, we didn't exactly give them the benefit of the doubt.

The meeting ended with a plan to get the governor to the next meeting to discuss reopening 1806. A representative from his office had been there, after he spoke (very briefly) he was asked to stay and answer a few questions, but he literally fast talked as he backed out of the door and was gone before anyone could get anything answered. Yeah, did I mention before that the governor was corrupt and personally invested in the oil business? It is one of the main three industries in the state after all. Got to keep them jobs. Good hard-working american jobs. It's enough to get any idiot elected. Go money!

The meeting was over, I ran into my vet buddy Freddie and caught up, then we left. Not at all why we had come, but we had been there for a reason, and they were sending death threats to people who were helping our resistance. They were starting to realize that they weren't going to scare us off, we grilled out when they threatened us, so they were putting pressure on our supporters. What was next? Who was next?

Next please. So Black Hoop? We didn't know any more than we did earlier, but some people didn't have the resolve to wait until the very last minute, we had to do something. So Black Hoop was a go and a few people started setting up tipis and security. And the first security personnel? Just know that he also slept in the security shack's community space.

James asked what my plan was, so I asked about his. He said we were staying, even if it was just the two of us. He needed his chef, so I wasn't allowed to leave. It didn't feel right anyway. Johan wasn't ready to move up there either, but he needed to use the camp to unload supplies for a new project, at least if that's where we'd all end up living anyway. He'd been talking about this new thing for a few weeks now, rumor has it that people talk about all sorts of stuff though, but as spastic as Johan was, he had some serious follow through. We were going to start tanning buffalo hides. Very cool.

He had found somebody that was going to sell us a four thousand pound pallet with fifty of them. Johan got his donors to pay for a lot of it and used his personal funds to cover the rest. This was going to be a spiritual learning experience for the camp and one of the biggest things I'd ever worked on. And I mean big. There were points of contention surrounding the project, as with anything, anything worth having anyway. Was this really the best use of time and resources in the current end of times? When was it not end of times around here? When would we find the time for a handful of people to process the skins? We found the time for a smoke and jam session every night. Who would get the finished hides? Well, plans always change, that's why I quit making them, but they had a pretty good idea so far. The first one was to be a prayer robe for ceremony and the sweat lodge. We'd be giving some to the different tribes in the area, inviting the Cannonball schools to come and learn and take some home, as well as the possibility of covering an inipi with them, I was a fan of that plan. A majority of them would be available to any that wanted to come work them, it would be a lot of sweat equity, and anyone could come and use small pieces to create personal projects. Moccasins, gloves, belts, a drum or whatever. I was thinking a nice tobacco pouch would be cool.

The Buffalo is a sacred animal to the Sioux. They had a very spiritual relationship with the giant beast before we arrived. Prayed to it. Honored its sacrifice so that the tribe could absorb its energy. The animal was the primary source of their survival for millennia. They always respected the its life and death, always using every part of the animal, as they did any living creature that they consumed. Then the colonizers arrived and began slaughtering the herds for the pelts alone, leaving the skinless carcasses to rot in the plains, and our government provided them free ammunition to facilitate the eradication. They nearly wiped out the entire species, killing two bison with one stone, not only profiting from the furs, but eliminating the natives' primary food source. We all know what happens to a population when they no longer have an abundant food source. There were some buffalo near camp, sometimes we would see them up on the hill across the river, sometimes blocked in by dapl so they couldn't access water or move to a more vegetative area of the icy landscape, and they were being poisoned.

"Tatanka", he who owns us, the four-legged came before the two-legged. Anytime we see a buffalo in the horizon it means that Tunkasila is looking out for us, today is our day to eat. We never take more than we need and there remains an abundance, for all creatures, we respect the natural laws that made us who we are and don't try to undercut God's authority. We live in a good way.

So, where did fifty Buffalo hides come from then? These weren't wild buffalo slaughtered for their skin, they were the leftovers from a buffalo farm a few hundred miles away. I didn't yet have the disdain for the farming industry that I now do, and we prayed over the animals before we started to work the hides. Johan was the broker for the project, Pete was integral to it as well, but the real leader was Leonard, our current spiritual counselor. Outside of camp, he was not only a long time sun dancer, he was also an assistant to a very powerful medicine man, we were lucky to have him. He had clashed with Neil early on, which caused me to unfairly cast judgment upon him since I respected Neil and his counsel. Neil had his flaws, as we all do, and eventually left to continue healing, away from the stresses of camp. Yet another lesson in humility.

Judgment of another is not living in a good way. Their path is not for me to evaluate, but it's hard when you're in a leadership position and looking out for what's best for your family. How to walk the line between protecting your people from negative energy and loving those who need it the most is a tough one. Pray on it. Pray for understanding. Remember that everything happens for a reason, including their path crossing with yours. Maybe you're there to help them, maybe they'll end up helping you.

Leonard and I would do both. The relationship I built with him was the strongest I had with any medicine person, he truly respected me and everything I did for our people, and continually expressed it. He genuinely appreciated my opinions, gave me personal counsel, cared for my well-being, and I'm sure he prayed for me even when I was out of sight. We were only just starting to build a relationship at this point, I was only known to him as the cook who tried to save some dinner for the night time sweaters, or if that wasn't possible, I would regularly whip something up for the prayer crew. That's why we're here. Rosebud doesn't go hungry.

Not on snack crew tonight though, I hadn't sweat in a while myself and with all we'd been through lately, I was needing it, both spiritually and physically. I served dinner and ran home to grab my shorts and a towel when I ran into Johan, freshly back from getting the hides. I asked what he was doing, he responded that he was beat and going to bed, but when I told him about the sweat happening in five, he quickly signed up. This was why we were here, not everyone maybe, but the ones that were, took it very seriously. The inipi ceremony centered your energy and made it possible to walk in prayer, to not only combine energies in the lodge, but to make every other action at camp that much more powerful.

I knew Johan would be in. He had been undergoing an extreme transition just like I had been, never expecting a path like this, but realizing that this had always been his destiny. He was a fast talker and a stoner, didn't smoke cigs, although I had convinced him to start accepting offered smokes and saving them to pay forward (or backwards to me), but not necessarily someone I would peg as a spiritual warrior. Of course, neither was I. I had recently seen another side of Johan though, he had invited me to go with him to pray at Turtle Island, in the face of armed guards, during the presidential inauguration. Who knows, it might be our last chance.

He'd invited me the day before and I was certainly in, as long as he gave me a wake-up call. I didn't do breakfast. We gathered at the car, me and Dustin were loading up and we invited a fourth as he passed by, Theo was stoked and jumped right on board. Theo had been around for a while, he did a lot of overnight shifts at the post and manned the eastern department of defense during the raids. But it had been taking a toll on him. He suffered from bipolar disorder, an emotional imbalance where he experienced a duality of ups and downs. A manic state where he vibrated high, in-tune with his inner self and his environment, and a depressive state where the whole world seemed to be against him and he didn't feel at home in his own body.

So, you're saying that trying to live by your indigenous tradition's natural way within the confines of this man-made fractured dystopia, you think that could cause internal conflict? I highly doubt that, if the diseases of the present were caused by our unnatural way of life, then why would the powers that be work so hard to develop cures for all of these ailments? Well, not exactly cures, more like temporary fixes, chemical compounds meant to curb the symptoms, that way the victim's can live long productive (and reproductive) lives. Just make sure you fill your prescription on time.

He didn't like taking his medication, while it numbs the pain of the lows, it also numbs the joy of the highs. It doesn't affect how you actually vibrate, it just deadens the emotions that have evolved to guide you through living in accord with your internal energy. It separates you from God. All of western medicine does. And alcohol. And high-fructose corn products. And gluten. And fluoride in the water. And plastic in the water. And oil in the water. And oil in the air. And chemtrails in the air. And microwaves in the air. And cell phone frequencies just inches from your emotional processing centers. And allergies. And tear gas. And pepper spray. And fear. And outlawing pot. And outlawing traditional native american prayer ceremonies. And desecrating their sacred burial sites. And convincing those that feel like the world is out of order, that it is actually them that don't belong. It is their fault. They are broken. And this whole time I thought smallpox was the only disease that we purposely gifted to the original inhabitants of the home of the free.

Even in his lows, Theo was such a kind spirit. He calmly helped the family deal with several internal struggles, giving insight to situations in such a peaceful manner that you had no choice but to hang on to every word. So yes, we wanted him by our side as we rang in the new regime, the Standing Rock presidential welcoming committee. We arrived at the bottom of the hill, crossed the river, and set up shop just on the other side. Several armed daplbots appeared at the chain link and razor wire fence at the top of the hill, but they didn't address us or seem to be concerned with any aggression towards us, as long as we didn't start climbing.

We smudged and the four of us stood side-by-side and silently prayed. We prayed for a solid fifteen, through the snickers and laughs of the bots up top, the mumbles that we could just barely make out as ridiculing our spiritual ceremony. Once each of us had released our creative energy into the universe, we retreated and headed back to camp. No incident. We checked back in with Smokey, who Johan had cleared the action with ahead of time, and he was glad to hear that it went well.

When we had passed by Echo3 they told us of a fire in Rosebud, smoke still rising from somewhere near my house on the other side of the mess hall. I really cannot leave anymore, it's always something. It wasn't my house, but even if it had been, I would have been okay. (maybe that's what I get for saying "my") I always have everything I need. I'd given up most connection to material things by this point. But it wasn't my house on fire, I mean the house I stayed in, nope, it was Theo's. Whoa. Sorry man. What can I do?

He was good. Cool as a cucumber, and our cucumbers were frozen solid. He'd only had some clothes in there, which could easily be replaced. He also didn't have much connection to the material world. He could have easily spiraled downhill into an episode of depression, which we were worried about, but as far as we could tell, he was good. Something was probably too close to the stove and caught fire. He had been on his way to take a nap when he signed up for our excursion at the last minute. He was preparing to sleep, a few feet away from the ignition source of a blaze that burnt his tent to the ground, when our prayerful vibrations and his commitment to doing what feels right, called him to join us on our journey. Again humbled. Again grateful to the amazing powers of the universe. The impending doom of the diabolical inauguration had possibly just saved our brother's life. The great mystery works in great and mysterious ways. So again we prayed.

And again tonight we would pray. Tonight's sweat would even be dedicated to blessing the sacredness of the buffalo that we would be pouring our energy into as we re-energized our own internal vibrations. It would also be my first sweat with Leonard. To date, my first time in an inipi had been the most intense, tonight would possibly take that title. It was hot, like forty-two stones hot. I'd started to get the hang of sweat. I was slowly learning some of the songs, which makes it way easier to let go of your fear and physical discomfort as you truly put your heart out there, to really live on a prayer. I was also getting my layers in order at home so that it was easier to disrobe while outside in the nighttime breeze of the record-breaking dakota winter. It was extra cold this night. I was fine half-dressed standing by the raging fire that was currently "warming" the stones, but once I finished undressing and crawled into the lodge it was almost too much to take. My toes were feeling it as I tried to rub some life into them, finally the glowing rocks started arriving and soon the cold was only a faint memory.

Ziggy was right in front of me, I hadn't sweat with him since we'd become close. It was his first sweat in this inipi, he and James had both been to over fifty sweats, but never in the same lodge until tonight. And Steph was here. And Bill. In fact, as I had looked around the fire earlier, I knew everyone. My previous sweats had been with mainly strangers, strangers at camp still felt like family, but this group was composed of some of my closest brothers and sisters, including Pete who was still suffering from pepper spray soaked deep into his dreads.

There was one still questionable participant there, and her name? Well that aintcha business. Now even if she was dapl, which was still as much of a suspicion as ever, I still wanted her at sweat. I had wanted Frank there but never succeeded, so getting her in the lodge was a win, even if I was worried that she wouldn't respect the sanctity of the ceremony. If she wasn't dapl, then she was still lost, not feeling connected to her path or the world and an outcast in this camp of outcasts, so a sweat would help her to reconnect to her spirit. And if she was dapl, then it was even more important that she come. She could witness that we truly were here praying in a good way, and even if it was just recon and trying to fit in as a community member, as she began her inadvertent connection to her internal energy, she might start to question her life choices and affiliations.

But would she be able to hold her tongue and not talk incessantly, like was her demeanor in the rest of camp? Nope. She talked way too much. Trying to crack small jokes early on to deal with her uncomfortableness with the experience. You're instructed to be silent for the first seven stones and she managed that, but throughout the ceremony she over spoke to the point that she was shushed repeatedly. I know, I don't film prayer, and I try not to judge, but I have to share just a little more.

When it was her time to pray, she spoke of her belief system that simply gives thanks, no problem, everyone prays in their own way. All gods are the same, belief systems are just different paths to gain that connection to spirit. But you have to do it from your heart. You have to believe. If you're praying without belief, then it's just words. It's not the words of the prayer that do it, it's the energy behind them. If you are not praying from the heart, then you're praying for appearances and the ones around you, not for yourself. So you can't be surprised when your prayers don't work and you don't receive the healing that those around you do. A silent prayer from the heart is far more powerful than an empty speech, a rehearsed recital intended to impress your neighbors.

She went on and on and on, all the things she was grateful for, and I try not to judge, but everyone felt that there were zero feelings involved. No heart. No belief. Just a movement through the motions. Others had done this before, perhaps even me that first time, and even here I didn't believe the same way I do now, but I knew not to continue elaborating to make up for it. The last few minutes (yes, it went on for more than a few minutes) heard the entire attendance adding "aho", as in amen, as in are you done yet, as in yeah, you're done, until eventually Leonard started the next song and she was played off the stage. The stones will only stay hot for so long.

I really do hate to speak on someone's prayer like this, but it was obviously disingenuous, which only made a mockery of our sacred ceremony. Any doubts I had at this time about her belief were justified in a later chapter when she openly belittled the power of prayer. Freakin dapl. But even dapl was on a path. Everything happens for a reason.

Dear dapl, thank you for everything you've brought into my life. Thank you for the people you've introduced me to, who have challenged me to become a better person and helped me to evolve along my way. Without you, we'd all just be consumers stuck in the system. Thanks to you, we now have formed a resistance and we are developing a better way of life. So, I guess oil might save the world after all?

Like I said though, I'm glad she sweat. Even if it hadn't been completely sincere, it was a step. It's not an overnight transition to give up all of your preconceptions about the world and to start believing in a completely new way from the heart. I'm still in the middle of my neverending story. Plus, it was a hot one for her first go at it, which gave me some kind of satisfaction. I guess because she didn't get a freebie and think she'd been through an intense lodge. I would always hear newbies exclaim about the heat of sweats that I considered mild, just you wait. She would also be one of the first to be stationed at Black Hoop, staying in a tipi on the hill. There was way less protection from the wind than in Rosebud, but it would be far safer once the impending doom of the inevitably catastrophic flood started encroaching on our home.

That was one of the driving forces of the eviction of our camp. Everyone is always so worried about our safety, doesn't it feel to good to be loved, especially by those that continuously sold us out? The flood would also wash all of our trash, abandoned tents, and current homes, into the river that we were trying to protect. This was a serious concern for everyone concerned. We had begun digging up abandoned tents and clearing the mess that those fleeing from previous fictitious threats had left upon departure. We absolutely did not want to pollute our precious mni, especially the committed few that still remained, so we were working diligently to preemptively stay ahead of the situation. So, how again does evicting the world's hardest working clean up crew help to keep the river pollution free? Oh yeah, it makes for a great mainstream media report about water protectors abandoning their camp and allowing it to be washed into the river. Who even knew if the flood threat was any more real than any of the other ones? We were definitely in a possible flood zone, right by a river and all, someone even had a picture from decades ago when it flooded almost up to the bridge. We had a record snowfall which had to go somewhere, so it was certainly plausible, except that I personally knew that this snow didn't melt like water, it melted like plastic. So, we'd see. I wasn't packing yet.

Christopher, Dustin and I were in their tipi one-day unwinding and Dustin pulled out a deck of tarot-style cards, so we asked a couple of questions before pulling a few. They are open to interpretation and none of us were particularly in-tune to a higher awareness of vibration, but the results were intriguing. We asked several questions regarding the next move, seemed pertinent considering our current situation. We pulled cards that alluded to ice and water a couple times, but every single time included the same exact card, "the stone people." The Sacred Stone people? Were we supposed to go there? Christopher took it to heart more than I, plus he had seen another sign. One day when asking the universe for guidance, he saw a flock of geese who normally flew north, instead flying east to Sacred Stone. It just felt right. He wouldn't leave Rosebud until he had to, but he had an emergency exit plan now. I on the other hand, would be hiking through the icy plains with two computers, a big camera and a casio. I'm a real plan ahead kind of guy.

The flood wasn't the only disaster we were facing. Dogs were getting sick. A lot of them. Hmm, we all got sick at the same time and now the dogs were all getting sick. Don't worry, I'm not going to go on about a government conspiracy to poison our dogs, that sounds a little too crazy for even me to believe. What good would it even do except to break our unbreakable morale? We still knew that there were confirmed chemicals in the snow and they were all eating who-knows-what unknown meats and treats. So it remained a mystery, but we obviously couldn't discount foul play, especially considering our recent campwide funk days after a new white fluff cropdusting. The sickest were Oso and Wolfie. Oso had started following Dan around on a firewood run in Oceti, Dan having an even bigger heart than his hairdo, took to him immediately. He had been a little underweight, but he was catching up to Dan in no time, until now. The sickness had him dropping pounds, and when Dan could get him to eat, he couldn't keep it down. It was scary, but eventually, after almost a week, he started to make a turnaround and a slow recovery.

Wolfie was adopted by Mary and Andre, a tiny little black puppy and super cute, even when he was constantly tripping you in the mess hall, or while you were transporting hot dinner from tent to tent. Mary and Andre had actually stopped seeing each other for a while and she got Wolfie in the separation agreement. I had seen Andre at the bridge with another protector, and I try not to judge, do what feels right, do what makes you happy, always, but I got the sense that she was just not as healthy for him as Mary had been. Mary was not necessarily as innocent as she may have appeared, she was a warrior and ready to sacrifice for what she believed in, but she had gotten Andre to calm down. To think things through before doing something he might regret, to think with his heart, to pray, to sweat. During this time, he was rarely in Rosebud and I worried about him, knowing about the troubles of his past and praying that he didn't get wrapped up with the wrong crowd. Not every protector had peace in their heart and love on their sleeve.

But now he was back. With Mary. I never asked and they never told, I just loved them both unconditionally while they figured out their own paths. And onions. They were both sick this week, and two of the stronger believers in my beloved recipe. Andre especially, three times he came in and when we did our "what's ups", I could tell that he was sick and I happened to be within five or ten minutes of finishing a batch of magic potion. Had he manifested a cure or had I manifested a patient? It must have worked either way, because he would find me anytime he felt bad and asked if I had any ready. It always went quickly when I made a pot, but I take care of my family, plus I had developed a pretty solid single serving recipe. So anytime anyone was in need, I was ready. Why would I not jump at any opportunity to raise my own vibration and build a little karma of my own? So maybe I was being selfishly selfless? Doing good because it felt good. Doing right by my family because it felt right in my heart. Is it so bad to love the way that loving made me feel? I wasn't doing it for something in return, no debt incurred, no great expectations, money no longer had value so that wasn't it, just feels nice to be nice. I highly recommend it.

So I whipped up a double batch of Happy Fun Time Sparkle Juice and got them both back on track, but I didn't have an answer for Wolfie. He was sick, really sick... and then he died. It was tough, not just for them, Wolfie was family to us all. We blamed it on dapl because that made it easier. Made us channel our painful vibrations towards stopping the seemingly unstoppable bad guys. Everything happens for a reason. It's easy to say. It's even easy to believe when you drop vegetables or can't start a fire, but when a loved one dies? It's tough. But you have to believe. You have to know that their vibrations are still positively affecting your world. You have to honor their life by letting their vibrations raise yours, not send you spiraling downward. And always know that their energy is still here. They are still with you, in more ways than one. Their physical being is made of vibrating particles that will reenter the circle of life, the universe's never-ending transformation of matter, creating the building blocks for countless lifeforms to progress the development of more complex elements. Their spirit will also live on forever. Their internal being, their soul, will continue to exist for eternity. And not in some magical land in the sky where all dogs go, full of virgins and pearls.

Every living thing is filled with a piece of the infinite energy of everything that is, of God, and when its time in that worldly body is complete, it returns to the oneness of energy that exists outside of this physical manifestation. We are all part of that energy. We are all God. Our current life on this planet is but a tiny fraction of our existence, one infinitieth to be exact. Every life is but a fraction of their species' existence, which is but a fraction of life on Earth, which is but a fraction of the history of the planet, which is but a fraction of the history of the universe. Everyone's energy has existed for all of this, all of time, outside of time, beyond all that has ever been. It was time for them to move on to the next step of their infinite journey. Everything happens for a reason. They were needed somewhere else. As far back as their vibration has existed into the past, it will continue to vibrate into the future. They were here in this physical world to increase their vibration through the love that they shared. Honor their love, honor their life, decreasing your own vibration as they raise theirs is not the way to do that. Remember the joy and beauty that they brought into the world and know that their energy increased not only its own vibration, but all that crossed their path. We are all love. We are all related. Mitakuye Oyasin.

This all reminds me of a story I heard a long time ago, before I thought anything about spirits and energies, but after I had moved on from the doctrines I was force fed in my youth. The uber condensed version goes as follows: This guy dies and goes to heaven and is met by God. He can feel himself regaining connection to the ultimate energy of the universe as he is led down a long hallway. It is explained that he has just experienced a single human lifetime, gaining all of the love, knowledge and perspective he learned during that journey. Where he is now is outside of time, outside of the physical universe, so not limited by its boundaries. He is told that he will be reincarnated into another human body on Earth momentarily, this time a girl in 500 BC on the opposite side of the globe. He's shown that this cycle has been in motion for a long long time and will continue for just as long. Once he has lived every single life on Earth, for the history of mankind, he will have learned and experienced all that there is and will have obtained enough love, compassion and understanding so that he himself will become a god. He begins to understand how the universe works as he is sent back to Earth and is born into his new physical body, but then his current level of enlightenment begins to fade as he sees the light of his new Earthly experience.

This was just a story. Not a belief. But it struck a chord with me years ago and I haven't forgotten it. It was a way, before I had my current understanding of how we are all connected and made of the same energy, that I was able to conceive of a concept of us all being related. Mitakuye Oyasin. If you can move along your path and carry the sentiment of this story with you, as your path crosses others it becomes nearly effortless to treat every individual with love, compassion, kindness and understanding. Do unto others as you'd have them do to you. Because you are them. So how you treat them now is how you will experience it later from their shoes, which will cause that version of you to treat others with more love and so on and so on. The vibrational chain will eventually make it back to your current self and a complete karmic circle will have made a positive impact on your life, simply by showing another the love that we are all made of.

Like I said, this is just an anecdote, but a way to think about life in a manner that can still positively affect your frequency. We are all the same, made up of energy from the same source, all related, and the more we pour love into the universe, the more it rains back down on us. Maybe, just maybe, if you're nice enough, if you do enough good deeds, if you truly love from a selfless heart, then maybe the universe will look out for you and bestow upon you the ultimate gift. Frybread burgers. Say what?!

Yeah, it got old when no matter what new thing I came up with, frybread always stole the show, so I just went with it. I had recruited a fry bread chef a week earlier. With so many recipes and techniques out there, I knew that I needed help. I operate with a no recipe, no measuring, no idea style of cooking. It works most of the time, but like I've said before, standards were low here. On most things at least, but not frybread. Every kitchen had their own, we hadn't had it much since Jan left, but now I had Dina on the team. Except that I couldn't find her today. I never planned ahead, therefore she wasn't expecting to be on the hook, so I tried to track her down once I had the epiphany of the cross pollination of frybread and burgers. It would be okay if I didn't find her, everything for a reason, if it was meant to happen it would, and if not then there was always tomorrow. But they would be so good today.

I walked to everywhere I could think of and asked everyone I saw, no sign of her. I went to Jacob's and made a deal for his mom's recipe, but I had to destroy it when I was done and bring a burger back for her to taste test. I got back to the kitchen and there she was, she had gotten my frybread signal, just had to put it out into the universe and my dreams came true.

Dina was from LA, like really from LA, like a native of LA. Not a transplant looking to market some silly kids TV show, but an indigenous oppressed native of what must be one of the most drastic colonization efforts ever. One of the ugliest, widest spanning tumors of civilization to spread across our otherwise pristine mother's face. Even a lot of humans can't stand it, its sprawl, its smog, its superficial vibration, but many truly do love it. Its buildings, its buzz, its celebrities, its always happening scene and cutting-edge economy. A capitalistic hub for every product and service imaginable and a few that aren't. But how many tumors think that they are ugly? How many parasites realize their aesthetics are less than pleasing? How many bacterial infections know that they are disgusting, appalling and an abomination on an otherwise perfectly healthy being? It's only from a distance, with a context of the damage that they cause, that one gains the perspective to see them for the desecration that they are.

I'm not picking on LA, it's all of civilization, including the popular Blue Ridge Parkway that I used to love to joy ride my motorcycle on, burning up gas for fun as I rode the endless curves that carve a scar into the otherwise perfect appalachian mountains. No worries though, they're putting a pipeline through there too, and they're crossing way more waterways than this one, like two thousand of them, and there's way more mountaintops to blow off when everything's not so plain, so at least we don't have to worry about them being so pristine anymore.

But Dina's frybread was. It was spot-on, and with my plan to slice'em up and throw a burger on there, I had finally gotten a chance to put my own camp style spin on the reservation classic. If I thought people liked my burgers before... if I thought they liked frybread before... this was in fact another marriage that all of camp could get behind. And we had barely pulled it off, almost had to postpone and have boring old fashioned hamburger buns, but the universe had been smiling on us. Dina also smiled and called me "a gem", oooh...

Clark, a newbie with a slight case of aspergers, loved our burgers, "Dude, this is the best burger I've ever eaten." Pretty good response from someone not known for making up compliments. That wasn't the comment that affected me the most though. I was talking to someone that night about humility, about how I pray for it and how important I felt that it was in all of our lives. Clark was walking by and interjected that as unhealthy as living without humility is, living with false humility is maybe even worse.

Wow. Yeah. I can see that. I didn't even know what it meant, but I felt that he was right. I don't think he was directing it at me, it was just in passing, but I took it to heart. Is that what I had been doing? I had been praying for it, but I was only just starting to believe in the power of prayer. I had knowingly been projecting more humbleness than I really felt, but I thought that would help me to genuinely feel the trait that I desired. I already project happiness and it actually makes me happy. Why had I even started praying for it in the first place? I had always felt highly of myself, aries remember, and I had always delivered. As an entertainer you have to have an ego, stage presence is a necessity, especially when you have limited talent. Me believing in myself had taken me on quite a journey, brought me here, convinced me that I could pull off what I did nightly, brought in countless compliments including best burger ever. I loved hearing them, loved knowing that my family appreciated what I was doing for them, but was I really doing it for me? Certainly it provided a sense of completion, accomplishment, something to be proud of. I was no doubt proud of Rosebud, still am obviously, which included being proud of my own work.

Pride. Self-esteem. Ego. We're taught that it's unhealthy not to have self esteem, unhealthy to have too much ego, unhealthy not to be proud to be an american. I remember the first time I prayed for it, it came out of nowhere really, it just felt right. I admired those around me that exuded the quality and I yearned for it in my life. So I tried to exude it too, before I truly felt it. When I received a commendation I tried to accept it selflessly, "Thank you, I just do it for my family though, everybody here works so hard, it's easy really, I just stay inside a warm tent and stir a pot all day. Plus, it's mainly just the lawrys." And still I prayed. And still I received lessons. But I was even proud that I prayed for humility.

So what is it? What's the difference between them? I can't even pretend to have all the answers. That's the answer. Believe in yourself, do what feels right, trust that you can do anything, but humble yourself and know that you have so much to learn from every single person who crosses your path. That's why they cross it. Everything happens for a reason. You do not have it all figured out. The wisest elder knows that they can learn from their youngest relative, they are the ones least removed from spirit after all. The minute you think you're done learning, when you think you know it all, that's precisely the moment you stop growing, stop evolving, stop getting closer to God. The closer I get, the closer I want to be. The more I know, the more I have yet to learn. So I trust. I trust that everything I need will always be there. I trust that I will always be in the right place. I trust that there is a reason for everything that happens, even if I don't yet know what that is. I may never know. I don't have to. I believe. I do what feels right. I follow my intuition. My instinct. My sensitivity to the vibrations of my higher self. My sensitivity to God.

Instinct is God. Millions of species of animals (and plants) follow their instincts to create an astonishingly complex global ecosystem. They don't know why. They don't think about it. They don't attempt to analyze it. They don't try to come up with a better way to live than the way that just feels right. The way that has worked for millions of generations before them. They believe. Instincts are evolved. They are inherited. They are naturally selected. Lifeforms whose instincts better prepared them to survive, did, and those that didn't, didn't. The next generation evolved stronger instincts, raised their vibration, and became more prepared to survive. Became closer to God. Until domestication. Science has proven that over and over. Animals kept in captivity lose the ability to survive in the wild. Domestication of animals stops their natural evolution. Man-made evolution selects for instincts that we deem important. Instincts that improve the productivity of our livestock and the usefulness of our pets. Usefulness to human desires, regardless of the animal's natural path.

How many breeds of dog are prone to a particular affliction? Most of them. Oh, their breed just develops this or that, it's common, it's inevitable, it's only natural. No, it's not natural at all. Wolves are natural, goldendoodles are not. Human instincts are even more rapidly removed. Our man-made evolution has reversed the process that made man. Babies still have instincts, they know how to nurse without instruction. All animals know how to eat without a handbook, they eat whatever they've naturally evolved to be able to digest and absorb energy from. We are the only species that insist on having to "learn to like it." It's an "acquired taste." Of course, we do force our domesticated prisoners to follow suit. Dog food filled with the parts of wheat that they won't even serve us, a man-made evolution so we think that a man-made diet is best. Luckily, the instincts that were passed down through generations dating back to that prehistoric mouse, guide animals to the locally grown plant medicines when the wheat makes them sick. Your dog knows what plants to eat when his stomach is upset without anyone telling him, and so did humans for that matter, until we didn't. And what about our old buddy corn? Turkeys just gobble it up, as do other poultry, fish and cows. They didn't evolve to be able to process the energy out of it's inflated kernels, so it reeks havoc on their digestive systems, their biotics, but the FDA has just the thing for that.

Grass fed cows don't need antibiotics. Their four chambered stomachs aren't designed for corn, so when they eat it, they get sick. Although our man-made evolution has started selecting for the fittest, those that can survive eating corn. They can survive because they have adapted and developed stomach acids that break the corn down, similar to the stomach acids that allow us to consume mass amounts of the crop. The same stomach acids that protect us from harmful bacteria in our food, like E. Coli, a trait we evolved because an infection of E. Coli is not an evolutionary advantage. The universe didn't want us to suffer from it. Great, we don't want sick cows, so their new stomach acid is good, right? Good for them, yes, now they are more fit to survive the torture we put them through with our privatized prison food supply.

Also evolving, but at a much faster rate, is the E. Coli itself. Specimens of the species who couldn't survive the new bovine stomach security system, died, so the fittest survived and got stronger. That's how evolution is supposed to work. E. Coli followed its instincts. Did what felt right. So now a more improved version of the bacteria lives on, lives on in the beef that we truck to food deserts around the country. And guess what? It's immune to our stomach acid that once was strong enough to easily wipe out its predecessors, we never even used to cook the stuff.

So not only have we artificially raised our own overpopulation, artificially raised the population of king corn, artificially raised the population of our beloved methane producing, water consuming t-bones, but E. Coli has naturally overcome it's environmental adversity and has become a more highly evolved organism. A higher vibration. E. Coli followed its instincts and believed. E. Coli didn't think it was as good as it gets and take itself out of the game. It rose to the occasion, followed natural law and became a better version of itself. Through instinct. Through belief. Through God. Plain and simple, E. Coli is closer to God than H. Sapien. The best part though, is that eating garlic kills E. Coli naturally and effectively, doesn't taste near as good as that pink stuff though.

We were in a position to be kings of the world, the Leos of the Titanic (ironic since we are now also on a sinking ship), but we instead decided to give up just a feet short of the finish line. Now we're slowly sliding backwards, asleep, and eventually the tortoise is going to catch up. We have to wake up. What if it is the turtle who's next. I've personally put in plenty of childhood hours believing and possibly manifesting it. What if turtles are the next species to make an evolutionary leap? To randomly mutate and through their instinct, belief and natural laws of competition, become stronger as a species. What if it's not just them? What if it's not zombies? What if the upcoming nuclear fallout provides enough global radiation that hundreds of species develop consciousness? We will also be affected, but we took ourselves out of the running for best new species of the year award. They will evolve all around us. No longer subject to our silly rules, our cages, our doors, our fences, our deeds to the Earth itself. A bunch of smart turtles is one thing, but how about lions and tigers and bears? It won't be a question of who's better suited to survive, we are barely hanging on as it is. It's a question of are we competing for the same meal, or will we be the meal? Our overpopulation would certainly be a boon to theirs. Or will they gain enough natural intelligence to realize the disease that we are to the planet and every other living organism? Will they take control of the extermination of another species into their own hands, like we do? Will they determine that their life will be far more comfortable with one less pest in the world? Don't worry, there will be one pretty big bright side if they do decide that it's our turn to be domesticated... We're already pretty evolved to eat corn.

I understand that personal preference is merely opinion, but turns out that I think I have some pretty strong newly evolved opinions, and I'd much prefer the option where we get to be the guidance counselors to our adolescent brothers and sisters. Teaching them a healthy way to live with each other instead of being teenage bad examples. Lashing out because we don't understand our mother's rules, our younger siblings envying our uninhibitedness and biding their time until they are mutated turtle teenagers themselves. But opinions are like buttholes, everyone's got one and they all stink, so do what you want. Do what feels right. I'm making snickerdoodles and it feels pretty good.
Step Fifteen:

I would imagine you're starting to get as unimpressed as my campmates, they'd come to believe in me so much that grilling cookies elicited thank yous and gratitude, but I was no longer blowing minds. Only one thing to do in this situation, step it up a notch, raise my vibration, give them the unexpected. We were eating double bottomed goldendoodles and playing spades into the night. After the sweet treats ran out we still needed some type of party platter, not quite stackers, but a similar cheese tray of sorts. We still had plenty of those organic valley mozzarella cheese sticks, so I cut a bunch into cubes.

Stephanie and Ziggy were there and she had told me about a pretty funny story that happened the day before. She had fixed a fresh cup of Ziggy's signature brew, possibly the reason she was so into him, and wanted to put a little butter into it. Kinda sounds weird, but I've known others that liked it too. Plus I thoroughly enjoyed a little ginger honey butter in mine, although that stuff was delicious in any mode of consumption, even on corn. We kept giant blocks of butter around, it was my not-so-secret ingredient for basically everything and now we could officially add coffee to the list. Except that what she thought was a pile of unmarked butter had turned out to be a pile of cheese, she hadn't realized until she took the first sip and a melted glob of mozzarella slid into her mouth. Quite the surprise I'm sure. And quite the inspiration for a fun prank between some of my besties.

I cut a single cube of butter, which was almost the exact color of the cheese and in the cold air was just as firm. I placed it in the pile of fresh cheese cubes, served them to my peeps and waited patiently. Patience is a virtue remember. It was anybody's game, except me, unless I forgot about it which was "highly" possible. No matter who got it, we would all get a good laugh, raising our vibrations through the best medicine of all, but oh how I hoped it was Stephanie. And then of course I forgot about it, until finally Stephanie exclaimed, "Now that's butter!" So good. Stephanie had experienced back to back String Cheese Incidents, pretty fitting for the cutest jam band fan at camp.

That energy boost alone powered us through the night and soon enough the sun had rejoined the party. I was trying to work my way to bed before I got sucked into another full day when James peer pressured me into making breakfast. I agreed, but only after he signed on to help me, yeah, the boss had become the chef, so as far as I knew I had become the boss. Nah, Harry's the boss. Harry had gone to bismarck for an errand though, so we knew that if we didn't cook breakfast now, it would probably be afternoon before the most important meal of the day. So we got to it, planning to serve hours before anyone had eaten eggs in months, and the best part about it all... I got to cook five pounds of bacon, completely guilt-free. Really, the best part was getting to cook with my friend James, people were in awe, "James helped you? How'd you pull that one off?" Actually, it was his idea. His menu too. We made our breakfast chef debut together with a no-risk dish, no chance our people wouldn't eat it up. Breakfast burritos. Then I went to bed.

Back in after a nap, still no clue what time it was at home. I could tell if it was after evening by the dimming light, but that was about it. Turned out to be barely afternoon, ok and go. I could tell that it was super windy. Could hear it howling from home and as I approached the mess hall, I thought it was going to take off. The propeller was just a couple of rpms away from flight. We had gotten a small wind turbine installed to the top of the tent, looked like a little plane, and today it was going crazy. Thought it was gonna fly off towards my final destination, so I made a break for it, ran underneath the danger zone and ducked inside.

I'd run across a new ingredient yesterday and had daydreamed a plan for dinner, so while I had it thawing, I stirred up some lunch. It would be my first day cooking every single meal. I was on a roll. Or I was on a biscuit. Biscuits were old news by now though, but no worries, worry is a low vibration so I stay away from it. Instead, I remember a mantra close to my heart, not the everything happens or the right place yadda yadda, no, a more strict guideline to live by. We eat meat. Biscuits and meat. Yep. Pigs in a blanket. Simple.

Ziggy had resurfaced too, so I set him to his always comical biscuit making routine while I grilled some wieners on the flat top. I also got some, shhh, veggie soup going. I made most everything from scratch, sometimes even a step before scratch, but I would cheat on the occasional lunch soup. We had gotten a truckload of pre-made stuff from Boulder Organic, it was dank, some small personal servings of minestrone and some big bags of green chili corn chowder. It was really just a good base, still needed some camp style seasoning, onions and garlic and whatever other plants were lying around, sometimes ground mystery meat and always a little extra love to make up for its convenience.

The love that I'm speaking of in this case wasn't intentionally thinking of my family, I did that with the garlic already, it was the extra attention that it takes to heat up, without burning, a couple of two gallon bags of frozen solid iced soup. It was still pretty cold out. One time I was cooking big cans of baked beans that I'd thawed just enough to slide out of their containers and into a pot. So three big bean ice blocks in a pot, and if you don't pay closer attention to them than when actually baking beans, you end up with burnt frozen canned beans, which is exactly the disclaimer I shared when I served them. Humility lesson learned and I didn't want to end up with burnt frozen bagged soup, I'd advanced my thawing skill set by this point though, so we were all good. I was really just wasting time until I could get started on dinner anyway. I was excited, although as was par for the course, I still had no idea what I was making. I'd found a fun ingredient in a cooler and had an inspiration, but without a proper kitchen I would have to camp style it and the grill just wouldn't do it. I believed though. I knew it wouldn't go to waste.

But what would happen to all of our perishables once the convenience of the winter faded? I had to be the only one thankful that it had been so cold, except maybe the non-exempt pooper scoopers. I had the largest industrial freezer ever and worked in a walk-in cooler. I was so spoiled that my meat didn't. Ironically, I had more issues with canned goods. May have still been okay, but we decided not to try the bulging ones that expired in 2009, eight years ago, back when oil still separated from water. Again, we were so thankful for everything that people provided us with, so many selfless acts of kindness, but it did seem that sometimes it was just an excuse to clean out the overgrown surplus of their cabinets. And in a life-or-death survival scenario, I'm sure we'd have eaten every bit. How could anyone have guessed the abundance we'd receive and the not so rice and beans we'd be eating? I certainly didn't see it coming, just as I hadn't seen tonight's ingredient coming... Duck!

I found a duck. Just one though, so not enough to go around, but we had plenty of turkeys and... um... chickens. So, turducken? But I had a policy that I strictly adhered to, we eat meat, not chicken. So when I saw Smokey that day I asked how he felt about duck, he said that I could cook whatever I wanted. Sweet, I think he had a bigger goose to cook anyway.

But turducken takes an oven, a chicken inside of a duck inside of a turkey. I didn't invent it, nor had I made it before, so how could I possibly just believe this one into existence? Well, I smoked a cigarette and talked my way through it. I knew that I couldn't cook them whole unless I deep-fried them, which would use up a lot of oil and would have to happen outside, they're delicious though. So how about a dish that incorporated all three of them, turducken lasagna or a turducken casserole or turducken pizzas? Hmm, how about three separate dishes with a common theme, like lasagna, pizza and spaghetti? That could work, but it didn't quite feel right. Felt like it wouldn't do the duck justice. Ahh... I got it, and it must be right because it had the perfect name, that's how you can tell that you're on the right path. So Stephanie and I would make turkey enchiladas, chicken mole and duck quesadillas. Yeah buddy, we're talking about "Turduxican."

The duckadillas would be the easiest part, had to thaw the duck first because it had an orange sauce packet stuffed inside (could have used that a few weeks ago) but then we just had to boil it until it fell off the bone. That's how we did all three birds, in two pots full of boiling water, in a time when water was getting a little tricky.

All winter we struggled with frozen jugs and a frozen watershed. Back in December I remember taping hand warmers to the spigot of the water buffalo in a last-ditch effort to thaw it to a trickle. We had cases of water bottles sometimes, frozen of course, and we'd place them by the woodstove to liquify, but we knew that wasn't the best approach. I'd also be at Echo3 and do the same thing by the fire, occasionally losing one to the flame. Knowing that toxic bpas could release from the plastic and permeate the water, but the alternative was to not drink the life-giving fluid at all. Might be useful to build a tolerance to dirty water anyway, jk, we're going to win this. And I figured out a better solution for thawing bottles, just cut them open and throw them in a pot. With a butchers knife, just chop the whole thing in half and melt the two pieces on top of the woodstove. Believe me, no one was complaining about their drinking water being warm out there. Once, I even did all twenty-four from a case to be able to cook dinner.

It was also around that time that we were expecting a water delivery, we'd been getting perilously low for a few days, but our guy never showed back up. And we mysteriously never heard from him again. Wendy took initiative, loaded up jugs and made runs to town, and soon we got a sixty gallon tank for the back of Dan's truck. That may sound like a lot, but we needed more, we were all pretty dehydrated. There was a sign in the mess hall with winter survival basics, it explained that our bodies need way more water when they're working to stay warm, like a gallon more than normal, and we weren't even getting the original half gallon recommended for life. Plus, all this coffee and tea dehydrates you and takes water to make, but go ahead and try to tell a camp like this that we are not having coffee today.

So sometimes I would try to conserve water when I planned meals, no pasta if we were short, or roast meat instead of boil it. But I already used water to thaw the "meat" today, so I didn't feel any worse using that same water to boil them. It was pretty crazy though, tipping up a five gallon jug of ice and letting the few melted drops drip onto your tongue because you're thirsty. If only there was an endless supply of drinkable water covering the ground outside.

Birds aboil, Stephanie and I started on the mole inspired sauce. I had seen several jars of it prefabbed when we arranged the pantry, that's why I suggested it to begin with, but then I remembered a particular deer leg dish of Harry's. I think it was that first day that I cooked in this new kitchen setup. I'd seen it before in a random cooler and with the move it had resurfaced, an unmarked random deer leg wrapped in plastic wrap. We had a propane smoker that I kept talking about setting up. Roasts for carolina barbecue, salmon to go with the several bottles of capers we had, the eventual giant buffalo ribs I would get, and of course random deer legs. Would have been pretty cool. Cooler if it wasn't propane though. I'd hoped to do that with it, but it was becoming apparent that I wasn't going to get to it, so I threw it in a pot and boiled it. Half at a time, while the other half stuck out of the top of the pot, it made me very proud when anyone walked by and saw a big deer leg sticking out of the top of a bubbling pot on the stove. We don't mess around.

Harry had ended up using it for a venison mole type thing, it was sweet and tasty. The best part was that someone thought that it was just a chocolate sauce, which wasn't unheard of to have lying around, and poured a big scoop into their coffee. They hadn't realized right away, but started to suspect that they might be drinking a venison mocha, coming this winter to a starbucks near you. Dear dapl...

So alas, we didn't in fact have legit mole sauce, but the inspiration had already been made and giving up wasn't really something we were into. So we wung it. Used two pots to make a double boiler and melted chocolate, chili powder and cayenne, molasses and I'm sure a few other random finds, it was sooo good. Probably even in some of Ziggy's sludge.

Enchiladas had also been something I'd been wanting to figure out, we did still have plenty of enchilada sauce, but an oven had not manifested itself yet. Twice I heard of ovens at camp and I antimanifested them actually, I was having too much fun with the way we'd been doing it to get a pass for the rest of winter. So when in doubt, and if the grill doesn't seem like the answer, although it was a serious consideration, there's only one option. Enchilada Scramble. I tore up tortillas, toasted them on an open flame and mixed everything together, perfect. Messy looking, but all the best things always are. Turduxican was a success. I was six meals in on a streak, feeling good, taking names, and even though she had helped, I had beaten Stephanie's five meal run. I later talked to a protector who would help me in the final days of the kitchen, "I grew up in a mexican household and that was some of the best mexican food I've ever had." (low standards)

I'd have never done anything like that in a world of grocery stores, I adapted to my abundant yet limited environment, and evolved, plus it had a cool name. The next meal had a naming committee and debate session and everything. Yeah, I wasn't done yet, we were crushing it, just getting warmed up, toasty, like neg 15. Ziggy had made an obscene amount of biscuit dough after a few back and forths between powder and water, so we were going to experiment. We melted butter and mixed brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins together to make a tasty goop, put a layer of biscuit dough on a pan, poured on half of the sweet slosh, another layer of biscuit and topped it with the rest of the stuff. Bake it in the grill and oh my, a super sweet biscuity, raisiny, sugary combo of late-night deliciousness. But to follow a dinner with such a title, we couldn't simply call it biscuit sugar thing. Sweet Biscuits? Sugar Loaf? Sweet'n'fluffy? Ziggy spouted off "Sticky Biscuits." We liked it. It was almost there. Nothing else felt right, so that would be the official scientific proper name, but Stephanie slanged it up a bit and delivered the final street name of the most awesomest late-night dessert invention ever, "StickyBiz." Yum.

Ziggy had already earned a spot on the permanent naming committee, actually, he'd started it. Everyone was a fan of my yogurt granola fruit thing, I had loosely had called it fruit goop, which while descriptive, hardly sounds as appetizing as onion tea. Ziggy was on his third bowl of it one night and suggested that I call it "Spanky." Blueberry spanky, strawberry pineapple spanky, nine fruit spanky, buffalo and broccoli spanky, pretty much any kind of spanky. Spanky was here to stay and a crowd favorite every single time it appeared. Like pizza, it was my go-to no-brainer if I wanted to treat the camp to something special with little thought on my end, plus I loved it. It did have one casualty though.

Maria had been helping me in the kitchen one day, or really it was more like I was helping her, with a classic spanish mustard chicken dish that we were double-teaming and turned out just fantastic. During dinner, Johan looked up at me and in the most calm voice, "Hey chef, I think your food just chipped my tooth." Whoa. No. I felt so bad. I assumed that a chicken bone had gotten through the attempted deboning phase, which was Maria, so I felt double bad because I didn't want her to feel guilty. I'd just take the hit and not tell her, for my own sake really. But no, not a chicken bone. I'd used granola with raisins in the spanky and it was served at almost freezing temperatures, which tends to make the dried grapes a little tough. He was cool, calm, collected. At least until another protector asked to see and when he reluctantly smiled, she gasped, jumped back and made a not-so-good face. Really? That's the reaction you prepared? She didn't quite have the tact of some of us. He was cool though, not mad at all. Honestly, I felt way less bad now that I knew it wasn't a bone, and the next day he remembered that he'd had work done before. It was a cap that had popped off. A pre-existing condition.

Well, that'll cost you. Family history of hereditary disease, a premium increase for sure. Don't worry though, if you can't afford to buy into the mandatory insurance plan, our trusty government programming can subsidize you with health care, no child left behind. No weakened consumer left behind. Our for-profit medical industry has to get their blood money somehow. In addition to the kickbacks they get for over-prescribing the latest chemical compound, we have to make sure that we pay our medical professionals way more than our teachers. They do a far more important job after all, keeping a weakened population afloat is the name of the game in a consumer-based society. That's the only way to ensure the insured. An economist's dream as it all adds up. An industry that creates an infinitely expanding customer base, that with every generation needs their services more and more. A noble career indeed, saving all of humanity, just like the National Guard.

Without western medicine, how could we ever maintain the overpopulation that agriculture has afforded us? It only provides the conditions for population growth, not the expansion of that populations life expectancy. Industrial agriculture actually does the opposite really, it's created so many new diseases and ailments that we should be living shorter lives and slightly curbing our overpopulation. Ironically, that would cause us to adapt to be more fit to actually consume our substandard diet without illness. Well now, that's just not good for business, either of them. The economist's society tells us that we need to buy time for every consumer possible, at whatever the price. We'll charge them back for it anyway and the sicker the people the higher the profits. If only there were a way to truly have survival of the weakest, like say, maybe an oil fueled war that we could send our strongest off to. They're proud to go, proud of america, not scared to die. Because they believe in it. The problem with the colonized, is that we're scared to die.

We don't believe in the system. The natural system. The circle of life. We don't believe in God. So we yet again try to usurp his authority with the rule of man. If we'd never tried to fake the life of those he deemed unfit for survival, we'd all be far healthier and wouldn't need all of these silly concoctions and their ridiculous side effects. But we ate from that tree and now we think we can decide who gets to live and who dies. We say that all of us live, no matter what the cost to the rest of the planet's evolution. When that proves to provide us only more problems, we don't consider that it could be God's will that not all of us survive. Some may, the uber conservative christians of my bloodline perhaps, they agree that the sins of man have brought suffering upon us all. They even understand that greed is bad, mkay. So they aren't greedy, they tithe and donate and use money to feed unfortunate humans around the world who God has forsaken. Except that God doesn't care about money, it's not real and it certainly had no role in his first garden. It's not their fault that they've been brainwashed by the doctrines of man disguised as the word of God. It's how they were told to believe.

Does it not seem a bit greedy to want all of the food in the world for your own species while striving to live forever? Does it make sense to believe in an all-powerful being and the born sin of man, but for some reason think that we know better than him about what's best for the world? Well, we ate from that tree and we obtained the knowledge of the gods, so yeah. That was "the fall," when we began to sin and fell out of grace with God, but I don't see a connection between that and medicine. It wasn't really our fault anyway, we were improperly designed to begin with, remember? The only reason we fell out of the garden of eden was because that serpent convinced us that we knew better than God, we could eat whatever we wanted, he made us broken, but we could fix it. So, why again are there snakes on the universal medical logo?

Before the fall, we weren't scared to die. We believed. All the other creatures still evolving with God aren't scared to die. Their instincts show them how to survive and escape danger, but they don't sit up at night worrying about impending doom. Worry is a negative vibration, pulls you away from God and makes your physical body not operate at peak performance. How can you possibly believe that an omnipresent energy is looking out for you and also worry with your (admittedly weak and broken) physical self? We're scared to die because we don't believe. In the natural world of indigenous believers, it is an honor to make the ultimate sacrifice of life so that another may be born. Today's a good day to die. It doesn't mean I want to die, but that it would be an honor to die on a day as beautiful and amazing as today. If you're honored to pass your energy on through the universe, then there's nothing to be afraid of. No other lifeform is scared of death. They believe. They know that their energy will continue on forever and their physical experiences will improve as life on Earth evolves and vibrates at higher and higher frequencies with every generation.

That used to be how it worked at least. Until we stopped believing in the abundance and righteousness of the natural world and took life into our own hands, because we were scared. Fear is a negative vibration. It's not healthy. Why do you think animals react so adversely to it? They are in-tune with the vibrations of the universe, their internal energies, and they know that it's simply not natural. Fear will destroy the world. You can't believe and fear at the same time. We got it all mixed up, maybe it was even just a typo when they were writing the laws of man. We are scared to death of dying and we've broken the system trying to thwart it. If only we hadn't misspelled the word sacred.

So what are you saying? Do away with doctors and pharmaceuticals? That'll be a hard pill to swallow. And what about all the insulin needed by your precious indians? A population of those supposedly living the closest to the great spirit, yet still plagued by hereditary diabetes, doomed to a quick death if left to your god of evolution. A non-existent illness in their previous world of hunting and gathering, another instance of the artificial vibrations of colonization not playing nicely with their natural world. I bet that once money is no longer the leader of the free world, they'll go back to being just fine. Probably no more stickybiz though. No problem, we ate it all in less time than it took to name it.

I was tired, I was operating on just a few hours and seven meals in a row, and yes, this late-night dessert thing counted. So I went to bed. I couldn't stay up to do breakfast again so I would have to call it. My streak was over.

Not. I came in refreshed the next day and there was no breakfast in order, so I ordered some. I kept the biscuit streak going and whipped up some pork chop gravy and scrambled egg slushie. Tuna salad sandwiches for lunch and set my scopes on a dinner to top last night's extravagance. I knew it would be a challenge, but I never doubted myself, or my cooler diving abilities. I'd start with the meat and go from there, but what would it be? I knew I'd found the right cooler when I pulled out a paper wrapped specimen labeled "wild boar heart."

It wasn't much, but the cooler had some other choice items and yesterday's consideration of lasagna had it on my mind. So lasagna it was. Five meat lasagna. Two dinners totaling eight meats, now that's the Lakota way. This cooler was a carnivore's cornucopia. I pulled out the wild boar, elk, buffalo and then sheep, yeah, this was going to be good, and my first go at boar. There was something else stuck in the ice at the bottom though, a couple of swift hatchets swipes later and it was mine, I mean ours, oh whatever, it was awesome. I had used a hatchet to chop free a pound of ground yak. Epic. Who does this? Talk about being unnatural. Or a natural. Either way, I quit trying to understand it all and just went with it. I was manifesting something to top turduxican and had outdone myself. Never came up with a good name for it though, I'm only human remember.

And this was a day that I would feel human too. Feel humbled. Feel weak. Feel compassion but not know what to do about it, except to simply love. That's all I could do. That's all anybody could do. And pray. Oh brother. Dear, dear brother. It was one thing to console a friend losing a pet, but a man's mother, I had nothing, I was just there, but I think that was enough. He asked me to come back his house and smoke, I was in the middle of a yak attack, but all of a sudden, dinner was the least important thing on the menu. Andre's mom was dead.

He actually had two moms, his biological mom who was a wild child and more of a friend, and her mom, who raised him and had just passed. We smoked and he called some family and had them sing some prayer songs on speakerphone. It also made me realize that I hadn't called my own mom since my phone went out a month ago. We talked about him wanting to drink. I didn't have much to talk him out of it with. As good as I felt after two months without alcohol, I couldn't imagine not climbing inside of a whiskey bottle if I were in his shoes. I'd never really had a problem with alcohol. I could be around it and not drink. I never drank alone. I'd often sit at my friend's bar and drink water while I worked on a project through the night. When I moved back to asheville, beer city usa, I started drinking more, but still not enough to get drunk regularly. So personally, I wouldn't worry about not being able to put it down. Andre though, had experienced a battle with the bottle, genetically predisposed due to it's only recent introduction to his people. To the real Americans.

He knew that drinking "spirits" would wake up the demons that he kept locked away tight. The lakota call this negative spirit the djinn, sounds kinda like gin, hmmm. He had been doing so much healing here at camp, if this caused him to slip back down the rabbit hole it would be such a travesty. Certainly wouldn't honor the life of his mother. But how could I tell him not to? I would want nothing more than to hide in a hole and forget the world if it were my mom who had left us. Alcohol wasn't the worst of the concerns though, he'd had a history of that other stuff too. He wasn't craving that, he knew it was bad news, but if he started drinking to numb the pain, who knows where it could lead. It might numb the healing that this place had done too. But how could I tell my brother not to do the exact thing that I'm sure I would do in his place? I didn't.

I expressed my concerns about it destroying the new person he was becoming, but I let him know that I wouldn't be mad at him. I wouldn't judge him. I would be here for him and love him unconditionally. We would all understand and help him through this dark time. But he couldn't let the darkness take over. He couldn't forget all of the light that he had been building inside. He had a family here. He had Mary to hold his hand and he had so many brothers and sisters to have his back. He couldn't disappear though. We couldn't help him if he wouldn't let us. He agreed to let me help him. He asked me to help him. And I agreed to do the thing I had avoided so strongly before, it never felt right, until now. I would leave camp, like really leave camp. I would go with him back to his home on the reservation and help him dig his mom's grave. I would be honored.

It would still be a few days before we went, we'd hang out like this a few more times and I'd share words to ease his heart and remind him that everything happens for a reason. Her energy was now limitless outside of this limited world and Tunkasila had bigger plans in store for her. And we prayed. It was good, considering. He was at peace with it. He laughed and told me stories about her, honored her in a good way, converted the sadness that he felt inside, into joy as he remembered the love that they shared. And we smoked hella weed. It doesn't make you forget and spiral out of control through depression and anger at God. It makes you happy and laugh at the positives, opens your mind to feel connected with God and the universe and understand that things happen. They're nobody's fault and through struggle we all grow. Like our own relationship and that between him and the other water protectors that would help him through this. He had trouble finding family that could do it, but he had a team of the strongest warriors imaginable, both physically and spiritually. We got this.

But I couldn't sit here all day, I had some meat to cook and I couldn't be sad when I poured my energy into it. Positive vibes only in this kitchen. Stephanie and I speculated that my emotions might change the way that I put energy into the food, so I decided not to chance it. I didn't actually put the boar's heart in the lasagna, just some normal old boring wild boar roast for the five meat dish, mainly just because I wanted to have the heart on its own. I pan seared it with some garlic and onions and handed it out to the brave few willing to try it. It was good, would have been better if it hadn't been frozen, and wouldn't be the best wild animal heart I'd end up eating, but it would be the most cooked.

Jess had popped in to see if I needed help, something other than eating wild animal heart preferably, so I set her to making a giant salad after she did some garlic and onions for the lasagna. She'd never done garlic with me, so I snuck over to her side of the table and filled her in on how I do it. She was the one who liked to visualize our family in their happiest states, something I sometimes still do. I thought that I had successfully kept it between us. I wasn't hiding the method, quite the opposite obviously, but I thought that sharing it quietly and personally set the stage for the practice of meditation. However, when I turned around, Stephanie and Ziggy had overheard and surrounded me, looked deep into my soul and engulfed me in such a warm embrace. Felt good.

There was a lot of love during these days. We'd been through a lot recently and every step of the way we were growing closer. We all felt so lucky to be a part of this, to get to be with these people, these inspirations. We knew anything could happen. So much already had. Any day could be our last together, so we lived every minute like it was. It was magic. I have a great, close, loving family back home who would sacrifice dearly for me, I've been a part of many different families of friends who really love each other, but this was something else. We were brought together by a higher power, a higher vibration, called, destined, it was meant to be. We are going to save the world.

For the most part, everyone that was here, had been here, but it was around this time that a few new faces started filtering in, as well as a couple of familiar ones. Just because we're deep into the winter already, don't think it means that they are any less integral to our story. They had been a part of the asheville yurt community, we had met in passing a few times, but never got to know each other. Cindy and Gabby were from my end of the country. One of my first friends here, Jeremy, was from their hometown too, in fact he had been chasing Cindy for a while and had followed her here. He had expressed his frustrations with chasing a cute little free spirited hippie chick, a challenge I know well. I tried, but you can't teach "playing it cool", it's hard to get, you just gotta chill. Eventually she'll come back around. And here she was. He just didn't wait long enough. Patience.

Cindy was a little bit older than me and had the taking care of people part figured out even better. A nurturer, a gentle soul, a mother to the whole camp and a biological mother to Gabby. Gabby was sixteen and pretty cool, played ukulele and was conscious when it came to the issues, but she was still sixteen. Very contrasted to Erica, who was seventeen but seemed much older, though she is still a strong member of the next generation and no doubt vital to the future of our planet.

One of the things that pulled on Cindy's heartstrings the most was Torch, a water protector who had been arrested and was still sitting in jail in bismarck. He'd been arrested for picking flowers. Why, that's almost as dastardly as praying, but not quite. It was during a protest in the front of a wells fargo in bismarck for their investment in the pipeline. Torch started picking flowers out of a neighboring flowerbed to give to the police who were keeping all that money safe from our prayers. He was approached by an officer who questioned his actions and wanted to see his ID. The officer of course had no identification of his own and must have forgotten that citizens are not legally required to show IDs unless they are driving. Name, birthdate and address. That's all we have to tell them. Never give them your social. Torch also suffered from PTSD because he is a veteran of the united states armed forces and served overseas, so when a crowd of heavily armed officers swarmed him over a flower picking violation, he went into a panic attack. They then arrested him with extreme force, but at least those pansies didn't get hurt.

Cindy visited him regularly when she was here and tried to share the love in her heart, her vibration, with not only him, but also the guards that she interacted with. She hoped that they would see him as a human and show him compassion. It constantly broke her heart when she saw that they didn't.

Surprise. Jail's not fun. They're not nice to you. This is not a vacation. They don't legally have to treat you with the love and compassion that every human alive is born with. The love and compassion that only feels natural to share with every single human they cross paths with. No, they're not legally required to treat you like a human at all. They can just treat you like a number. I don't mean the number printed on your stylish new complimentary outfit. I'm talking about the dollar figure you're worth to them. For-profit privatized prisons are businesses, plain and simple. Capitalism at its ugliest. At least the monopolized energy conglomerates have to pretend to have their customer's best interests in mind. The overpopulation economist will commend the business model, especially with the government's commitment of providing a solid customer base. A customer who, in this industry alone, is always wrong, but they have you locked into a ten year contract so they're not too worried about you opting out early. Many books have already been written about the evils of our capitalistic prison system, and honestly I'm not educated enough to write much more than I have, not that that ever stopped me. However, I do know that a company with the authority to mistreat americans with no accountability for the sole purpose of pocketing dollars (cough, dapl), who profit more with an influx of the wrongly accused than when justice is served, who directly profit from cutting corners on the quality of life of another human, they are not the good guys.

That being said, certainly there are some good guys that work there. Just doing their job. Those who honestly care and treat their fellow humans like people. Who don't take the judgment of another into their own hands. Who realize that people's paths are different, and until you truly try to understand what has happened in their lives to bring them there, then you'll just never understand. There are some employees of any evil giant corporation that know that we are all the same, brothers and sisters, we are all love, and that through treating all of life with love and compassion they can raise their own vibration and become closer to God. I commend these strong souls and pray that their loving energy spreads. There are as many belief systems out there as there are frybread recipes and I've never heard a single one that condones the mistreatment and hatred of your fellow man. Prisoners are people too. Now, vegetarians on the other hand...

Cindy was a vegetarian, so she was loving my eleven meal meat-a-thon. She had actually been studying the sacredness of buffalo and how the Lakota pray over it and honor its sacrifice so that it may energize the circle of life, so maybe one day we'll get her back on team carnivore. I have no beef with vegetarians, vegans or pescatarians. Pescatarians don't eat meat, just fish... Huh? Which food group was fish again? Fish are meat. Animals are meat. Except chicken. Some claim that fish don't feel pain, no karmic baggage to carry, except that it's been shown that fish do in fact feel you. If given the choice between two meals and electrifying option two, fish only pick the second option once, never again. Now, that doesn't mean pain, sure, but it does insinuate that they're sensing vibrations and don't prefer the one that we would perceive as pain. Maybe it feels like happy to them and they're just not that into happy.

Plants though, they definitely don't have feelings, well... Way back in the seventies they hooked a few plants up to some cutting edge technology and kinda proved that they do. The meters read the conductance of the lifeforms, their internal electricity, their vibrations, and as the scientist simply visualized positive and negative imagery, he got corresponding results. When he thought of burning a leaf of the plant, the needle stopped pulsing altogether and the plant lost consciousness for up to two weeks. It cut off it's electricity. To... numb the pain? So not only can plants feel, they're psychic. Many green thumbs have always known this, talking to their plants, playing them music, loving them, vibing with them. All of life is powered by the energy of the universe, why would they not be affected by our vibrations? Plants are so sensitive to vibrations that they don't even have to consume other living organisms for energy, they just absorb vibrations from the sun. Some still eat meat just for fun though.

So we know that organisms have each evolved to sense a different range of frequencies, we like to imagine that plants can't see, hear or taste, but why would we assume that they couldn't feel? We see them move everyday towards the ultraviolet frequencies of the all powering sun. We see ivy touch and climb walls. Those meat eaters know when a bug is in the trap. So how could they do all that without a sensitivity to vibrations? I'm not saying not to eat plants, although that might boost sales of my all meat veggie alternatives, no, I love plants. You should love them too. You should love and treat every living organism with compassion. Like they are you. They are. We are all made of the same energy of the universe. Made of God. If you wouldn't clear cut an acre full of humans for a pocketful of cash, then maybe you could think twice about destroying countless living organisms for a couple of bucks. Money isn't part of the circle of life. Eating other organisms is. Holding sacred the natural laws of the Earth and taking part in the way of all that has ever been, is a great honor. We raise our own frequencies and become closer to God by participating in this incredible system. At least when we eat actual food, not that fud stuff. So basically, be nice to plants, they have feelings. It's science. Remember, cornstalks are people too. Mitakuye Oyasin.

Even Australians are people too. Bailey was australian, that probably means that she knew Australian Alan, but I never asked. It's just an island. She had met Cindy and Gabby here and had been traveling with them to the east coast for the last month or so. She's a keeper. She can go toe to toe with my off the wall sarcasm and fire back with some fiery wit of her own. Plus she had a mullet. Proper mullet. Like mainly a buzz cut with just a few inches of hair on the back. Classic. They had all been here for the sunday before thanksgiving. Cindy and Gabby had stayed at the hotel to take care of people as they arrived from the worst bridge debacle of the year. Not near as luxurious as the nights in my record book, at least we stayed dry. Bailey had gone out there, a super sketchy situation for any of our people here on a travel visa. If you get arrested, you get deported. Ouch. Free ticket maybe, but they're not exactly letting you right back in. You are a foreigner remember, hello.

She saw her family being sprayed with the water cannon and realized that they were going to need help, medical assistance, they would be battling hypothermia. So she ran back to camp and got a space prepared to warm and dry the cold and wet. But hey, it wasn't even below zero those days, like five or ten at least, so it wasn't that evil, right? It's still within the limitations of treating others as you'd like to be treated, it's just a fun little water gun. Yeah right. There wasn't snow on the ground, so viewers at home couldn't quite register how inhumane the government was treating their own, jk, nobody was watching. But did you see that new america's best gameshow reality spin-off? That show is like OMG! I'm not totally hating on the entertainment industry, although it is called "programming" for a reason. For the last eight years I've made my living (funny how even I use "living" and "money" synonymously) with music and most recently tv, plus I used to binge watch plenty of shows, but this place was all the entertainment anyone could ask for.

Every night was another amazing something, crazy good music, funny people, thrilling stories, excitement, drama, government tyranny, you know, all the makings for a cult classic. Um... so were we a cult? I had all but given up having personal belongings, we followed a single leader, we prayed all the time including sweat rituals, and most of us were out of touch with our families. I'm sure some at home considered the possibility, but no, not at all. We hadn't relinquished money and stuff to the leader, we'd given to others in need or simply forgotten about it because it was no longer important in our new way of life. We may have listened to Smokey because he was in charge and respected him because he had earned it, but he was far from charismatic and we were far from worshiping him. We prayed, a lot, but not through some strict doctrine. We weren't told how to pray. We were shown. And we were shown that it was working.

And our families. I felt bad for what mine must be wondering without contact and only seeing whatever updates the associated press decided were important enough to share. I had talked to my mom on christmas, but she was the only one, I had close friends all over that I would find out later were putting out feelers on facebook to see if I was still alive. My phone froze during the storm on christmas night and I couldn't get it back on. So glad that I had called her, was called to call her, it happened for a reason. I don't know anyone's number by heart, so I couldn't have contacted friends or family even if I could have worked myself up to call home. I was messed up. Broken. And somehow the happiest and healthiest I had ever been. But the thought of talking to someone who hadn't seen what I had and trying to convince them that I was ok, it gave me anxiety. How could I make small talk when this is what was happening? How could I start to catch my sister up without worrying her even more for my safety? We weren't safe.

I barely choked through the conversation with my mom, and that had been before all the real trauma began. I would end up figuring out her number and calling her in a few days, over a month since the last time we spoke. I told her small details about what they had been doing to us, I told her about my food and the great experiences I'd had, I tried not to worry her but still fill her in on the truth. I wanted her to be able to tell the rest of my family more than what fox news had, and you never know, something bad could still happen. I wanted her to know that I was doing the right thing. I was. We were. There is no other place on our great mother Earth that any of us could have been. This was absolutely the most important thing that we could be doing. Now, I can see that the anxiety attack I felt coming on when I thought of calling home, was a symptom of PTSD, but I compartmentalized it and carried on, we still had a world to save. And we had to eat some yak. It was good. One of our sisters who didn't like gamey meat asked what was in it, wrong kitchen for that question. Um, it's that kind you like.

The meat marathon must not have quite satiated the Lakota way, that night the spades team talked me into grilling some two am steaks and then it was finally over. My longest running kitchen extravaganza ever, eleven meals in a row. Take that Stephanie and Ziggy :p nvrmnd, they both helped a lot too. One of the main steak proponents was Rick, he was Denise's brother and we had a lot of good late night kitchen convos. He had been a wildfire fighter, not to be mistaken with a wild firefighter commonly seen in calanders and bachelorette parties. No, he had hiked into burning forests with a chainsaw and camped for fourteen days at a time, cutting firelines to slow the flame's advances. A totally different kind of being under fire at a frontline while being pushed back with life threatening smoke. What he had done sounds way scarier. At least we had an herbalist.

He was a hard worker to say the least. He, James and Grant (the little girls' grandfather) were some of our strongest, and handled a lot of the tough tasks themselves. True leaders. Led by example. They didn't try to tell the hippies how to do it. They showed us. They gave us hippies plenty of hard times too though. Sometimes I got extra smack talk because we were close and they knew I could take it, but most of the time I caught a break. They knew that I worked all day, especially now that I was in the mess hall for all to see. But mainly because they knew the one true natural law, the one way to live that no matter what your environment throws at you, you will be ensured survival, they knew what was up. Be nice to the chef.

I made a vow to myself not to come in early enough to do breakfast, eleven meals was good enough for me, let someone else have some fun for a change. Cindy had asked what she could do to help and I offered up tomorrow's first meal, I had just publicly broken my no breakfast policy and I didn't want to set too much of a precedent. I'd been talking about my eleven meal run, not at all complaining, bragging if anything, which is clearly not a trait of humility so obviously it backfired and I was due another lesson in the subject. I came in at lunchtime and Cindy said that she had dinner covered. I had been given the night off. It felt more like I had been benched. You think you can rearrange those spices for me too?

I had cooked every single dinner for over a month and I thought that I'd done a pretty good job, passable anyway, at least earned the right of first refusal. I could have been consulted before the office takeover. I'd always tried so hard not to step on anyone's toes, even Tina and I had worked through our deal, kinda. Anytime someone had an idea, I helped them bring it to fruition. I was humble. I wanted nothing but to make my family happy. And now someone who hadn't even been here for any of the winter's hardships was coming in and kicking me out of the kitchen? And a vegetarian at that?!

Breathe... I sat down, drank a huge cup of water, had coffee and smokes, and reminded myself about patience, understanding and our old pal humility. I probably could have gotten the kitchen back, I could have talked Smokey and reported the meatless menu, or just jumped in thrown something on the grll, but I was getting pretty good at taking lessons from the universe as it answered my prayers. I was cool. Thanks guys. I actually have some other stuff I was wanting to do today anyway. Everything happens for a reason. It was perfect that I had the night off, the buffalo tent was now up and running. Rewind.

Johan had gotten the buffalo hides unloaded at Black Hoop, then a crew restacked them into piles of five so that when they froze, they would be "manageable" four hundred pound parcels. With the back and forth Black Hoopery, they decided to just set up shop down here in the old food not bombs tent, good thing we didn't put the kitchen there. Sure, we might get raided or flooded, but at least they'd be close to the people. We were all in this together.

The first step was salting the pelts to essentially cure them, and then build a huge wooden frame to stretch them out so they could be worked. I had stopped by to check it out at Pete's request late last night on my way home, and yeah, they worked even later in here than I did up the street. They had the biggest hide already strung up in a vertical eight by twelve frame, that way they knew the rack would be big enough for the rest of them. There were holes punched into the perimeter of the skin and a single rope that wove it to the two by fours, allowing the team to gradually tighten and stretch the hide. Johan had procured the pelts, but he didn't know anything about buffalo, I think he still thought they had wings. Leonard was our resident expert and guidance counselor, which was perfect since he was our spiritual leader as well.

Buffalo are sacred. The hide tanning process is sacred. We prayed over the life and death of these animals and tried to keep a prayerful energy in the tent at all times. We honored and cherished these animals. This was going to be a lot of work. We knew that, before he had gotten them, but now we could grasp the reality of what we had gotten ourselves into. They had two big round pieces of obsidian, and with just the right strike from the other piece, you could knock off a shard with a razor edge. This was an artform. There were all sorts of shapes that had been chipped off the old block, big ones with sharp curves, and smaller pieces with serrated edges that you had to grip tight. When you worked with them, you had to hold them in such a way that you could exert force, but not cut yourself. Check. So what next?

The hide was covered with thick fur on the backside, but we had to clean up the surface underneath, we had to scrape off the layer of dried fatty tissue that was adhered to the skin. There were actually three layers, you'd scrape for an hour and think that you were done with a three inch spot, ooh smooth, but then realize that you were only one layer in. Sometimes you could get a hold of a small ligament strand and pull it back as you cut it free, like peeling a sticker with a razor blade. Your arm would get tired from scraping and putting pressure into the pelt, so you'd switch hands for a while, and maybe eventually trade-in for a new tool and a slightly different technique. There was room for six of us to work at the same time, some standing on chairs to get higher, but I was high enough so I worked the bottom right corner exclusively, which gave me a grasp of how little I'd actually done over the course of the coming weeks. Yeah, weeks, and this was just one hide. We had fifty. Better put some coffee on.

It sounds like so much hard work, but it was incredibly therapeutic. Zenful. Prayerful. So much good energy in the place and you could just zone out in the hide while you forget about the troubles of the world for a few hours, or worked through them. I loved it. Elsewhere, I had a feeling of importance at the camp, and the included weight that accompanied it, but here I was just one of many buffalo scrapers. Quiet and in thought, or not thought, making incredibly slow progress on such a small part of a magnificent creation. I didn't have to take control of the whole thing, I could just plug away at my little niche in the corner. I didn't have to be concerned about the rest of the world, I knew that someone else was looking out for the global scope of the project. Everyone could do their part, all working together in harmony to create a beautifully functioning sacred energy. I was at peace. This was meditation. I figured out some secrets of the universe, and of myself, in the time that I was given to think about life while being hands on with this sacred animal. It was pretty cool. I did make one mistake though. I carried the weight of it for a while, but eventually realized that I had been a conduit for another's humility lesson. And mine. Everything happens for a reason. Even mistakes.

The first night I popped in, I didn't work the hide, I had only stopped by for a visit and was on my way. I had really taken to the place though, and thought that it might work if I started doing late night snacks on their woodstove. I even cooked some pork chops the next day on my "night off." This was not a vacation. The thought was that we could make this place a late night hangout spot, which would increase the labor force, plus I already foresaw me wanting to be here, so obviously there would be snacks. I mentioned it to James one night and he thought that it felt like I was trying to pressure people into helping on a project that they didn't feel called to. I saw his point, but also pointed out that I wanted to spend time there and I was the resident snackateer. In the end I agreed though, mainly because we were trying to keep the place sacred and an influx of late nighters with their commotion was not the vibe we were going for. No worry, I could do both, I got this. I'm a water protector. Mni wiconi.

When I reported for duty after I got canned from my day job, Pete had been there and gave me my initiation. I was looking at the obsidian tools and he said that I could use his as he unwrapped it out of a piece of leather. He called it sacred and talked about how special it was, it had been broken off of the larger rock in the most usable shape. Several sharp cutting edges and a few serrated nooks, perfect for peeling back strips of flesh. I worked for hours that first day, had nothing better to do anyway, I'd be a regular in this tent, but not with the stamina of that first go at it. Worked through some stuff. Worked through dinner, probably just me boycotting my replacement, but also just really digging where I was at. Did get a little gratification when I heard that the meal didn't have "that thing" that mine always did. You mean meat? Lawrys? Ah... love. C'mon, I'm sure Cindy made it with love, she's one of the most loving people I've ever met, lots of love for the whole community. But I had a different thing going on. I was putting intentional love for each specific family member, and the things that I knew they needed, into each bite. It made me feel good that they could tell. Without it, they could taste a difference. Feel a difference. It had a different vibration. Plus there was meat.

There was still meat on the buffalo too, well not meat, but close, and after five or six hours of scraping I could feel the tool getting dull. There was a protector there that was only at camp for a few days, but was one of the few that had experience tanning hides, and chipping obsidian. In fact, he was sharpening some of the other tools right now. Pete's was losing cutting power, so I asked him to sharpen it, which I then learned entails chipping away at the edge to reveal new surfaces. He hit it with the other stone and tried to rebuild an edge, was fairly successful, but it had lost it's perfectly curved single edge and a lot of its effectiveness. I thanked him and went back to work with it, but it just wasn't the same. I had ruined Pete's sacred tool. I showed it to him when he got back and he handled it with grace, but it hurt. I could sense him going through his own internal dialogue to work through the lesson in humility. Breathe and 2 and 3 and 4.

The lesson was to not put too much importance into material things, even if it is for a sacred act. If your prayers are from the heart, then the ceremony isn't even necessary. Ceremony and tradition is a way of focusing your vibration and helping remove any ego that's keeping you from opening your heart completely. Like sweat, it humbles you. Big time. Believe me, you are most definitely focused on the prayer. It's the only thing getting you through. When you sing through the heat and pray from deep inside, it's like the heat doesn't phase you, you're vibrating above it. Then if you lose focus and get scared of the heat, it all of a sudden rushes around you and starts burning when you breath, we're all used to that though.

Traditions in all faiths are different, and they all work, they simply help to put your heart in a state of giving in to the universe. Get your brain into alpha mode. Which is why the first indians that america ran into were successfully stripped of all of their traditions. Eastern indians, including my own ancestors, the Cherokee, just don't remember that much. It was illegal to practice ceremony, just like for the slaves, because the non-believers saw that prayer was working. They didn't want an uprising, especially from those who were still living in harmony with nature, with the universe, so they shut it down. And it worked. Eastern indians don't have a sweat ceremony of their own, they use the Lakota's. They did hang onto some songs, which were probably easier to smuggle under their breath, but they refer to a lot of Lakota ceremony. Not that theirs is better than anyone else's, but because the Lakota have been more forthgiving of their language, songs and ceremony than any other tribe. People in many different tribes speak Lakota, sort of a universal language among the real Americans. A lot of tribes held their ceremony too sacred to be shared, especially with california hippies, but the Lakota saw the power of spreading the prayer and knew that it was the only way to preserve their tradition as they were actively being exterminated. Aw, too harsh again?

The united states government's "Indian Termination" policies were active until 1968 and not officially taken out of officialness until '88. Way back when I was six years old playing cowboys and indians, how cute. The evolutionary heirs to this great country are not a myth. Not a joke. Not a kindergarten story about cartoon characters. They are the answer to saving the world. They have a proven track record of living in a good way for a long time. Millions of years. We suppressed a lot of their connection to the Earth, but it is still strong. If we can work together to develop a way to live with nature and not against it, then we might still have a chance at that whole utopia thing.

The first non-Americans to step foot in appalachia reported hearing laughter coming from all over, all throughout the hills, and why wouldn't they? The people here had been living in a good way, therefore they led a carefree lifestyle of love and harmony in an abundant cornucopia of all that they could ever want. No disease or plagues. No survival of the weakest. They were at the top of their game and their food was the breakfast of champions. They were literally living in the garden of eden. Back before colonization wiped them out in the 40s, there were massive chestnut trees all over, the redwoods of the east. The most excellent wood and canopy cover, indescribably nutritious food supply that was a few years in the making, and an energy far beyond that of the measly 50 year regrowth forest that this cave is in. The entire everything was sacred. The sun, the water, the land, the air, the plants, the animals, the rocks, the wind, and indian tacos. Everything around them poured love and life into the world, and they were a part of that, the most evolved to properly conceive of just how amazing the entire thing was. Life was good. Life was sacred. So wrapping too much up into a material object is not healthy, it's good to have your sacred traditions that help to put you into an openhearted meditation state, but you can't set yourself up to crumble when they do.

And "mine." Pete had been quick to let me use it, but he still felt some ownership over it. He was farther along on his path to letting go than I was though, so he got it. He still had to walk it off, but he didn't at all put any negative vibrations out there, we were all good. I had gotten my own humility lesson too. Second of the day. I knew that this item was important to him, yet I let it out of my possession and into another's, someone who had no way of knowing its significance to Pete. I'd already learned, through observation of a friend, that sometimes you don't realize that something holds special value to someone, so you treat it like just another material object. You can't know unless it's pointed out to you, or maybe if it's obviously set on an altar, or wrapped in a red prayer cloth. So it's nice to be conscious of those around you, and respect the things that seem important to them, even if you don't understand their significance.

That hide would end up taking the rest of the winter to finish, and we got a few fresher alpaca pelts thrown into the mix too, so at this rate we should be done by 2030 or so. After all the scraping is done there is still more to do, the actual tanning process. We'd wash the hide with the tannin and use a fire contraption to cure the skins, if we were in a sunnier landscape, we could just use our trusty sun's vibrations to do the same. The tannin can be made of eggs or certain tree barks for a less authentic tan in a pinch, but we didn't mess around, so for a legit tan we needed to procure some supplies... you got it, buffalo brains. One brain per hide, the exact ratio that nature "coincidentally" provides. Plenty of scraping to do in the meantime though, so we'll leave the brainwashing for another day.
Step Sixteen:

Next day I jumped up and got dressed in under a minute, a while back I quit building fires altogether, so it was a tit bit nipply outside of my cocoon. I was just fine. It took a few chilly minutes to warm the bed up at night, but then it was all good. I liked breathing the cold air seeping into my hot pocket and I never overheated. I know that sounds like a funny thing to worry about out here, but I'm not joking. People would regularly get their stoves rocking and overheat their tipis, especially after we got the suspiciously hot burning wood, and soon enough their body and bedroll would be soaked with sweat. No sweat, as long as you stay up all night stoking your at-home DIY inipi jr. Otherwise, after just a few hours of sawing frozen logs, all that sweat starts turning to ice faster than you can say "Brrr, all my sweat is turning to ice." So I just chilled. Slept in as long as I could stand, until I couldn't wait any longer, had to get up to pee.

My new abode came stock with many built-in amenities, including a snazzy self freezing pee bucket. I hadn't used one before this place, but it would have made the igloo way more convenient. You probably don't want to get snowed in without one. Fun bathroom story about this tarpee; Christopher had lived here before, with Tim, and an older guy named Gary. Christopher heard something one night and pried his eyes open, once they started to focus, they were focused directly on Gary, completely naked, squatting and doing a poop. Then he threw it in the fire and Christopher's dreams went up in smoke. Mmm... what's that smell? Oh, it's just garlic and onions. The image was burned into his retinas, so he passed it on to me, and now it's yours.

This morning I went outside though. I generally did, cut out the middle man, who wants to empty a five gallon pee popsicle anyway? So here I am, over there, going outside behind the tool shed, and I see something very unfamiliar stuck in the snow. Foreign to me, well domestic really, but it had been a while. It was a united states dollar bill. I bent over to pick it up and it felt super strange. I barely pinched it by the very corner and held it with the disgust that I normally reserved for watching old guys taking dumps. I took it into the tarpee and threw it into the corner behind the pee bucket. I didn't want it obviously, but it was pollution of the worst kind, so I couldn't just leave it out there. It felt good to have such a distaste for the current currency of a supposedly free nation. Felt like it raised my vibration on the spot. (Even though disgust isn't on the vibratory top ten list.)

But it says "In God We Trust" right on it, so shouldn't believing in this material dollar be the same as believing in the infinite vibrations of the universe. America's whole deal was to be a new land, free of the evils of the backwards ideals of the broken european system. Free of religious persecution. The first visitors to set foot on the continent described it as a nation living before "the fall." Just had to evict the current tenants and we could get that fall thing up and rolling by this fall, thanksgiving to be exact. The natives of course had no concept of "mine", so when the first new arrivals made a surprise visit, it didn't make sense to them why they took entire gathered food supplies and claimed them as "theirs." No google translator I guess. No need to use force, here, take some more, you're obviously very hungry from your travels. We've always had plenty, so help yourself. It's not mine anyway, it's all of ours. We are all related.

When explorers first returned to europe, they reported of the generous hospitality they had received. One might think that this would inspire the next wave of travelers to believe in the abundance that their God had provided them in this do-over of eden. But as we already know, it only inspired a belief that there was a new land to conquer, rule and destroy. Luckily, the europeon catholic church approved Doctrine of Discovery was hot off of the press just in time for the voyage of 1492, so now we could "legally" take whatever we wanted. Thanks for keeping it warm for us boys.

Fast forward back to our God trusting dollar. We all know that he never forbid us to eat from the money tree, so it must be there for us to consume. Of course, life is a circle, which explains why it consumes us too. You don't think this could be that false idol thing he was talking about, do you? Depending on a man-made creation to provide you with sustenance instead of the life giving universe, hmmm. And what's with the all seeing eye of an illuminatic egyptian pyramid doing on the back of this thing. What's it got to do with our world conquering agriconomy? Ancient egyptians were all wrapped up in energies and planetary alignments and enlightenment and a bunch of hippie dippie stuff. What's any of that got to do with us?.

Well, I don't know if the pyramid on the dollar is egyptian I guess, we've discovered these pyramids all over the Earth, even on the bottom of the ocean. All in a line around the globe. And they had advance technologies that even our most artificialest of intelligences haven't figured out yet. Things assumed to function based on the vibrations of the universe. Perhaps during particular celestial alignments. Maybe even this fall's long awaited event of virgo, the virgin, lining up with the moon and sun and some stars and the king (Jupiter) re-emerging from her womb and it all seems to correspond to biblical references about the end of times. It's been a long time since this alignment has taken place, long enough for the son being born of a virgin theme to take hold in so many belief systems far out-dating the american one. So if 7,000 years ago was the last time, and it happens to coincide with the dawn of this version of civilization, what's this one gonna be the dawn of? Man, no wonder they outlawed astrology too, musta been as scared of it as they were prayer.

The pyramids also don a mysterious symbol, which matches a symbol of the far away myans, whose celestial calendar just so happened to recently reset. Funny that two supposedly separate cultures share the same specific design. Even funnier that the design is the blueprint for a perpetual motion machine. What? Free energy. No way. All that the science business has ever taught us is that this is impossible. We have to buy energy, no way around it. Science is God, remember. Of course science also says that hummingbirds and bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly. So... maybe there actually is a chance that we're not the geniuses that the american school system promised us.

There's been all sorts of invention for conscious energy production, but they've all been squashed by oil. A long list of patents bought and buried and worse. I've seen a perpetual motion machine in action. Made of wood and steel balls and with one slight nudge the wheel spins on its own into perpetuity. Put a big one of those on the back of every house and bye bye nuclear waste. Nope. If that was a thing then we'd know about it. We're not going to be duped into paying for something that we should be able to get for free. Just imagine the awesome inventions we'd be seeing if money wasn't the mother of them all.

Some natives speak of the star people, that's who spreads the knowledge and the symbol of the secrets of the universe, we send our energy out to them during sweat, but they will only enlighten a culture that is ready for it. Peaceful people who are living in a good way, not through greed, but through love. We're getting there through a mass waking up that is happening all around, and once we reach a high enough concentration of unified love, they will return and we'll be too legit to quit.

Check this out, the Lakota believe that man has evolved through four ages, each represented by the legs of the sacred white buffalo. So do the hindus in india, the real Indians on the other side of the globe, except that it is the legs of their sacred white bull which symbolize the eras of man. Hopi "indians" believe that the first age was destroyed with fire, because man became destructive to the animals. The second generation wiped out with a greed induced ice age. In the third era, money and trade and technology took over in a bad way, until a massive flood was unleashed on mankind. And now we're living in the fourth age of man, according to many indigenous cultures around the world. Our crimes against nature seem to cover the entirety of the other three, we don't mess around I guess. Another similarity between the beliefs, they all agree that we are approaching the dawn of the next age.

Yeah right, that's a whole bunch of uneducated mythology, everyone knows that the world is only six thousand years old, just read the bible dude. Plus, shouldn't God have hidden artifacts to make the devil's scientists test our faith. Shouldn't there be some type of record of ancient civilizations? Like some old styrofoam cups or something? Or maybe like the massive stone walls and structures found all around the globe, the ones that we still haven't pieced together an idea of how these ancient cultures used advanced knowledge to make their construction possible. 500,000 pound blocks aligned precisely with some hippie star map, a single block cut with a perfectly straight edge that weighs half a million pounds. And then obviously the pyramids, but slaves did all that by hand I'm sure, go slavery. Here's a fun fact to ponder about the stones used in the egyptian pyramids, way out in the desert, there are seashell fossils embedded in them...

So why is there a pyramid on the dollar? To rub it in our faces that they've got us suckered? Or maybe someone on the board of the money company knew the power of believing, and thought that there was a way to reconcile the incompatibility of belief with this flawed monetary system. No doubt someone who actively believed that they would get to be one of the top one percent of the shareholders of the Earth. Who believed in their own greed and the enslaving power of capitalism. Even the non-existent illuminati know that the pyramid is the ultimate symbol of belief. A pyramid is all about vibrations, reaching enlightenment, joining the all seeing eye of God up top. Or I guess it was Ra actually. The sun god. Creator of all life on Earth. The magnificent ball of energy that powers our entire world. Now let me remind you, if we assume that god aliens didn't build the pyramids, then those pesky egyptians were undeniably way smarter than us. I love you sun.

Imagine a man standing on the ground on one side of the structure. He only sees a single triangle. He's trapped in a physical construct of limited dimension. He knows nothing about any other aspects of the universe. Just the one plane that he's ever experienced. He seeks enlightenment. Strives to become closer to the omnipresent energy at the top, although he has no concept of what omnipresent even means, he's only ever seen this one triangle. This one dimension. For all he knows, it's all that exists. His physical body is heavy and restricts his assent, but as he continues on his path through life and raises his vibration, he becomes in-tune with his internal energy and becomes more enlightened, lighter, closer to God. The higher his vibration allows him to climb, the more he can look around and see the vastness of the universe surrounding him. But he is still constricted to this one dimension. This one triangle. Eventually, by believing and doing what feels right, raising his vibration through love for everything, patience in understanding that there is an entire something else out there, by having the humility to know that he can't know, through living in a good way, in harmony with the vibrations that justly govern the universe, eventually he can truly reach the pinnacle of enlightenment and once again be with God.

From this new viewpoint of the universe, with his physical body now perfectly in-tune with the ultimate vibration that has been inside of him since birth, he can see in all directions. All dimensions. No longer constrained by the limited physical construct of his one triangle. There's a whole universe out there that he could never have conceived of, he was only on a single side of this single pyramid on a single continent on a single planet circling a single star that's over on the edge of a single galaxy out of trillions like and unlike it. He is now God. Always has been. But now he can see clearly the path that brought him to this point and understands that all paths lead here. No matter which triangle you live on.

We used to live up here, all of God's creatures seeing the universe for all that it is, not scared to die because we could easily see that we were all infinite energies cycling through physical manifestations. Sacrificing a physical lifeform pushes evolution so that our next physical appearance will be even more amazing as life develops more intricate ways to sense vibrations. All of the inhabitants of the garden of eden, including us, could see that they were all God. They were all infinite. Never feared and never sinned. Vibrated at the highest frequency. Then we stopped believing that we were God, started getting scared to die and scared of heights, and then we fell. Fell out of grace with God. And instead of being humble, trying to face our fear and climb back up, we turned and ran and took on the never ending task of trying to provide for ourselves by the sweat of our brows. At any cost to those around us.

We still "believed" that God existed. Prayed to him way up there. But we no longer believed that he would provide for us. He had forsaken us. We were now on our own to produce our own produce. Talk about living in a food desert. So all of that is on the back of our most precious dollar bill? Well, I guess maybe if you stack up enough of them, you might be able to climb your way back to heaven. Be sure to give God ten percent of your earnings though, he hasn't figured out how to mint it himself yet, above his pay grade I guess.

Climbing the corporate money ladder to heaven will be a bit tougher with today's digital dollar though. Paper dollars used to be backed by the actual vibrations of naturally occurring gold. Then inflation (of our egos), according to the overpopulated economist, demanded that we needed more and more and more and more and more and more. Now rumor has it that we even sold the fractionally small gold cache that we started with, sold it for paper dollars that were supposedly backed by that very gold. I'm getting a headache trying to do all that math. So now we have this paper, that somebody better at math than us tells us is worth something, and they say we should let them guard it for us at their banks. Fun side note: The first banks in the us were opened to be able to issue loans for the purchase of the first mechanized machine, a wheat reaper, the dawn of industrial agriculture. No wonder the bankers have all the money. They must be so happy.

Banks of course are only required to keep ten percent of their clients cash on hand, so they can now invest the the other ninety percent in global humanitarian efforts, like distributing the life giving fluid of petroleum to the needy. And the fish. So for every dollar that you deposit, they can make up nine more and loan them out at variable interest rates to unqualified potential "property owners." Hey, can a moose get a loan around here or what? It said I was pre-qualified.

As fictitious as the original value of the gold was, it was then replaced by an even faker paper substitute that lost any semblance of connection to its vibrating predecessor, and then through our federally insured banks, it became even less real as paper money was exchanged for tic marks beside a name on an account ledger. As if that contrived system didn't confuse the dwindling value of a dollar enough, our almighty digital revolution made it possible for the click of a button to transfer enough ones and zeros to pretend that egold had exchanged hands. Once the paper money has all been converted to bits and bytes, there will no longer be a physical manifestation to represent the man-made concept of currency and banks will be free to simply type up as much money as they want. Banks will have the power of a US mint at their fingertips. That's probably for the best though, they're way better at math than the undereducated masses anyway. They'd never let their overinflated egos mathematically crumble to the point that the faithful taxpayers of the land of the free would have to bail them out of the money pit they'd been digging since the beginning of a different revolution. Oh wait, actually that did happen, didn't it? Oh well, I'm sure they learned their lesson. Ha.

I learned mine though, I pulled out. I closed my wells fargo account before I headed to north dakota. They were one of the banks providing funding to dapl, so there was a call to divest from them and boycotts happened all around the country on their doorsteps. Luckily, other states' flower picking policies weren't as strict as they are here. They probably don't allow dancing either. Of course, losing my measly balance didn't quite break the bank, but it's the thought that counts.

My current thoughts had once again forgotten about... what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, dinner, or more specifically, confirming that I still had a job. Turns out I did, so I checked out the coolers to see if there was anything left after my recent meatatarian throw down. Had to have a strong return to the veggie plate served yesterday. Tribal bingo, a whole cooler full of little baby animals, tonight we'd have lamb and rice.

I'm only kidding when I go on about vegetarians, I get it, and I would never genuinely belittle anyone's beliefs. I obviously agree about the evils of industrialized meat production, both for our own health and for the mistreatment of our four legged brothers and sisters. I've never hunted or taken an animal's life for dinner, other than fishing as a boy, but they're not real animals anyway so that doesn't count. I do think that hunting is ok though. It's actually great. It's the natural way. Depending on hunting as a primary source of calories is how the Lakota existed for their entire existence. It's how lions and tigers and bears and american bald eagles and frogs and t-rexes and venus fly traps have collected the suns energizing vibrations forever. It's only natural. The most skilled hunters catch their fair share of the weakest and push the evolution of both predator and prey. Circle of life. Science. Instincts. God.

Lions don't kill more than they need, they believe that there will be more tomorrow. And so there is. If every lion killed twice what they could eat, then the food supply would drop and so would our lion population. The circle of life is an ever-providing, abundant, all you can eat buffet. For the omnivore there is an almost infinite selection of diverse foods available. But you have to eat them. No smuggling cookies into your purse just to turn around and sell them for profit. I'm not saying that a hunter has to eat his entire kill in one sitting, but it does seem a little greedy to go back for seconds before you've cleaned your first plate. It also seems greedy to hunt in the name of following natural law, yet still consume just as much as anybody from the agricapital empire. Taking your "fair" share from the broken man-made system and your fair share from the almost still functioning natural system, doesn't quite seem that fair at all. I've never heard of the tribe of hunter gatherer consumers, no, that'd be wanting to have your cake and eat it and sell it too.

I do realize that at camp, we ate and were so grateful for plenty of wild animals, killed and gifted to us by many gracious hunters. I realize that this is a cookbook featuring both wild game and the products of the very agricultural revolution that I credit with the downfall of the planet. I understand that without trucking sustenance into this frozen food desert, we would not have been able to sustain the population that we did at camp. This was only the first step to changing the world, to developing a system that allows humans and our planetmates to thrive side by side. It's only been since I left camp that I've had these revelations about the world's food supply. Certainly the next camp that I go to will still function from within the system, but hopefully I can teach and inspire the transition to a more natural way of life. Assuming that something else doesn't drop our population for us, it's going to be a slow change. Our inflated numbers are dependent on agriculture's fud. There's already more of it produced than we can possibly eat every year. If we can lower our population, or at least just stop the mindless expansion, then we can slowly start to lower our fud production. Slowly more actual food will be given room to grow, and the countless species that we've pushed towards extinction will begin to rebuild their own underpopulations.

Obviously this sounds like a fairy tale, given the knowledge of how our man-made world works. How money and greed are the deciders. How civilization is fueled by running the Earth into the ground. It would take an honest to God miracle to make a global change like this. The entire human race would have to wake up to the wrongs of everything they've been taught was right since the domestication of mankind. The entire collective unconscious would have to undergo the biggest lesson in humility imaginable. We would all have to believe.

So I'm cool with hunting. I don't think you should hunt to excess and ship it to far away lands incapable of sustaining human life. By definition, I don't think that humans should live there to begin with. Barring global disaster, I understand that it will be more than difficult to go cold turkey on the food distribution system that has us this close to global disaster. I feel that it's not too late, but it's getting awfully close to the impending doom of all of mankind. We can still change, I wouldn't be writing all this if I didn't believe, but it will take a unified global effort and commitment to atone for the sins of man.

Personally, I will hunt. I will take another life and consume its God given energy. I will pray over it and be grateful for its life and death. I will hold it sacred. I want this experience so that I can truly appreciate the circle of life that I am so lucky to get to be a part of. But I will not take a life unless I am hungry. I do not get to kill this turkey while I still have that cold one in the fridge. But tonight we're eating frozen lamb, and believe me, it was cold.

Our vegetarian population had increased too, must be all those vegetarian inspired dishes added to the food supply. We were up to four now, almost an epidemic, so I decided not to use my standard meat based recipe for the classic southern side dish I had on the menu. We'd have vegetarian veggies, a novel approach, but collard greens without pork fat would take some hardcore believing.

Actually, it just took a whole bunch of vegetable bouillon, a lot, plus a little mushroom bouillon just in case. I'd never used the stuff. I'd never even used meat bouillon. I always make my own stock, but this stuff was really good. Super flavorful. I've got to admit that the meatless plant matter was probably the best rendition of the dish that I've ever made, and I normally use a pound of bacon. Also the first time I'd made it with all this love, especially for the four veggie people.

I made the lamb, so good, big whoop, anybody can make meat taste like meat. Lamb gravy was solid, I mean it was liquid, but it was tasty. I never made gravy the same way twice, and I made it a dozen or so times, I just always made it up as I went depending on what we had. This was my favorite batch. I had some big tubs of rendered pork fat, heavy cream and the leftover lamb remnants. I always needed more than I thought, so it was more a game of putting everything I could find into it, tons of butter, and from there it was all gravy. But honestly, the star was the collards, just don't let Smokey know.

He wasn't around in the mess hall much anyway, he'd pretty much only show up if neither Ziggy nor I had coffee ready. Coming right up sir, just let me boil some water real quick. James was here though, he'd stopped playing cards and upped his game to arts and crafts. He started beading, a tradition for many tribes, and he was pretty good at it. He was making lighter sleeves, and the first one was for Dan. It had a depiction of a tree on it that I thought also looked like a little space shippy, probably shoulda kept my mouth shut and maybe I'd have ended up with one.

The beads are made of plastic, probably don't have to elaborate too much about my thoughts on that one. Probably harvested from the plastic trees in my home state's DuPont Forest, yep, the mega chemical conglomerate. Rivers and woods and animals and a stunning giant triple waterfall, all there for mankind's enjoyment of the mythological "nature", at least until they find oil there. Scratch that, they've already found chemical contamination from the company's x-ray film factory. Shoulda seen that one brewing below the surface.

Before the plastic facsimiles, beads used to be made of bone, stone, wood and other found items, but as you could imagine, when you reduce someones gathering grounds, food's not the only resource that gets a little skinny. At least the plastic counterparts will survive any impending doom and provide future "intelligent" species something to speculate on, like "Is that a tree or a spaceship?"

I couldn't stay up all night cooking snackatizers though, I had a hole to dig myself into tomorrow. A grave situation, to be more specific. I woke up and gathered a few supplies before we headed out, even if I was on a more important crew today, I was still the chef. Rosebud doesn't go hungry. Even on a field trip. I grabbed a bag of oranges, the makings of pb&j sandwiches, and I checked in with Harry. Checked out I guess. I had no idea how long it would take, definitely a new page in this book, so I wasn't counting on being back for dinner. Luckily, I had just been shown that the kitchen wouldn't catch on fire if I wasn't there. Everything for a reason. Wait, every time I leave something does burn down though, ummm... I'll just cross my fingers and assume that I'm on a mission from God.

We assembled the team, myself, Johan, Daniel and Pete. Just had to track down Pete. Easier said, but soon enough we were off. We had been able to gather a pickaxe, two shovels and a sharp shooter. (It's a long skinny pointed shovel.) Should be enough for this motley crew to complete the most sacred honor that any of us had ever been tasked. Daniel, who had compared camp to an orphaned tv family, where I was the older brother who had returned to take care of the kids, now had a new commentary of our group. He thought that we had an eclectic menagerie for the dig, him the singer, the chef, the merchant, and the wild card. Funny that in most groups I'm the wild card, Pete unanimously gets the title this time though. We were probably all wild cards back home, outcasts, outside of the norm, which just reminded us that we were all family here. Of course, most of our family roles back home had escalated from black sheep to the elephants in the room, but we had a different home to focus on today.

Andre lived about an hour away. We got twenty minutes down the road and Johan realized that he had forgotten something. No big deal. We turned around, but he was still kicking himself and very frustrated. Dude, it's all good, there was a reason for this, we may have just avoided a head on collision with disaster, go with the flow brother. Plus, we're on indian time. There was no "late", the hole wasn't going anywhere without us. We finally got down there to meet them in town, but couldn't get ahold of Mary. Straight to voicemail. Waited. And then who do we see "randomly" drive by? Frank. He just happened to be riding down the road we were stopped on, just right placing it, and he'd given them plenty of rides home so he knew exactly where we were going. Never so happy to see Frank pull up. Wakan Tanka works in mysterious ways. Like, we might not have crossed paths if we hadn't had to turn around...

We got to Andre's and met his older sisters, they were funny, they were (maybe jokingly?) hitting on Pete and entranced by his dreads. They called a few family members to try to get us some help, telling them that the water protectors were here to dig their mom's grave. Andre couldn't have been more proud of our team. He said that he couldn't think of anyone that he would trust more with such an important task. So we rolled one and rolled out.

His mom would be buried next to his uncle, so first we cleared out the foot of snow that sat on his grave and where we would be digging hers. We all smudged and prayed and Daniel sang a prayer song. Then we dug in. Andre said the hole needed to be three by eight by five. Not six foot? He said five is how they do it, five or seven, I like five, we'll stick with that, Lakota way and all. Oh yeah, remember that whole winter thing, it was still going on. It was cold. Had been for a while. The ground was way frozen. Shovels wouldn't touch it. Pickaxe was doing it, but slowly. We took turns wailing on it and hoping that we'd eventually get through the permafrost layer.

Also noteworthy, was that I had lost my gloves. Today. I had them in the car but now they were nowhere to be found. The only thing I could think of, was that they had fallen out of my lap when I hopped out at Echo3 to look for a second pickaxe. Sure hoped they were there. I liked them a lot. But it would be ok if they weren't, especially if they had manifested into the path of someone who needed them more than me.

I was actually really good at losing them, basically happened at least once every day, especially when the kitchen was separate from the mess hall. I would swear that I remembered taking them off in one, only to find them in the other. It would be a joke with most everyone I worked with, all the way back to the Suzy days. On the cold days (as opposed to?) you'd start to take off without them, but within twenty feet of the door you knew something was wrong. I had no thermometer or concept of this type of cold, so I gauged the temperature by how long you could be outside without gloves before finger shutdown set in. The cold days were measured in seconds.

In the mess hall it was always iffy to leave stuff sitting around, there were donations everywhere and the place abounded with manifestations, so if someone in need found a new pair of gloves and you weren't around to claim them, well... Many times I thought that "mine" had walked off, certain that I left them laying right there, but it would be ok if they had, I always had everything I needed. I wouldn't assume that they'd been stolen like some conclusion jumpers, I would simply know that they would turn up, and honestly, if they didn't I would be even happier. I know the power of manifestation. I had seen it countless times in action. I knew that if these gloves were passed on, or even more so if I actually gave them away, that I would get an even more amazinger pair within the day. I loved these, so an even better pair would be really sweet.

But alas, these gloves were meant to be. I only legitimately couldn't find them twice, the first time of course, was about three minutes before we were taking off for the frontline, not really the best time to be gloveless. I scoured the mess hall and the kitchen, but nothing. Luckily there were some stray gloves in the mess hall that I borrowed, always have what we need. Certainly taught me a lesson, I still lost them often, but on suspected frontline days I tried to keep a closer tab on them. Found 'em the next day outside on the grill. There was only one time that they were actually not where I had left them. I was playing spades and was pretty sure I'd stashed them on the edge of the card table. After hours of high cards, maybe I had grown weary and mistaken, so I searched all the spots, even the grill. Nope. Nowhere. No big, my house was close enough that I could just pocket my pair tonight and figure it out tomorrow. The next day, I was cooking something or other in the mess hall and Andre came in looking for some onion tea. Gotcha bro, always, but you think I could have those gloves back? He'd actually scored some liners for them and now they were even warmer than ever. See? Always. Every time. Trust.

Even after all the time that the glove story took, we had still hardly broken ground. We'd chipped away at two sides of the perimeter and we were slowly getting to a point that the sharp shovel could help out. Still rock hard, although we never hit any rocks, which I hear is uncommon out there. Eventually, we did achieve a breakthrough, the ground was only crazy hard for the top eight inches, so at some point we had gotten one small area below the surface. We kept at it, trading off the pickaxe, and finally we were able to use the sharp shovel to break off large chunks of the top layer. We piled all the dirt up on a blue tarp at the foot of the hole, turned out to be way more than would ever fit in a hole that size.

A few hours in and we'd actually gotten the upper crust removed, which earned ourselves not only a sandwich, but a swig of Johan's coffee. Coffee with cannibutter, weed butter for baking, it's a pretty powerful medicine when ingested. The coffee had cooled somehow and the butter was a congealed blob, maybe it was actually coconut oil based instead, no complaints, except that after we all ate a small chunk, Pete finished the rest off. We didn't actually complain, we laughed, especially once it all caught up to him in a few hours, but for now it was back to work. We dug and dug and got a little over two feet down by dusk. We debated continuing through the temperatures that were dropping faster than the sun, but Andre wanted to go chill at home instead of freeze out here, and what were we even doing here if not being there for him? We hadn't originally planned on staying the night. None of us had ever dug a grave before, even above zero, plus that indian time start, but we were all way good with staying. Felt right. Felt more than right.

Johan needed to run back to camp though and I wanted to tag along to grab some supplies and check in with the kitchen, so we bounced. And guess what was waiting for me at the post? Yep, Lucas had my gloves in hand. Lucas was here with his wife Constance and his homie Ricky. I'd just met him recently, but I'd seen him around and heard a story that he was in, well, I guess I was in it too actually.

An unknown guy had walked in past the post, I was there but not on duty (standard) and he told Jacob that he was here to interview somebody. Jacob gave him directions to the compost toilets where the interview was scheduled, interesting choice, and then we continued about our serious business. A while later the guy came back by, a little rattled, but not too bad, and on his way to Oceti to try to get a media pass. He had been filming when Lucas informed him about the press credentials required to use a camera bigger than a phone at camp. We were way after the influx of the news teams that left back in december, back when we defeated dapl, I didn't even know if the media tent was still a thing. I'd never even been asked about my press pass, which had officially expired on new years eve, but I was kitchen crew and everyone knows you don't mess with the chef.

So the unknown man had been supposedly meeting someone at the bathrooms, but no one had been there but Christopher. He was cool with the guy filming and even offered an interview. One of the reasons for the media pass policy was to make sure that those filming, knew the protocols for respecting the privacy and sacredness of the camp. The catch was that you only heard these if you went to the orientation. So, many didn't know the rules, even members of our own security, but we were so small right now that it was easy to tell if someone was out of place.

The basics were simple, ask permission before you film someone and no filming prayer or sacred sites, the compost toilets weren't installed when I went through the debriefing, but I can't think of a site more sacred to most. It protected not just our individual privacy, but the security of the camp. Would have been simple for dapl to send in some unknown videographer for an interview with "someone" at the bathrooms... mmhmm. Even if it did take me a few days, it was easy enough to get a pass if you were at all legit. So with dapl's control of Rupert Murdoch's mainstream media, I doubt they'd have any trouble, but at least it gave us a record for accountability.

One time, someone came into the kitchen, back in the Dustin days, and asked some informal questions, no big, it's a community kitchen. She knew to ask before she filmed, at which point Dustin and I pretty simultaneously denied. I had no intention of willingly putting myself out there, especially after I'd put myself out there on the frontline. You think I want everyone knowing all my business? Another time, a less respectful camera person was filming some of us splitting wood and we semi-politely put a stop to it. At least until they started arguing their justification case, not the best way to get the proper authorization forms. More flys with honey.

The official policy if someone was improperly filming, was to delete their data, but we didn't exactly have the authoritarian principles of our competition. So this stranger had been filming in the compost tent when Summer saw him, grabbed Lucas, and they let him know about the media pass as they sent him hiking to Oceti. Christopher thought that they'd been a little harsh on him, he had his permission after all, plus we had nothing to hide, but I was with them. Someone who is not a part of the camp and who hasn't learned a single thing about us, may not be the best voice for our movement. The best move would be for him to stay a few days and really get to know us, instead of interviewing the first person he found in the bathroom of a somewhere between fifteen thousand person and global awakening. Unless of course you work for a certain government agency supposedly created to protect the environment, but under new management your directives are a little skewed and you've decided that our composting waste system, which is designed to be the most environmentally friendly option, is actually a bigger threat than the unreviewed ecological concerns of a three foot oil pipe pumping crude under america's largest river. But that's a load to drop on you at another time.

Johan and I had a party to get to. Seems like party might not be the right word, but we were certainly in high spirits, honoring Andre's mom, letting stories of her life raise our vibrations instead of bringing us and him down. Plus we smoked seven blunts. Not Pete though, the butter had caught up to him and he was passed out in the corner, poor little fella. I of course brought an obscene amount of snacks, a whole stacker spread including goat cheese and spicy sweet pepper jam. Why would I start messing around now?

We also watched a couple of B movies, including this classic about three people stuck on a ski lift in supposedly frostbite conditions. Our current expertise on the specifics of windchill had us cracking up at the ridiculous movie magic. Like how their jackets weren't even zipped all the way up and nothing covered their powdered faces. Guess it's hard to "star" in a movie with full frontal coverage, wish someone had told us about that before our close up. Tonight also marked an unprecedented occurrence, an unparalleled milestone, a landmark event and something that many thought was an impossibility. Yeah, it actually happened... I took a shower.

I was almost two months in and not near as smelly as one would imagine. I mean, they were still letting me cook everyday, so I couldn't have been much worse than anyone else. Like I said before, many people had ventured to the casino to rinse off, but I continually saw that when they returned, they were often both physically and emotionally ill. There was not good energy there. I'd rather take my chances being labeled a dirty hippie. But tonight I was clean. Andre's sister was going to do laundry the next day, so he gave me some shorts and a tee as I relinquished my very bottom layer. Man, after this extreme makeover rez edition, I should be good for another two at least.

Then we slept. Tried to a least. The thermostat was set at eighty, jeez, and I was used to zero. I could hardly breathe it seemed like, I was on the floor near the door, so I crawled even closer and caught a draft as it crept in. It was like surviving a sweat, but without any of the universe's energy helping me through it. So far, a shower, goat cheese and too warm of a bed, where again was the struggle of the life threatening dakota winter that I had been promised?

I survived my first night away from camp. Johan got up early and headed to the Cannonball post office to pick up a package, it was only open until noon every day. Lucky for us, his trip was extra fruitful and he swung by camp to pick up a straggler, Bill was now on the team. Nice. The sisters cooked us breakfast after I dodged a few biscuit requests and eventually we made moves back to the graveyard. All in indian time no doubt. We dug and dug. The ground wasn't frozen solid anymore, but it was still really cold, which was actually a godsend. Instead of it being warm and moist and sticky, it crumbled into golf ball size nuggets that were relatively easy to scoop up. The pile was growing faster than the hole was and the deeper it got, the harder it was to throw the chunks up to the top of it. As we moved down, it was becoming a lot tighter of a workspace and was tricky to even get two people digging at once, especially if the pickaxe was swinging. We'd started using another tarp as a sled, loading it up on the side of the hole and dragging it to the side of the pile. I had come up with a pretty good technique for breaking the Earth apart with the sharp shovel, I could jump on it and pry it back to make a six inch section crumble, and then move to the side a bit and repeat. Like a typewriter kinda, and then when I finished a row I could move back a notch and do another line. I could bust up a whole layer while another shovel was scooping it out. We'd all come up with our own signature styles, all of them included not wanting to stop until another had to basically beg you to take a break and let them dig.

Of course, digging graves is a ridiculous concept to begin with. What? Well, why do we do it then? Because it honors the life of the recently departed? We give them back to the Earth that they came from? Back to God? But we villainized the belief systems that worshiped the Earth as God, remember? Well, if we didn't, then they would just rot up here at eye level, and that would pollute the Earth which is something that we just can't stand for. Well, actually, they wouldn't have time to rot because the scavengers would eat their flesh. Gross. We'd be just like all of the other animals when they pass on. But we don't count as animals anymore. That would make it seem like we were actually a part of the circle of life. Like we actually wanted to take part in God's magnificent design. The very system with which he creates life. Instead, we twist the sacred geometry of life and claim it to be a line, a chain, and we are at the top of it. No others above us. We are the end all be all of evolution, so we should bury our deceased far out of reach of any calorie starved creatures that happen to pass by. Of course, they're so starved because we leveled their community's free soup kitchen to build an elitist restaurant, which nonsensically serves inferior calories for a premium price. Small price really though, to be able to live in peace without all those filthy animals wandering the neighborhood. Yeah, they did live here first, and never did anything mean to us, but they look different than us, so we don't like them. Legally speaking, they never printed a proof of ownership, so they have no ground to stand on, literally. Plus, didn't you promise that their population would start shrinking soon?

Eventually, even a buried body does sneak its way back into the life cycle, there are micro organisms in the dirt which break down the body so that plants can consume the vibration rich nutrients. Unless of course you lock the body up in an airtight box. Or get even more grossed out about your most sacred vibrations supporting another life and just burn them up. Now, we're so scared to die that death has lost its honor. We used to hold sacred our role of passing on our universal energy, which we got by consuming animals, which they got from consuming plants, which they got from our most precious life giving sun. I love you sun.

So when did we start burying our dead then? Well, when we stopped believing of course. But to play devil's advocate (The non-believers do count as the havoc reeking devils right?), it actually is kinda gross. Now that we've taken our path away from God and filled our physical manifestations with all this artificial fud, and now even faker genetically modified corn based impostors, our bodies are almost as polluted as our planet. We figured out that an overpopulation of diseased corpses lying around was not good for growing the figures of consumerism, but what was it again that caused the disease and overpopulation?

Well, then why is there a graveyard on the reservation? If the non-believers are the only ones greedy with their vibrations, their love, with God, then why on his green Earth would they be forsaking his circle of life? Colonizers. Lakota tradition was to take the merely physical bodies that their relative's higher spirits had once occupied, and hang them in a tree for all to see and honor. For all of life to consume. Sending their physical energy throughout the universe in a beautiful neverending story that has been playing out since God cut the lights on. Then the colonizers, who preferred to write their own story rather than live in someone else's, made the sacred tradition illegal. Outlawed it along with every other spiritual ceremony that they either didn't understand, or possibly understood very clearly and could not allow them to jeopardize their corporate takeover. So now if they attempted to do what felt right, what they knew as the proper way to honor the life that they had been blessed with, they were murdered. The next generation were of course forced into "boarding schools" where they beat out any semblance of tradition or prayer, all in the name of... God? No wonder they've had such a hard time with basically everything.

We were also about to have our own hard time with the current excavation. The digging was tough, but we'd gotten a pretty good flow going. Johan was in the pit swinging the pickaxe, busting up the floor so that one of us could come behind him and scoop out the loose stuff. At least that was the plan. Until he swung the pick axe and it got stuck... in another coffin. A hush fell over the crowd.

The wooden box from a neighboring plot farther uphill, had shifted underground substantially due to flooding and other wonders of the natural world. It was only jutting into the side of our hole about six inches on the right side, and only for half the length of the grave. There was now a quarter sized hole (see, money does have a use, measuring deficits) in the final resting spot of another's physical self. Unsure of the ramifications of such an accident, but certain that it was some type of faux pas, we prayed. Johan put some tobacco on the breach and we burned some sage as we prayed for the continued peace of the spirit whose body this belonged to. I quietly prayed for Johan not to carry any negative weight on his heart. I could see it in his face and knew that he might continue to feel guilt for something that I knew had happened for a reason. Perhaps the reason was to tell us to slow down a bit, or maybe the box needed some airflow to complete the energy decomposition that had been artificially inhibited, allowing the body's energy to rejoin that of the universe. We finished praying and took it at face value, time to slow down, the sun was starting to set and it just felt right to call it a day, so we did. We were also notified that we had a treat waiting for us at the house, buffalo soup and good old frybread, yum.

Another night at the house, played some cards, watched some bad movies, smoked less this time, still too hot to sleep and soon enough we were back at the grave. Andre and Mary had been battling illness the whole time, since before I'd made the onion juice a week earlier, and today he was too sick to help dig. He'd already been alternating between helping us and recuperating at his cousin's house down the street. I think there may have been a bottle involved too. No judgments brother, it's a tough time and we're honored to get to be here for you in any way that we can.

We got straight to work, already almost deep enough, but now we had to shift the hole over a foot due to the previous occupant. We were in the zone and shifting the hole wasn't nearly as hard as it sounded, we could pry big chunks from the top with a shovel and catch them from below. Still took a good chunk of the day, though we didn't start until afternoon with indian time and all, but we were in no hurry and knew that we were in the right place. Once we were finally done though, we were pretty anxious to get back to camp, had to see what had fallen apart without us.

Even this far way from camp, we were not immune to rumors. Andre's cousins stopped by and helped a good bit throughout the dig, and one had stopped by the house to fill us in on something that he had heard from his relative who was at camp. Rosebud was currently being raided. Um... yeah... told you I couldn't leave. Or was everything happening for a reason? To keep us away from camp for a reason? Wouldn't we have heard from our people somehow? Or would we? We text Frank, who kinda seemed in the know sometimes, but was always trying to get us to disconnect our service package. We knew he wouldn't hang around to get caught up in any raid though. He didn't confirm an invasion, but reliably recommended not risking return. Dapl. We had heard of a possible raid on Sacred Stone, looking for people with warrants, so we hoped that this was the ignition source for the rumor. We didn't let it slow our mission, and when we finally returned to camp, they had no idea what we were talking about. WTF? Where does this stuff even come from?

Whatever, doesn't matter, we were home and our energies refilled after having the honor of helping a dear brother through his grieving. We left Daniel behind to stay with the family and help cook and stuff, but mainly he was just good company. I was curious how the kitchen had managed in my absence. Had the whole camp gone vegan? No way, I'd be digging another hole for Smokey if that were the case. They had managed, but I was dearly missed. Far from replaced, I was on the hook for some meat production, right after I got grilled about my previous whereabouts. I had only broadcast where I was going to a few and had only underestimated being gone a day, so to many, I was simply MIA. Just like I was back home. I didn't make a big deal about it, "I had to help a friend with some personal stuff", but word got around and everyone thanked me for what we had done. We were honored. Truly. Plus I had completed a side mission.

While out of the vortex of camp, I had managed to procure my mom's phone number, so I called her that night to let her know that I was alive. It was all I could do to get through the conversation with her in one piece as I tried to update her without alarming her too badly. How can you tell the person who loves you the most that you're being poisoned, tear gassed, raided by assault rifles and that the government is in on it, all without causing them to worry? I told her that I wasn't scared. That I was surrounded by love. That I'd been praying. And that I was the chef. She noted that I always did like to cook and she did a good job pretending to not be scared for me. I can't even imagine how much sleep she's already lost thinking about me, had this helped or only made it worse? I couldn't not tell her the truth though. I needed her to understand why I was here, this was not a vacation. I felt safe, but you never knew. Certainly I was in danger. What if the next armed invasion threat wasn't so empty? She understood. She at least understood that she couldn't understand, but she believed in me without condition and knew that if I felt that I had to be here, then I had to be here. I wouldn't have been who I am without her support in the first place. She exemplified the patience, understanding and humility that I prayed for daily, and speaking to her gave me the energy I needed to keep going, especially after helping Andre through his loss. The phone call ended with her nudging me onward. "Well, I guess you better go grill some steaks then." So I did.

The next day when I saw Bill, he seemed a little off. I didn't think too much of it, he was one to seem a little off sometimes, plus we had just helped our brother bury his mom and that's gonna affect people differently. I had gotten to almost immediately talk to mine, which got me all sorted out, but I couldn't help but think that Bill's deal was something different. The next day I confirmed what I had already suspected, but had refused to put any energy into because I didn't want any part of its manifestation. Jess had broken up with Bill.

Out of all of our campmates, I had been their closest friend. Honestly, I'd been closer to her than him, but she had moved into a tarpee with a strong female support team and I knew that my role was to help my brother through his own grieving process. He hadn't had many past relationships, it had been a while since his last and even though it hadn't been going on that long, this was the fastest and deepest he'd ever fallen in love. I get it. Jess was a very special girl indeed. But he was letting his pain cause resentment instead of honoring the time that they shared.

Those are lessons learned over time though, through experience and heartache. I tried to counsel him with my perspectives, but in the end, you can't tell someone to feel differently than they do. I learned that one a while back and he was learning it right now. You can't talk someone into loving you, and you definitely can't guilt them into it. Harboring negative energy is not only going to drive them farther away, it's going to lower your own vibration and pull you off of your path, away from your internal navigation. Instead, focus on the good times and the growth you experienced. Don't beat yourself up for mistakes, rather take them as a lesson in humility and look forward for ways to continue your own personal growth, not reverse it. Everything happens for a reason. If it didn't work out, that's because it wasn't meant to be. It's hard to see that from inside the pain, but once you move on and grow from it, it becomes so obvious that it was just a stepping stone along your path, preparing you for the moment that you meet "the one."

A couple of days later I finally got to talk to her, we could talk more openly than most, including Bill and I. We had very similar relationship philosophies. It'd taken me so long to figure it all out and she was already there at such a young age. Honestly, if it hadn't been for the age gap and my friendship with Bill, I'd have probably gone after something a little less solid than our friendship, glad it all worked out this way though. She had been slowly feeling more and more unfulfilled, but what do you do when you live and work with a person that you still care for? I had a similar experience. It was still comfortable, there was no bad times to justify a break up, it just didn't feel right. In my case, I moved to california, but leaving wasn't an option for any of us here. So she moved to the third tarpee on the right, now we were neighbors.

She hadn't ended it after his grave experience to be malicious. In fact, she had resigned herself to sticking it out until the eventual government invasion, but the night alone had given her the space and clarity to realize that it wasn't healthy for her vibration. It wasn't worth it to herself, to stick it out for the feelings of someone else. It may seem that sacrificing your own happiness to spare the emotions of another is the noble thing to do, but that's unfair to all and only slows the path of everyone involved. Over my past few relationships, I had realized that being happy was all that mattered. I just wanted my partners to be happy, and if that meant not being with me, it would be ok. I might be sad for a bit, but how sad would it make me to know that they felt trapped and unhappy with me? Now, I know that happiness is simply a higher frequency on our emotional scale, our sixth sense of natural vibrations. The happier you are, the closer you are to your true self, on the right path, connected to the piece of God living inside of you. So don't regret and resent, instead trust and believe. And love. Unconditionally. Sometimes that means letting go.

After our talk, Jess helped me in the kitchen. I was making her favorite double meat burgers, but didn't feel like grilling outside, so we just did them right there on the flat top. And the biggest advantage to helping in the kitchen? At least besides snacks, cigs, camp gossip, extra prayers, complimentary bowl packs, witty banter and no poop clean up duty... was menu input. Especially if you were a vegetarian. The camp had recently undergone a meatless mafia takeover, but now I was back, so we'd most certainly be consuming flesh, but Jess and I worked on a handful of bean burgers and they actually turned out pretty good. Good looking at least, I didn't try one, oh heck no, I eat meat.

With the doubling and now quadrupling of the veggie population (Where will it end?), I actually threw together a few things for them over the next few weeks. Spaghetti squash with butter and garlic, a creamy butternutcarrotpotatobasil soup, and a special stew that even I was proud of. I started with tons of vegetable bouillon, my new secret meat replacement, and then loaded it down with golden beets and celery and carrots and heady mushrooms and peas and garbanzos and, and, and, and these weird things that I found on a shelf in the mess hall. I thought that unknown meat was something, what in the world was this unknown root vegetable thing? Maybe celery root? Nope, it was kohlrabi. A cold what? A turnip-like vegetable, some were red inside, some were white, and all were way better than a turnip. I ate some raw, crazy huh, and distributed some among the crowd before I threw the rest in the pot. Now this soup really did have everything, even vegetables unheard of by common man. And yes, it even had the suggested daily value of corn. If Smokey asks, it had beef too.

Smokey was busy after dinner though, which meant that soon I was as well. Tonight was the night that we spotlighted the plane. I went out to see what the commotion was all about and he sent me for the camera. The aircraft was flying wide circles over camp, flying it's spirograph over Oceti and working it's way to Rosebud. It had flown super low right above us once, but by the time I had the camera out, it was farther away. You could hear it circling back around in the distance and then it would start getting closer as Smokey tried to find it with the spotlight. The plane had zero lights, not even a tiny blinking one on the tail or wings. Super creepy. It started getting closer, but I only had a few seconds after he found it with the light, to try to get it into my viewfinder, zoom in all the way, recenter it and then try to focus, all while it was moving out of sight.

It got closer and I got it kind of in frame, but out of focus and too far away to really see anything. It got closer again and I did better, but not anything that was of any worth. A few more passes and it was almost directly above us, possibly a smoking gun. Or a dusting plane. At this angle, it would be super difficult to catch it, zoom and focus all in time, so I elected to stay zoomed out and at least catch something, even if we couldn't read the numbers on it. And... Got it. You could see a gray plane without lights flying over our heads. And now it was coming back.

I was worried that the bright spotlight would scare them off, but why would they be scared of some hippies playing indian that nobody at home would believe anyway? I also realized that the spotlight kept them from being able to see me with my big camera as they neared us. Here they come again, low and slow, right on our heads. Got 'em. Zoom, focus and follow. Got it for real this time. Got super close. Plenty of detail with his fancy light. Still couldn't make out any identification though... because there wasn't any. It was a completely unmarked, unlit plane, flying low circles over camp late at night. Well, I guess we should go eat some onions.

I had the video now, but it was no news to us, we knew that they'd been up to no good the whole time. Tonight was just another night in paradise. I popped into the mess hall to throw my battery on the charger, I'd been keeping it in here since the raids, and that's when I was alerted about the next dapl inconvenience. That's all they could do to us, try to slow us down, but we always got stronger. Poison our snow, fine, we'll use water. Steal our kitchen, we'll just grill out. Invade camp with a highly armed private military, well, how do you like your steaks again?

This was the first time I had been on the scene, but I think it had happened before, a giant dumptruck of firewood unloaded in the middle of our main entrance. I wanted to put away some foodstuff before I went to help, so I tried to grab a nearby protector's assistance, but he was heading to chuck wood. Cool, I got this, except that in five minutes when I made it up there, he was nowhere to be seen. Again, I try not to judge, I can't say that he wasn't working hard somewhere else, but I know first hand that several times I asked him for help with something and he disappeared. This was not a vacation. We all got to have a good time, but we all got to work hard too. He had been at the frontline. Stood on the wall with a shield and a mask. More than most had risked for the ultimate reason that we were all supposedly here. But just being at the frontline was not doing your fair share. A lot of us had been there, and still did our parts to make camp happen. This was not a vacation. I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus, he did plenty, there were others that didn't come close to doing their part or even seem to care about the anti-oil movement. And he went to sweat. He prayed. It's kinda why we were here. Did I mention that part already?

Speaking of mentioning things, it may have only been speculation that dapl was responsible for the late night mystery wood that was unloaded in our only way in or out, but it was widely known that they had the North Dakota government in their pocket. The governor himself stood to financially profit from the pipeline. That explains the bill that they were trying to rush through that would remove any legal liability to motorists who injured protesters. Yep. Dapl would soon be able to run us over without consequence. Now remember, 1806 was closed at the bridge. There was no through traffic. No innocent civilians on their daily commute to work driving by the camp. Just us and dapl. So explain the justification for the bill again?

Nothing surprised us by this point though. It was just another thing to laugh about. Another joke to tell while we waited for the next thing. Didn't have to wait long, and it wasn't even dapl this time, I don't think so at least. We'd left Daniel behind at Andre's and he'd attended the funeral service, been there to witness them lowering the casket into our family's contribution to theirs, except that it didn't fit. He said that it was the exact size of the hole and needed more clearance to work. We had tried to confirm that the dimensions they gave us were for the actual grave, not just for the casket. That's what they said. Kinda made sense with the hole being a full eight feet. Never done this before. We felt bad for sure, musta made for an awkward moment to say the least, but we'd be there first thing in the afternoon tomorrow to make it right. And just to make sure that we did it properly this time, we'd bring Leonard along with us.

The cemetery was an hour south. As we started creeping into february, we occasionally crept closer to thawing temperatures at camp. They musta made it all the way past thirty-two down here at some point. There was mud. Real life, honest to God, mud. Liquid water never sucked this bad. The frozen crumbles had been a cinch to throw from five feet down, but this stuff was sticky. We would try to heave a scoopful out, but it just wouldn't leave the shovel. It was a mess. We eventually came up with a system of filling five gallon buckets and handing them out of the mud pit. It kinda worked. The shovels still clumped up and had to be scraped clean. The mud would have to be scraped out of the buckets. Boots clumped up, gloves were slippery with mud, it was miserable. So much more work that before, and we only had to go a foot in two directions.

Even through the struggle, we would never have traded it for a thing. The harder we worked, the more honored we were to be there. And finally we were there. Hopefully at least. We still had to test fit it to be sure. We used some rope to lift it and worked our way over the hole, slid in the mud and almost lost it, took another step and almost lost it, started lowering it into the pit, and then we lost it. The rope slipped and the foot of the casket fell to the bottom of the grave. Ouch. Grave danger. So that's not good. Blew a hole in a neighbor's casket, dug the wrong size grave and now this. Good thing we're cheap. Of course we felt bad, but the members of the family that were there were unphased and so grateful, if they were at all upset, they did a magnificent job of getting over it. We got it leveled back out, it didn't quite fit, but after a quick adjustment we were done. I was beat. We went home. I went to bed.

I slept in a little, no watch, so who really knows, but whatever, like anything ever happens at camp before noon anyway. I got up, stumbled outside, wiped my eyes and headed for some coffee. Something seemed a little off. Took a second to register exactly what it was. Oh yeah... the pantry was missing.
Step Seventeen:

The pantry tent was gone at least. There were just the shelves that Wendy and I had built, full of cans, standing alone in the snow. Well, not alone I guess, there was a handful of new faces digging through our food supply. Grocery shopping in our lifeline. It was the tribe. Smokey's Rosebud tribe was finally taking the tents that they'd promised to take before the raids. Tents schments, the kitchen was empty, who cares? But you're taking our food too? Right in front of us. I know that the press was telling america that we were gone, but you can see that we're right here. Hungry. Fighting for you. What the...?

Thomas was grabbing a couple of supplies (I think he was actually looting for his own tent, lol.) and told me that I better grab whatever I wanted to keep, the tribe was taking all of it to some new camp, actually in Rosebud, SD. Oh jeez. And breathe, two, three, four. No problem. We always have everything we need. I almost even believed it. Well, we had beans and rice for days, and it was all in a snowed over tent not owned by the tribe, so we would not starve. Rosebud doesn't go hungry. Especially not their new camp apparently. I'm not one to freak out at first mention of a new rumor. Sure, maybe I could see the rumor unfolding right before my eyes this time, but I wasn't convinced. I needed to talk to Smokey. I tracked him down, smoking one with another guy who felt constantly slighted by his own tribe. I just hit it, chilled and listened to them talk.

Smokey said that he had never once felt like his own tribe had looked out for him. The very people that were supposed to have his back as he tried to live the struggle that it is to be a native american in such a foreign america. More naturally equipped for survival here than any other possibly could be. Until colonization dug it's claws in deep. So deep, that after the tribes were forced into smaller and smaller living spaces with less and less food, concentrated into camps, they didn't band together to survive as one, living in a good way. No, they allowed capitalism to corrupt their leadership. So now they share the same broken caste system as the brainwashed brainwashers that actually thought they were free in this new world. The tribal members that took money and power looked out for themselves, while those that didn't, fell into poverty, depression and addiction. The rez was split into haves and have-nots. Greed was now in charge among the people who had no word for "mine." If only they'd never learned english.

The saddest part is that the highest up in the status of the supposedly sovereign nation, were still lower than the lowest of the capitalistic white man. They were selling their own people out to finish the race one place above last. Opposers of our movement will tout that other tribes gladly accepted monetary compensation in return for oil rights on their reservations. I'm sure they did. Money talks. In fact, it speaks english. It says "mine." They didn't just sell out the members of their own tribe, they sold out their mother. They sold out their creator. Their planet. They sold out God. Wonder how much all the water in the world is worth? And all of the animals? And plants? And basically all of life on Earth? That's what's at stake.

I learned that there were a few tribes that weren't yet corruptable. Rick told me that his tribe had refused to sell out, so the oil company opened a bank account for them and put seven million dollars in it. All it will take is one withdrawal and the contract is considered accepted. Still it sits. Just like how a 1980 court ruled that based on the Treaty of Fort Laramie, we did in fact steal a bunch of land from it's original occupants. America said "my bad" and even offered to pay the indians back with the universally accepted american dollar, that they printed. We decided that the only fair thing to do was pay them the fair market value... of the year we stole it. So an underinflated fifteen million dollars bought america. What a steal. We did tack on some interest and put it into an account for them, but still it sits too. They don't want money, they know that it's not a real thing. They want to protect everything that is sacred. They want to protect our planet. Thank God somebody does.

But all it will take is the wrong authorized hand, knowing nothing but poverty and emptiness, or knowing first hand the death threats that standing up to big oil earns you, it won't take much to make the mistake. Doesn't much matter anyway when your pockets are filled with the national guardians of american freedom. They never hesitated to steal whatever they wanted before. The vote of some tribal council is merely an illusion to make the rightful caretakers of this country think that they have some type of say in their own future. Of their homeland. They've got an entire world convinced that money is more important than everything else in the history of the planet put together, and they've almost got the tribes convinced too.

The crazy thing, is that half of the country's money grubbers still think they believe in God. Think that their lifelong mission to accumulate wealth is his way. That they can buy their way into heaven. That it doesn't matter what kind of destruction they lay upon the Earth and on God's plants and animals, simply collateral damage in the righteousness of the holier than thou. The ultimate species. The perfection of broken man. Unable to assume responsibility for the extinction of countless creatures or to have the forethought to look out for future generations of their own. Even if you believe that man is the final creation, the epitome of life on Earth, either the literal descendant of a man named Adam or the final step of millions of years of evolution, how on God's (and for a limited time) green Earth can you justify ruining every single thing that we've ever come in contact with? We don't even have a king midas thing going on, we just turn everything we touch into garbage. Literally waste. So instead of trying to actually create something beautiful and healthy, we just convinced everyone that waste was where it was at. That this completely useless piece of trash was the most important thing in the world. More important than the world itself. It's cool though, once we've sold out our own mother, we should have enough moola to buy mars and terraform it. Haha, you know I'm kidding now, like we'd ever buy mars. We'd obviously steal it. It's kind of our thing.

I'd like to say "on a more serious note", but the attempted colonization of space is a publicly stated goal of the human race, and it's touted as a good thing. Their reasons are of course that our own planet is on a self inflicted collision course for disaster, so obviously we need to expand our destruction outward. If there is nearby sentient life who saw what the expansion and colonization of america looked like, I don't think they'll be as welcoming as the indians were when our ships land on their shore. Let's pretend for a moment that we can agree that pollution is bad, mkay. Which it seems that half of us are simply unwilling to admit as even a possibility, ironically it appears to be the same half that claim to worship a diety that created all of the beauty that they can see everywhere around them. Or used to be able to at least. Aw shucks, they didn't vote based on the health of the planet, for some reason they were more concerned with good old american jobs. But even if we came to terms with the fact that garbage is trashing our planet, we would still have a hard time overcoming the doctrine that all of civilization worships.

Agriculture makes us human. It's true, if your definition of human is selfish sinners destined for failure. I like to think of us as being loving believers on a path to enlightenment instead. We can't be both. We can't defeat the universe. But it's already begun. Some advanced level high school students just proved that plants can grow without gravity. Everything they have ever known tells them that this is good. The same goes for their proud parents and teachers and future corporate leadership of america. Guess what, it's not good.

Icarus has been too close to the sun for a long time already, we can't go any higher. We're already falling, but most of the distracted passengers still think that we're in ascending flight. Some do know the truth, but they think that there's nothing that they can do, so they just bury their heads and pretend that it'll all be ok. Don't fret, it'll all be over soon. We can no longer simply acknowledge that the system is broken but claim that there is nothing to be done. That money is the root of all evil, but it is a necessary one. That doesn't sound like any kind of believing I know. We must believe that we can make a change and we can save the planet. It might mean forgetting about your 401k or your government assistance, but that really only assists the government anyway. The bottom line, is that we're coming up on a turning point, either we give up on money and save the world, or we save money and the world gives up on us. How's that for a bottom line?

Now back to the backs that were currently turning on us. I finally spoke up in Smokey's conversation to get an informed update. He said not to stress. The tribe was going to take a few supplies, but most would stay. We'd be just fine. We live in abundance anyway. I was good, at ease, the smoke helped too, so I returned to what used to be the pantry to recover any personally critical ingredients. Of course I saw them loading up all of the choice items I'd just picked up in Oceti, but I was fine. We hadn't had that stuff all winter. No prob.

And this was the exact moment that I started to feel it. It was beginning to happen. I was starting to be granted the humility that I'd been praying for. Not a gift from above, a gift from within. I really felt the humility that I'd been trying to show all winter. Still not there yet, it'd be a process, but I could feel it coming on.

Denise and I scoped out another tent that we could set up on the newly emptied wooden kitchen platform, that was a definite silver lining, we were no longer in limbo with an empty tent. We could do some stuff. Make some moves. Only one catch, there always is one it seems, the tent we found was only a fifteen foot square. It was gonna be a tight kitchen, but we'd once again have our own space and the mess hall would have a little more breathing room. The mess hall would be slow to recover though, we'd still keep most of the kitchen stuff in here and only move things as we needed them. We had minimal space to work with in the new spot and I'd end up cooking some stuff in here still, I'd gotten pretty used to being with my people. Tonight was no exception, in fact, it seemed like we had half of them helping with dinner.

Ever since Daniel made it back, I'd recruited him as my frybread chef. I'd given up trying to top the warm reception that the soft and crispy treat always commanded, instead I embraced it. Frybread every night, any night he'd make it anyway. His was different than the others that I'd had and would eventually be the recipe that I still use. He used sweetened condensed milk instead of powdered lactose, but not so much that it was overly sweet. He also made them bigger and rounder than most, which inspired an idea that I never got the chance to create, but I know it will be a hit. A revolutionary meal for the future of the revolution. I expect it to be nearing perfection when I visit your camp... Frybread pizza. Indian pizza and ramen spaghetti. Indiatalian night. Do it.

Tonight would be a spin on the classic fried gluten too, but I can't take the credit, Denise suggested it because it was already a thing. Indian taco pockets. Yeah baby. Meat, beans and cheese wrapped in dough and thrown into the hot oil. We're talking next level. It was a process though, like all those deer dumplings I had done that time, so this time I wised up and got some help. I got Gabby who got Cindy who got Bailey, plus Daniel and me, so we started an assembly line and it was on. We did a tester and obviously it was like a little piece of taco heaven wrapped in delicious goodness that melt-exploded in your mouth. So we were good. I had successfully delegated the arduous kitchen task to a capable team, no longer felt the need to micro manage the process, and I could just join in the assembly line and enjoy the moment. Felt good.

We got three trays done and served the meal. I broke apart one to make the spirit plate and saw the underdone doughy center. Uh oh. I checked another... same. I took a bite, spit it out, gross, not cooked enough. But we had tested it. I checked the first tray, those right after the test pocket, they were good. What was the deal? I of course knew the deal right away. Deep frying is in my blood, I got oil in my pipeline and I know it gets dirtier as you use it. Not so much with just frybread, there's nothing to fall of and burn in the oil, but there was probably some grease and meat particles that picked from the pockets. So as it got dirtier, it browned the fryees faster, so to the untrained eye they looked as done as the test subject as they got removed earlier and earlier. Oops. We continued serving the first tray and offered some additional doughy ones, which apparently some people like, I couldn't do it. We tried a last ditch effort and refried the pockets... and... no way, even grosser.

We still had enough to satisfy the need, the overabundance just wasn't there, and in the end, the doughy ones all got eaten throughout the night too. That just goes to prove what I've been saying all along, the food was only a hit because our standards were so low out in this secluded landscape. Maybe our tastebuds were frozen. Nah, they still tasted great, just a little doughy. Oh well, you win some you lose some. Nobody's perfect, remember?

I'd also lost something else that found its way back to me that night. Both my original tent and the igloo had been raided for supplies, certainly not in a bad way, they both looked pretty abandoned. Somewhat at least. I had left two notes in the tent with my name and number (ha) and a statement that I was still at camp, but would someone leaving in an emergency go back to remove the notes? The igloo was under four feet of snow, so was obviously abandoned, except that it was still during the time that I used it to sleep during the day, so the entrance was freshly swept. Completely free of snow the day after a snowfall, so to me it was clearly occupied, but we'll assume that the raiders of the lost igloo were not quite as perceptive. I had planned to keep an eye out for my missing backpack, not mad at all, but I'd mention the mistaken abandonment assessment if I saw it.

Then I saw it. On a friends back. On a more than vital campmates back. I could have mentioned it, they would have quickly returned the items and shown remorse, but I realized in the moment that I didn't want that outcome. I remembered that I always had everything I needed. I obviously didn't need anything that was in there, if I didn't have it on me, then I didn't need it. Hadn't yet. The blizzard had a way of stripping you down to just the essentials of survival, like yeast and chopsticks. There had been useful stuff in there, things that another could use to do good for our family. If anything, now I felt selfish for keeping it all secreted away in a buried hideout and claiming it as "mine." So I never mentioned it. I felt proud whenever I saw the bag that I used to use, doing good out in the world. It had been given to me by a friend a few years ago anyway. The more I let go of material things, the better I felt inside and the more room I had for love.

So here I was in the kitchen, just botched another dinner, one step closer to the humility that I just today started to truly feel in my heart, and then a material item that I had given up on walked right back into my life. Thomas walked up to me as I was trying to save some doughballs and said "Check out the new hat I just got gifted, I don't really wear fedoras though." I do, so I looked up thinking that there might be a cool reminder of a past life, and "That's my hat!" And once again it was.

I love a good hat. I know, a fedora, really? The international d-bag uniform. But I can wear it, I can pull it off. It's because I don't put it on occasionally for attention at the club, I wear it every day and it's as much utilitarian as it is fashion. It blocks the sun and the rain and the spider webs. I camp in it, in fact I'm wearing it now in a cave. It gets dirty, eventually tattered, I crumple it up to stuff it in a bag, cover my face to snooze on a plane and best of all, I empty my pockets into it so that I can sleep anywhere and all my essentials are ready to go for the next red alert. I've worn one almost everyday for seven years. In my previous career, it made me recognizable, which was helpful when your business meetings happen in dark music venues after a few too many pbrs. My first hat was most excellent, got it in california, the only place that I've ever found a good hat at a price that a hippie can afford. I wore it out to the point that we had a party just to retire it, with explosives and all. I hadn't found another of comparable quality, size and style, until I found this one in CA two weeks before I found out about Standing Rock. I'd almost given up looking, checked a lot of stores, but nothing that met my criteria. Then, as a fluke, I checked one last place and there it was, the perfect hat and only a single one, in my size, sitting on the shelf. Meant to be. I knew I wouldn't wear it in the frozen camp, but I wore it on the way out there, it was a part of me. I don't leave home without it. I knew I could squish it up and shove it in my icy tent, it always shocks the hat salesman when the first thing I do after I buy one is smash test it. It's important. It's a tool. I need it to last through the unexpected, and I certainly never expected this. Never expected to see it again either.

I had already started thinking that maybe I'd give up fedoras all together. Maybe they had been a part of my life during the music phase, but it was becoming apparent that the trajectory of my entire life was transforming. Maybe it disappearing out of my path had been a sign, a transition into a new era, I could move on from the fedora daze. But then this, it walked right up to me in the middle of a blizzard, at a moment when I'd officially started letting go of everything. Yeah, I know a good sign when I see one. I wouldn't wear it here at camp, it was still too cold out (and in), so I stuck it in the tarpee with all of my other treasures. I'd been wearing the same knit cap all winter, I tried to give it away once to someone who needed it more than me, but I was scolded, "You can't give that away, that's the chef's hat", we'll find another one for them. Thanks a lot, I could have just manifested the coolest hat. And now I had.

So the universe had provided for me as soon as I had given up enough possession to create some headspace. It was only fair that I do the same for everyone else. I'd messed up dinner, they may not have agreed, but I wasn't satisfied with the results. I had a plan to make up for it though. They'd suffered through my half baked meal, so we'd spend the evening in extravagance with ice cream and brownies.

One might think that living in such extreme temperatures would lower the excitement level when the words ice cream are mentioned, not so. I'd actually tried to make some a week earlier and it would have worked, but it was a night that it was only fifteen degrees out. Never thought I'd be wishing it was fifteen below instead. The plan was simple and I was certain it would work. I'd mix the ingredients in a big pot, put it into a hole I dug in the snow, and spin it while I stirred. It was a no-brainer really, would be a cold procedure, but the extreme temperatures would cancel out needing the rock salt of traditional summertime homemade ice cream production. I mean, coffee would freeze before you could get halfway through a cup. It would work, but the winter was slowly starting to fade and we might not get another deep freeze, at least not on a night free of impending doom.

In the absence of the from scratch recipe that would have really made this book worth reading, Cindy had bought a few gallons in bismarck, buried them in the snow and drew me a mental map. We lamented on the joy one would experience if they randomly happened upon buried treasure rocky road, but upon my inspection, we were still in business. One pan of scrambled brownies later and I made sure that I'd redeemed myself, no poop brigade would I see this day.

Speaking of inspections and poop, it was sometime this week that we got a threat of the EPA coming to shut us down because of the compost toilets. We already know how many poops I could give about a rumor, but I cleaned up the kitchen a little, just in case they stopped by for dinner. Maybe just another ruse to get me to tidy up. Wait a sec, had the grave been a hoax to get me to take a shower? Ok, so maybe the cold was starting to get to me a little bit.

Turns out it wasn't a hoax at all, the EPA rolled in the next day. At least a car marked as EPA did. The funny part, is that our new president had planned to do away with the environmental protection agency altogether, who really needs this whole "environment" thing anyway? Everybody knows that money doesn't grow on trees. So now was he sending them out on one last mission to do his dirty work? They must not have been too stoked on getting shut down themselves, because they didn't close our hot tub doors. We were cleared for "business." Score one for the water protectors. Perhaps the agency in charge of protecting the water, who had been completely circumvented and not consulted before an oil empire ran a three foot sludgeline under one of the most important waterways in the country, maybe just maybe, they actually did have the people's best interests in mind. No wonder the president wanted to shut them down. Scratch that, he didn't shut them down, instead he appointed a new head of the agency's water safety department, a person with direct ties to dapl. No joke. And it's even less funny that the new head of our nations energy department, is an ETP board member. But hey, at least we were awarded the human right to poop in peace. I forget which amendment that's under anyway. Although dapl wouldn't let us sit around feeling victorious for too long, what fun would that be? There was soon another situation that resulted in 70 arrests of protectors who were nowhere near the bridge or the drill pad.

A group had assembled to set up a new camp overnight, up on top of one of the hills on the western side of 1806. A space unclaimed by the dapl corps of engineers, reservation land, but a small victory that they simply could not let stand. In their defense, it provided us a way better vantage point to see and film their illegal shenanigans, so that's definitely no good for their defense. It was called the Last Child camp. They'd gathered tipis from all three existing camps, had it all set up and helicopters already going nuts before I'd opened my eyes. I knew something was up before I was, helicopters flew low over camp all the time, but there was something more frantic about the air traffic today. By the time I made it out there, with my camera of course (I carried it most days by this point), Smokey, Denise and a few others were standing by the sacred fire, onlooking. I considered venturing closer, but this was really a better angle, plus it was close to the battery charger. It was also a better place to pray.

Before I got the camera out, I grabbed a handful of tobacco and knelt by the fire. This was the most from the heart I'd prayed yet. I didn't pray for the usual humility and stuff, or for Rosebuddies, or for the destruction of the black snake. I prayed for the safety of our brothers on the hill. I couldn't pray for them to successfully hold the camp without arrest, invasion was imminent, so I prayed that they didn't plan to fight back. I knew that many of our strongest and bravest were up there, I prayed that they didn't feel that all hope was lost and that this was their last stand. I prayed hard. Prayed into the tobacco and then let the fire carry my prayers out into the universe. Once I did all that I could do, I got the camera rolling.

There was already a fleet of private security vehicles on the opposite side of the hill, so anything could happen at any moment. There was also a large group of water protectors assembling on 1806, right in front of Echo1, at the foot of the hill that held the new encampment. They were assembled their tightly because the morton county sherriffs had set up a road block of heavily armed guards. Right there. Far from the bridge where our official site of oppression had been established. They just keep taking, and now there was a long line of humvees growing on the other side. Each assault vehicle unloaded a group of soldiers who approached the newly established barricade. At the main entrance of Oceti. This could go real bad, real quick.

A few of the humvees up front backed away. A sign of non aggression perhaps? Um, nope. They just needed room for that giant turreted tank looking thing to park right up front. They megaphoned for the crowd to disperse. We were no longer constitutionally free to assemble. Makes sense, we were on Lakota land and they don't have a constitution. They wanted us to go home, but they were at our front door. We were at home. For some reason, I no longer think it impossible for the US government to try to deport the native americans back to where they came from. By this point, the national guard was joining the private mercenaries up on the hill. They were getting ready for something big. It wasn't a question of if, or even when. It was how bad? Would they go in guns blazing? Would the strike be synchronized with an assault on the hundreds down below? With the strongest up top, would now be the strategic time to raid Oceti? To invade and arrest the grandmothers who were too fragile to climb the hill and were now unprotected, praying by Oceti's sacred fire? I mean, we do know how they feel about prayer, don't we?

I know, this is all probably just propaganda from our side, no different than the blatantly staged PSAs that morton county had been posting to make themselves look like the good guys. No government or private security detail is ever going to arrest a praying grandmother for inciting a riot... Oh yeah? Just wait. I couldn't make this stuff up if I wanted to.

Water cannons arrived. So did the LRAD eardrum bursting sound weapon. The line of humvees literally extended out of sight until they were too small to even zoom in on. The forces up top began to form their offensive line. The wall of guards on 1806 deepened and it was about to be game time. I prayed more from my post. Just let them arrest you peacefully. I'm filming it all. Their smoking guns will be the proof that we need. This will wake up the millions of americans who already think your people are extinct. Don't fight back. Please. I imagine the grandmas at the sacred fire had similar thoughts. The ones up top were part of a select group, vetted to remove infiltrators, but the no assembly required team on the road had no such filter. So even if the Last Child camp went peacefully, one infiltrator crossing the line in the snow was all that it would take. A line not made of concrete barriers, but instead face shields, bullet proof flak jackets, billy clubs, tear gas, mace and that's just the baby stuff. No buffer between the innocents and the oppressors. One wrong move and it was on. The one "lucky" thing that our limited independent media coverage had afforded us, was that they no longer sicced the attack dogs on unprotected protectors. Plus, all that toxic mace probably irritated their eyes and we can't risk getting PETA involved, remember?

So fingers crossed. Hopefully this isn't it. If things escalated, I'd imagine that our camp wasn't far behind. I think we had people in the crowd on 1806 too. Please. The troops started advancing towards the tipis on the hill. I kept the camera zoomed in on the camp, but tried to also keep up with what was going on down below. I'd never filmed an attack from the outside, didn't stop me from shaking though. This time I didn't have all that adrenaline to keep me going strong. And warm.

Snowmobiles cutting across the hill. Soldiers were approaching the edge of camp. The crowd below was growing restless as they watched the most stacked game of king of the hill since the advent of propane accessories. Then they took the camp. Peacefully. We did it. None of us crossed a line that enabled them to do the same. Thank you Tunkasila. Wopila.

They rounded up over 70 water protectors, searched the tipis for more, and started marching prisoners down the hill to the paddywagons. I'm not sure what the crimes were, I'd quit spending my energy being upset about trumped up charges, something about tipis and bungholes I'd imagine. They eventually cleared the camp, took down the tipis and then we saw smoke coming from the hill. The consensus was that they were burning sacredly prayed on tipi poles and I saw a cell phone video that seemed to back up that theory. People were a little upset. I then heard a conflicting report that the national guard had only burned some other building materials and they were going to allow us to retrieve the tipis. I don't know which was accurate, but as far as I was convinced, they actually let us back up there to get them.

The crowd on 1806 started to filter back into camp, we had somehow managed to get through this possibly devastating situation with nothing more than some mere criminal charges. Arrests made by an invading nation with no jurisdiction on tribal land. Now we were up to over 700 incarcerations due to americans losing faith in the authoritarian corporation that their country had become. Must be some kind of record or something.

Oh, the America Corporation can't be that bad. Whichever side of the aisle your on, you get to push your teams agenda eventually. Except that our two party system, with its rigged nominations and electoral college, doesn't even need russia getting involved. We can screw this one up just fine on our own. They are all the same party. The money party. Concerned only with our gross national products. Owned by oil and drugs and corn and Haliburton and Blackwater. Wait, the same Blackwater who is TigerSwan who is dapl's private security assassins?

Ahhh, I see. It doesn't matter which side wins. They've got it just separated enough to keep the sheeple at bay, arguing among themselves about petty crime instead of seeing the bigger federal offense. Get one side in for a while to grow government, and when the time is right, switch it up to let the other guys increase the limitlessness of our enlarged pro state's authority. We do it in all the countries we invade too, we just have to be less sly about it there. I love the t-shirt that some of my family wear, it has a picture of four influential native warriors and is captioned "The original homeland security." It's true, the united states is the terrorist. America is just another invaded country with an artificial democracy that we put in place to keep the population complacent while we rape the land of natural resources. Pretty standard US protocol actually.

So yeah, we may appear to have a two party system, which in itself is a faulty arrangement even if they weren't both owned by the same parent company, but they are. We don't have a choice, not as long as we continue to believe that we have to choose between the lesser of two evils. The only way to cancel our contract is to opt out of the system altogether. But they have the most loyal customer base in the history of business, they just have to convince people to hate the other guys. "Of course you're right and they're wrong. That's how duality works. And especially if they're a different color than you." They want us divided. They want us fighting each other so that we can't unite and come after them. That's what two party systems are all about. Except that they know the ultimate power of oneness and they've used it to systematically herd us like cattle. America is a monopoly. But they don't just own boardwalk and park place, no, they own Milton Bradley. And segue in 3, 2, 1 and...

So this one night we played monopoly in the medic yurt. I know, sounds like a ridiculous thing to be doing out here with our growing distaste for money and all, but then I found out something I never knew about the game. The man that invented it, did so just to show how broken the concept of capitalism is and how in this sped up version (yet surprisingly accurate) it's winner take all. At the end, there is one person left at the top with all the money and deeds for the entire world while everyone else is empty pocketed, homeless and in debt. It's all about cutthroat backstabbing for a profit and bankrupting anyone who gets in the way, even if it means sending them to jail while you get out free. Wait, were we talking about the game or capitalism?

We played around with the idea of a #nodapl version of the game to raise awareness for our movement. Like instead of roads, we could have sacred tribal sites, and all you have to do is land on them first and you now own them. Doesn't really matter if someone was there before you even started playing the game. Didn't they read the rules? Then of course you colonize the "property" with infrastructure to fuel your growing population. The chance cards would be fun to write, "Get tear gassed, assaulted and arrested, again, go directly to jail."

So we could see the game exemplifying the ills of a greed based system clearly, but the sad part, is that basically everyone else who's ever played the game doesn't. It's just another way to indoctrinate our youth with the glory of capitalism. From Candyland to to the Game of Life, we're taught that living is about consumerism, so Monopoly Jr just makes sense, never too young to learn the value of a dollar. Guess what? It's zero. But no, the game successfully teaches that if you keep on playing, you might just climb your way to the top and be the big winner. Except the house always wins.

Well then, whose house are we in? Oh yeah, we're in the medical yurt. But I thought medicine was just as much to blame as agriculture? Close second at least. Perhaps, but these medics weren't exactly the oxycontin and aderol pushers of the colonized. Here, many ailments were treated with the most elaborate shelf of herbs and spices, and Katy always rotated in at least two very powerful teas, as well as custom brews for whatever anyone needed.

There is an almost limitless natural pharmacy growing all around us, they just don't advertise with your current cable provider, you know, the one owned by the same corporations that own the drug companies. Ha, I don't watch cable, just the major networks, who all happen to share a board member with big pharma. Let's just take one non-onion plant, we won't even use pot this time, there's some fuzzy mullein leaves growing near the cave, let's go with that.

So mullein treats: cold, flu, congestion, mucus buildup, allergies, asthma, bronchitis, tuberculosis, diarrhea, constipation, hemorrhoids, intestinal worms, cramps (menstrual or gastric), insomnia, anxiety, joint and muscle pain and staph infections. Hello. It's an anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, an expectorant and I've personally cured an ear infection with it. Not done, you can apply it directly to a wound or burn, local natives used the entire leaf as a soft bandage with built in medicine. And you can put it in your pipe and smoke it.

So mullein's cool, and so was Katy, funny and talkative, we liked to joke about who was more revered at camp. Who would never be left behind in a lifeboat flood escape? The chef or the doctor. We were both vital. Possibly the two most needed at camp. Food and medicine, that's what it's all about, right? Gotta keep our population strong. People kept me close everyday, but realistically, they could replace me with a can opener. She might not get their attention at all, I'd only just met her, but when somebody really needed her, she was the most important person in their world. We'll call it a draw. Either way, we'd both gotten synchronized watches from Johan, he knew what was up. Of course now I'd lost my timeless breakfast excuse.

We were playing the national parks edition of the game, so I got to purchase my very own appalachain mountains before the army corps approves our pipeline. A nice new fracked natural gas pipeline added to the scenic views of the appalachain trail, coming this fall to an ecosystem near you. Well, at least it's natural.

We were joined by Ricky and Megan for our experiment in the good and evil of money and corruption. (Turns out it's not that good.) Ricky was Lucas's friend from back home and we were becoming homies by the minute. Our relationship had begun with him always boisterously bragging on my cooking. Points. He had the first rule of camp survival figured out, which didn't much hurt the snack pack I'd prepared for such an occasion. C'mon, why would I stop now? Megan was pretty weird, but I'm into weird. And pretty. I'd never really hung out with her, she didn't spend much time in the mess hall and she worked throughout all the camps, so we'd just have to wait to see how pretty and weird she was.

We played, it got a little rowdy, Megan set the stage for a cutthroat game with cheating allowed, as long as you didn't get caught. So pretty much just like real life. Except that in the real world, you can get caught cheating and it's still cool. We had a good time with it and I was crushing it as the only white person in the group, obviously. Perhaps genetically predisposed to capitalism and I'd even gotten Ricky to sell out. Sound familiar. I bankrupted him and then bought his debt, so now he owed me in perpetuity and had to keep working on his own land for someone else to profit, and all at the expense of his neighbors who were barely hanging on. It was fun. Go money.

Megan wouldn't sell out, even when it eventually took her out of the game completely, she had moxy. We also were clicking pretty good. She'd started in on me right away with pranks, which we already know is one of my trades, so we picked on each other all night. Mercilessly. Like, crossing lines, personal safety boundaries, but hey, we were in the medic yurt, so it should be all good. She said that I reminded her of her brother a lot, a comment that could go either way, but it was going in the right way so far. I got a pretty good slow game, so the brother angle was a good way in. We ended the game, finally, I won, duh, and Katy had to rush off to save a few lives. The three of us stayed at it all night though. We played cards and talked junk for hours. They taught me a really fun card game called Thirteen, look it up, and got a few rounds of the middle school classic Speed in too. I had tobacco, but just a couple of papers, so I rolled a really fat cigarette for us to share and conserve supplies.

It was the absolute worst cigarette I've ever rolled, and I've been smoking off and on for a long time. The worst, unbelievably bad, I'd done better with partial frostbite setting in, but it was good junk talking fodder for sure. Rolling papers were hard to come by at this juncture. You'd get a few here and there and conserve when you could, even piecing two broken ones together sometimes. So bring papers, tobacco will appear, at least as long as you have low standards. Or better yet, quit smoking. Turns out it's not that good for you.

We chilled all night, I grabbed the casio, we did missions, stunts, tricks, pranks and I was for the first time at camp, kinda into a girl who wasn't leaving tomorrow. But, I think Ricky was too, and they'd been hanging out longer, maybe already even a thing, but like I said, I got this. I can play it cool. Plus, I was here on a more important mission than chasing a girl, and I was evolving who I was inside, let alone what I was looking for in a woman. But she was cool. And you never know. I only saw her for a few minutes in the mess hall the next day. I shot a coy wave as I was walking by on a food mission, of course I made it look more important than it was before I stopped by for a quick exchange. "Oh wait, did I like you? I forgot. I was too busy doing all this other cool stuff, you know, just being me. Well, gotta go, so many people need to see me right now. Ok, bye bye." I've got some experience chasing girls that aren't into me, they're kinda my type, so best case was that she wasn't about it.

I genuinely wouldn't have much free time today anyway. It was another one of those days. You know, like pretty much every day at camp. Today was Pete's court date for his most heinous illegal prayer. One of our trio's late night missions had been to stop in at the buffalo tent to see what was happening. That was one of the real blessings of the buffalo project, we now had another late night stop, instead of just bouncing between Echo3 and the mess hall. Pete had been there, probably a little too late to be out on the town on court date eve, but do whatever feels right. We passed the guitar, he played a few of his songs, by this point I could almost sing along with them, and we unconditionally showered him with love. Probably could have used an actual shower too, but who am I to judge? Johan offered to give him a ride to court but he said he had it covered. I could tell that Pete's energy was off. Sure, he was going to court tomorrow and they weren't legally required to shower him with the love that we did. There was a chance that he wouldn't come home tomorrow. But he was one of our strongest. He believed and we believed in him. I think to most, he just seemed off because of the pre-court jitters, but we were close, there was something a little fishy going on behind those wild eyes.

When I got up and at 'em the next day, not too early considering I'd stayed up til sunrise with my new crush, my intuition proved to be pretty in-tune. Johan had been running to the post office first thing and the man on duty at the post said that he'd seen Pete walking down the frozen river, alone, singing, praying, and not quite in the direction of the courthouse. Johan tracked him down and a few others convinced him that he needed to face the jury. A jury would have been better really, maybe at least one out of twelve would appreciate clean water. But a simple judge who was simply a part of the oil based economy was probably not going to be too sympathetic. We wouldn't have forced him to go, to each his own, but he would be issued a warrant, which would just give the government more justification to trample his and our constitutional rights. Criminals don't get rights, remember?

He got it, so he went, and once it was his turn up at bat, he sang. Johan hung around and reported back that he sang prayer songs throughout the entire time that he was being tried. The judge, for some reason didn't appreciate that, could have been the overarching fear of heartfelt prayer, or maybe they just don't allow singing in the courtroom. Before he started sing praying, he shared one statement with the court. "I do not acknowledge the jurisdiction of this court." We were inhabitants of a sovereign nation. BIA could arrest us, but not some other invading nations guards. They came over to our side to yank him up. According to the treaties that america signed, whose own constitution claims treaties to be the 'supreme law of the land,' according to this piece of paper declaring land rights of an ecosystem, we were not in america. We can't cross the canadian border to arrest Terrance and Phillip, that would literally be crossing the line, even if they are canadian. But america has america convinced that cowboys and indians are just fairy tales that may or may not have one day existed, and even if they did, we're on the cowboys team because they look like us. Go cowboys.

The original inhabitants of our country are now the smallest minority here, 0.6% of the population, they don't even show up on most lists. Someone at camp claimed that they thought that racism was almost gone out of our society, they must live in a metropolitan area of a blue state and keep to their open minded friends. I'm from the south. I know, just like a majority of the minorities, that racism is strong. Even in the younger generation. Within my own family, I see those of my generation passing on their backwards beliefs to their children. It's socially acceptable, and that's against a race that has a voice and even had a president, how could those with red skin ever stand a chance in a red state?

How could a dready hippie that prayed though his trial ever stand a chance? Pete went to jail. A friend asked me to prepare a copy of the video that I had of Pete's arrest. I'd offered it to Pete already, but I guess a defense of his actions wasn't part of his plan, so now we were going to get a copy to his court appointed defender. Court appointed representation might not be the strongest legal counsel, but the idea I heard was that if all seven hundred arrestees selected this option, then the courts would get bogged down and feasibly have to start dropping charges in order to be able to function. They were definitely feeling it, they already had to ask for one point seven million dollars in additional funds to process incarcerations, but I'm sure dapl paid that directly. Pete had gotten a super fast court date, maybe they were trying to get his prayers out of their system. Christopher, who was arrested two days after Pete, still didn't have a court date and was told that it wouldn't be until the fall.

Henry had already left camp, so I had taken the computer out of the mash tent and it was sitting in the tarpee. I needed power, but didn't really want to set it up in the mess hall, it would be too distracting to show bystanders the footage and I wasn't really trying to advertise my covert ops film crew. Johan said that I could hook into the new solar panel at the buffalo tent, perfect. I got it all cut together, but it was tough. I'd almost forgotten about everything we'd been through last month. Memories had candy coated the plastic coated bullets, but the camera doesn't lie. It still looked pretty sinister when an army appeared out of a thick cloud of smoke and started assaulting my brother in prayer. Remember why you are here. This is not a vacation. Today was certainly no vacation for me. Pete had gotten an all expense paid trip downtown, but I was here pulling a triple. Video crew, kitchen staff and someone reported that they just walked by Echo3 and there was nobody there. The post had been abandoned. I got it.

It had been a while anyway. I caught grief for volunteering, I had just finished a full day and no one wanted to risk not eating good tomorrow, but we were short staffed. Everyone had worked full days and it was likely that I was going to be up all night anyway, it seemed to happen a lot lately. "But who will make late night snacks?" Ah... is that all I am to you? "Stephanie, you're in charge of munchies..... and send some my way." I grabbed the woodcarving set from home, this would be a good chance for some quality me-time and maybe I could knock out a few neglected chess pieces. While I was walking up there, Nick drove by and offered me a ride, what a nice guy. Until we got up there at least. The huge dump truck of firewood was here again and was about to dump a load in the middle of our entrance, or in Nick's case, the exit.

I was not feeling into doing any actual work, I had only signed up to keep my favorite fire company, so I jumped out and ran to the truck to see what I could work out. Nick's approach was a little different, he just started yelling profanities at the driver. Um...? I think it's pretty obvious that the driver doesn't care about us or our review on yelp. I doubt that berating him at the moment that he can still decide to help us will be the most effective method. How about we use the love technique? Like, let's just be nice. If he's already convinced that we're the bad guys, I bet cursing him out will only solidify that feeling. I ran up and talked to the driver's assistant who had helped him back up, he was super friendly and open to suggestion. The driver started dropping his load, after the assistant yelled for him to stop, but then reluctantly he did cease firewood. We just wanted it a few feet to the side, right off of the road, logistically it should be simple for the truck. My guy and I started moving the already dropped pieces out of the way to clear a path for the driver to maneuver, after I set down the wooden box with the carving kit and the two paper wrapped ribeyes I'd packed for a snack. What? You think I'm gonna sit around waiting on Steph to feed me?

We only had a few pieces of wood left, the closest to the wheels of the massive truck, and as I reached for one, the truck started to back up on top of me. Yikes. I shouted out of reflex, jumped a few feet in the air and did a Fred Flinstonesque escape. Barely evaded roadkill status. I performed what a witness would later describe as the most graceful near death experience they'd ever seen. In one fail swoop, I fled, pushed the remaining log out of the way, spun, knelt down and grabbed the knives and meat before retreating. Rosebud doesn't go hungry. My heart was pumping pretty good now. Thanks dapl. We'll assume the driver was dapl, at least on their payroll, but we had won this one. We had out dapled dapl. The assistant didn't seem to be bought off, he was helpful and apologetic, but corruption follows greed, so I'm sure the driver hadn't shared his take. I didn't talk to him, but I could tell through the window that he was not happy, may have messed up his bonus check. Ten points if he'd have flattened me. Well, maybe they'd never know and he... oh shucks, nevermind, here comes that pesky night plane. I always waved.

Some crews showed up to distribute the wood, it was good wood too. Short round logs, easy to split and dry, just a little too short, so they made for awkward fires. Perfect for small stoves though. I'd love to stay and help, but I have to go clock in at the post. But what I walked into at the post upset me more than almost becoming a dapljack pancake and revisiting Pete's arrest, put together. It hurt.

No one there, three unburnt short logs in the fire pit barely smoldering from the center and a... a... WTF? There was a big propane tank with a heater attachment just blasting away into the night. What the... breathe... humili... nah, fuck that... I was pissed man. I was fuming, just like the propane tank was. We're out here because we care about the environment? We're conscious and want to inspire the world to live in a good way? We're not just a bunch of freeloading polluter hippie hypocrites? I don't even believe in all that now. I thought I did. I thought that my family was out here in a good way. For the right reasons. Trying to save the world. But how could this be their answer?

I know that "nobody's perfect." Not everyone was undergoing the transformation that I was. Some hadn't discovered the universe. Some didn't feel as strongly as me about the evils of the man-made world. Not everyone genuinely believed that we could make a difference. We knew that it was a tall order to save the world. But this is the personal footprint you're gonna leave on our mother? How do we even standing a chance of waking up a single person at home if this is who we have in our welcoming committee? I know that I use more propane than this everyday in the kitchen. But it makes me sick and I try to reverse that negative energy to come up with solutions for a better future. I mean, they weren't even here. I'd have still been upset had they been sitting in front of the tank, but abandoning your post while this thing was going... I was mad. I don't get mad. I was never even mad at dapl and they'd trampled all over my family. Just doing their jobs really. I don't even have ill will towards the government, somehow they're still doing what feels right. But this? Are you telling me that this is what felt right to you? Wow. This person will leave here and go into the world claiming to be a water protector, interacting with people and representing our movement. I missed Pete.

I quickly cut off the tank and put it away in the room, I'd end up removing it from the post all together, it wasn't even that cold out nowadays anyway. I didn't try to justify it as a humility exam, I was just glad that I'd been the one to take the shift. I pulled the three logs out of the tiny pile of coals and started building a proper fire. I was just now getting the chance to be upset about the neglect of what used to be the most glorious fire in all of camp. Now I doubted that it had never gone out. What a shame.

I was splitting small pieces off of one of the smoldering logs when the deserter returned to his post. He'd been gone since before I was recruited to work, throughout all of the firewood ordeal, and I later found out that he had been on shift less than an hour. I didn't know him. New guy. Dapl. I'd heard his idiotic name a few times before, but had no face, and now I didn't feel too bad for making fun of his name. No humility lesson tonight. I was right, he was wrong.

The humility was that I had deserted the post when I became the chef. He'd probably never been shown the importance of this fire as I had been. I'd "lucked" into learning it from the one who held it the most sacred, during an era of true survival, when we needed the fire as much as it needed us. I'd heard others considering doing away with it altogether and relying on the woodstove like at the other Echoes. I would voice my opinions, which actually did seem to carry a little weight, but then I would go days without visiting up here, so how much did I really care? You can't tell someone how to live. You have to show them. So I did. I didn't pop in and spout off about propane and then go back to the kitchen to cook desserts. I gladly removed the dapl tank, got on my knees and blew up a fire, almost from scratch.

It must have been apparent that I hadn't approved of the condition I had found the post in because he started up with his defense before I even said a word, I was exclusively talking to the fire at this point. He had gone to the bathroom, without informing anyone, less than an hour into his shift, but I didn't even have abandonment issues. He said that the fire had been too smoky so he was letting it go out and using the tank instead. I didn't say aloud all that I was thinking, like that if he'd have halfway tried to build an actual fire then it wouldn't have been a stupid pile of smoldering blocks. Or that it was obvious that he hadn't picked up any basic survival skills and I thought his name was dumb. I did not pull all of the punches however. I, in a not mean but certainly not confusable with nice tone, simply reminded him that we were here fighting an oil company, just in case he had forgotten. That it was hypocritical to be needlessly burning propane while trying to protect the environment from petroleum. That we'd been surviving just fine with only this fire all winter. With much lower quality wood and even lower quality temperatures. It's not even cold out here. But it's all good now, I was his replacement and he was free to go. Good day sir.

I was still upset, but remembered that my early days were also relatively not forty below, and I had used gratuitous amounts of handwarmers and even burned propane a couple times. He was new. He'd come here for the same reasons I had. Back then I didn't have the resolve and conditioning that I do now. Many others had also complained about the smokey fire, that was what the smokeshifter was all about. But I rebuilt the sacred (to me) fire, filled it with prayers, and only even smelled the smoke once, and that was only after I dozed off and the fire fell sometime after four.

I never even had a chance to carve. I just stared into the fire all night. Contemplating life. The winter that the planet was starting to wake up from. The lessons we had all learned. The separate paths we would all eventually embark on to wake up the rest of the planet. The lifelong alliances that had been forged. Our lives had been changed.

I was no longer the person I was when I arrived. I could no longer simply exist in my previous timeline. Producing music for hire and taking any video gig I could get just to make a dollar, pretending that a client's music was changing the world. Now I knew that I had to actually change the world. I'd also been a part of projects that genuinely did make a difference. I'd taught and mentored many children through afterschool programs and believed that I'd made a positive impact on our next generation. Our problems are bigger than that though. Our planet is facing legitimate impending doom. I could not unsee what my eyes had been opened up to. I could not squander the opportunity I had been given. I could not deny my path. We were the people we had been waiting for. We were the chosen ones. We had been brought here to learn and connect. We now had a family of the strongest on the planet. It was our job to save it. This was the rest of my life. This was not some wacky story to someday tell our grandkids, this was the beginning of a worldwide movement to ensure that there would even be grandkids. We are going to save the planet. Our mother. Because we believe in her. I know I do.

I prayed about a lot that night. I'd prayed hard on the day of the Last Child raid too, but tonight I prayed even harder, for me. Grateful for my path, my faith, my family, prayed for Pete, prayed for all the people who had touched me the most, for Andre and his family, for calm in the hearts of my brothers and sisters as we eventually moved on from here, for them to trust, to believe, to not worry and just do what feels right. I prayed for dapl. I had before, but this time it was with more heart, I actually believed what I said. I prayed for my friends and family back home, everyone who believed in me, everyone who didn't. Prayed for my stressed relationship with my own son and his mom, prayed for her. Prayed for my mom, so grateful for her unconditional support. I cried. I laughed. I spoke to Tunkasila. I spoke to the fire. I spoke to myself. I believed. More than ever. More than I thought possible. I would have laughed in your face back in the fall if you'd have told me that I would feel the way I do now. I had transformed. And I wasn't even done yet. I had saved lives at this camp and this camp had saved mine. This was the most important thing that we could have possibly been doing. It would be a crime against nature not to take this energy and spread it into the world. I laid by the fire's energy all night, just like old times. It was nice. Powerful. Peaceful. I was glad I had the time alone. All that was, was good. Always.

I also ate a delicious sunrise breakfast alone. Oh yeah, don't think I prayed so hard that I'd forgotten about the steak, we eat meat. I even had the forethought to pack a pocket of salt and pepper, I'd have to be alright without the Lawrys I'd just reordered from the universe. I took an old piece of foil from some grilled cheeses that I'd brought up here a few days earlier, wrapped the seasoned steak and buried it in a pile of coals. Took it out six or seven minutes later, unwrapped it and ate it right out of my campfire soaked hands. It was the best steak I've ever had. Not a hyperbole. Or a hyperbowl. Possibly filtered through my amazing night with the fire and first solo sunrise in a while, plus a little sacred ash on one side, but I honestly can't name a single time that I've eaten a better steak. Ever. Someone stopped by with an early breakfast delivery from an Oceti kitchen and I took it, but wrapped it up for the next shift. I had a pretty good mouth taste going on and had probably just eaten the best breakfast out of all of camp. I was good. I was tired too. I took a nap once I got relieved, but I had stuff to do today.

I had taken yesterday off to edit and cook and guard and pray and all that stuff, but now it was game on. It was valentines day. I ran into Jess while I was grabbing supplies for dinner and dug myself into her new personal business gossip, juicy, then I slyly said "Well, maybe I like somebody now too..." That's all it took to lock in an assistant for dinner. Sometimes it got a little lonelier over in the new tiny kitchen, although I was digging the quiet time when I wanted it. I'd already boiled some sweet potatoes for a new invention I was working on, innovation thrives in the impendment of doom, so we got to work on cream cheese and sweet potato stuffed peppers. I opened what seemed like fifty little packets of cream cheese, mashed the potatoes, and spiced things up a bit. With the filling ready, we did a few test cuts in the sweet peppers that Dylan and Maria had gotten from bismarck. Where they also got me some lawrys. And some Spirits. They'd also surprised us with a stack of pretzel buns, but they were a fun twist for another menu. We settled on a cutting technique, stuffed the peppers, topped them off with a slice of organic valley motz and threw them on the grill. I was getting good at this vegetarian thing. Of course we cooked some meat too. The real dish wasn't the food though, it was our back stories as we caught up, but I'm no gossip, so sorry. It was gooood too.

Anyway, we considered that it was valentines day and she assured me that it wasn't too soon for a fun and friendly homemade valentine. We worked on funny lines for the card, I'm short, ugly and broke, so I gotta stick to what I'm good at. And eventually I left Jess to finish the peppers while went to make the card, grabbed some scissors and construction paper from the mess hall and headed home. I cut out hearts and flowers and glued together a card that looked like a cross between south park and napoleon dynamite. It was pretty freakin sweet. "Roses are red, water is still blue, I really like your hair... because it frames your face in such a way that makes your nose not look too big or too small, but quite symmetrical really." If that wouldn't do it then I got nothing. I also drew a picture of her face depicting her hair and facial symmetricality. Then I wrote her an actual heartfelt note that told her I thought she was cool and looked forward to getting to know her more.

I rushed back to the kitchen to show Jess, but she was gone. Without finishing the peppers. I'd been deserted, and it wasn't brownies this time. All good though, always was. I stuck my head outside and saw her making moves to help someone else, she was certainly a worker. I made some kind of noise and Ricky chimed in, he was happy to help. He was funny, and we were deep into the OK below the waist game. And we might be into the same girl too. Oh yeah, and he was literally tall, dark and handsome. And funny... And now I was letting him help cook... Now I kinda want to date him. I was underdog for sure. I'm a cucumber though, and not at all the jealous type, plus I'd consider myself lucky just to get to keep being their third wheel. Still worth a shot though.

I served dinner and made a plate for security, wanted to check on the post after last nights debacle. Kinda hoped to run into Megan, but I knew I'd be in the right place when I needed to be. And I was. When I made it back to the mess hall, Katy was there and suggested another game of monopoly, I was in. And hopefully Megan was too. She didn't answer her walkie, but of course we ran into her on the way. And Ricky. Mmhmm. Game on.

Rematch. The game was more of the same. Good fun, pranks, stunts, cheating, selling out, not selling out and I won again. But we all know it's not the winning that counts, it's whoever has the most money in the end, huh? Katy had to call it quits to do some actual work, so us three played cards, smoked cigs, deja vu, but I was totally cool with it. Looking for a window to make my move and then...
Step Eighteen:

...then we heard a girl coming across the river screaming bloody murder. We were close, so we met her at the edge of the river as she entered Rosebud. None of us knew her, she had obviously been drinking, but had something bigger on her mind. She wasn't listening to anything that Megan had to say and then ditched us to walk in the snow between the road and the river. Megan and Ricky rushed up the road to head her off if she tried to run through the deep snow. We weren't trying to arrest her, just making sure that she was safe out here. She was most definitely breaking the rules though, and screaming about it wasn't helping her case any. I followed the path that she had taken and found her only a few yards past where she'd lost us. Now I was on point. Turns out it was better that way, right place kinda thing.

She was sitting there, drunk, so probably not feeling the cold the way she shoulda been. I just sat beside her. I didn't talk. We just sat. She didn't have to answer to me. I wasn't nobody special. We were just chillin, like, it was chilly. She didn't have any, so I gave her my gloves. Finally! I had successfully given my gloves away, karma fingers here we come. Eventually she started to open up and we just talked. I didn't judge or overreact when she dropped some bombs on me, I just genuinely loved and showed nothing but understanding. She was hurting, both from recent stuff, and from a lifetime of pain. I've always been a good counselor, another trait I get from my mom, but this place had me in the zone. Megan and Ricky appeared in my peripheral, but they could see that I was getting somewhere and unlike that time with Jacob, they were able to give me the space to do what was best.

We connected, and she told me that she'd been taken to a party in Oceti, fed alcohol, pushed, assaulted, and then abandoned. All by someone we knew. Not a Rosebuddy per se, but a regular. She had just moved into a new tipi and agreed to let us walk her home so that she could get warm and safe. We got up and I told my team what we were doing, but couldn't quite fill them in on all the details yet, not without re-upsetting the newly calmed down victim. So for all they knew, she was just a drunk girl without a story. I tried to briefly let them know that there was more to it, but before we got to her door, Ricky let her have it about drinking at camp. I'm not saying he was wrong to do so, she shouldn't have started drinking to begin with and staying sober may have saved her a little headache. She agreed, he made a lot of solid points, somewhat harsh, but some real stuff that she connected with. It just would have been cool if I could have filled him in beforehand.

We got her home, at the door I got Megan to go in too as I let her know that there was more to the story. But then the worst thing imaginable happened... She gave me back my gloves, noooo, I just couldn't manage to lose these things. Now I could fill Ricky in, who was quickly pissed and ready to crack some heads. I got him to consider all angles, we certainly needed to handle it, but her drunken story had been all over the place and there were two other people involved. We probably shouldn't go popping faces as our opening move. Plus, we have a chain of command, so he went to get Smokey. I waited outside of the tipi and then heard yelling and commotion at the mess hall. Well, guess we didn't have to go shaking tents at least. I walked a little closer to try to hear but couldn't make anything out, certainly I should stay nearby so that I could walk Megan up there and corroborate stories...

She came out and we filled each other in, including the scrapple that I'd heard at the mess hall. Let's go. And "Oh yeah, this is kind of awkward timing, but it's the first that we've been alone and... I kinda made you a valentine." Big smile. Flattered, excited and she read it right there by the moonlight. Loved it. Obviously. I mean who wouldn't. She said it was one of the best presents she'd ever gotten (probably top 1,000, still counts) and as we walked back she said that she was giddy. I'm pretty sure giddy is a good thing. So now I was too. We were pretty quiet for the rest of the short walk and then we got filled in on the deal at the hall.

So... somehow all of the drama up here had absolutely zero to do with our last hour of events. Except that Ricky was there too and had to get physical with a troublemaker. "Man, this Ricky guy, I don't know about him, sounds like trouble..." Totally kidding, he saved the day, or night I guess. Love you brother.

So a guy that had been at camp for a week or two, and maybe had been here back before the winter, had come into the mess hall spouting off about something or another. We also heard about him having a weird attitude and energy for the last few days, I get it, this place was stressful to say the least. Dina had been keeping the fire company and had spoken up when he said something not quite kosher. We're all about respecting each other, especially women, and standing up for what is right, but she also had a habit of not being able to let stuff go and pushing issues into more escalated situations. Not at all defending his actions, he was in the wrong, but I can see how the event could have gotten worked up.

Anyway, Ricky walked in, already ready to set somebody straight, and this dude was loud and proudly yelling at Dina. This was not how we behaved at camp. Especially in Rosebud. You gotta leave brother. Ricky got him outside, Smokey was on the scene now and the guy just wouldn't quit. He and Smokey exchanged words and he wanted to get physical, so Ricky put him in a choke hold. He kept telling the guy that he just had to calm down, eventually he did, kinda, got in his truck and recklessly sped out of camp. So, love was in the air big time on this epic valentines day. We chilled at the mess hall, smoked a bunch of cigs, tried to piece together the web of events and eventually I called it a night. Valentine delivered, we'd see what happened.

I'd be just fine if it didn't go any farther, I hardly knew her, didn't even know if I really liked her, just knew that I had the potential to. I would never have made a move as bold as a valentine that early, but it was valentines day, so it's not like I really had much of a choice. I do like to let my crushes know that I'm feeling them pretty early though, don't want to get friend zoned and all, but I would be totally down to just be friends with this one. I wasn't bluffing about being cool with being their third wheel, it was early enough that I wouldn't be harboring secret feelings for her or anything. Now him on the other hand...

I didn't think that she was necessarily perfect for me or anything like "the one." She was way different than the last girl who I'd fallen for the hardest, but so was I now. Inside that last one, it had been hard to imagine someone more perfect for me, but when I moved on I knew that I would. I just had to be me. I didn't completely understand, but I believed. And now I was here. A place that I'd never have ended up at had I still been with her, or had I never been with her, everything had been just as it was supposed to be. We both did what felt right, even if that meant a little bit of pain. It was the pain that made us both stronger.

Now I was here. I was a completely new version of myself. She was no longer the perfect one for me. I was at a new point of my path and I realized that I was now officially over her. Not because this place had healed me, but because this place had evolved me, which in turn evolved what is important to me in a partner. How could I go on from this and be with someone who was not a water protector? Someone who had not dedicated their life to saving the world? They might not have actually been here, there are water protectors all over, but I knew that this was now my life and I would have a hard time connecting with a colonized consumer. Being at camp and surrounded by such amazing women had definitely raised the bar a bit too. Out in the real world, I'd have fallen for every single one of them, and I don't fall in love easily. Girls like these didn't come around often, but out here I was spoiled.

Megan had been the first who I had an immediate connection with, first permanent resident at least, but it wasn't necessarily a romantic connection. I was like her brother after all. She was on a much different section of her path, even though our paths were both here right now. She'd been against capitalism long before camp, I was just starting to get there. She was already decolonized, something that all of us were working on at various rates. She'd helped several boyfriends through their own process of letting go of everything they have ever been taught and she wasn't looking for that again. It's not fun to always have to be the teacher, she deserved someone who she could grow through as well.

So no pressure, low expectations, medium hopes and a high probability that one of us would get hurt. Not emotionally, like physically injured. We were rough. It was fun. We'd throw stuff at each other, she'd throat check me and I'd trip her. This one time in the buffalo tent, I turned to look at her and she blasted me in the face with hand sanitizer. We're talking all natural herbal hand rinse, safe on hands, soft on eyes. It was really funny... because I survived. I'm sure, well I hope at least, that she knew it was safer than the mainstream alternative.

Hand sanitizer is bad stuff. Not only does it push the evolution of more resistant supergerms while it destroys the good bacteria that naturally protect you from said supergerms, it also contains triclosan, which is known to cause hormone disruption, like elevated levels of testosterone. So just man up and wash your hands. We had a bunch at camp and some people swore by it. I informed them about what I had learned, but in the end, it's up to everyone to do what feels right for themselves. To some that means shooting people in the eyes. Felt right to me too. Definitely means a girl likes you, right?

The three of us hung out the next day, roamed around all night on missions, fresh off of saving the day and ready for another. The issues of last night had been addressed this morning and the appropriate measures had been taken, above my pay grade. We visited Echo3, they were starting to lose it, much earlier than the four o'clock hour which was standard protocol, so we got the H out of D before we ended up on duty. Walked to the other end of camp, halfway to Sacred Stone, did some snow battle training, bothered the buffalo tent and the next thing I know, Ricky went to bed and I was all alone with Megan in the mess hall. Cool. We played cards and talked... til sunrise. Like, a real talk, about almost everything. Previous lives, childhoods, music, so far so good, and eventually the first to wake up at camp appeared as Megan went to bed. I got this.

I was gonna sleep soon too, but first I had a great talk with someone who I'd only spoken to in passing before. She loved my food, that was about the extent of our previous conversations, but over the next week we became super close. She was my family. She was my grandmother. Grandma Gloria. She is the only person I've ever known with the patience, humility and understanding to rival that of my mom's. She is my idol. She'd been through it her whole life. She'd been around long enough to experience the oppression in ways that our generation could only try to imagine. She was spiritually strong. A warrior. And she had been arrested during a women's prayer ceremony at the bridge. This physically frail but spiritually powerful medicine woman had been arrested during prayer, for inciting a riot.

They're terrified of prayer. I'm starting to see why. It's powerful. It keeps us strong. United. They tried their hardest to break us up, but still we stood in solidarity. Praying. They may have done it so far, but it's going to be pretty hard to keep up the good guy charade when you go around arresting grandmothers in prayer. We believed. And I would follow her into any battle, not just a spiritual one. She earned a special kind of respect from me. A new kind of love. She was a woman without judgment and never told us how to live. She showed us.

I believed in her to no end and she believed in me. She could see more than anyone what I was doing for the camp, for our family. I never talked to her about the intention that I put into the food, I didn't have to, she could feel it. That thing about the stuff I cooked that people couldn't quite put their fingers on, what set it apart from other food they ate at camp, or ever, the thing that I'd chock up to butter and lawrys, she knew exactly what it was. Her vibrations were high. She was close to spirit. She had zero ego keeping her caught up in the material world. She could literally feel the love that I had been putting into the food. So of course she believed in me.

She believed in onion tea too. She was sick, like actually sick. She'd had several of my big batches, but now she knew that without hesitation, I would drop whatever I was doing to make her a microbrew with a full dose of love. Her believing in me made me believe in myself. I only kinda believed everything that I showed my family, but having someone that I believed in to this extent also believe in me, concurring that everything I was doing was working, that I was raising the vibrations of my family, that I was keeping us all healthy, and happy, that I was saving lives and that those lives could save the world, if I knew that I trusted her to no end, and if she trusted me the same, then I had no choice but to trust in myself. We're going to save the freaking world. In fact, onions might just save it for us.

If mucus buildup actually is what has plagued civilization, lowered vibrations and pulled society away from their connection to spirit, mucus brought on by all the fake foods and other pollutions of the world, maybe even intentionally by the powers-that-be who stand to gain from an overpopulation of non-believers, then onions might be an effective part of the solution. Certainly that's far fetched. We all know that if they were truly the miracle elixir that I propose they may be, if they could be used to treat hundreds of ailments with no side effects, then we know exactly what big pharmaceutical would have to say about onions, they already did it with pot.

Marijuana is also an expectorant. It causes the mucus clinging to your insides to loosen up so that you can cough it out. You don't have to take my word for it, I'm just a pothead who picked up the habit out of pure recreation as a teenager. I only learned about the medical and spiritual powers of the god given naturally growing plant later in life. You want a more reputable source? How about the sweetest, humblest, most genuine person you could possibly imagine? A little old grandmother who suffers from severe asthma among other things. When her inhaler is empty and she finds herself unable to breathe, just one puff of the green stuff and she opens right up. It works better than the inhaler actually, but the demonization of the all-natural herb has made the inhaler more readily available and socially acceptable. And profitable. How could the pharmaceutical companies ever sleep at night? Knowing that there was a widely available over-the-counter plant that treats asthma, depression, pain, addiction, seizures and eases symptoms of MS, HIV and cancer? Oh yeah, they could just smoke some, it cures insomnia too, and without the constipated diarrhea of Ambien.

People are waking up though, and without the morning fog of sleeping pills, the system is being forced to adapt. Pot is on it's way to being legal. It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up the lies that have villainized it for so long. It is a medicine. When used in a good way, it can heal and prevent such an extensive list of ailments. Yet alcohol is a drug that causes depression, complacency and physical illness. Either the people running the show have been corrupt conspirators since the beginning or they're just complete idiots. I'm not convinced it's not both. But now they're coming around right? No longer able to deny and suppress the truly magical powers of this spiritual plant.

So it would seem, but how long will it be before the money hungry corporations dig their greedy fingers into it? It's not them making money that scares me, it's the hundreds of chemicals they're going to spray on their genetically modified strains of a commercialized plant. This, I think we can all agree, is less a theory and more the inevitable conclusion of the R.J. Reynolds weed industry. They already do this with tobacco. A naturally growing and smokeable plant, that for some reason they feel the need to spray down with hundreds of harsh cancer causing chemicals. Stuff with fun names like arsenic and formaldehyde. So why on Earth would they leave pot natural? It's like the people at the top of capitalism make more money with a sickly population of addicts or something.

In areas where it is currently legal, growing it yourself is also permitted. This allows people access to the medicine without the fingerprint of money involved. Lets them choose the processes used to grow their own herb gardens. Certainly way healthier than whatever the government comes up with. Which is why I'd imaginet that once it becomes federally legal, it won't be long before the regulations set in and we'll no longer be allowed to take our health into our own hands. It's just not good for business. But anyway, wouldn't growing your own weed be... agriculture?

Now now, it's not very fair for me to get to have my pot and smoke it too. I've got no argument for that. As much as I want to keep myself stocked with the healing powers of the plant, I have to believe that I will always have everything I need, just like with anything else. I can't take the success of this one organism into my own hands at the cost of other plants and animals. I'm not even eating the stuff, well, I could, but for every plant that I personally grow, another plant can't. A possibly more fit to survive plant. A plant that could provide energy to an entire circle of life, doesn't have the available vibrations to live. How spiritual could the pot plant be if it's growth was at the cost of another's life?

Plus, I'd be taking the evolution of the smoke into human hands and out of God's. As absurd as it is for man to think that he can do food better than the Earth can, it's even crazier to think that we could do spiritual better than the spirit itself. Weed used to grow naturally, hello, it's called weed, but once it became illegal, it all went into hiding. May have had something to do with the cropdusters of chemicals they sprayed to eradicate the extremely versatile hemp population. I only personally know of that happening on the reservations though, and it's not like they made their houses with it once the buffalo hides all disappeared or anything.

So what's the solution. If it's such an important medicine, how can we ensure that it's available, but not do so at the cost of the rest of the planet? I don't have all the answers. I very admittedly don't know everything. Don't know much really. Never will. It's essential to my humility that I don't stop learning. I have figured out some things though. I have some ideas that, as we work together to recreate the Garden of Eden, we can develop into a way to live both as humans, and in harmony with the natural balance of the planet.

It's completely natural for plants that another species enjoys the consumption of, to succeed. To thrive. It's the name of the game. The flowers that bees like, get pollinated (at least they used to before the honey bees mysteriously started disappearing), and the tastiest foods that are eaten by mammals, get their seeds spread across the surface of the Earth. They even get deposited with their very own fertilization supply. This is how it works. It's tried and true. Much more empirical evidence of its success than the thumbnail of history containing the self appointed new management. So it makes total sense that we can spread the seeds of the plants that we like. We are animals after all. Just like any other. As long as we agree to once again live by the natural laws that we know to work, then we get all of the perks of being a part of the system. We've even evolved advantages over other species, that's the whole premise of it all. Ours is our brains, so let's use them. We can totally take our knowledge, our gift of observation, and spread seeds of the food we like. We have a pretty good idea of the basic requirements for a plant to survive, even if we don't have a true understanding of all of the intricacies at play.

Once, I carved a pumpkin for halloween, threw it's guts into the woods and the pumpkin soon followed. The next year, without a single shred of human interference, the strongest, most equipped to survive seed, grew. It absorbed the vibrations of the nutrients in the decaying fruit and then the next, slightly evolved generation of pumpkin plant, was born. It then produced the most beautiful pumpkin that I'd ever seen, especially after I carved the 2004 presidential nominees into either side, and then blew it up. Evolutionarily suited for that environment in every way, because I didn't force it. I didn't water it because the ground was not naturally moist enough to sustain it's life. I didn't cut the other vegetation to provide more vibrations from the sun. I didn't pour phosphorus on it. I didn't use my sometimes seemingly pumpkin seed sized brain to guess which seed was the best.

We can sew the Earth. We can spread the seeds of the plants we like. We don't even have to rely strictly on the decaying plant matter that the plant itself produced, rich in the very nutrients to effectively create life. If you have a location that seems nutrient rich, with all of the vital components of life, go ahead, dig a hole and plant a seed. No need to water it or eradicate its competition, if it's capable of growing there, it will. If it wants to. Life is a stubborn creature, just ask any gardener about the weeds most evolved to thrive in their particular landscape. Plants want to grow. It's their instinct. It's the natural way. If it takes any work other than that, then maybe it's not the best place for the plant. That would just be cruel to force a plant to live somewhere that didn't make it happy. That wasn't natural. That didn't provide them with the basic requirements for life. That's the way we treat the red people of our country, not the plants, c'mon now.

Choosing the one seed that we decide is the best, may not be the optimal choice, we're only human after all, but as long as we leave well enough alone and let the plant naturally spawn new life with the fittest for that particular environment surviving, then after a few generations of evolution it'll eventually get back on track. There's no natural guarantee that an animal doesn't distribute an inferior seed anyway, it's just a broad law of averages that over time produces an incredibly diverse plant kingdom. And all we came up with monoculture.

Many animals instinctively, which we now know as God, bury their seed filled earthly deposits. You'd better believe that if we stopped filling our bodies with all of this fud, the delicious new generations of the very plants we prefer to consume would just sprout. One man's trash could be his own treasure and literally the more we ate of something, the more it would grow. It's all starting to sound a little too utopian now, God turning poop into peaches and all, but this is how it works, and has worked for so many other species for a long long time. It's science. It's God. It's the circle of life. It's too gross for most to think about, not because nature tells us so, but because an agriculture based society does. Plus remember, it is gross now. Our waste has become toxic. (Although with the proper composting procedures, we have figured out how to undo the damage so that our waste doesn't go completely to waste.) Our bodies are no longer highly evolved, highly vibrating, properly fueled, or capable of continuing life's circle. That sucks. They used to be, and they can be again. We just have to admit that maybe we're not so smart after all and let nature takes its course. Now that would really be using our pumpkin.

But even if everyone was on board with our pumpkin planting instincts, we've been over it already, currently it's toxic sludge, no good. We have to shift the evolution train out of reverse and get it back into a circular motion. So what's the next best plan? Well, the pumpkin didn't need any help, it came equipped from the factory with everything it needed to evolve life. Just add rain and shine. So just plant a nutrient rich pumpkin. That might be a little crazy, but you get the idea. Let a whole pumpkin do it's thing, or plant all the guts together. Don't pick your favorite seed, let Science God pick his.

Hypothetically, if a humanitarian helicopter loaded with fruits and vegetables (We'll assume out to feed those living in unlivable conditions in a country who has a natural resource that we want.) accidentally dropped its load over a fertile, crescent shaped section of wildlife, completely untouched by man, then what would happen? Assuming that no animals came by and started up the cycle that we already considered, then the food would decompose, leaving the area incredibly rich in a diverse collection of ingredients. It would be just the right conditions for many to grow, with the best of each species surviving side by side. Some wouldn't make it, but nobody would cry, they weren't happy there anyway. The best of the best would have a population bloom, their strongest offspring would survive, then their strongest offspring would survive, and the entire community would fertilize itself with the fruits of its own labor. You'd have a self sufficient garden of eden.

Of course, we know that we need animals to truly complete the circle of life, to help with pollination and other sciency kind of stuff, and as they got involved, the seeds of this secluded community would spread across the Earth to any climate that would have them. A new habitat, with new environmental parameters, would naturally select seeds and plants with varying characteristics and new varieties of life would evolve. This is how it works.

This automatic garden may have been hypothetical, but plants have evolved and covered the Earth for a long long time without us lifting an opposable thumb. Assuming you believe that life spawned in the ocean and evolved plants, who spread from there to cover the land, then you gotta give them a little bit of credit. And if that's not quite what you believe, if you think that God just snapped his fingers and wished plants into existence on the third day, then he deserves even more credit than the plants do. How could you possibly doubt his ultimate plan and think that you know better?

However it all came to be, we should all be able to agree that life on Earth is amazing and beautiful and supremely diverse. So diverse, that even with our fancy sciencing, we still haven't cataloged anywhere close to a majority of life. It works so well because of this diversity. We know this. Yet we are apparently trying our hardest to break world records for the most amount of species to be driven to extinction in a single year. Even the faulty theology of agriculture knows that diversity is crucial. Different plants need different nutrients to grow. Different plants add different nutrients back into the soil. Basic. If there is a diverse habitat of plants on a particular section of land, it's soil is most likely pretty healthy. Even fundamentally flawed man figured out that one, which is why farms grow a diverse selection of plant life and rotate the crops to replenish nutrients back into the soil. Used to at least. Certainly we know where this is going... yeah, corn.

We now have a new trend in our american farms and I don't mean wiping with a corncob, no, that's actually one of the more legitimate uses for the plant. Monoculture. Because of the government subsidies, many farms quit using their valuable/costly acreage for a wide ranging selection of foods and instead now grow corn exclusively. And over half the time, it's industrial corn, not even fit for the lowered FDA standards of human consumption.

Monoculture is not only bad because it leaves us vulnerable to a catastrophic crop failure, an agrisystem where a single disease could wipe out all of the country's precious national veggie, no, it's destructive enough on its own as the soil is systematically abused and nutritionally depleted generation after generation. You are what you eat, and that includes the plants, so if you eat them and they were dirt poor, then you're not quite set up for success. Of course, we could always pour on the only three chemicals needed to produce the complexities of abundant life, just dump it right in the dirt there. So we're cool, right?

And it's not like president corn is actually all alone, there's always a behind the scenes player, good old vice president soybean. Soybeans replenish the nitrogen that the corn removes from the soil. See how smart we are, we reduced God's complicated algorithms to a simple two party system. We're like, the best ever. We all know about the Pinky and Brain style world domination plan that corn has been working on, it's been stalking every aspect of american life for years, but it's been dragging it's idiot cousin along with it too.

Surprise, surprise, soy is not good for us. Sure, those healthy asians have been eating it forever, but only in its fermented form, like soy sauce and miso, otherwise it is full of toxins. Hmm, sounds kinda like gluten's story. For one, it causes lady problems, and I got enough of those already. And hormonal disruption, but that's more severe in infants, which happens to coincide with a generation of soy formula fed gender identity crisis. Men aren't left out though, they get a bonus dose of phytoestrogens to lower the testosterone levels in their yoga pants. Well, guess maybe it'll even out that hand sanitizer's contribution to your endocrine system. By the way, your endocrine system, your glands, your vibrational centers, your chakras, these are how you connect to the universe. Capitaculture doesn't want these systems to function. You should. But it's your call, sounds a little too new age soy latte for me.

Just like it's running mate corn, soy is in everything in the marketplace, from fast food filler to chapstick. It took off as a meat substitute once the unnatural industrialization of protein production turned people off, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing natural about a soy burger. And have you ever tried to milk a soybean? I did once but it turned out to be a boy.

It's all horrible for you, but they sell it as the healthy alternative. Maybe God should have gone to school for marketing. They've convinced us that corn and soy are the best things ever, but honestly, how could I be surprised that america could be convinced to elect a completely inferior presidential team, that's what we do. At least with the corn/soy ticket, it's up front that we're being led by a vegetable.

It's also up front that our leadership is destroying the Earth to suck out precious natural resources. Vitamins and minerals that used to exist for all, are now exclusive property of the top one percent. They're simply vibrations, like everything else in the universe. They're not some arbitrary concept that's made up to explain to school children what does a body good. They are actual physical things in us, in our food, and in the ground. They are vibrations. Minerals. Yeah, like the vibrations of the time consuming quartz crystal, mineral. The vibrations of a clarity inducing diamond, mineral. The vibrations of salt, which our tastebuds have evolved to be able to sense because it is essential to our health, mineral. Minerals are vibrations, easy enough, we can see minerals. So what about vitamins? Are we talking about flintstone gummies or what? They're just naturally occurring vibrations that we use to sustain our own. The largest source of vitamin D? Sunshine. Waves of light from the sun. Vibrations pouring into our skin from the very life providing orb that powers the plants, who in turn power the entire planet. I love you sun.

Why do you think it feels so good to be in the sun? You need it. At least fifteen minutes a day. And if you spend just two minutes standing directly towards the sun with your arms extended in its direction, you will feel it pour through your whole body and energize you immediately. Throw in a deep breath and a prayer, or a compliment to yourself, and your entire day will change. Do it, I promise it works. I feel better already.

Vibrations. That same vibration exists in our food and in the Earth. We made up their uncreative names, God didn't. He'd have probably given them cool names. We picked A, C, D, E, K, B6, B12, what? We didn't even run out of letters yet. Well, at least beta keratin is fun to say. They're all just vibrations. The more diverse natural vibrations that we consume, the higher ours becomes. If we eat an animal who only ate food forced to grow in minerally depleted soil, then their vibration has little to offer us. How great could some man-made vibration look-a-like of phosphorus be, we can't even figure out tofurkey.

Our hypothetical vegetable garden of eden would govern itself. One season the plants that thrive with an abundance of one particular vitamin would thrive, and they'd release a different nutrient. The next season it would be another's turn and they'd settle into an equilibrium where everybody just gets along. This is the way it works, the science of God.

I promised that I wouldn't try to push my faith onto you, but instead relate to you the steps of my transformation. I believe in God. I'm new to it and only call him God when I'm speaking with those that prefer that term. I call the energy of the universe Tunkasila. I am not a christian. I do not believe that Jesus was anything more than a man like us who raised his vibration to a point of enlightenment and used his connection to spirit to show people how to live in a good way. I don't believe in a literal interpretation of the bible. I do believe that the book is full of parables that attempt to teach people how to live in a good way. They were written a long time ago, based on stories from existing cultures and lost in translation. That's all apparent in the whole fall from eden story. I used to assume that they were all tales of morality written by man in the name of some made up god, but still originally intended to help people live in a good way.

Now, I understand what a connectedness to Tunkasila is like. How the energy inside of all of us can guide us along the right path. How a book beyond the knowledge of the author can be inspired and almost write itself. It's still through the words of man. Still relevant to the people, culture and environment of a particular era. But now those stories from the old world lost their relevance as each generation became further removed from tradition. Many have been driven away completely by the seemingly obscure text. Others seem to pick and choose the parts that they want to adhere to, in order to justify their own way of life. The rest just can't make sense of the outdated and impossible to translate properly text.

Many that follow the scripture as the only way to God will say that the "god" I pray to, Tunkasila, the great mystery, our ancestors, the infinite energy of the universe inside us all, is not the same God they believe in. A false idol. Not the God who is little baby Jesus, and therefore no god at all. I believe that it doesn't matter how you pray. As long as you believe, pray from your heart and pour love out to all of God's creatures, then it doesn't matter what you call him. The name God is just a translation anyway. It's a made up english word and nobody with any sense claims that Jesus was english, every one knows that God blessed america.

All this being said, I don't rely on the bible to tell me how to live. You can't tell someone how to live anyway. But I also can't discount its value. The authors believed and they may have been closer to God than us today. We have so many toxins constantly lowering our vibrations that weren't around back then, so they may have been onto something and started developing a way to live, with agriculture, and still be in harmony with natural law. If there were guidelines in there, they would be mixed in with all the "ye's" and "thee's" and most wouldn't be able to make sense out of them because they don't make sense with the way that we've been indoctrinated to live. They don't mesh with capitalism.

So again, my path to God wasn't through the bible, it began in a sweat lodge during a blizzard in ND. If the book is your path to spirit though, then you should probably pay a little extra attention. And if it's not, if you don't believe that the book is anything more than old wives tales trying to teach us how to live in a good way, then just consider the science behind the words. I'm somewhere in the middle.

In the book of leviticus, there is a blueprint for a way to more responsibly produce food with agriculture and still let evolution happen. God's way. To let natural law select the best of the best and allow the diversity and abundance that has always been, to continue to be. This is not my book. I don't consider it literally written by a vibration of the universe without the conduit of man's interpretation. However, I think that the authors may have realized back, then the harm to the planet that would occur if we continued raping our mother. I don't have all the answers. I can only do what feels right. I know that it's going to be extremely difficult to give up agriculture altogether, at least at first, so I'm open to suggestion from any source. Especially when I crack a bible for the first time in twenty years and it opens directly to a page spelling out a plan to grow food in a good way.

Lev. 25: God tells Moses right there how to do it. For six years grow food, prune trees and gather crops. Then for the seventh year let the land rest. Do not commit agriculture. Let God have the sabbath year. That doesn't mean let some old man in the sky come to dinner. God is around us in every living thing ever, including the plants we eat. Let the world happen. Let it rest. Let the strongest specimens of every plant and animal listen to their god given instincts and follow their natural paths. The land will rest and replenish vital nutrients, the animals will thrive and increase, we'll have a diverse ecosystem of abundance and the most fit to live species will survive. Evolution will happen in front of us. The sabbath isn't a day of rest for our sake, it's a day of rest for the planet. The Earth is God. An all powerful magic being doesn't need rest, but a living planet whose systems are being pushed to the limits does. Just like a machine or a human, if you overwork her, she runs out of coolant and overheats. Science.

Leviticus also tells us not to reap all of our harvest. Leave some for the poor, our brothers, don't be greedy with what God has provided. Got it. People feed the poor all the time. No, our brothers aren't other men, we are all related. Our brothers are all of God's creatures. We have to share our harvest with any animal that wants a bite, big or small, deer or aphid, we have to feed our whole family. It clearly states that no man shall own the land. It all belongs to God. No "mine." The planet belongs to the energy of the Earth itself. She's a free world and we are but guests.

And what if we don't respect her hospitality? Well, yet another reference to the sins of man being handed down to the seventh generation. It tells us that the Earth will become barren, like brass, nothing will grow. We'll face plagues of beasts which will lower our numbers. Our overpopulation. Oh whatever, prophecy schmophecy. Well, we are in the middle of a worldwide water shortage, the Earth is drying up, there's growing amounts of natural disasters, and due to the "unexplainably" warm winter apparently experienced globally by everyone but me, there are already a record number of snakes, spiders, ticks, mosquitos and sharks on the prowl, and that's just here in north carolina. Fun fact: The devastating tick transmitted lymes disease which evades diagnosis and can cripple a population, was transmitted by the government as a weapon of biological warfare. Admittedly. Oh, and by the way, all natural stevia fixes lymes and tastes great. Write that down.

But like I said, I don't adhere to this doctrine as the literal word of God, it's still a little too agricultury for me, but as food for thought as I think about food in a new light. But those that do follow this doctrine word for word, they should probably consider what these words mean to them before getting so caught up on the single line about a man lying with another man. A popular biblical reference which happens to share a page with the condemning of cutting your hair, trimming your beard and wearing clothing made of two types of material. Jesus said to love unconditionally and would give any sinner the shirt off his back, unless of course it was a cotton polyester blend.

Some Lakota are even christian nowadays. It seems that with enough force, you actually can tell someone what to believe. If only I'd been kidnapped and sent to "boarding school" away from everything that my entire family tree had ever known, where I was then indoctrinated and brainwashed as I was physically pushed to Jesus. If I'd have been lucky enough for the assimilation of that childhood, maybe I'd have a better understanding of which part of the bible justifies such despicable behavior and this would be a way different book that you're reading.

Lakota tradition teaches a much different path to God, including a deep heartfelt respect for the vibrations that sustain the tribe. The most sacred of these of course, the buffalo. For countless generations, the buffalo provided energy for the plains indians and they honored it as the godsend that it was. Many prayer songs call out to "tatanka" directly. It was a very spiritual animal and its naturally high vibration could be felt as it was consumed. Now, as with most things, and especially with a species slaughtered to near extinction, the buffalo are in man's hands with the industrialized bison industry. Yeah, the amount of wild bison alive is far below endangered status, and all due to the greed of the same colonizers who profit from the commercialization of bison meat. Farmed buffalo is not buffalo, the bloodlines are all mixed with cattle, but they look close enough that they were able to inflate production and get them taken off of the official endangered species list. You didn't think life was gonna be fair all of a sudden did you? Certainly not. Not fair at all. We were the lucky ones. We were blessed beyond comparison. Dapl deserves our sympathies because we certainly lived better than they did. Today we would eat wild buffalo steaks.

A team brought one in whole and was currently in camp, cutting up the sacred animal for our family to consume the most natural vibrations of the winter. The couple of remaining wild herds are relatively small in number, but since their limited living space of undeveloped land is so minuscule, the encroaching human population gets hunters to thin the herds. Leonard disagreed with the slaughter of the animal when we already live in abundance, and they exist only through hardship, but he was adamant that with the beast already dead, we were indebted to honor its life and death.

He knew that it had already been prayed over and would be again when we served it. He also knew about my energy in the kitchen, but he asked that I perform an additional prayer over the energy of the meat before I began preparing it. Gotcha. I prayed over the two massive trays of steaks, sausage, liver, ribs, and the heart of the animal. I thanked Tunkasila for the sacrifice of the animal's life and prayed that its energy raised each of our vibrations. The guy in charge of its delivery also reminded me over and over about the spiritualness of the animal. Never touched by man. Truly no GMOs. He said that you could feel the energy as your body absorbed it, so I passed it on to any who would listen. After a day of talking about it, a lot of people were ready, so it's good that buffalo are big.

A bunch of steaks, the heart was almost the size of a basketball, and the ribs were almost two feet long. Just steaks tonight though. I carried the grill outside, it was really a two man job, but I got pretty good at carrying it on my own. Because we had a much smaller tent on the same kitchen platform, now we were left with a sweet front porch, a much more stable grill surface than a half packed snowbank. I got it all set and ran into the mess hall for a few supplies, when I was greeted by a familiar face that had been gone from camp for a month. It even took a second for me to recognize his face and just how much I'd missed him. Then I remembered that I'd had three different conversations over the last week about missing him. I had called him here. He agreed and said that he had felt pulled over the last week. He'd been traveling with Marty, who had also returned, yeah, I know, I'd manifested the return of my dearest brother Ernie.

He'd been sitting by the door when I walked in, and as my eyes adjusted, he stood up for one of the most heartfelt hugs I've ever been a part of. I almost cried. Mid hug I whispered that I'd been talking about him and he said that he knew. This was a great day. I had so much to tell him about, he had been an original pizza tester and needed to try it now, plus rabbit and yak and turduxican, oh my. I vowed to hug him every single time I saw him, this dude was my blood. Oh! And I definitely had to show him something in the kitchen.

He was one of the most spiritual of us, he appreciated the sacredness of consuming a wild animal, and most importantly, our bond had been forged through us cooking game over our most precious fire. He had to see the buffalo. He could feel the energy off of it. Then we ate a piece raw. Whoa. You most certainly could feel it. I'd been told that it would unclog our minds and give us clarity as well as energy. It worked. I'd cook the rest of them, but none well done, except for Smokey. For a man that loved meat so much, it was funny that he couldn't stand it still bleeding.

Ernie had stuff to do, he was here with Marty, breaking down their old camp and moving on to another. He wasn't sure how long he'd be here, but at least a week or two. I was so ecstatic. I couldn't contain it, nor did I try. My heart was as melted as the ice was getting in spots. Oh yeah, the snow was starting to disappear and leave this weird wet dirt stuff. I think it was... mud. Just in the roads though, where it was the thinnest and constantly driven over, everything else was still a few feet of frozen solid. So now the commute from the kitchen to the mess hall included crossing a precarious mud pit enclosed with icy walls. Made for a tricky dinner presentation among other things.

It was strange to see, but possibly the first signs of the imminent flood that we'd been hearing so much about. I jokingly suggested building on top of 55 gallon barrels to make a tied together village of floating structures. The idea must have taken off because the bought and paid for tribal council who were trying to scare us off with the flood, publicly claimed that the torrential speed of the flooded river would make that an even more dangerous option. I was just kidding anyway, but with that warning it was starting to sound more fun by the minute. Imagine the kitchen platform floating by, with me on the porch delivering medium rare wild buffalo steaks. Yeah, let's do that plan.

But alas, no flood yet, maybe tomorrow. We got the steaks done and they were magic, not cooked in the coals of a sacred fire or anything, but amazing none the less. You could feel the natural energy of the food. Actual honest to God "food." Not that "fud" facsimile I'd been eating my entire life. Is this what all food is supposed to feel like? Supposed to taste like? Holy cow, I mean buffalo. This is what God tastes like. God is good. Real good.

As I was standing in the halfway dismantled mess hall kitchen, waiting for the masses to eat so that I could, I turned around to see Megan, plate in hand, and here to eat with me in the vip lounge. Nice. We sat back by the more private woodstove in the back, still a few bystanders, but we were in our own world, at least until James started bothering me. He kept walking by, trying to aggravate me, but he wasn't genuinely trying to hurt my game and couldn't have done it if he'd wanted to.

We finished eating and went for a walk and talk. Books, she asked if I'd read Marx, I haven't, there's a lot of important stuff that I haven't read which is probably apparent in my lack of writing skills. He's been added to my jail cell reading list after they lock me up for all this "propaganda", but I do already know that he's pretty against capitalism and the way that the bourgeoisie (the top one percent who own everything) manipulate the workforce through class struggle and materialism, at least until it ends in a social revolution. Makes sense that she would be a reader of his work.

She'd never read my favorite book either though. Ishmael. If you know it, then you've seen its influence throughout my whole story. Big time. I first read it before I'd even started becoming a hippie and it affected the way I looked at the world. I read it again last year and it affected the way I interact in the world. Then I read it a third time, in the few weeks since camp, and it's affected the way I'm going to save the world. It has impacted my life three different times, with increasing velocity during each reading. It started me on this path and helped me along at critical moments. If you've never read it, or even if you have, I recommend closing this book, going to your local bookstore and trading this one for it right now. It will affect you. I play on a lot of its concepts with this thing and take the ideas a little farther than the story of a man and a gorilla. If you're going to read it soon, skip the next part. I'm not going to write the cliffnotes, but I'm going to touch on a few points briefly.

SPOILER ALERT: So it's essentially the story of the leavers and the takers, or those living by the natural laws and the agriculturalists. It spells out why taking land and growing your own food, forces the leavers to either join in or die. It also explains that the parable of Cain and Abel was symbolic of the farmers killing the herders. It's not at all a religious book, neither character have a relationship with God, it is simply shown as the way that the herders of the fertile crescent explained why their fellow man was wiping them out and dominating the region. It also explains that the world is doomed if we don't do something. The main character is then charged with one task. To save the world. :SPOILER OVER

So you see where I get it from. But it took reading it three times, with a life's worth of living, for it to all really sink in. It then took me experiencing a place that sparked this belief inside and inspired me to live in a better way, only now was it my life's mission to save the world. It doesn't provide any solutions, just the problem, and I've only taken it a step further while presenting more problems. It's up to you to take what I've shared and let it not only affect the way that you personally interact with the planet, but if I've inspired you to truly make a difference, then we have to start waking people up. Before it's too late. We're coming up on that threshold faster than a deer whose traditional migration path crosses that of a oil filled semi's headlights. See, told you pipelines were safer.

I honestly just pray that I can get this thing done in time. And I believe. I know that I'm on my path. I can feel it more everyday. So that convinces me that this book is not in vain. I can finish it and it'll end up in your hands in time to do something. At exactly the right time. You. The person intended to be reading this book right now. If you've made it this far into this literary scramble, then something must feel right. Just like how I was intended to read Ishmael. A brief but influential friend was called to bring it into my life. It just felt right for her to give it to me. I believe. It's not too late. Not a lost cause. It's not too big of a task to save a supremely broken world. You can do it. We can do it. Everything happens for a reason and that reason is you.

Well, at the moment, the reason was Megan. I also told her about my favorite book on tape, is that weird? I've never read it, but I've listened to the long recording twice, it's a different medium for sure. Just wait til James Earl Jones is reading this thing. "The Beach", it was just an ok movie, but it was an excellent book (on tape). A group of adventurers surviving away from society in a close communal utopian paradise. Love triangles, camp projects, social politics, pot smoking, leisure, and an undertone of fear, terror, oppression and guns. It had come up in conversation here before, we were living it, just on an iceberg instead of a deserted island.

She didn't know it either. I mentioned that it was a movie too and she spoke about not watching many movies because of the footprint of colonization being blatantly pushed onto the mainstream. I speak strongly about it now, but back then I was just starting to see the colonizing machine as the evil that it truly is. She had been the first to flat out tell me that she wasn't a capitalist. We were all living out here in this moneyless love based society, but that wasn't by everyone's choice necessarily, that's just how it was. Many just wanted to stop the globalization of the oil industry. Many of those that hadn't experienced the oppression of colonization first hand, were still in the dark about exactly how big of a problem we're dealing with. It's hard enough to convince someone that we can change the way the world fuels its industry. "That's just the way it it." But try explaining that everything about how the civilized world has worked, since forever, is the problem and that everything needs to change from the ground up. And we were the people who believed enough to put our lives on the line and on hold to be there, imagine the challenge of convincing anyone else.

I get the movie thing now though. Like the last animated kids movie I watched about the evolution of animals into the civilized world. I liked the concept of the evolution of all species in friendly conjunction with others, no one was better, or the ultimate product of creation, and all thrived. Then in the first five minutes it explained how animals used to be "savage", lived by natural law and had to kill to eat, but now they were "civilized" and could have respectable jobs, like, I kid you not, an accountant. WTF? By the way, "savage" is a highly offensive racial slur and certainly not material for a kids movie, unless of course the mythical people that it might offend have long been extinct.

So yeah, it's everywhere. It's not even a global conspiracy, it's just so ingrained in everything that we are taught about the right way to live that it is the basis for everything we do. Even in my own past creative projects with positive messages for kids, I see the stamp of colonization all over. I wasn't there yet though. This was really my introduction to my own decolonization. I reminded her that I was actually just talking about the book anyway and continued describing The Beach.

I thought we were vibing pretty good. I was at least, which she musta picked up on, because she got a little weird. I generally like weird, but then she dropped some knowledge on me. She was involved with Ricky. I was like her brother. Dang. Honestly, I was more then good, I loved Ricky and he really did make more sense for her than I did. I let her know that I was cool, but it still made her a little standoffish when it came to pranks of physical prowess. One thing was certain though, she now met the minimum requirements for being my type, she didn't like me.

After that convo I went to the mess hall, I had been there just a few minutes when Stephanie popped in needing someone to cover a shift at the post. "I gotcha." It would give me some time to collect myself and pray. To remember why I was here. This was not a vacation. I didn't need to be putting energy into chasing girls, I had a world to save. Obviously it ended up being a night that I was meant to work the post, as if it wouldn't be, I'd quit being surprised by this point really. As if it hadn't been orchestrated for me to get run off by Megan at the exact moment to get tapped for duty at Echo3 just minutes before my right place right time path crossed with another's. Ernie walked in the door.
Step Nineteen:

Aho. My man. Brother. I got up and hugged him as promised and we sat reminiscing about the first night that we had shared at this very fire. Rebuilding it after Benny dug it out and then cooking late night elk and bacon. The first meal I'd cooked on this incredible journey. We laughed about the ridiculous looking smoke shifting contraption and were in awe of the transformations that we'd both been through since that early winter night. I talked more about how I had missed him, called him here, in fact, I'd also been missing Ronan and talking about him, so he should be walking in any minute.

At camp, it's just a day at a time, and most of them seem like three or four rolled into one. It's only when you looked back at the winter as a whole that you started to see the scope of what we'd all been through. Sounds a lot like that evolution thing we've been talking about. He'd missed all of the crazy january stuff, so I filled him in on the bridge and the raids and Pete's arrest and the secret planes. The narrative was much like this one, woven around the recent evolution of camp style cuisine. I promised to make pizza soon, plus he had walked back through our door on wild buffalo steak night. Perfect timing. Always. It was so good to hear his voice. So soothing. He was also a big mentor in patience, humility and understanding. Never telling anyone how to live, but always showing. Ok, enough about Ernie, Megan hadn't chased me away from girls altogether.

I told him about my last shift here and the propane heater. I could almost laugh about the absurdity by this point. But not quite. I mean, it was basically summertime. The bottles of water here weren't even that frozen. As long as they were near the fire. Six foot radius. They used to freeze within two. But if you want to be a superhero, you gotta suck it up sometimes. Plus you gotta take whatever water you can get. We ran out most days. Dan and Wendy were making daily runs to fill up a tank in the back of his truck, plus as many jugs as they could fit, but we used it all up everyday.

It's important. It's life. It's why we were here. It's the most necessary component of survival. For all species. Plant and animal. It's the most powerful medicine. Even stronger than onions and garlic and pot and elderberry put together. It clears mucus and helps along every single function of the human body. It is the function of the human body. I love you water.

Some people still don't believe in it's importance, obviously, but I've even heard people say that they just don't like it. What? Most of our bodies are water. And bacteria. Don't like those either. Most of the Earth is water. Yet somehow there is a worldwide water shortage. This can't be a scam, even hollywood celebrities have jumped on board to help ship water to places devoid of it. Just throw it in with the food we're already delivering. Or better yet, just sell them back the water we pumped out of their own lakes. California has been in a drought for as long as I've been alive, but even they don't seem to believe it. People turn on the tap and there it is, it's always been there, no worries. Or "Oh, I have a well, so that doesn't affect me. That's just in California, and an earthquake is going to knock them into the ocean soon anyway. They'll have plenty of water then."

All of our water is connected. Even your well. It's fifth grade science. The water cycle is how the planet is able to produce life at every corner and as with everything else, we're destroying it. There's of course the obvious things like unleashing a three foot oil pipe into a major riverway, but even some that live by that river don't seem to get it. So how can we expect anyone else to? My own family doesn't understand why I would be fighting for the water over twenty-four hours away when there are, yep, starving people to feed at home.

All of the water is connected. If hundreds of gallons of oil pour into the missouri river, that leads straight to an ocean which is directly connected to the supposedly separate other three. There aren't four different oceans, it's all one body of water with chunks of land sticking out of it. Turtle Island is just that, one of a few big islands in a massive, life creating ocean. If the water of the Earth gets tainted, runs black as the Lakota prophecy suggests, then we all suffer. That's why running away to an ecovillage in spain isn't an option, still sounds fun though, maybe after we save the world.

So what's the water shortage all about? All this oil stuff is starting to make me sick...

Well, according to the georgia guidestones, the world can only sustain a human population of five hundred million. We're currently headed to eight billion sardined in tight. So we're at sixteen times capacity of the Earth. At least according to some mysterious monument that's aligned with celestial energies in good ol peachy georgia and nicknamed the stonehenge of america. Rednecks.

Not Quite. These anonymously authored twenty foot high giant slabs of granite, have their own ten commandments engraved in eight different languages and seem to be trying convey the rules for rebuilding civilization, after whatever disaster the monument was built to endure, occurs. Here's what it says just in case you're reading this post apocalypse and can't make it down to the south:

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

2. Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.

3. Unite humanity with a living new language.

4. Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.

5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.

6. Let all nations rule internally, resolving external disputes in a world court.

7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.

8. Balance personal rights with social duties.

9. Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite.

10. Be not a cancer on the earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.

A lot of that stuff sounds like the future I'm fighting for. A population in balance with nature. Reproduction based on fitness and diversity. Truth and love and harmony with the infinite. A request not to be a cancerous organism that hogs all of the nature. It's been there for almost forty years but we don't know who erected it, or their true intention, especially considering that it also sounds a lot like some new world order conspiracy mumbo jumbo.

We could talk about the freemasons and the illuminati and the strings they've been pulling behind the scenes to control every aspect of the systematic farming of our species all day. And at the end of that day, you'll either call me a conspiracy crackpot, or you'll pick up what I'm putting down yet still conclude that "It's too big to stand up against. That's just the way it is." So we don't have to talk about that silly old secret society that may or may not be pulling the strings of our uncivilization, we can just talk about well known factual people who can easily be researched and their evils illuminated.

Specifically, the Rothschilds. The richest family in the world whose combined worth is in the trillions. So how'd they get all that money? Hard work and the sweat of their brow I bet, right? Well, kinda. It really started before the Rothschild name was even known, back in medieval times before the goldsmiths controlled the worlds money supply, so back when they actually had to do a days work. Then they started offering the service of storing people's gold so that they didn't have to carry it around with them, they issued receipts which were far easier to be traded and so they were. Then they figured out that most people weren't ever taking their gold out of storage, they just traded the paper proxies, which sparked the hatchment of a plan that pushed the evolution of a dollar farther than the discovery of gold itself.

Fractional reserve banking. They just made up ten times as many receipts as the gold they had on the shelf and loaned it all out. Looking out for small business owners and obviously farmers. At interest of course. So now the goldsmiths were amassing wealth as debts were paid and when people occasionally did climb out of the hole and turn a profit, they quickly let the bank hold on to it for them, which they just as quickly loaned out for ten times face value.

So now we see the mechanics of how some unscrupulous racketeers faked it til they made it. Let's give that another seven hundred years and here comes the first Rothschild. Now it's in the mid 1700's, you know, just before the american revolution, that time we stood up against the tyranny of an oppressive nation to defend our homeland and our freedom from the greed of an evil empire. Eventually the Rothchild name had enough money to stop lending to agriculturalists and start lending to countries, and when do countries need the most money? Yep, war. The Rothschilds have profited from both sides of every american war since we won our "independence." And possibly orchestrated them too.

Let's look at the first one. The colonies were of course owned by private companies in england, corporations owned by the very merchants who were robbing all sorts of foreign lands of their natural resources. The colonies were set up as thirteen divisions of their english parent companies and thus the America Corporation began. It was originally called the Virginia Company, and has exploded into the most profitable venture into capitalism yet, at least for the Rothschilds. Mayer Rothschild, a money pusher in germany, was ready to invest in a country and already supplied england with troops for hire, paid mercenaries, sound familiar? America seems to be crushing it, let's buy them.

Ben Franklin claims that america's success is due to the colonies printing their own currency based on the market needs. Rothschild convinces britain to illegalize colonial printing of currency. Can't they just use some beads or something? No, they must borrow from the Bank of England. The Bank of England was of course a privately owned company and operated through the fictitious practice of fractional reserve lending. Including lending to it's home country of britain for fifty years of war, which was bankrupting britain and making the bank filthy rich. The bank was happy to help britain and bailed them out, but only with the provision of the privately owned bank becoming the central financial institution for all of england, and be allowed to print money at their whim. So now american colonies (or companies) had to take out loans and pay interest to a private corporation so that they could conduct commerce and pay taxes back to england. America went from the land of plenty to the land of empty real fast and soon it was time to revolt. And guess what? It wasn't about any tea party, at least that's what Ben said when he credited the war solely to the illegalization of printing money. So we won that one, america could be great again while england went even broker. The Bank of England was still fine, and the Bank of Germany, and the Bank of France, all private companies in charge of a nation's money and all owned by the same family.

Time for the First Bank of the United States I guess. The Bank of England sent a representative to the newly independent nation with the hopes of instating a privately held central bank, backed by money from the Bank of England. Franklin was outspoken about the evils of privatized banking and BoE's representative was getting nowhere, the new country's constitution even specifically states that congress will be in charge of issuing money, no evil corporations allowed.

Then Ben Franklin died and it was BoE's chance. Their representative was very knowledgeable about money and banks and interest and that kinda stuff, so without the adamant opposition of Franklin, he was appointed as the first Secretary of the Treasury of the infantile united states. Yeah, Alexander Hamilton worked for the Bank of England and immediately put into place the banking policies that he'd been hired to install into the foundation of america. Then he was assassinated during a "duel."

The bank loaned like crazy, convinced americans to invest in their great country and to be loud and proud, then they called in all of the loans and crippled the nations economy. For the second time. It was now clear that the Bank of England still owned america. We weren't happy about it. Jefferson says that the bank is more dangerous than the army. Rothschild says that 'he who controls the money of a nation, controls the nation.' Jackson says that he agrees and that america will not be renewing the charter for the First Bank of the United States. We're on to the next generation of Rothschild by now and he threatens the US with war if we don't renew their grip on our government. We don't. They attack in 1812 and cripple our economy. Again.

Always happy to help, they get us back on our feet in exchange for, yep, renewing the banks charter. Still owned by BoE. Jackson would continue to attempt to take down the central banking system and would simultaneously be the first president to experience an assassination attempt. He thought the two were connected.

Now Napoleon started calling out france for the corruption of their privatized central bank. Bank of France, of course being another Rothschild company, funded the countries that Napoleon attacked, leaving them deep in debt to the same family that already owned america. Napoleon wouldn't bend to the bank, so instead he sold a bunch of land to the united states, the Louisiana Purchase, who technically were already owned by the Bank of England. Sorry Napoleon, it's a shame you didn't know that the Rothschild pyramid scheme already bought the land of the free. Rothschild didn't really own all of England though. Not yet.

He smuggled some gold through france to help defeat Napoleon. Now he knew the outcome of the war before the media did, remember that this is all before he bought it and everything, and so he started on his third and biggest revenue stream off of the napoleonic wars. He goes to the stock market and starts selling british bonds, people know that he is in the know, so they think this means that england lost to Napoleon. Everyone sells in a panic, prices plummet and the british stock market collapses. Rothschild sweeps up behind everyone and buys the entire country for pence on the pound. The real war news rolls in, stocks go back up and Rothschild has made out like a bandit who stole more money in a day, than Napoleon did in his entire life. Next war.

Well this one's america vs. america, so probably no Bank of Rothschild involved. Actually, let's speed this up a bit so we can get back to some food, I'm getting kinda hungry. The civil war wasn't about slavery, not really, it was about money, obviously. The south dealt heavily with england and the cotton trade. Lincoln didn't want to get involved with the bank so he started printing his own "greenbacks." England and france couldn't have that type of behavior, so they helped the south while instigating racial issues, through their connections with the kkk, that would divide our country forever and keep the masses from uniting against them, but I think that was just a bonus play. The south would have won, but russia came to help Lincoln at the last minute. See, russia's not so bad. Lincoln had almost made it without a loan, but was finally forced to create the National Bank Act, indebting the country to the very bankers that he was outspoken against. He still despised the central banks, but before he could shut them back down, well, we all know how his story ends.

So you get the jist, they're bad people. Let's talk about something besides all those silly wars. In no particular order: Gold standard - they own all the gold - bad. They pull out the gold \- depression - bad. The New Deal - deficit spending - bad. They infiltrated the democratic party and turn it from conservative to liberal to further push their agenda- freakin liberals. JP Morgan, american money man who both created and bailed out the stock market crash by printing money from nowhere is discovered to be an employee of the Rothschilds - bad. JP financed Rockafeller's company Standard Oil - bad. Federal reserve - america's brand new privately held central bank that was passed while congress was on a break \- bad. Really bad. They own the debt of our country. They determine the price you pay for everything, they print money out of thin air, they set your interest rates and they are a privately owned business who has never been audited because...

They own the IRS. It is simply a collection agency for the income tax which goes straight to the Fed. We pay our taxes directly to the Rothschilds, well, I don't, lol. Then Kennedy finally came around and tried to shut down the Federal Reserve, what ever happened to him anyway? Nowadays their family is massive, they demanded incest for a long time to keep the money and secrets in the bloodline, and now they have representatives embedded in most governments globally. They now own our country, our bank, our media, our oil, our pharmaceuticals and of course our food supply. Through their various family agents, they own our politicians, especially the ones that make it to the CEOs office.

Why do you think we call him a president? We're a corporation. The states are companies, but that's also what we call our for-profit military units. Our flag is a star spangled "banner" ad and just regurgitates the same colors of our parent corporation, the Bank of England. Your birth certificate is issued by the department of commerce. You are just a number. America is a corporation owned by the Rothschilds. So who are the Rothschilds? They are the "they" that everyone keeps talking about. The powers that be. The evil empire. The dark side. The puppeteers who profit from war. Including our current battle. They are dapl. They run all three independent global control centers, cities of great power that are exempt from their hosting nation's rule. London, the financial hub, the vatican for religion, and washington's military.

I've only lent you a fraction of the facts, but even that's enough to make you want to consider the other rumor, the one about them being the illuminati. The new world order. The ones behind all the bad stuff as they work towards a global government and economy, the most central private bank yet. Yeah, they want to own the world. They use war, fear and staged tragedy to profit and strip us of civil liberties, thereby keeping us plugged into the machine. They are the matrix. Just look at the US dollar, I'm sorry, the Federal Reserve Note. There's all sorts of sketchy stuff on there, like the all seeing eye of the pyramid, the illuminated one, the illuminati, and some of the latin even translates to new world order, or new social order. Who even cares about the conspiracy stuff though, the Federal Reserve is for real and it's in charge of the country. It's privately owned and isn't afraid to kill those speaking out about it, um, anyway...

Just remember that their mainstream media is why we laugh at hippies, protesters and conspiracy theorists, the three groups of people that are willing to speak out against them. But did they secretly put these massive tablets out here to push the world towards singular control? Who knows? I'm thinking not. I mean, there's some really good stuff in here about science, but I guess even an evil corporation could possibly realize that the planet is important at some point. It's vague, but doesn't even mention money, so that's cool. I'll take it like anything else, I'll absorb what feels right. I'll continue to prize truth and beauty and love and seek harmony with the infinite while I leave room for nature. I'll make room for nature in fact. I'd like to unite humanity, not in some new economic prison, but in the next step of our species' evolution. United in love. And a population in perpetual balance with nature, that sounds like exactly what I've been talking about this whole time. It scares people because that's a small percentage of us, so who gets to live? Let's assume that there's not a secret society intentionally trying to reduce our numbers, oh, like by poisoning the worlds dwindling water supply and using the bottled reserves for leverage into the charter of the first privatized Bank of the Earth. Oh yeah, water, they own that too.

We'll get back to saving the water in a bit, let's try to wrap our heads around this whole population thing. So they say we're sixteen times overpopulated, sixteen times the life sustaining capabilities of the Earth. So imagine that your average household of 2.5 suddenly has to accommodate for 40. I think you'd start to understand quickly that you'd run short on just about everything. Can't some of those house guests just build a new house? I've heard lots of people insist that we're not overpopulated, there's still plenty of room in other states, north dakota included. Just have to ship in food and water. No problem, we have plenty of oil for that. Well, while we're feeling mathy, let's just see how on Earth we got into all this mess. We'll go a little farther into the past than our last flashback.

Way back in the day, before any bad stuff ever happened, we could just walk around eating and drinking whatever and whenever we wanted. It took millions of years to become us, and agriculture has only been around for a small sliver of that, so obviously we did just fine. Food was abundant and highly vibrating. The water was crystal clear. Pollution didn't exist. Then somebody got scared, quit believing in tomorrow, and plowed an acre to grow their own future. We could call him Cain, but for the sake of secularity, let's call him Roth. The first "fud" farmer. The first time that life had been held captive and grown against it's will. Not the last.

Ok, well there was still plenty to go around. There were a few individuals that didn't eat as much, but honestly, it made their species stronger as a whole. Having to work harder for food provides the environmental conditions that push evolution. You're welcome. Then Roth the farmer took a wife and started a family. They didn't even have to limit their intake. So through the surplus of food they were able to have more kids than they naturally would have out in the real world. More food equals more population. Once those kids took spouses and had kids of their own, the single acre just wasn't enough to provide for them all. No biggie, there's still a lot of land everywhere, so nobody's gonna complain about doubling the size of the farm.

So now we have two humble acres tilled by the sweat of their brows. Hard work, so it must be a noble way to live, far more respectable than just picking food when you're hungry. The trees they cut down certainly died, as well as the tiny creatures, but the big ones that really mattered would be fine. We don't eat bugs anyway. And humans were at the top of the food chain, so a couple of acres missing wasn't starving any of them to death. Plus, the farm was doing great, so much food, and then all the grandkids got married.

The family's empire was strong. They could start having even bigger families with lots of children now. The more kids the better really, we need help doing all these toilsome farm chores, cultivation is hard work it turns out. Especially now that we had to double our acreage again with all these new hungry farmhands running around. So now we're up to four acres of agriculture vs. a whole world full of nature, far from global domination and... what was that thing again, overpopu... nope, never heard of it. So the third generation cultivated 4 acres, who begat the fourth who needed 8, who begat the fifth and needed 16, and begat the sixth for 32, and seventh needed 64, and the eighth 128, and ninth 256, and then 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32,768, and once we get to the twenty first generation we hit 1,048,576 acres of planet commited to growing food for one family of one species. Need I continue?

They're doing great, the most successful land grab in all of the newborn system of capitalism and the first family fortune is born. So what do you think Roth's children's population is looking like at this point? Oh, it's up there, but what we've been doing has worked great so far, for us at least, so just keep on trucking. Truck the food all over the place. And water. The fertile land ran out a long time ago and we started artificially irrigating our "family owned farm." We removed water from the abundant rivers to fuel the plants that we decided should live. But we weren't being greedy, we were giving the water back to the plants. Back to God. Free of charge. It would still be a part of the magnificent water cycle of the Earth. And as far as the rest of mankind, the majestic kings of the planet, well they all married into the family as our farms grew. Nobody would dare try to survive out there in the real world, there hasn't been a fertile crescent in over ten generations. It's just a handed down myth, something about a magic garden and a fruit tree, I can't recall exactly, all I remember is that the agriculturalist lived and the other one died. So yep, we're doing the right thing alright.

Fast forward a few more generations and let's think of where all the water could have gone. The US consumes water at twice the rate of anyone else, and our water usage increases at twice the rate of population growth. Oh boy. Well, we already covered the irrigation of a new massive supply of food, check, it's actually 70% of our national water overusage, but that works its way back in eventually, right? Well... It is true that the average american throws away 24 pounds of food each month, and the mainstream don't do compost, so that's all sitting in a landfill somewhere. Most people also don't compost their own waste, so there's a lot of gallons just flushed right down the drain. 7,000,000,000 gallons a day to be exact. Meanwhile, there are 1,200,000,000 people without access to water for drinking, and the lucky ones only have to walk 3 hours, uphill both ways, to fetch a pail of it. Shame.

It takes 2,000 gallons for every cow on an industrial farm and 30 gallons for a single gallon of milk. Plus, all the water used in equipment there, and in every other industry in the world. Like how it takes 40,000 gallons of water to manufacture an oil guzzling car. Or like nuclear power production and stuff. But really most of that nuclear waste ends up back in the global supply anyway, like in the Fukushima radioactive water spill a few years ago. They are still using the oceans water to dissipate the plutonium and uranium surplus radiating from their melted nuclear reactor cores. Still today. Our ocean. The best part is that america built the reactors, so yeah, we nuked japan yet again, and this meltdown was even bigger than chernobyl, but it's cool, the nuclear energy industry are big supporters of Obama.

And with all this hard work that agriculture pushed on us, we need to blow off some steam. So how about we chlorinate a bunch of swimming pools and giant water parks, just like the brand new one that opened this season at Disney, amid a global water crisis. Don't get me started on Disney though, that'll take a whole other book. Not a good company. Plus there's tons of other water wasters, like the hundred gallons of water it takes to wash an oil guzzling suv. Not even necessary for our continued dependence on their operation, instead strictly for vanity's sake. Pretty vain indeed. Especially with the chemicals it adds to everyone's water table. Dirty oil no prob, dirty Earth whatevs, dirty water, we'll live, dirty car... OMG!!! That was a slight low blow, if you actually added up all that we use for carwashes and pools and dishes and baths and watering the lawn and even all the water that we drink... that's still just a single percent of the water pumped out of our mother for the explicit use of mankind. Mine.

Now we do clean some water. Reuse and recycle. In fact, water treament plants are already in place to clean the eventual dapl leak. They actually said that. They built a water treatment plant so that the reservation would still have access to clean water after a leak. What? They knew it would leak, always do, and this one already has. 200,000 gallons have already leaked during a single test. F plus.

Wonder how much they'll charge to clean it? The bottle of water that I grabbed to read about its "advanced filtration and reverse osmosis" claims to also include "flavor enhancing minerals." Um... I happen to like water flavored water. This bottle included calcium chloride and sodium bicarbonate to cover up the taste of sewage, yeah... You shouldn't have to read your water's ingredients. Of course, bottled water is also in a bottle, plastic, not healthy to consume out of and not healthy for the environment, but is that the worst of it?

Well... we are admittedly in a water crisis, so bottling it to send to the thirsty makes sense, right? Well... where did all that bottled water come from? Well... the depleted global water cycle that can't keep up because of the billions of gallons just sitting in bottles across the globe. Countless bottles in refrigerators, coolers, offices, pallets stacked high in warehouses and a case of frozen ones at Echo3. We removed precious water, sometimes even to help treat a drought elsewhere, and now it's trapped in storage. Unable to evaporate into the clouds. Unable to absorb into the ground and work its way to the ocean. Just like a gas shortage created by a manufactured gas scare, we're out of water because we put it all into bottles. Duh. Who could have ever seen that one coming? Who could have realized that bottling up all the water would lead to us running out of unbottled water. Um, how about those that stood to profit when bottled water was all that was left, the very water bottlers that got us into this mess. Gotta hand it to them, they're good. Agriculture laid the perfect framework for selling the masses something that used to just be free and abundant. Through fear, they grew a population that couldn't possibly survive without them.

I'm starting to be a little less impressed with the oil industry. They just kinda seem like hangers on. Like leeches on the self fulfilling prophecies of agriculture and the untapped market of the bottled water business plan. Oil is just a symptom. We said it ourselves, you can't drink oil. It had no place back on that one acre farm next to the garden of eden. Oil works for agriculture, plain and simple, an exclusive contract. Sure, tractors need gas, but oil is used for a lot of other things too. Nope. It's just for agriculture. Well, for overpopulation, but we already understand that the two are the same thing. The population is just the artificially stimulated customer base of the agriconomy.

Back on Roth's farm, were there cars? Well, no, everybody lived in the same neighborhood, where would they go? It wasn't until there were too many people to live comfortably, that they started migrating to places that simply weren't comfortable to live in. No food, so burn gas to deliver it across the globe. No water, burn more gas. Oh, you're too cold? You're trying to live in a place that you're not evolved to survive in? You left the absolute most ideal environment for your physical well being and now you aren't comfortable? Well, just burn some more gas and warm things up. Globally. Cities, roads, pipelines, more gas. Industry's gonna need a lot too, have to build machines to revolutionize agriculture so that a few mega farms can provide food to all those city folk. We couldn't even escape it to support our unsustainable population at camp. Chainsaws, gas. Water runs, gas. Back up generators, gas. Snowmobiles... priceless.

Oh, they used gas alright, and while they could be used for work sometimes, the only work I could justify them with was training to ride a snowmobile. On-the-job training. It was awesome. It would be cool if it was a solar sled, but maybe one day. The hypocrisy isn't lost on me, but I couldn't pass it up. It could very likely be a skill that I'm going to want to have once global warming creates the next ice age. I know it's confusing, sorta like a jumbo shrimp kinda thing.
Step Nineteen:

I was gearing up to grill some lunch when I saw Smokey letting a couple of people ride James's snowmobile down the frozen river. Uh, I wanna try. I went over and milled about to try and get a turn. Harry went first and what felt like fast to him, looked pretty slow from our observation point. Bill gave it a try, determined to let it rip, said he felt like he was going 70, but it hardly looked faster than Harry. Then Smokey got on it, had to show you boys how it was done. He opened the throttle wide and took off. I had started to consider that from our angle, maybe it just looked slower than it actually was, nope, Smokey was flying. Almost literally. Then he cut up the bank in front of us and did a bunny hop to land at our feet. Textbook.

Finally it was my turn. He made some joke about me being slow, but I'd already taken off in my mind and couldn't hear him. I gathered my bearings with the acceleration while I drove up muddy main street before I dropped in. I've ridden motorcycles a lot and a jetski once over the summer, this was only a little similar, but had the same devastating consequences if I happen to freeze up. I wasn't worried. The river seemed solid. People bigger than me had gone already. I had heard that near some of the edges, where the water was shallower, it was a little slushy, but as long as I kept going I'd be ok.

I centered myself in the river, determined to make Smokey proud, and pushed the thumb lever throttle all the way down. Full speed ahead and hardly any more weight than a jumbo shrimp slowing it down. I hoped it looked fast as I passed by the boys. It did. The surface was bumpy from all of the other tracks, I bet fresh powder would be a way safer ride. With my scrawniness as the only down force, it just bounced around on top of it all and I used my legs as the shocks to keep myself steady. They had warned me about the rope bridge used to cross the river, so as I saw it approaching I slowed down and ducked, a high speed clothesline would not be fun. Perception was tough and it looked deadly, but as I ducked and passed under it, I realized that it was still several feet above my head. There was also the foot rope lying on the ice though. The curved front of the skis below should ride right over the top of it, but it's certainly not impossible to snag it and flip the whole thing. I slowed down on this first pass and as soon as I was clear, I laid into it again.

It had a speedometer and I knew that James had gotten it up to ninety, I was only at sixty so far though, so ninety was gonna be a stretch. Grandpa Grant had reportedly gotten his up to one-twenty out on the big river, taking it all the way to the casino. No way, he was nuts. Like, he'd been through it all and had nothing to lose, certifiably out there. Plus he'd been the world champion bareback rider back in his day, so he knew how to ride stuff. And it was just a figure of speech, he obviously had things to lose, mainly the girls. He'd hook a sled up to the back of his and give them rides to Turtle Island and back. "Hey girls, let's snowball dapl."

So got it to 60, stayed on it til 75 which came up quick, then it crept to 80, then 85, this thing was hauling. Bumpy, and any wrong jerk of the handlebars would impend doom for sure, but I was so close. My hat had flown off at seventy, tears and blurred vision kicked in at eighty and I had made it this far... I don't mess around. 88, 89, 90 and let go. Now I had to get it to stop before I hit the upcoming turn, if I cut the steering too soon it would be a triple lutz and I wasn't even in view of Smokey anymore. Did it. I had done it. Take that James. (The next day he told me he hit 91.)

I cut it around and it tipped up on one ski, dropped it back down and took off, snagged my hat and hardly slowed down for the rope this time. I floored it again, had to regain top speed as I flew back past the boys, circled around and jumped it up, just like my dude Smokey. Whew. That was freakin cool. I had earned my position on the team. When the fan gets hit, I'll be one of the ones who can be counted on to escape dodge. In my head, I'm always wearing my apron on covert-ops, ninety mile an hour snowmobiling to escape dapl and through their chemical vision scopes they're like, "Is that an... apron?" You guys want a buffalo steak? That reminds me, I still gotta cook lunch.

So I was heating the grill up and scraping the grate clean from the night before, not too clean, that's where all the flavor comes from. I loved grilling out for lunch, I got to be out in the action instead of cooped up in a tent, and I got all sorts of visitors stopping by to check out my action. So I'm scraping it with a brand new grill tool that I'd "conveniently" found in the kitchen move, I get it clean enough to throw on some leftover steaks for a warm up and all of a sudden the entire grill goes toppling backwards, off of the porch and into the muddy snow. While it's on full blast. Dapl.

Luckily I was able to avoid an actual full blast and cut the tank off while I tried to assess what had happened. It definitely had a loose leg, always had, every time we moved it, the leg fell off. But it had worked fine all winter like that. Bill and Daniel had been behind me in the kitchen and came rushing out to make sure that I was alive, all I could do was laugh. What else was there to do? Everyone was safe. The grill was just a material object. It was super useful, but I could live without it. In fact, it was already starting to deteriorate after moving it around through the elements all winter. The fall may or may not have bent the lid even more. "It wasn't me." (I didn't mention it earlier, but Carson loved to use the song lyric and a sneaky grin as his primary alibi. It became a common retort around camp, with the irony being that most of the time, it actually was him.)

The three of us picked up the toppled grill, it was hot, but we back down from no challenge. Especially if food is involved. A few steaks had been flung into the snow. Dapl snow. No problem though, we'd just char off the silver nitrate and no one would be any the wiser. We're talking wild buffalo here, it was still better than any of that other stuff I'd been serving. We were back in position and fired it up, nothing to see here.

Apparently when I'd been cleaning it, the grill's unlevel footing had let it walk back to the very edge of the porch, and as I was scooting a steak into the proper position, the grill scooted into the wrong one. I'd always been cooking in the snow with the feet embedded in the ice, the grill sinking into a glacier was always of more concern than toppling over. Luckily, I reverse osmosised it and figured out what had happened, I had plans for the grill and couldn't risk dumping brats and pretzel buns into the abyss.

Mmm... they were good. Don't know what else I can say, I cooked 'em, we ate 'em. Soft delicious pretzel buns, I'd never had them before but now I'm a fan. Go gluten. I had considered moving the grill, but not because of the newfound danger, I laugh at danger remember, but James was heading up the construction of a monstrous bonfire and fireside brats sounded pretty tasty.

Now that the snow was starting to soften up a bit, our crews were focusing a lot of time and energy on digging out collapsed and abandoned tents and structures. We were not going to let some silly flood wash the camp into the river that we were here to protect. Absolutely not. The proponents of kicking us out used the certainty of the flood as fuel for our eviction. The limited mainstream media coverage we received, tried to frame us as polluters who cause more harm than good. We absolutely were not going to let that happen. We'd been planning all winter to start the clean up as soon as possible, and we did. Honestly, even before it was possible, but we often did the impossible, no big. Even being short handed and with some survival priorities at play, we were getting it done. Everyday. It was even becoming apparent that it was not going to be the impossible task that they'd been trying to scare us off with. We were succeeding, and as layers of snow melted, we'd be able to stay ahead of it and leave no trace.

Unless of course they held up their threat of releasing the dam which would force us to make an emergency exit and flee from camp. The associated press would certainly report that we had abandoned our trash and the flood they had been trying to warn us about had washed it all into the river. I somehow doubt that they would mention the part about being so sure it would flood because they were creating it themselves. But for now we were on it. We repurposed what we could, took bags of unused clothing to donation centers in town and stacked up all the burnable pallets, platforms and scrap lumber. We were going to have a good old fashioned bonfire. Dapl just hated us. Trying to crush us over and over and here we are, singing songs and laughing around a bonfire with pretzel dogs.

We actually ended up not burning it that night, James and a team were driving a load of supplies to another camp a few hours away and weren't coming back until the next day, but that didn't stop dapl from stopping in. I was making a pit stop by the compost depository on the way home and a pick up truck was creeping down main street, one that I didn't recognize. I certainly didn't know everybody and new people still showed up occasionally, so I didn't really think anything of it. Then it ran off of the side of the packed road and into the soft snow on the side, where it immediately sunk in and got stuck.

I was glad I was right there, it wasn't super stuck and I was able to push him right out. Simple mistake. So I just checked in with him to make sure that he was good and knew where he was going. He was a little off, either just disoriented in the white landscape or maybe trying to infiltrate a place, late at night, that he knew nothing about. I asked if he knew where he was going. He said yeah, acted like he'd been here before and pointed down a road on the right. Cool. All are welcome. Even infiltrators.

Then he made the turn way too early and drove right through a super soft snowbank that no one who had ever been on that road before would mistake for their path. He was definitely not from around here. He was stuck, beyond my assistance. "Where you stayin at? May have to wait til the morning to get you pulled out." I had him. But then someone who lived in the tipi that his lights where shining into and his revving engine was vibrating, popped their head out and offered up some straps. They hooked him up and pulled him out, I hung out just long enough to make sure that he got the truck to where it was going safely and I went to bed. Couldn't be having a daplbot freezing to death out here, fox news would have a field day with that one. Didn't they hear that it was cold out here?

I couldn't stay out all night on covert-ops anyway though, the strangest thing was happening to me... I was feeling... sick. I know, me, touter of onions and all things anti-mucus, felt sick. Not full on sick yet, but I could feel it coming. I guess it could still possibly just be lack of sleep and dehydration. So I went to bed and drank some water. Not in that order.

And I woke up sick. Was it at all possible that I'd overdosed on onions? Or diluted their power? Built a tolerance to them? The last few days, and three times yesterday, I'd eaten the entire trifecta of burn with different friends. I had to prove it wasn't a prank half the time. Sometimes, especially if you are known as a jokester, it's hard to convince someone to do something as outlandish as eating raw onions, garlic and ginger. They jump right on board for tear gas though. They still wouldn't be sure of my sincerity, but if I was that committed to the prank, then I'd gotten them fair and square. Every time, if they could finish at least, it worked. They coughed up stuff and felt better. People were on board. But was there a limit? I don't think so. I doubt it. Unless I had broken up so much stuff deep down that my body was going to be sick while I purged it. I would reemerge anew with a higher vibration, and maybe telekinesis.

I landed on something non onion related, but I would certainly use them to treat it. I got up and stumbled to the mess hall, drank a few cups of water, ate the medicine, made a small batch of brew and headed to the buffalo tent where I knew there was a bottle of elderberry. I got there and it wasn't crowded yet, still morning time, and they could tell right away that I was sick. I tried to smoke a cig, no good. They had a bowl I could hit, good. They asked a question they already knew the answer to. "Onions?"

Leonard had told me about his own passed down onion concoction. I haven't tried it yet, but I will. Take a jar, load it with onion slices and then fill it up with honey. Refrigerate it overnight and a foam will rise to the top, he said that the foam is the best natural cough syrup ever. I bet it is. Somehow, I'm looking forward to the next time I'm sick so that I can give it a go. It was him and Gloria there and just being in in the room with my two closest spiritual mentors was helping already. Then Ernie walked in. Better now. Not. I was actually sick this time. I'd also been pulling overnight shifts by a campfire in-between overnight shifts chasing off girls, I probably needed to keep sleeping. They made me lay down on the cot right there by the warm stove. Maybe they knew that I didn't burn fires at my house, hmmm, wonder why I was sick? JK, that wasn't it, that only made me stronger. I told them to wake me by three, I still had to cook dinner and all. Rosebud doesn't go hungry.

Dapl doesn't stop drilling just because I'm sick. And dapl was definitely drilling, not cold enough to break bits these days, you could feel the ground vibrating when they were boring through our planet. Sure, we were still here, they couldn't figure out how to get rid of us, but we couldn't figure out how to stop them either. The whole camp was ever so slightly shaking, nothing we could do, just a taste of what's to come as big oil comes up with more and more destructive methods of extracting crude. And crude ways of extracting destruction. At least when the earthquakes start, we'll know that it's coming from our team. Team Earth vs team money. The final showdown. Our planet fighting back, destroying those that are trying to defeat her and the universe knows that we're just fine. We've been taught to survive. Shown to believe. Just like when the temperatures here shut them down while only making us stronger. We're ready. Are you?

I woke up on my own, the sleep had helped a bit, but I needed more. While I had been lying there, I also considered the smell of the buffalo tent. I liked it. Smelled like a sacred buffalo hide. But what was I breathing? We were scraping layers of fat and flesh off of it. It was dry. There was dust on the floor after you scraped for a while. None of us wore breathing protection. The gas masks still had another toxic residue on them. Traditionally, pelts are tanned outside in the open air. If it hadn't been for the extreme temperatures here, we'd probably be doing the same. Could breathing this dust make somebody sick? Quite possibly. I wasn't gonna stop working in here, so I'd better just adapt and get over it.

I went to make more onion juice and sat down for a minute, I was still considering pushing through and doing dinner. I asked Harry and he said that they needed my services, but then Cindy came by, could tell that I was no good and sent me home. Another successful kitchen takeover. Yes ma'am. I even built a fire, first one in a month. I was miserable while I worked on it, but it was a good call. It got it super hot in there. I was gonna sweat this thing out. I had to get up at some point for fear of burning the place down. I hadn't used the stove in so long that I couldn't guarantee that there was nothing remotely flammable within a four foot radius of the fire. It was hot. I had some of that super dry (and possibly dapl) wood left, since I hadn't burned through it like everyone else. I was wrapped up good too, though the blankets had to be just a few degrees off of their melting point. It worked. I was sweating this fire harder than I had for Megan. JK, we were just friends.

I did have a pretty healthy procession of caretakers stop by to nurse me back to health. Or more like back to the kitchen. I had a powerful tea delivered, no onions, but a bunch of stuff I don't even know about, you'll have to buy her book I guess. I could already feel it working as I drank it right before I fell asleep. I also got a pack of the best "tailor made" cigarettes ever. I was too sick to smoke and teased the idea of smokes as a get well present, but once I was better, I was grateful.

I preferred rolling my own. They taste better and are "better" for you than smoking chemicals through a fiberglass filter. Plus it makes the habit more appreciated, not taken for granted, it puts you into a more concentrated state to be able to absorb all the healthy vibrations. It was a little tricky out in the negative forty-five wind chill, and by the end of the season I started suffering from slight motor function loss in my left thumb, but I adapted and learned how to roll one handed. When I'd start rolling one, often someone would offer me a "real cigarette." Uh, I have a real one, thanks though. American spirit rolling tobacco is the best semi-mainstream tobacco I know of, you'd have to poll a hipster to find a more obscure treasure. So it was a big deal if you were looking to manifest a smoke and a spirit appeared. Or a whole pack. Pre-rolled spirits are good, way better than the other brands, and twice over the winter I ran into a variety that I never knew existed before camp. One that I actually prefer over rolling my own. And now I had my very own pack, just you wait til I feel better, I'm gonna smoke 'em til I'm sick. The tan pack, filterless, just a solid cigarette of fancy spirit tobacco, like I had rolled my own, but way better. But smoking's bad, mkay.

I got several food deliveries but couldn't eat. Hug deliveries, I could handle those. And then I got the call I'd been hoping I'd be ready for. Hoping I'd be feeling up to. They were getting ready to light the bonfire. It was such a good stack of wood. I was feeling a lot better. Everyone would be there. This was not the event to miss. So I put on my pants. My big boy pants. My adult decision making pants. I didn't go. I wanted to so bad, but I wasn't quite feeling good enough yet. I could have made it, and had a great time, adrenaline and laughter would have made me feel fine, better even. So I'd have stayed out late, all night, in the cold, and smoke, I'd have smoked my whole new pack of spirits (well, given away half) and I'd feel even worse tomorrow. I had missed today. I had to be back tomorrow. It was the hardest I've ever had to convince myself to stay in a warm bed, but I did it. They said they almost came back and made me get up, at any cost, and it had taken all I had to deny the first invitation, so they'd have won the next one.

They said it was just as incredible as I had imagined. Not the fire, I mean yeah, it was a good one, but the camaraderie. Everyone was there. All of the family. Extended family. Everyone but me. Music and laughs and hugs and kisses. It sounded amazing and I almost wish that I'd have gone. But I live with no regrets. No wishing I'd done something differently, everything happens for a reason. But it would have been cool if I had been there. It would be cool to have film from that night. Not that I would have taken the camera anyway, but it would be cool. Before this winter was over, I'd have plenty of touching moments with the family, times when I looked around and it would start to sink in, just how incredible this experience had been to us all. If I was going to hypothetically wish I'd done something different all winter, it would be going to that fire, but I was sick. And I woke up the next morning feeling great. Hundred percent. That would not have been the case had I gone out all night. It might have been worth it, maybe, but I needed to be better. I couldn't do all that I had to do without a clear head. I had to have my wits about me. The next day we got our final eviction notice. The national guard is coming in with guns and bulldozers.
Step Twenty:

We've heard this one before. Can't you come up with something original? They were giving us three days and then it was on. It was three days last time too. Had someone just accidentally read last months raid threat spam mail? It's whatever though. I don't run from rumors. Other people were though. Scrambling to make a plan. I'm a fan of the no-plan technique, you don't get disappointed that way. I'll just do what feels right, and basically, I'm not leaving until Smokey tells me to. Then Smokey told me to. Well, not exactly, but he told me that he was gonna go and that I probably should too. But James and I already had a plan of sticking it out til the end, I really did love the idea of grilling out as they moved in on us. It'd be almost worth writing a book if we pulled that one off.

So why was this any more real of a threat than the other ones? We'd never backed down before this. They hadn't bought off Smokey had they? No way, but he had people on the outside who were in the know. Someone who explained that this time it was for real. It's a sovereign nation though, how could the US National Guard move in? That would be an act of war, not that it would matter to them that much. I need to stay. I need to film them invading indian country. This is important. Except that it might not be that illegal after all. They'd found a loophole. The landlord was unlocking the door and letting them in. The tribe sold us out. The tribe granted permission for them to raid the camp. Permission for non-tribal police to have jurisdiction on the reservation. They gave dapl the keys. They gave dapl the green light on shutting down the few small voices still here speaking out against them. The tribe sold us out. We were here to help them and they turned on us. Turned on their own people. The tribe got paid off. Now they could just walk right in the front door with whatever guns they wanted to, it wouldn't even be illegal this time.

Black Hoop was still maybe a possible option, maybe. It had been kind of a thing this whole time, back and forth on its availability, I couldn't keep up with it. It was supposed to be owned by the family that had invited us, but then they said that there were actually seven family members that shared control and one was not on board. Then it was a go. Then a no. I saw first hand what happened to the last camp that got set up on top of a hill with a clear view of the daplworks. No thanks. But it was really the only option that made any kind of sense. Plus, Three Feathers and Aintcha were already based up there, oh yeah, I did notice it's been a little quieter around here.

The consensus was that everyone wanted to stay where the people were. They all wanted to stick together. I agreed with this sentiment, but I doubted its feasibility. The buffalo tent needed to stay semi close due to the scale of it's operation, it was important to some of us, but not even on other's radar. There was the camp down in Rosebud, where our tents had gone, but the word was that it wouldn't be ready to accept newcomers for another month. What could be the hold up? Setting up camp? Didn't they know that we were the most qualified team in the country to do that very thing? Well, they might not have had the same faith in us that we shared, they did pull our support after all. Honestly, as good as it sounded to be that close, and near Smokey's home, we'd also lost some faith in Rosebud. We heard about a camp in iowa, it was still fighting the exact same line, still fighting dapl. So this seemed less like giving up and more like moving on to the next battle, plus they already had our facial scans so it would save them some headache. There had already been that Two Rivers camp going in texas, but the farther away we migrated, the more difficult it would be to make multiple trips and get the most out of our supplies. Plus south texas for the summer... I can't do extreme temperatures, sorry.

Then this camp in minnesota surfaced. It was set up by a guy I hadn't known, but he'd been a vital part of camp before my time. He'd built the wigwam and other structures here and he already had a sweat lodge set up there. Big plus. It was also going to be a part of an existing camp on a maple syrup farm, with years of infrastructure and the vision of it becoming a cultural learning camp. Cool. Six hours away. Close enough that we could do day trips with supplies. A few people were leaning this way. I liked it because it was colder than here, no joke, I was already starting to miss the winter. We also remembered that Summer had gone to set up a camp, maybe a place to recover and make a game plan. Sacred Stone was still there, but it seemed like they'd be next, so only a quick fix.

People wanted to know what my plan was. Where was I gonna be cooking? While I shared the sentiment of following the people, which would prove difficult if everyone stuck to that strategy and no one decided, in the end, I knew that I would just do whatever felt right. I knew that none of these felt right. Not yet at least. If anything, the short move to Black Hoop should buy us some time to work on a real plan.

At the time, nothing felt right because we had never surrendered. We were the unwavering Rosebud camp. We grilled steaks during raid threats. And now, within an hour of an eviction notice, everyone is scrambling for a way out? What is happening? This time it's for real? We thought it was real last time. People had evacuated then too, many of the same that were now frantically fleeing, but the strongest ones had all stayed. We were ready for an armed invasion then too. Ready for arrest. We had been ready to get shot at. I had been at least. Had they only stayed because they didn't think it was real? Smokey had suggested that we leave then too. I just didn't understand why we'd been so quick to stand up last time and even quicker to give up now.

Not everybody was though, there were others that felt the way I did. Almost ashamed at how quickly the retreat was happening. We weren't here to run away, those people left a long time ago. We were supposed to be the people we were waiting for. We were supposed to be standing up. If we weren't still fighting, then there would be no one. It would be over. We lose. Ricky was adamant about staying, he didn't come to lose. Like everyone else, he'd sacrificed a lot to be here and wasn't going back to any normal life. This was it. This was life now. Once you get the job offer to save the world, why would you ever do anything else? And once you were at the very front of it all, tasked with being the defender of the planet, where could you even go from here? Why would you want to? James didn't come to lose. Like me, this place had transformed him. Reconnected him to a way of life that he had known before, but this place reminded you just how important it all was. He had been our leader. The people's leader. The leader of the strongest people we could have imagined. How can you walk out on that?

You can probably guess another who was staying. Who gave me a look of disbelief that I had even asked what he was thinking. A man that didn't back down. No matter what. He was here because of his relationship with our mother and he was here to stand up for her, at all costs. I knew that he couldn't be scared by guns and tear gas and armored guards and I knew he wouldn't run from a bulldozer either, he'd sing a prayer with his dying breath as it ran him over if he had to. Pete did not come to lose. Then I heard the most convincing rumor, the one protector that I would follow into any fire or certain death was planning to stay. Grandma Gloria didn't come to lose. Neither did I. So it was settled, only one thing left to do... Pizza.

Nobody on the breakfast crew had touched the buffalo sausage. Buffalo heart sausage. I kept reminding them about it, but no takers. So I eminent domained it and we'd eat the best pizza yet, buffalo and brussel sprout pizza. Sproutalo pie. I'd make them in the mess hall, it was so much better to serve them that way, plus it'd probably be my last time tossing them so I wanted to spend it with my family. I also wanted my quiet time too, a lot to process today, so I'd do all the prep in the kitchen. No meat or meat accessories in the veggies, I could even provide a vegetarian option for the final pizza party, what a guy. Just a lot of butter, salt and pepper... maybe a little lawrys for that extra umph and... they were actually pretty fantastic. I'll probably keep using bacon at home, whatever "home" means now, but I was starting to get the hang of this "cooking" thing.

Sauce, dough and the toppings were all ready. I got a hand moving the grill into the mess hall, it used to be a challenge to move the collapsing contraption through the blizzard, but now it was nearing on impossible. The road between the two tents was a lake with a steep ice wall on the side. At some other places there were pallets and concrete blocks to help cross, but not here. We did it. Really slowly. There was one out-of-the-way path slash obstacle course that could get you there with minimal mud. Definitely missing the cold already.

I ran into Jess, who I hadn't seen since we came up with the valentine idea, so we had a lot to talk about. Then Bill walked up and noted that he'd been watching from afar and wanted details. I was just so glad that they were back to buddies that I could hang out with together, we even chilled back at Bill's house, just like old times. They were bummed that it hadn't ended with true love, but we kinda had bigger issues going on right now anyway. Maybe there was a reason that I didn't have any distractions at the moment.

We also talked about our own plans, they had been warriors at every other stand, so what were their thoughts. They also didn't feel called anywhere else yet. So what were the pros and cons of staying? Or mainly, what good did it do to get arrested? If it made a difference, if it sparked a revolution, then we were all ready for the sacrifice. But did it do the opposite? Did it just hide away the strongest inspirers? Those that could be spreading the word and waking up america? Would that be the ultimate dapl win. Just an inspirocy theory. My thought was that it would give me plenty of time to write a book... about pizza. Oh yeah, pizza, gotta go.

It was the best. The culmination of a winter's worth of research and development, clinical taste test trials, environmental hardships and the best of the best surviving. This pizza had evolved. And Ernie had been there for the very first yeastless midnight pizza session two months ago. Everyone had been impressed and elated back then, who even does ovenless pizza in a blizzard? So for him to be here for this, was priceless. Good thing, since I don't really believe in the whole money system anymore.

He was blown away with the new hand torched crispy crust, and then buffalo heart sausage and brussel sprouts... Show me a better pizza. Certainly none with this amount of love. And the sprouts were bomb, even without the meat accompaniment. I made half with and half without, Simon was long gone, but he'd be proud of our ratio. Although he was probably allergic to vegetables that start with the letter B. Cindy hadn't seen the pizza process before either and had to photodocument the whole thing, and of course I got a few points for the brussel sprouts. Game on?

The energy in the whole place was phenomenal. Nobody knew for sure what they were doing, but there wasn't an air of uncertainty at all. We were absolutely certain that there was nowhere on this still beautiful Earth that any of us would rather be. The question of the night was "What are you doing?" I heard a few answers, some leaners, but mainly undecideds as people waited to see where the family went. Waited to see what felt right. We still had time, nobody was ready to give this place up, we might have to, but tonight we could just live in denial and soak each other up. This had been the coolest, craziest, scariest, amazingest and most certainly coldest thing that any of us had ever done. This place had opened our eyes and our hearts. And doors. We now knew the greatest people in the world. The ones who are going to save it. And we get to help.

They'd already had their big fancy bonfire celebration, but with the news earlier, James proclaimed that we'd be celebrating every night. Another fire was ready to go. I hadn't missed out after all. It wouldn't be the same, but it would still make me pretty happy. I walked by the fire as they were about to light it up and they begged me to stop, I couldn't miss another, doctors orders. "Be right there, just gotta make a pizza delivery to a friend." What, just friends can still eat pizza together.

There were only ten or twelve fire protectors gathered around and I was more in the mood to quietly stare into the blaze, at least as long as I would be permitted, so I took a seat on the unmanned back side. A few people stopped by and we talked about what was next, how it seemed so surreal, and that as weird as it felt, it also felt like it was the right time to transition to the next step. We'd been on our last leg for weeks really, somehow stronger and spirits higher than ever, but worn out, drained and the weakest we'd been at the same time. The mud didn't help. The flood would be tough. A mess. But at least it would give us a challenge to rise up to. Something to defeat and remember why we were here. That we were the lucky ones. We hadn't had any real excitement for a month. Nothing to get us amped up and feel like we were really saving the world. Nothing to make us too busy to feel the ground shaking from them drilling over there. As much as we could talk about this not being a loss, they were still drilling. They didn't just have the highest man-made authority on their side, they had the whole system.

We had still won though, and we had an even higher authority who isn't bound by any system. But the universe truly does work in mysterious ways. I know that now. It may not be in the plan for a lightening bolt to take out the drill pad. Bad stuff has to happen sometimes. It's how we get stronger. We knew we were protected at camp, it was the only explanation to how well we survived through it all, I mean, the snow all around us was poisonous. We were cared for. The Earth looked out for us, but maybe dapl was always meant to drill. We just needed to face that adversity to become who were are now. We were called here, by a higher power, an energy that pulsed in us all and told us that we had no other choice. Many of us left everything, our lives, lifelong careers, mortgages, pot farms, our families. We didn't even understand why. It just felt right. We were brought here to meet and bond together. To learn of the evils of the world and make it a better place for all. To evolve. And to wake up the planet. We did that. We won.

At our peak, we were fifteen thousand strong. They all dropped their lives to come speak out. Hundreds of thousands of others supported us from home, grateful that we were fighting for their safety. We inspired camps across the country to stand up. We united the indigenous tribes of the continent, something unheard of before this. We had water protectors here from around the globe. We even had the UN show up to investigate the human rights violations that we were facing. People saw us. Our families that would have otherwise turned the channel and assumed that fox news had it right, would instead question what they were told by the tv, for the first time ever. We convinced a hippie music guy to give up his only passion to come live in the snow and pray for the Earth. The last thing I ever would have imagined on my path. It woke me up. If it can work on me, then it can work on anyone. We can do this. We can wake the world up.

They can drill all they want while it's just a couple of ants scrambling to survive. But the more destruction they pour into our home, the easier it will be to wake up the entire colony. They can't stop us all. Their system only works if we let it. If we mindlessly follow. If we continue to think that there's no way out. If we just stay on the sinking ship and wait for it to all be over. It can be over right now. We can end this. We far outnumber them. They are only one percent. We just have to believe. We can't hide behind excuses. If you're one of the ones who claim to be awake, who know that it's all broken and the world is suffering, and you do nothing... you're more to blame than any of them. At least those on the other side are doing what they feel is right, at least they're standing up for something. And those that have been successfully brainwashed into being complacent consumers, not personally perpetrating evil because they see the world for what they've been taught that it is, a home for the one important species who we have to protect at all costs, well, who can blame them for being followers? If the people that claim to know better don't see a need to change the world, then it must not be that bad after all. As long as it's just a few thousand hippies and some inferior endangered race, it can't be that important, especially after what I saw about them on the news. No, we need everyone who is on our side to come be on our side. Only then, can we begin to convince the sheep that there is anything wrong. And only then can we convince them to stand up and join us. If you've read this far, then I'm talking to you. I didn't write this for the sheep, they're not ready for it yet. We need you.

I was just like you a year ago, aware that the world wasn't perfect, could see injustice all around me, saw that the system was broken, but what could I do? I was just one person. Not even that political of a person. No one would even listen to me. Who was I? So I did the best that I could do to survive in a world that just didn't feel right. I did ok, there are enough of us out there that we've figured out how to manage just fine. How to find the things that make you feel good, like music and food, or family and love, and make them your life. Forget about all of the other stuff going on out there. I knew it was bad, but it had always been bad and there was nothing to be done about it. Just the way it is. And then I was called here. I realized that we are strong. There are others like us out there. We can make a difference. Way easier than I'd ever imagined. I was shown an alternative. Proof that it doesn't have to be like it's always been. There is another way. We can do it. The beauty of a world full of followers is that all we have to do is show them the way. It's kindofa "If you build it, they will come" type of thing. So we're building it. You coming?

"I'm staying." That's what I told Ricky when he sat down beside me at the fire. He was more stoked than the flame. He didn't think we'd even be arrested, as long as we didn't try to sabotage the equipment or their mission. If we were just cleaning up, the task that we had vowed to complete before we left, would they actually arrest us? Um... yeah. Worst case, he figured they would threaten us and we could escape up the hill to Sacred Stone. The other idea, which I liked a lot, was to be in the sweat lodge, in ceremony. When would we need the prayers more? We knew that they wouldn't allow it. They would be scared of it. But they would be forced to face that fear. They would have to come into the sweat lodge during a sacred prayer ceremony and pull us out. Certainly they would, gotta follow orders, but it would affect them and it would affect anyone who saw it happening on a live stream. Now that I think about it, they'd probably just throw a few tear gas canisters into the tiny space and call it a day. Either way, I liked the idea.

We stayed out by the fire for a long time. Christopher even brought out his bag and was gonna to sleep out there. Sounded like a great idea, but I decided that it wasn't the smartest move with my recent illness and I went to bed instead. Although it was colder at my house then by the fire.

The next day, Daniel had a plan for dinner. Sweet, I could relax and just be his assistant while I planned for the unplannable. But, turns out that being his helper was more work than doing dinner alone. I had tapped him to make frybread, which inspired the meal, he wanted to do mashed potatoes and gravy so I suggested bbq buffalo sandwiches and committed to try to use up the rest of the brussel sprouts too. They were already on their way out with this heat wave setting in, just like us. I hated to do them two days in a row, but Lucas's wife, Constance, had been helping in the kitchen and couldn't stop talking about them, so I felt obliged to salvage what I could. She was also a big fan of turduxican, but you can't repeat that kind of miracle.

We talked for a while about the future. She was so nice, but a warrior too. Desperate to find a way to stop this pipe, but thought that staying here was not the answer. Lucas and Ricky however, were planning on it, she was not in approval, in the end I'm sure she could talk some sense into Lucas at least. I told her that I was planning on staying too. She begged me to reconsider. What good would it do? She knew that jail wasn't going to do any of us any favors. We may be the strongest, but even as hard as we prayed and knew that we'd sacrificed for the right reasons, jail would break our spirits.

Plus, how could we keep up the fight? Rumor had it that water protectors were heroes in the jail, among the incarcerated indian population at least. Probably less so among the loyal servants of the system. They probably hated prayer too. Leonard had told me stories about his time in jail, the mistreatment and abuse he had received due to his beliefs and spiritual strength. Nothing else felt right though. I gotta stick with my heart. I couldn't promise a retreat, but I promised that I'd reconsider it all before I made up my mind. And I promised more brussel sprouts. I'd try at least, they were already on the verge of turning, but I thought I could cover it up with some spices.

I also remembered that I had found the missing ingredient for a dessert I had in mind all winter, well, a camp style reproduction at least. I'd been trying to manifest them and they waited until the last minute. Figs. I was hoping for fresh ones, I know that sounds like a ridiculous thing to expect to come rolling in, but we've seen crazier stuff show up. No freshies, but I'd found two big bags of dried figs. The real world inspirer was a dish I'd had at my aunt and uncles house, she took a fig, roasted it in butter, halfway sliced it and inserted a slice of fresh parmesan and a walnut. So freakin good. This would not be that.

I threw a giant hunk of butter into a pan and dumped in the figs, it was basically a no fail solution. Still didn't know what I was doing, so once they softened up and caramelized a bit, I took them out and chopped them up. I was gonna make a paste type of thing or something or other. Chopped them up, more butter, brown sugar and threw them into a makeshift double boiler. I had a new assistant today. Well, not really assistant, mainly just good campany (typo, but I like it), Smokey's sister Christina.

I'd first seen her and her kids a couple of days before and overheard Smokey bragging on our pizza. I was so proud of my little guy. She stopped by and she was as good of a talker as I was a listener, so we got along just fine. Talked about oppression and hard times on the reservation, seemed to be a common theme among a lot of my new friends. Already mistreated and looked down upon by everyone outside of their culture, secondhand citizens of a place that they lived in first, and then when they looked to their own tribe for support, they just got more grief. How dare I ever look back at anything I'd ever experienced and not see it for all of the privilege that it was.

I was raised a straight white male christian in a world where even a gay black female muslim had more chance of equality than the people who had the absolute most right to live here. We should be looking towards them. Respecting their knowledge of a how to exist in this country in a good way. Not trying to silence them.

Dylan was always big on acknowledging his white privilege and not denying it, instead trying to figure out a way to use it to make a difference. I've heard plenty claim that they've never experienced any white privilege, never seen racism either, if you can make either claim, then that's proof positive that your entire life has been privileged. If you're not white, then you know that racism is very real. It may not always be the harshest of hate crimes, but discrimination is built into every aspect of american life.

Many claim no racism, but don't approve of a particular group's behaviors, like hiphop culture for example, which has been adopted by many indians too. Now, hiphop culture wasn't the traditional african way of life, so they have no actual right to act in a way that parents just don't understand. Well, like another group we know, their sacred traditions that were passed down through an eternity of ancestors and guided their way of life, which was working for them in harmony with the planet, got beaten out of them a long time ago. Then, after we decided that it might not be too christian to keep slaves, even if they were black, even if Thomas Jefferson himself would have approved, we still treated them as lesser human beings. So now they've had to adapt to survive in a broken system, a country founded on genocide and built on slavery, that is even more against them than the rest of us, and without any of the traditional knowledge of their ancestors, kudos.

As much as some people still hate it, they've got the numbers to force us to acknowledge their presence. With every generation, our youth realize that through the adversity that the african-american community has relentlessly faced, they've grown stronger and have provided us with some of the greatest human beings in our country's history. (low standards) They're still the underdogs in a society that is completely rigged in every way against them, but at least they've worked their way into the race. They're still included in the basically everybody that don't realize that the indians are still alive and actively being oppressed. Imagine people asking what country you're from based on your looks and the answer is right under their feet.

Speaking of feet, Christina's son walked in to pass off some socks, she wanted him to take them to their tipi because they were his, but he was determined to get out of it. He was a smart one, an old soul, like in a way I'd never seen before. His mom had story after story of it, which was why she was such a big believer in listening to children. Really listening to them. They're wiser than a lot of people give them credit for. They're the closest to the creator. The least removed. The least tainted. The least polluted by our filthy way of life. Don't brush them off as inexperienced. Hold them in the highest esteem because they have a perspective of the world based on love, full of hope and wonder, and unscathed by greed.

I believe the children are our future, teach them love and let them lead the way. Or let them teach us love and hope that we don't get in their way. They believe unwaveringly. We have to believe in them. If we saw all of the magic in the world that they do, there would be no room for all of the destruction that we insist on unleashing into their future. They're the ones who have to deal with whatever condition we leave the planet in. They have to clean up our mess. It's easy to ignore consequences for our actions when they take a hundred years to sink in, that's exactly what they did a hundred years ago and now we're in this mess to begin with. So we have a choice. Our legacy could be that we were selfish, or scared, or not smart enough to figure it out, or whatever excuse we decide to tell our grandchildren about why they can only see clean water, trees and animals in his-story books. And at mcdonamart. Why we live in a scary place of pollution, natural disasters and a world that seems like God forgot all about it. By the way, when they ask, the answer isn't that God forgot about us, it's that we forgot about God.

Or our legacy could be great. The generation that saw what was happening and stood up for the planet. That saved the water. That understood that saving the environment wasn't a selfless noble act, we are part of nature, we had to save it to save ourselves. So we still get to be self motivated and save the world at the same time. It will be way nicer to go on and on about that time we saved the world, instead of constantly apologizing and wishing there had been something we could have done. I'm at least going to be able to say I tried. Will you?

If I at all believed in money, I'd bet every bit of it on this kid being able to figure out how to save us all, not exaggerating. His connection to spirit was deep, almost scary really. Like he remembered stuff from past lives, including getting shot and dying, and details of things that he could never have known about, events that happened long before he was born. Yeah. And just a wise and sage kid. Super on it. Mature for nine, but at the same time, a nine year old who was concerned about kid stuff and fun and exploring and was friendly to anyone who would listen. Genetic.

He liked to show me how waterproof his flashlight was, by throwing it into the growing lake out front, and currently he was trying to pull one over on his mom. He handed her the socks and asked her to announce that they were hers, she wasn't keeping up with his misdirection and fell for his trap. He invoked the power of "mine." They were now her responsibility to take home. I got my own self esteem boost when I outsmarted a fifth grader and asked him "Hey, do you remember your socks that you left in here earlier?" Gotcha, now take these home. And don't say "mine", gets you in trouble every time.

This dinner menu wasn't mine either and finally Daniel showed up. He had the potatoes warming up to a boil over there and had Justin making frybread dough. Justin had come a week or so back, we'd been expecting him because... he was Wendy's brother. She had the whole family stopping by, maybe to try to corroborate that she wasn't a robot. I joked that he was her handler, but he was no agent, he was too weird, not a duplicate of her at all. Socially awkward and walking into a tight knit camp at the last minute, but he was a hard worker, kinda, and currently making the most important frybread. So what was Daniel doing then? I asked him how he made gravy and I'd gather supplies. "I don't know how to make gravy." What? This is your meal dude, I was just gonna do sprouts. So you're... boiling water? It's cool, just funny. About that time Wendy popped in and needed to have a safety meeting with me, perfect. I briefed Daniel on how to make gravy, he had at least seen it done, and I should be back soon anyway.

We went to my house because it was close and empty. She said that Bill was coming too. This wasn't actually a safety meeting, although we were safe, this was a serious council. This meeting would change things. Like for real. Change our paths. Our future. She was presenting a plan to leave camp. I was a cash crop of corn... all ears. I didn't currently plan to leave, but I'm as open minded as they come, so if something feels right, then I'm in. I'd also been talking to her about her equal dislike for any of the other exit strategies. We had both expressed our desires to stick together, knowing that we were two of the strongest and we made each other even stronger, but whatever happens happens. Always for a reason.

She had this random possible plan, none of the details at all worked out, but a call to the outside world to see if it was even a possibility. Her grandparents had this land in iowa where they used to live, but didn't anymore. Acreage, water, workshop and a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. I was immediately turned off because I didn't want to retreat, but continue. She hadn't talked to anyone about permission, but earlier she had been talking about the land and it hit her, she could possibly take a small group there to recover while we waited for the next camp to open, maybe Rosebud, or whatever else ended up happening.

I wasn't sold. I like to talk things out though. Devil's advocate. Would we even feel right living in a house? Not even a woodstove, it had electric heat. She said the land was magical, but she'd also grown up going there. What would our time look like? She said there were plenty of projects to fill our inner desire to endlessly work. But work for what purpose? Just to survive?

I did know that I wanted to write some, nothing much, just a dozen page essay that I could post online. I thought it was important for all of us to write. We had to take this experience and inspire. Inspire more than just each other, we were already fighting. We had to wake everyone else up. Wendy and I had also been talking about some bigger plans to change the world, plus we all had our own ideas that we could work together to develop. I wanted to design more sustainable kitchen strategies and equipment. Possibly work on a plan to go camp to camp and help set them up as we teach all that we had learned. Speaking in public will also be important, but not sure when any of us will be ready for that.

So three or four weeks away from distraction could help facilitate all sorts of strategerizing. A select group of people with the same energy, working together to build a blueprint for the future, able to focus ninety percent on our goal because we would have to focus zero on survival. No firewood or water runs or dapl raids, just the ten percent I reserved for cooking dinner. We don't go hungry. Plus we all had dapl cough and tear gas in our clothes, we could use a physical recovery for sure.

It had now reached full-on hypothetical status. We could pack enough food from here to last a while, I was the chef after all. I believed that we had done so well in Rosebud because we had central leadership, I wanted the same for our group. We were all strong leaders, and would all share the burden, but I felt it was important in order to ensure unity. Obviously it should be Wendy. She tried to deny it, but since it was her family's place, it only made sense. She'd have to be the liaison with her people anyway, so this way it saved us having to decide otherwise. Plus, I pointed out that we would all be proud to follow her and Bill quickly seconded. I had already shared the sentiment before and she felt the same about me, I didn't think I could be my strongest without her. She inspired me. I thought I was a hard worker before, but her drive pushed me to be a better version of myself. This place did that in general, so leaving here would challenge our focus, and I knew that sticking with her would be my best chance at continuing on the right path. It would prove difficult to save the world without her. So no matter what we decided on, we were staying together. It's what felt right.

We were getting awfully close to making a plan. Who would we invite? Us three and her brother at least. I hadn't connected to her brother, he wasn't one of us yet, but because of her I was sold, plus it was his grandparents' place. Ernie. Although I think he had plans to travel with Marty and then was going home to see his kids. Dylan and Maria. They might not be down with the house, but they had their own tipi. Daniel. He still had some path to travel, but his energy was the right kind of calm. Plus his mental database of indian songs would help keep us living in a good way. And frybread. Cindy and Gabby and Bailey. But certainly they had a life to go back to. Stephanie. But I was pretty sure she already had plans. I knew that Ziggy was going back home. Harry. I didn't suggest him then, but I thought of him later on when I saw him. Pete? We all did love him, but he was beyond a wildcard. This was Wendy's family life we were stepping into and I couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't do something a little too out there. Plus, he was staying here for sure.

We'd be happy if it was just the four of us, maybe even more happy. So no real plan. We hadn't talked to the fam yet, but certainly they'd be in, we were saving the world. The consensus was that this felt right. The first and only thing that did. The thing that we'd been waiting for. Until the very end. Because we believed. We trusted. We knew that it would be obvious when we found it. We were happy. Calm. Hearts at ease. Before we left, I had another sentiment to share. This was our plan. The place we did it at was not important. It was the people and the space that we would make that would matter. This land had inspired the plan, just like a dinner ingredient, but if it fell through, there was no need to worry. Just trust. There was a reason. Maybe we're not meant to go there, but meant to be together and go wherever feels right. So she'd work on the place and I'd invite the people, with the full disclosure that we still didn't have a solid plan.

The three of us felt good. I always felt good, but this was a new good. I had just erased any angst or sadness that I had about winter camp being over. Now I knew what was next and it was a bright future. I knew that I would see everyone again, at exactly the right moments. I wasn't worried. We'd all have so many stories and now it was a race to see who could save the world first. And also a race to the kitchen, we'd been here way longer than the allotted ten minutes.

Surprisingly, Daniel and Christina noticed that I had been gone closer to an hour, oops. He seemed a little stressed and I didn't think the "conversation" alibi would quite cut it, even though it had been the most path changing conversation yet. Not one I could really walk out on. I'd seen him get overwhelmed a couple of times in the kitchen, as well as a few others that took the reins as I became a backseat diner.

Dinner could be simple, I often joked about rice and beans and people would get excited "I love rice and beans." But I loved going over the top. It was working. I was figuring out more and more ways to put love and intention into the meals. Something that would be harder to do with just a pot of beans. Possible though. I woke up everyday without knowing what was on the menu and I astonished myself with what came out. Because I believed. I made it look easy. I'm not saying that God intervened and cooked it for me, but I believed in myself and believed that anything was possible. I didn't stress when I dropped a tray of vegetables, couldn't find a crucial ingredient, or ran out of water and propane and solar at the exact moment that dinner was starting to burn. Because I believed that it would all work out. Always does. I didn't freak out. I kept my cool. Stayed level headed and I could get through anything. Often times the setback made the meal stronger. Certainly made me stronger.

So if I could do all of this with seemingly little effort, just some stoned hippie in an apron, then others thought they could too. And they could, thinking they could do it was the first step, but they didn't always see all that was going on under my hood. I'd see people have everything planned out perfectly, but sometimes things don't follow the plan as closely as you do. You have to be able to adapt. To do what feels right. You can't shut down or panic, how is anything ever going to work out that way? You gotta believe. I also hadn't jumped right into turduxican, it had been a process. My first meal was served hours late and froze our hands off. Pizza hadn't just popped out of some oven all of a sudden, only a select few even knew about the midnight experiments to see if it was even plausible. Learning how to thaw and keep my cool at the same time was another lesson to break the ice. When I sat down to smoke a cigarette in the middle of a hectic kitchen, I wasn't taking a sanctioned union break, I was working even harder than I did the rest of the time.

Most, including Daniel, acknowledged that I was doing something right, gave me credit and listened to any advice I had to share. But sometimes people have themselves convinced that they already know everything. They may even know the one right way to live. No need to listen to anyone else. Even if they may have gotten good at pretending to listen, you can see that they aren't hearing you. Not considering that your words could possibly help them to become a better version of themselves. They know it all already. So they stopped learning. How could you ever believe in the wonder of the infinite universe and think that you could ever have all the answers? Believe that everything happens for a reason, but not stop to consider that your path may have crossed with another's for some higher purpose? Something other than you "telling" them how to live.

That's how I was able to adapt to any situation, especially knowing that I was surrounded by such knowledge. I could have easily brushed off suggestions on onion tea, but instead I made it better. I could have claimed that my beloved taco recipe couldn't be beaten and never even tried an indian taco, but that would have just been silly, and I'd have missed out on the greatest invention since fried bread. I could have ignored the nine year old boy who proved to be as wise a mentor as the medicine people I'd been praying with. We can learn from anyone, not just those that are more experienced and seem to have it all figured out. All of us are on a different path with unique perspectives. I have to remind myself of that while I write this book. I cant tell you how to live. I can only show you what I've learned and let you grow in your own way from it. Let you do what feels right for you. There is one thing I can tell you though, very definitively, without a doubt a fact and not up for debate... the brussel sprouts were gross.
Step Twenty-One:

Many will say derogatory things about the dish under any circumstances, but all those that had eaten them here before, were believers. I chocked it up to being old before I even started them, they had already been on the fence yesterday. I overseasoned them even more, trying to cover up whatever this bad taste in my mouth was, but I couldn't get them up to my liking. I'd made them for Constance really, she tried some and said she liked them, swore she wasn't just saying that for my sake, and then Nick stopped by and gave the same review. But I just couldn't do it, just didn't taste right, didn't feel right. A had established a standard of quality and these were simply not there, and I'd once served frozen burnt canned beans. What if someone's first time in Rosebud was today, and this was their debut with our food? We were leaving soon, so what if tonight was my big break and some famous food critic had heard of us and wanted to offer me a lot of money to sell out my soul? JK, but I couldn't serve them. Maybe I was picking up on a negative vibration with my taste buds, one that others weren't because I was closer to the food than they were. Maybe they would have made the whole camp deathly ill. Dapl sprouts.

The fig stuff had burned in my extended absence, but just on the bottom and it was an experimental dish anyway, I'd figure something out with it still. No gravy had coalesced during the meeting and the word on the street was that I needed to mash the potatoes too. So I'm not sure what had Daniel so stressed, I guess waiting for me to come do it all is tougher than it seems. It was semi warm today, especially working by the stove, this small kitchen didn't even have a woodstove because the cookstoves did the trick. I wasn't even wearing a coat outside, just a single long sleeved t-shirt, it wasn't quite warm enough for that, but as long as I was fast between tents I should be ok. Cindy had stopped by to see if I could use any help. Yes please, you're a southern girl, gravy. Even veggie gravy, whatever you want, just make more than you think you need.

I went to go get the potatoes that Daniel had boiled, we still had a few more things to transport, so I grabbed a few helpers along the way. The pot was hot, like boiling hot, but I had the long sleeves of my shirt, so no worries. I considered dumping the hot water, which made the most sense, safety first, but we were going to be mixing in instant potatoes to stretch it because we needed more, and heating a new pot of water would take another hour. It was a good technique, half instant and half handmashed, and a lot of butter. Plus some evaporated milk, garlic and onions. It got super creamy but also had the chunks of authenticity, no one would ever suspect the instant addition. I took off with the hot pot and a food chain of assistants were somewhere behind me, but I couldn't stand around with the recently boiling potatoes and water for long. I managed the spa door, the frozen sidewalk and the ice stairs, and all without the yaktrax assisting my traction.

I had taken them off a few weeks prior, it seemed that our trips to the concrete of the bridge had not been as kind to their integrity as it had been to ours. Then our mission with Andre certainly didn't require the added grip on reality and by that point I was managing ok without them. It was a bambi style slip and slide the first day I took them off, but I got better at walking on ice and not relying on the crutch of traction. More aware of every step, I grew stronger to overcome my environmental conditions. But I also simply couldn't do some things. Couldn't just climb right up a steep icy hill, had to figure out a way around.

So it's a double edged hatchet, without tools, you physically become more equipped to succeed, but with them, the impossible becomes easy. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how to best apply that to the rest of my path. Don't wear shoes and my feet get tougher, but wear them and I can do things that I wouldn't even attempt barefoot. Don't wear my contacts and my eyes get stronger, it blew my optometrist's mind once when my vision had actually improved from going without, but without them, my abilities are severely hindered. Not only would my vision get stronger though, all of my other senses would too. That's undeniable, we see that all the time in people who are denied the sense of vision altogether, the rest of their senses become extremely heightened. They are pushed to adapt. No longer relying on the easy way out of just looking at something, so their sense of hearing becomes exceptional.

The human body is highly adaptable. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. This isn't just an adage that exists to help people through hard times, although it does, every emotional upset I've experienced made me a stronger person inside. But it's also a literal description of how our bodies work. Through struggle, adversity and environmental conditions that are not easy, that is how we adapt and eventually evolve. My grandfather's legs didn't work right, so his arms became the strongest I've ever seen and his mental resolve made him a harder worker than most. It didn't kill him, so it made him stronger. Now, he could have chosen not to rise to the occasion. He could have sat around having a pity party for himself. He could have blamed God for his bum wrap. He could have thought that he would never amount to anything because of the adversity that he faced in every aspect of life. But he believed. He believed in himself, did what felt right, stayed positive and evolved into the greatest man I've ever known.

The phrase doesn't stop there though. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger on every level, especially as a species. In fact, that's what it's really about. All species face adversity throughout their entire run on the planet. Some die. Go extinct. It happens. Even before we started causing it, species died. Completely natural. Death is natural. It's actually required for the continued evolution of life. The less fit species die out and the stronger survive. What doesn't wipe out an entire species, makes them more suited to survive in a constantly changing planetary ecosystem.

A mythological global flood, which happens to match the scientific evidence of a regional natural disaster in the mesopotamia, the fertile crescent, the birthplace of man and the entirety of the world as they knew it at the time, would push the strong to survive. Species would certainly be wiped out, but the fastest would escape, the best swimmers would thrive, and the smartest would find a way to build a big boat. Those species that it didn't kill, would evolve to become stronger. The most genetically capable specimens would have made it and the less equipped wouldn't have, so the future generations would all share the advanced traits of the survivors.

Even before all of that was dreamed up, the dinosaurs were the big success story of the planet. You can call them a myth that lines up with science if that makes your flintstones easier to swallow. Think you're supposed to chew on that. They were the most suited to survive in a world that was more oxygen rich then ours is today, growing to massive scales with the abundance of that particular vibration in the atmosphere. Then global catastrophe hit, whatever it was, and environmental conditions changed. I would never pretend to know the unknowable, but I personally imagine that the asteroid theory is a pretty good guess. It explains the KT asteroid line, a worldwide layer of sediment in the unearthed geological record, a complete ground covering layer of debris that is estimated to have fallen at the end of the mesozoic period, 66 million years ago. This layer of course also being the point in the geological record where we no longer find fossils of dinosaurs, all of a sudden the creatures ceased to exist for some reason. The kicker of course being that the layer is iridium, an element not common on Earth but basically what asteroids are made of. Happens to be rarer than gold, maybe we can trade it for corn. No definitive proof. Could have come from anywhere. God could certainly just snapped his fingers and whipped it up. I personally like to think that there's no stronger of an act of God than an asteroid crashing down from the heavens and changing the course of the planet's history.

It would have crushed many right away. Then sparked earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis, which would take out another wave around the world. The sky would have then gone dark with ash and any cold blooded creatures would have a hard time keeping warm. The ozone would now be full of more carbon, less oxygen, especially after the abundance of oxygen creating plankton were starved of precious vitamin D. Now any exaggerated giants would have a hard time breathing, just like we do at high altitudes with less oxygen, or in an atmosphere full of carbon emissions.

Many species of life on Earth went extinct. The now weakest in the current environmental conditions couldn't survive, which left room for a whole new branch of life on this planet to evolve. The small, warmblooded, fur covered creatures who required less oxygen, thrived. Especially now that their main predators were out of the equation. The smaller reptiles were able to manage, and those that had evolved wings, charted out their flight path in one of the most drastic transitions of planetary evolution ever. All because of the survival of the fittest under environmental adversity. A worldwide disaster that sparked a revolution. The evolution revolution. It could reoccur again at any moment, especially if you believe that God sends them when a particular population gets a little too full of themselves.

Asteroid, global flood, nuclear proliferation, the worlds oceans running black, you know, the usual stuff. Or even just a simple disease outbreak. That even seems very possible, quite probably really, maybe because it happens all the time. That's how our immune systems got to be so spectacular, and like all of the other species surviving with us, we inherited instincts that guided us through a catalog of herbal remedies, specifically developed for our exact GPS coordinates. That's convenient. Diseases hit the population and those whose bodies could fight them off, survived. Now the next generation had nothing to worry about, their parents were immune to all of the diseases of the world, otherwise they wouldn't be here. That's how we did it for eternity, but then we got scared and invented vaccines because we lost belief in God's system and instead invested all of our time/energy/money into man's.

Animals that still live in nature don't get vaccines, they don't take pharmaceuticals, and aside from the disease of the parasitic humans that wipe them out, they're doing just fine. Sure, some may die from disease, but most don't and the next generation becomes healthier. Well, what about all of the shots we give our pets? They need vaccines because they're plagued with disease just like us, and they're a part of nature. Right? Ha. They might not have taken their lives out of God's hands and into their own, but that's because we beat them to it. We pushed our beliefs onto them and they have done nothing but suffer because of it. Sure, your dog is happy, as happy as he's ever been, because mankind took their success out of nature and put it into his own system.

Dogs that seemed happy being complacent, obedient and servants of man were selected, they survived, not the ones closest to nature. We took away their God and convinced them to worship man, whoever provides sustenance is in charge, so they have to do their job, gotta do what you gotta do to eat. Kinda sounds like what their doing to us... So now we have to vaccinate them for diseases that God would have removed from their bloodline a long time ago and the vaccine ensures that they can all live long reproductive lives while passing on their weaknesses to their pups. Of course, the best part is that most of the ailments that plague canines are because of our meddling in the first place. We even revere the weakest of a litter, the runt, and we breed them smaller and smaller so that we can charge more and more for a miniature version of a man-made species.

At least we do try to curb the overgrowth of our frankensteined together, mismatched, out of order pet populations. Everyday that I laid out of the infallible school system as a child, I got to watch The Price Is Right, the ultimate in capitalistic propaganda. Teaching all of america about what's really important in life. Game shows in general preach the importance of money. The importance of competition in a society that has long ignored its actual purpose. We evolved by competing for food, but now that everyone eats no matter what, let's compete for money so that the at home complacent viewer can dream of one day becoming fulfilled in the emptiness of capitalism. At least some programs have a brain stimulating puzzle element, this one (which has always been one of my favorites) is strictly about the value of a dollar. The fictitious value that man put on this piece of paper, and now we'll quiz you on it to make sure that our programming has fully set in.

The only thing more important than knowing how much this useless product is supposedly worth, is the advertisement that the manufacturer gets by providing the product to the show. Especially when they're all owned by the same corporation. They have a pretty good money racket going on, all based on a completely fictional premise, so pretty much like the rest of reality tv. The womanizing host of course wrapped up every episode with a conscious message, maybe to make up for the greed training he was unleashing on school skippers across america. "Please remember to spay and neuter your pets."

We of course don't have to spay or neuter wolves or tigers or butterflies, it would probably prove difficult anyway. We only have to control the population of man-made evolution. If you take a single pregnant domesticated house cat and leave her to her own devices, in ten years she will have multiplied to 57,000 cute little kitty witties. Wow. That's a fast expansion rate. Do you think if we weren't around to feed or pay ridiculous vet bills to keep sick animals alive far past their time to go, that their population would continue to explode into the infinite universe? No. Their food supply would dwindle as their predators' populations increased and it would end up at an equilibrium. But at least we have the forethought to realize the cat-astrophe that the world would face with an extreme overpopulation of a species whose evolution we'd taken into our own hands. Oh, do we now? So with cats we deem it ok, even necessary, socially responsible to force them into reproductive surgery without their written consent, but yet we demonize any options made available for a woman to make reproductive decisions about her own body. Left unchecked, the human overpopulation is far more destructive than all of the cute little keyboard kittens of youtube fame. If you don't agree, just write a book cataloging their endless list of unleashed evils and we can compare notes. While you work on that, I'll continue.

After I navigated the ice stairs with the hot pot, I had to circle around lake Rosebud and traverse the edge where the ice wall met the mud pit. One foot on the ice and one in the mud, I was zipping along, the heat was permeating my sleeves, but I was good. Then my left foot slid into the mud, as my right slid across the ice, I was officially in the middle of the most intense game of hot potato that these eyes had ever seen. Hot water sloshed out and I somehow managed to get the pot set down into the mud while still upright. I turned to my audience, still back at the stairs, and signaled for them to grab it on their way. I had a situation to deal with. My sleeves were soaked with scalding water. Should freeze soon though. I threw off my shirt, grabbed some snow and started icing down my right arm. I was ok, it was red, but no flesh was peeling off. I laughed at the thought of me shirtless and rubbing snow on myself while Cindy was inside by the stove in a coat, scarf and hat. Stephanie was in my entourage and had some aloe back in her tipi, so soon enough I was back on task, finishing the potatoes that has nearly finished me.

We never set the smoker up and had no slow cook method for the bbq, so I just boiled the meat until it fell apart. I know this technique would be more sacrilegious back home than praying to somebody named Tunkasila, but that's what I did and I was gonna make it all better with sweet baby rays anyway. Except that all I could kind was kc masterpiece, still ok probably, but none of that good good. I was about to put it into the pot and mix it up when Denise came in, saw the atrocity I was about to commit, and stopped me. She had hidden away a gallon of the goodness for just such an occasion. Dinner would be a success after all.

I had trashed the sprouts, burned the fig and narrowly escaped tossing the potatoes in the mud. I'll get this cooking thing figured out eventually. I felt like the meal would be short an item, but honestly they were lucky that any of it had survived. Once I got the meal safely back across the abyss, I remembered that I'd actually gotten something right today. First thing this "morning" I made carrot, cabbage and cauliflower slaw with apple cider vinegar, all it needed was a little spicing up and it was ready to go. Maybe I wasn't a complete idiot after all. Frybread, sweet baby buffalo bbq, triple c slaw, third degree potatoes and no brussel sprouts... Daniel had nailed it, so Stephanie and I disappeared to the kitchen to invent dessert.

I had some leftover pizza dough from yesterday, so I was thinking some kind of mega fig newtony kinda thing. Then we considered cooking the dough by itself and layering it all up into a figgy nutty parmesany layered dessert baclasagna. Cool. I threw a pizza dough on the grill and warned Stephanie that I'd been ruining stuff all day. I also told her about our escape route. I knew that she already had her own plans, so I was surprised when she showed great interest in ours. I also shared some secrets with her and alluded to others which had her wanting to tag along even more. She had commitments after camp, but considered it a possibility to meet up with us a few weeks down the road. That would be so cool. And then I smelled something burning.

Of course. No big. I tossed it, out not up, and got another going. It crisped into this tasty looking cracker and we spread on the fig stuff. We weighed our options, landed on not layering it and sticking with flatbread fig pizzas. Sprinkled on chopped walnuts, grated parmsean, a honey drizzle and the final, last minute entry to the best camp pizza competition was complete. We ended up eating it all before the judges could decide though.

What a day. I'd barely survived. But still had a great time through it all. Never stressed. I was in the zone. I believed. I needed a little me time though. Well, time for me to talk to a good friend. Someone who I was getting closer to everyday. Who continuously earned my trust. So I walked down to the river and prayed. I'll spare you the details, but obviously we talked about the new plan and our future. I still felt good about it all, better even, but I would also be ok if things changed and I took a different path.

I was riding on my own vibration through the universe. I could feel it. I had completely given myself over to doing what felt right. I no longer had to put any energy into trying to figure out what was next. I'd know it when it was time. I sat on a bench near the bonfire pit, there wasn't a fire planned tonight, just a mega blaze tomorrow for the last night of camp. I sat there, done praying, just thinking about the winter and waiting on a visitor.

I didn't know who it would be, but I had this feeling that someone would appear soon. I had guessed Wendy, hoped Megan, but was stoked when it was Daniel. I told him about our plan and invited him. He was weighing a few options, not sure about any and not jumping on board with ours, but he had a seat if he wanted it. Wendy had questioned me adding him to the roster, she just hadn't gotten to know him yet and really I hadn't either, but I think working on the grave together had bonded us and I knew we cold both learn a lot from each other. I'd really like to have at least one indian with us to help keep us living in a good way, especially one who was a walking database of songs, but that was one of his hesitations. He wanted to be among indian culture, not the token native.

We talked about all sorts of other stuff and he kicked around the still smoldering log that hadn't fully burned early this morning. He pretty instantly got a flame going, which attracted water protectors like moths to a solar powered light bulb. I wasn't feeling another all night fire-a-thon, so I headed to the buffalo tent for a little more quiet time and a chance to scrape some energy into the sacred animal. Or maybe out of it. That's what I hoped for at least, but it was always something around here.

I walked into a whole thing. Aintcha was having a meltdown, maybe not quite a meltdown, but she was having a time. She was going on and on about lying and that she felt lied to by somebody. She'd apparently been at it for a while, camp was certainly a place to talk about things and heal, but she wasn't looking to heal. She wasn't looking for a way to learn and grow from her experience. Certainly not approaching it with humility or understanding. She was looking for affirmation that she was right. He was wrong. She was a victim and he was a villain. She wanted us to judge him the way she had. I didn't even know who she was talking about.

Pete chimed in from the other side of the hide. He had connected with Aintcha more than most of us, he really did have something special about him. He said something to the effect of "Aintcha, I love you, I do, I truly want for you to heal and get through this, I want nothing but the best for you and I will help in any way that I can, but we have been over this several times already. This is not the place for this kind of energy. This is a sacred space and you are disrespecting it. You are disrespecting us, and we're the ones trying to help you. If you're not ready or willing to heal from this, then maybe this isn't the place for you right now. I'm not saying that you should leave, but if you are going to stay then you need to understand that this is a place of prayer and your energy is affecting the work that we're putting into this animal." Thank you Pete. Well said. Apparently he'd had a few chances to refine it over the last hour. Though not good enough I guess. She just responded with even more negativity directed at our lack of compassion for her case and our obvious choice to take a liars side over hers. Pete left.

Dina's turn. She'd been talking to her the whole time, but now was the first that I'd been able to figure out who they were talking about. Dina could empathize, she'd actually had a confliction with him too. She was not one to bite her tongue and wait for a more personal setting to discuss a matter with humility from both sides. He was not one to sugar coat his opinions, which were generally already made up. His delivery was also more abrasive than most, most here anyway. He had a hard time not voicing those opinions and not defending them if they were challenged, even if it meant pushing some buttons. She had a hard time not speaking up when her buttons had been pushed and was a challenger of opinions that she had strong opposition to.

One night in the mess hall, he offended her and she confronted him about the disrespectful way that he spoke to people. So he defended his words. When he saw someone acting in a way that he disapproved of, two faced, lazy, selfish, dapl... he called them out. Not concerned with his tact and putting them on the spot to defend their actions, which causes some people to get defensive. I'd spoken to both of them separately later that night and they both agreed that they could have handled themselves differently, could have taken a break and let it go for the moment, could have talked about it once the smoke had cleared. Or through some new smoke. They still didn't agree with each other, but they also knew that they weren't perfect themselves.

Sometimes the best thing is to not insist on having the last word. That's the big one. I used to have to have it, but just letting something go and coming back to it later, with clear heads, can save so much headache. Saves you from saying something that you truly don't mean, something you say just to push buttons, gives you the chance to look at the situation from another perspective and to approach the conflict with a solution, instead of just blame.

Dina didn't share her entire story with Aintcha, but she expressed that she understood where she was coming from. She wasn't blindly taking his side over hers. Far from it. She was an ally that could see her perspective and offer personal insight. That harboring this negative energy was only harming her, it wasn't going to affect him. Her being intent on negatively affecting him wasn't a healthy way to heal. A better way would be to come to peace with their conflict and discuss it from a place of sincerity.

Or simply move on and not let him get to her. If she was right and he was wrong, then there was no need to analyze the situation further. If she didn't genuinely want to resolve their issue, then just let it go. Rise above it. She swore to want a true resolution, but all of our words were falling on deaf ears. She absolutely wasn't listening or considering that there could possibly be another perspective and her disrespect was completely unnerving. Dina suggested that if Aintcha was too worked up to adhere to the energy requirements of this sacred space, then maybe she should go for a walk. Clear her head. Collect herself and take some deep breaths before returning in a good way.

Dina truly did not say this in a bad way, but an honest suggestion that works for her in her own life. Aintcha got up in a huff, let that get to her even more, and took her negativity out on the only people that would endure this kind of abuse and still try to help. She went on a continued rant about the same stuff she'd been stuck on, no acknowledgment that we'd even made an impact. Then referenced the fact that we were taking his side and kicking her out. Dina quickly corrected her, we were not kicking her out, it was a mere suggestion to help her calm her energy to a place appropriate for this space. So she sat back down and continued her rant.

My turn I guess. I suggested that she pray. She said she had. I'm not one to judge, we all pray in a different way, all of them valid as long as it comes from the heart. But I'd heard her pray before, in sweat, and it was far from heartfelt. In fact, I'd never heard her say anything that sounded genuine. It all sounded fake. Rehearsed. Dapl. This moment, in the buffalo tent, was the only time that I ever saw any true feeling coming from her. As much as I felt disrespected, I also had to acknowledge that this was actually Aintcha, not the facade that she had been trying to project before. Or she was a better undercover agent than I gave her credit for.

People project things other than their true selves for all sorts of reasons, not just dapl. I don't know her story, it could be filled with great struggle and pain, deep issues that will take more than just a couple of sweats to work through. So I don't judge her or where she is on her path. That's exactly what I tried to relate to her. We are all here learning, healing, finding and continuing on each of our paths. Including him. He's trying to figure out how to live in a good way, just like the rest of us. He still has stuff to work on, we all do, it's not our place to judge him for where he's at on his journey. It's our role to love unconditionally and truly want him to grow, not just want everyone else to know that he'd made a mistake and wasn't perfect.

I explained to her how I pray for patience, humility and understanding. If she were to sincerely pray for these things, it would help her to see everything from a new perspective. It is not possible to truly want these things in your heart and not begin to feel them. The moment that you ask for them in a real way, they start to grow inside you. Acknowledging that you need help with these things is a humbling experience in itself, and it is the first step in gaining humility. Understanding that there are perspectives that you don't, is the only way to ever increase your understanding of them. Having the patience to pray and realizing that it will not be an overnight transformation, is precisely when the transformation begins taking place. Praying for someone else to magically change in an instant while not considering that there is any growing that you yourself have to work on, is not praying from your heart, so it's not going to work.

Her response? To belittle the power of prayer. To belittle our faith. The faith that was continuously growing in our hearts and saving our lives. She mocked everything that our camp stood for. A prayer camp. Dina let her know that she better watch herself. This was not a path she wanted to walk down. Still she went on about praying to some magical man in the sky to grant wishes and about how ridiculous we all were for thinking that prayers were anything but a waste of breath. I reminded her that "This is a prayer camp. We are here as guests of the Lakota people, and while no one is going to force us to pray, the least we can do is honor their traditions. Have some respect. No one is making you stay, you are free to go at anytime if this is not the place for you. This is not a vacation. Personally, like most of us that are here for genuine reasons, I feel that I was called here by something bigger than myself. This place has taught me how to pray and connect to the universe in ways that I didn't know possible, but only because I was open to it. I know that my prayers work. I've felt them inside of me as they helped me to become a better person. I've seen them in action. Because I believe."

Then I closed my eyes and silently prayed... while she started laughing. She laughed out loud for me while I prayed for her. I prayed for the trifecta in myself. Prayed for the humility to understand that she was in pain and the patience to help her through it, even though she was hurting me as I tried. I prayed for calmness in her heart to ease her pain and to help her let us help her. I understood the disbelief in God. I'd shared it for a long time. If someone had told me to pray as a solution to a problem, I also would have laughed inside. I doubt that I would have belittled their faith to their face, but I hadn't been in her shoes either. I genuinely prayed from my heart, for hers, while she laughed in my face. I got done, opened my eyes and looked into hers. "I know you're hurting and I will be more than happy to discuss this with you somewhere else tomorrow. I'm a really good listener and we can talk about as much as you'd like to, but we're done with this in here tonight. This is not the venue for this conversation, so if you insist on continuing, then this may not be the place for you right now." She realized that making fun of the things that we held most sacred may not be in her best interests, but within sixty seconds was back onto the previous tirade, though with a little less intensity this time.

I got up and walked around the hide to where a fellow you haven't met yet was scraping an alpaca hide. They were fresher and a lot easier to work, especially with one of the metal scraping tools that Johan had picked up. I knew that Mark was a drummer and a singer, so I asked him to take a break and sing a few prayer songs for us. He had been trying to work through the drama this whole time, so he was more than happy to oblige. Traditional indian music was one of the quickest ways to calm our hearts and minds. Even if you don't know what the words mean, it centers you, especially if you let it. It was also powerful to us because of the role that it plays in prayer and sweat ceremony. It clears your mind and allows you to block outside distractions, enter a state of prayer and have the clarity to think about whatever is weighing on your heart. Aintcha's distractions only lasted a minute after everyone shut their eyes and let the music ease their tensions, anyone that would let it at least.

After each song, I asked Mark about the words and what they meant. He was super knowledgeable and was happy to share about the songs from tribes all around the country. He was wise and humble, plus he always appreciated everything I did for the camp and always had tobacco for me, so he was way cool in my book. I mean this book. He also had some words of wisdom for the distressed Aintcha, who had not taken the less than subtle hint or the opportunity to relax her heart, but instead had started right back up. Dina left.

Frieda, another wise protector came in and was immediately surveyed with a loaded question. "What do you think about lying?" She replied that she felt that lying was bad, and that there was a time and place to discuss it and a way to speak on it in a productive manner that didn't perpetuate negative energy, but instead offered a chance for growth. Then she got up and left. "Ooh, she told you!" was what I wanted to say. Instead, I got up, said "I agree" and followed her out the door.

Dina had run into Frieda as she left, obviously upset, and had filled her in on what had been going on. I made a beeline to the bonfire to tell Dina what Frieda had said. So good. We decompressed a bit about the recent stress and then Pete showed up with his cigar box guitar and started screamsinging. I was yet to get the quiet time I had originally set out for, so I went to get a piece of fig crispie and go home.

I loved Pete to death, deeply, but he was definitely a handful. And an earful. You'd often hear him walking down main street belting out yahs and yos and heys. It was refreshing at times, to hear someone so full of spirit and passionate about our mission, unless it was first thing in the morning, after an all-nighter, through the the walls of an uninsulated tipi. There for a little while, you could also hear him from the radio station that was transmitting from the mash tent. He was a great choice to be a voice for the camp, but Jerry tended to expect the impossible. I know I've been going on and on and on about us pulling off the impossible again and again and again, but his orders were a little too tall, even for us.

I happened to be in the mash tent when he was first recruiting Pete for his radio personality. He told Pete that this role would take one hundred percent commitment, not just undivided attention when he was on duty, this had to be his only duty. No more shifts at the post when his family needed him. No more digging graves when his family needed him. No more praying through the tear gas and inspiring his family, when his family needed him most. If we were going to be successful, if we stood a chance of stopping the black snake, if we were going to do the impossible, then we needed our wild card. Was Pete here to help you run a radio station or was he here to help us save the world? I don't think you're going to want to make him choose.

Pete had all sorts of projects and was always trying to get me involved. I was down to help wherever I could, always, but he also didn't quite have a firm grasp on reality sometimes. Gotta hand it to him though, he believed. Once, he wanted to make a peace treaty soup for dapl. Well, he wanted me to make a soup, a "really tasty" soup, in addition to the two meals that I already somehow managed to pull off between saving the world. He was going to assemble a team to deliver twenty bowls to the frontline and place them on the barricade as a symbol of peace. If I thought for a second that they would accept the offering, I would have made the tastiest soup with so much love (and lawrys) and they would have instantly put down their guns and joined us. But they wouldn't even take a sealed tight snickers. Maybe this is just my faulty disbelief and if I'd have trusted, then they'd have gone for it. But really?

His idea was that we would each take a spoonful from the bowls to prove that they weren't poisoned with our silver dapl snow, but that wouldn't be their only hold up. They needed to hate us to be able to abuse us. They couldn't see us as people like we saw them. So I'd be "throwing together" a delicious soup (I gotta quit making it look so easy.) for no one to eat. I got out of it with a logistical point, because I wasn't going to convince him that it wouldn't work on principle. What are you going to put all this soup in? Bowls? We're already desperately low on dishware in camp, hardly any bowls and not enough plates to go around at each meal, so...?

Every once in a while someone would be leaving camp and would drop off a stack from their tipi, dishes that they had accumulated over the winter from the mess hall, and then acted like they were doing us a favor. Um, thanks. Thanks for hoarding more than your fair share and causing a shortage for everyone else. I also once found a crate of plates under a shelf in the mess hall, they had been used here before, but somebody took them out of rotation to save on dirty dishes. And... use styrofoam instead?

I couldn't take it. This is a big deal. Forget about it being such an everlasting destructive chemical pollution that doesn't biodegrade... nevermind that it never digests and a tiny morsel can clog up any animal that orders takeout, which of course then starves them alive... be selfish for once and quit using it for yourself. Styrofoam is neurotoxic (kills your brain), phlebotoxic (kills your blood), and cancerous (kills you). Not cool. Whatever camp you end up at, please make this a priority. I can't put into words how upset this makes me, especially when many of the strongest ecological warriors I ever met didn't seem to be near as bothered about it as I was. We can't be hypocrites.

Even the all powerful Wendy, she wouldn't use styrofoam, but when I suggested getting donations of portable plates for each of us to carry, she fought it. She cited that she always used a ceramic one and washed it herself, so no harm no foul. Which would be true, except that we didn't have enough, so even if you don't use one yourself, you used a plate that a guest could have but instead, they had to use styrofoam. Your own conscience is clean, but we've shown our guests that we're not, that we're not even trying to save the world. So if Pete thought for a second that we were using disposable bowls up on that barrier, delivering a peace treaty to our biggest critics in a hypocritical vessel of waste, well, he knew by the second second that it wasn't an option.

The last mission he wanted my help with was a little more feasible, but it was in the final days of camp, which for some reason seemed to be a little hectic. We'd discussed what we should do with the footage of his arrest before. At first he was unsure of releasing it, then left it up to my discretion. I hadn't felt called to push it out there yet, maybe my radio silence was keeping me under the radar, but with our upcoming eviction and his resolve to stay, he felt the need release it. He wanted it to be a message to call people to come back to camp. To flood dapl before they could flood us.

Certainly unsanctioned, but I wasn't totally opposed to helping him. It had been him that sacrificed the most that night at the bridge after all, but his message was weak. He needed to work on his words and make a compassionate plea to inspire people to rise up, wherever they were, in whatever capacity they could. I told him to write a script and get Leonard to help refine the message. Leonard was planning on staying close and I wanted his approval before I got involved. I was also adamant that we had to record voiceover of his script. He insisted that running the text on the screen would be enough, but I know video, it was my kinda job for a long time, I know what works. If you are going to compel people to get involved, then they need to hear a compelling voice explaining why we need their help. I thought it should be him. Especially after I heard the desperation and sincerity in his voice as he spoke the words, the most passionate speaker in our camp by far, he finally conceded.

Next, we needed power and a place to work, on the last day of camp, while I also cook two meals, pack, work on an exit strategy and whatever other random emergencies will inevitably pop up. No prob. I had a little power in the new kitchen so I set up my computer in there, that way I could edit and record voiceover in-between stirring the pot. He promised that it wouldn't take long, but I ran into this daily in my "professional" world, people have no concept of what is involved in media production and the obscene amount of time that a five minute video takes to make. Especially if you always make it look easy. We couldn't upload it from here anyway, though somebody could later from the casino. We only had another day on our deadline and north dakota seems to be twenty-four hours away from everywhere, so it'll be a long shot, but in the end, he didn't make it to the kitchen to record before the power cut out. Wasn't meant to be.

There were a few special missions as everyone was packing their emotional baggage for our upcoming fantastic journeys. Which meant that everyone was busy, so it was harder to get a team of assistants to shovel snow, but what else did I really have going on? "I gotcha." Double double bonus projects, Ziggy had two vehicles to extract. He'd driven here in his small RV, it was his keyboard studio too, and it'd been parked for months. Since before it ever snowed. And he had driven back behind the treeline and wedged it into the cut. Provided an excellent living situation and windblock, but not only was it buried in a winters worth of snow, a forty foot path through the snowbank also had to be excavated. Including a three point turn and narrow escape through a tight tree trio, and then we narrowly escaped this bobcat driver dumping a snow pile right at the entrance of Ziggy's path. Dapl.

He had a lot of it dug out already, so we finished it up and moved on to our second challenger of the evening. He also had an old GMC Eagle that wouldn't start. I poked around with it for a while, but after his story about it burning up before it died, and a few diagnostic scans later, I determined head gasket and turns out I actually think I left the stove on or something, gotta go, sorry.

The special mission that actually was meant to be, was my new roommate situation. We all know that I was intentionally unwinterized to deter finicky roommates, but I would have invited in this particular roomie anytime, even if it was just for the last night of camp. I knew it would be a fun slumber party and he was quite content roughing it in the cold. Bill moved in. He had started dismantling his house, not wanting to leave a trace behind. The materials could be used to build something somewhere, if we weren't forced to abandon them at least. So much stuff was just going to go to waste when they bulldozed us, stuff that could be used to help the sick and hungry, but all we could do with it now was throw it into the massive bonfire that we were preparing for our last hoorah.

Speaking of Bill and fire and roommate shenanigans and our new best friends club, we shared a very powerful and symbolic moment in the tarpee. And it was hot. After I'd given him the tour, Bill found the dollar I had thrown behind the pee bucket in disgust. I made a face and he, mostly in jest, asked if I had a lighter. Before he could raise the interest rate on an unethical home loan, I pulled one out of my pocket, lit the corner of the bill and set it on top of the woodstove so we could watch it burn baby burn. It was the most incredible feeling.

When I found it, it just seemed like this strange item that I used to put a fictitious value on, but this was the moment that I truly understood just how evil this object was. I now knew how much destruction had been perpetrated around the globe, to the globe itself, and to every single inhabitant of our global community, including every single one of us, by us. For nothing but our desire to hold this absolutely worthless piece of trash.

You can't drink money. You can't even eat it. Although to hear most people talk about it, it's synonymous with food. In fact, I was reading a christian pamphlet one day, and while I don't adhere to this particular doctrine, I do connect with a lot of the philosophies and my open minded belief system allows me to grow and learn through everything that I encounter on my path. In fact, I agreed with most of what the pamphlet spoke about. About treating each other with love and respect, it spoke of humility and understanding, a lot of qualities that I try to exhibit myself. Then I read the section about money. This oughta be good. It talked about how it was a necessary part of life. We all need it to survive. We shouldn't live our life in greed, but if we lead a good christian life and believe, then we can depend on God to provide us with the money that we need to live. It even cited a few bible quotes to back it all up. Well, if it's in the bible then it must be true, God wrote that thing himself, right in-between blowing up an abortion clinic and protesting a gay marriage. Sorry, got a little off topic there.

So I looked up the verses it referenced, not as a way to argue against the faith as I might have done in the past, I do genuinely look to the bible now to see what may have inspired the scripture. What the message of the right way to live may have been, back before it was translated into something that could be understood by a capitalist farmer. I need help trying to figure out how to live in harmony with nature, and I think somewhere deep down, there may be some clues in this misinterpreted text. For instance, I wondered what exactly it would say about the importance of money, and God providing it to us, if it were written in a time period where bartering goods and services was the way of the land, not the god blessed US dollar.

Turns out that when I looked up the verse, money wasn't even mentioned. That was simply the extrapolation that the followers of the faith have made because of the way that the man-made world works. The word used in the book instead? Food. Yes, food is important to life. Yes, we all need it to survive. Yes, if you believe in God, then God will provide you with it. But money does not equal food. They are not synonyms. God did not create money, and as hard as he may try, man cannot create food. They are not the same. Today, I would understand that sentiment more than ever. Learn that lesson in a way that I had previously unknown. I was going to have the most intense food experience of my entire life. But first I had to make a final batch of onion tea.

Gloria was not doing that good, and with the journeys that we were all embarking on, or not embarking on, we all needed to be our best. So why would I not rely on the cocktail that had gotten us this far? I got it done, delivered a jarful to Gloria'a tarpee and we proceeded to have the best hour long conversation that I'd had all winter. Talked about everything we'd been through and all of the amazing people that had been brought into our lives. About the big picture of what was next. How we could make a difference. Show people how to stand up. Inspire people to inspire. How to save the world.

We talked about our more short term futures. About Wendy's plan and how it was the only thing that felt right to me. Wendy had already told her about it, she was strongly considering it herself, and by the end of our talk, it was her plan too. We were both certain that if we could manage to stay together, it would be the healthiest thing for both of us, spiritually and physically. I was beaming with excitement. If she went with us, it would take a plan that already felt like the right move and promote it to destiny status. We would have no doubt that we would be able to save the world. Having a strong spiritual leader was the thing that I would miss the most. I was worried about myself and the group losing focus once we were back out in babylon. So to have her, the strongest and dearest to my heart, a true spiritual warrior and an inspiration to us all, would be the greatest thing that I could possibly imagine. And Wendy. And Bill. And I had never been so excited to leave camp.

Before I left, we talked about the special food I was planning for our final dinner. She was not only all about it, she had a contribution to up the ante even further, people would remember that Rosebud doesn't mess around. Eventually I had to leave her side, I didn't want to, but life must go on. I was bouncing. Anyone I talked to who was on our group plan got a whisper of Gloria's possible involvement and immediately lit up. Love it when a plan comes together. Until it comes apart at least.

I ran into Wendy and mentioned Gloria, she had already been talking to her too and was equally thrilled with the prospect of her joining the group. Then Wendy said that she'd talked to her family... There was a kink in the plan. Like, now there was no plan. She'd talked to her dad the night before, who while not really being one of us, had been to camp and seen what we were about. He thought it was a great idea to have his kids in a safe place that he could come check in on, he just had to talk to the part of his family that thought they were in charge of the land. He asked her how many people she thought and she said ten or twelve just to cover our bases, but when he talked to them, they were hesitant to let a bunch of strangers take up shop in the family's special place. Wendy was a little hurt that her family couldn't just trust her, but we'd see that across the board, our loved ones back home just wouldn't understand. Not why we had been here in the first place or why we needed to recover now. Wasn't it just some kind of vacation? Her dad got her, like my mom did me, understood that he couldn't understand, but had ultimate faith in his daughter. As did I.

He had a suggestion. He was planning a trip down there this weekend anyway, so a car full of us could come stay at their house for a couple of days and then ride with him to iowa to meet the family. We bet that once they met Bill and I, and maybe even Gloria, we could probably convince them that we could be trusted. Either just the few of us could end up staying, we'd originally been totally cool with the three of us alone in refuge, or maybe more could follow once we were established. We didn't even have anyone else on board for sure yet, it had just been an idea whispered into a select few ears. In a time of escape and quick decision, we weren't going to get anyone to commit to a plan as up in the air as this. We could go and see what happened and when the time was right, we could extend invitations, but the plan was not going to look like it did yesterday.

She was little bit upset, not too bad, but it had just been falling into place so well. I assured her that it was all for a reason, we'd prepared for this very outcome, and in the end we knew that at the very least, the two of us would stick together and we would be exactly where we were meant to be. The original plan had sparked this vision that we now shared, but we needed another location if we were going to lead a larger group than just ourselves through this exodus. There had been a couple of options that had popped up, all of them would be just empty land and would require us setting up a camp. Certainly something we were capable of, the most capable in fact, but what had sold me was the chance to exchange the energy committed to surviving for a chance to plan step two.

If we were going to set up a camp, expending that amount of energy and resources, we'd rather be somewhere that mattered, instead of just hiding out in the woods somewhere. I remembered that Cindy had mentioned a cabin somewhere that sounded a lot like Wendy's spot, so we took a field trip to her end of camp to find out more about it. We tracked her down and she confirmed that she had access to a pretty secluded cabin up on top of a mountain. Some friends used to live in it, but now it's just a weekend escape, so it was fully set up and ready to rock. She'd have to check with her friends, but she was certain they'd be on board. So was Wendy though. We had liked the idea of Cindy, Gabby and Bailey being a part of our group, it may have still happened in iowa, but this option would ensure it.

And the location of this amazing cabin? Complete with woodburning fireplace and all of our wildest dreams. Why, in the breathtaking appalachian mountains of north carolina of course. Less than an hour away from asheville. Where I lived. At least where I used to live before I gave up all that I ever knew to become a water protector. I didn't like it. I was not ready to go home. That's why I had been drawn to the iowa plan, a place to recover away from society, away from the "real world."

I could hardly even talk to my own mom on the phone. I was not ready to face any type of colonization, let alone the one full of people that I used to know, full of questions that I wasn't ready to answer. I hadn't processed it all myself, there was no way I was ready to talk to others about it. I didn't really think it would be PTSD that I'd be going through, but I knew that I'd need some time to decompress. Sure, I could always go and pretend that I wasn't that close to home, I would still be at a cabin in the middle of nowhere with no phone or internet, no one would know where I was and I could still try to believe it was iowa. But it wouldn't be, and I would know it. I would feel the weight of being that close to everything that I knew and I would feel the need to go into town. I had resources there. I had a car still parked at Barry's. Hopefully. Had a music teaching gig to officially quit. So many close friends who I should let know that I'm alive. All reasons that I should want to be close. But they all scared me. I wasn't ready for any of that. And if I was that close, I'd feel their pressure and would end up facing them before I was ready.

But what was the alternative? To go stay in suburbia at Wendy's parent's place? Go to another camp that didn't feel right? Black Hoop? I always consider the options with an open mind. Remove your bias and ego from the equation and the math gets a lot easier. We told Cindy to confirm the house to see if it was even a sure thing while we weighed it all out. I knew that I'd end up being ok with it, coming to terms now, but I needed to pray on it first.

The mountains of NC were no doubt incredible. Beautifully familiar. It would be a great place to recover. It neighbored the cherokee reservation, my own unknown heritage. All plus column entries. Plus, once I was ready, it would be close to a lot of valuable resources. Before we embarked on whatever grand plans we came up with, I could make a few pit stops and gear up. I prayed. It would be ok. It could work to our advantage. I could pretend I wasn't home until I needed to be, and staying disconnected would help to keep that imagined space. I wouldn't have to tell anyone I was there. I could simply pretend that I was in the middle of the country, when in fact I was just an hour from home, which was twenty-four away from here. Oh yeah, so now our pilgrimage just grew a bit too. Cindy had already been planning on buying a school bus for her and Gabby to outfit as a home for their continued life's mission. Now they'd try to make that happen before we left so that we could load it up with gear, people and tipi poles. And all before our two pm deadline tomorrow. I felt good. It felt good. Felt right. Game back on.

Caught up with Bill, he was good with whatever as long as he was with the people, he'd follow us anywhere we went. His other alternative was to return to the sustainable treehouse project where he used to work and wait on the next call to save the world. I didn't like that solution, nor did I think he would. Him returning to that job still sounded more in line with our current paths than me returning to music though. Daniel still wasn't sure, the possibility of Gloria was a big plus, but he was also being pulled back home to california. Harry was thinking that he might be in. I had doubted that he would get on board, but had thrown it out there to him, and now he was leaning towards it. Every time I saw him after this point, I would just talk about him already being on the roster, convincing him that he was in, even if he hadn't convinced himself yet.

At that instant, when I was talking to Harry, I realized that I had inadvertently invited all of the chefs. I figured that wherever I ended up, I'd be on the hook for cooking every meal for the crew, that's how I'd earn my way aboard, but we'd built an escape pod of great cooks. We were going to be eating well. It made sense. We invited the most like-minded people, those with the same level headed energy as us three original conspirators. That same energy is what made for a good chef in this world, so of course it naturally led to us all sticking together.

Stephanie was still talking about meeting up with us later. Dylan and Maria already loved the NC mountains, but they'd be a tough sell. Ernie had to go home to his kids, which made iowa a long shot, but his home in virginia would be just a hop, skip and a jump from where we would be. What!? Ernie was in? Ok, I'm sold. Everything for a reason and this was it. Plan was set. Cherokee it was. Time to thaw dinner.

I threw together a simple lunch too, but I could do that with little effort before my first cup of coffee by this point. I dug through cooler depot, which had to be moved when the tribe took the kitchen tent, and was now an almost unmanageable stack of melting meat. Way better than the spread outness and the accessibility of the previous arrangement, all comfortably nestled into an icy snowbank, still chillin. Again, I'm grateful for and appreciate all of the help that everyone gave us, for the most part it was all well intentioned, but for future reference, you should probably check in with the kitchen before you start rearranging their supplies. Especially if you're only going to complain about it later. It'll save all of us a little headache. So does cayenne pepper.

I did take this opportunity to get a few ducks in a row, well, we were out of ducks, but I got everything else in order. Now that we had a plan that included a growing family and a vehicle bigger than Justin's car, I could take some to-go boxes. I'd already started mentally packing. Not only did we have the best cooks, we had the top inventory specialist with gps coordinates of the primo stuff, and now that we were leaving, I didn't have to feel bad about wiping out the caches.

Wendy thought that the place in iowa probably had some food already, at least the basics, but I was assuming this new spot was probably empty. I dug through the coolers and grabbed the best of the best of what was still frozen enough to travel. Seven coolers that I later condensed to four. A lot of ground beefalo mystery special, pork roasts, whole chickens, bona fide bovine and other choice cuts, plus half a cooler of cheese. I didn't know who was going, for how long, or if this was the end of the world, so I prepared for all of it. I stacked it all up in the kitchen, tied a tarp over it and labeled it "adventure crew." Indeed it would be.

No ownership and all, if someone else had needed some of it, I would have certainly hooked them up, but I didn't want some random passerby to think they'd stumbled upon an abandoned sausage party. I wasn't planning on taking any cookware. I was banking on the house having something and if it didn't, we'd figure it out. We always have everything we need. I went to the mess hall to prep dinner stuff. I'd gather the non-refrigerated items later (Ha, where was that section?) but I did stash the one item that I couldn't face impending doom without. Gotta have that lawrys. I may be against corporate greed, but I doubt that I could turn down a sponsorship, wink wink. "The official spice of the revolution." I was in the zone, my element, multi-tasking dinner prep and assembling our zombie apocalypse go-bags, nose and toes to the front, full steam ahead. Then the Rosebud rollercoaster came to a full and complete stop.
Step Twenty-Two:

Bill and Harry had gone to bismarck to buy a school bus, seemed to have it all worked out, until they were told that they wouldn't be allowed drive it away without a CDL license. We knew that this might be that law, but we were willing to risk it as long as it felt right, we'd just give it a good prayer before we took off. They weren't into it though, maybe they'd be left liable if we got pulled. Dylan had just bought one and drove it off of the same lot a week earlier, he rolled into camp with the widest grin I'd ever seen and didn't stop smiling for days. So maybe it was luck of the draw, depended on who was working I guess, or maybe depended on how they felt about indians and hippies. No worries, everything for a reason, and as long as we knew where we were going, I wasn't concerned about how we'd get there. Even now, with the family of water protectors that I have around the country and the network of support from others, I'm confident that I could get anywhere in the nation that I feel called to. I believe.

I went to find Wendy. With someone as important as Wendy, it was easy to hear rumors of her whereabouts, but she was all over the place and it often felt like a domesticated goose chase. I've never even tried to track down a wild one. We also saw a lot of geese today and tomorrow. You'd see two big groups converge into one, neat, and once we even saw a massive line with connected vee after vee that went on for four full minutes.

She was off walkie today, most people were, everyone was packing up and apparently not concerned with any "situations." Finally found her, holding Trinity back at Grant's truck while he loaded it up. He still had a horse here too, but Girl could stay another night. I let her know that we needed to walk and talk, Wendy, not Girl, and once she pried Trinity loose we were off. She had been helping with all three of Grant's girls through the winter and was the only one, besides him, that they would cling to. I filled her in on the bus deal. Sucked. Yet another plan that seemed like it was falling together until it fell the other way. But we were good. We still knew that we were on the right path, still felt right, and still closer than we were yesterday.

We were on the way to see Cindy and brainstormed a few solutions as we walked. The bus was great because it provided ample space for people and supplies, specifically, tipi poles on the top. So without that option, what could we do? So scrap the poles, what do we really need? We always have everything we need, so just people. We only needed seats for butts in order to survive. Justin had a sedan here and Cindy had a hatchback. So there it was. We could already carry everyone that was signed up, even if Gloria and Daniel both went. We were at ten and there were ten seats. Almost like it was meant to be. Sure would be tight though. And for a twenty-four hour drive.

Plus, realistically, we needed some stuff too. I wanted to take my computer and camera of course, the only personal possessions that I was having a hard time truly letting go. Less for the items themselves and more for the data. Footage from the bridge. And food. I had hundreds of dollars of food ready to go. We always have everything we need, and we can eat rice and beans, but if we're saving that much in food costs, then it almost makes sense to rent a van. That's it. Rent a van. A big commercial van. Plenty of room for everything, we were also hoping to take the asheville yurt and a van might just do the trick, probably not the tipi poles, but maybe...

Ok. Now we had a little something to offer Cindy besides "just believe." Not that that wasn't enough. We show up, Gabby was emptying the yurt, Cindy claimed that it came down easy enough but Gabby was still a ways off from being ready. Earlier today also marked my most favorite memory of Gabby, maybe not hers though. She came storming into the mess hall, completely covered in mud, had taken a nose dive into a puddle and super calmly she says, "Can somebody please come help Brock out here, I have to go handle some personal business." Respect. So she directed us back to the cars to find her mom, past my first campsite, ahh, memories.

Found Cindy, we smiled at each other as I approached and in a joking-because-I-wasn't-worried tone, I asked how things were going down here. She kept smiling for a second, "Oh, you know...", and then I could tell that her forced grin was fading fast. She was gonna lose it. I hugged her tight, our first real hug and it felt pretty nice, except that she was crying and upset that things were all falling apart. Things had seemed so perfect before and now nothing was going right. She was worried that this all meant that the plan was over, we'd been this close to figuring it all out, but now it was not going to happen at all. I held her close (real close) and calmed her down. We're good. This doesn't change a thing. The plan is still happening, everything still feels right, we just weren't meant to get that bus. No need to be upset, we can figure this out, (and here it comes...) we just have to believe.

This is like the fifth time it's fallen apart for us, and it just keeps getting stronger each time because we believe, in ourselves. That bus might have been no good. A discount bus without a license on a cross country trip out of dapl land, that might not be the right path for us. Trust. Then I went on to tell her (while still in tight hug formation) about the possible solutions we'd brainstormed. Eventually, I convinced her that all was as it was supposed to be and we were in this together. It was going to take more than one short bus to slow this party down.

We finally broke our hug (aw) and talked logistics. We agreed, at the very minimum, we already had the seats. We'd all have to leave most everything behind, but it was only stuff. We'd have left it all if we were flooded or raided anyway. Rental van was a crowd favorite. She had the money to buy a small bus, and as much as it would suck to spend some of that on temporarily renting something instead, it would mean getting all of our stuff, the yurt and the food. Almost paid for itself. So that was the plan. I almost couldn't keep up. Am I packing food or what?

I had minimal things to pack, but I could tell that they were a little overwhelmed, and now dealing with this, so I jumped in and started helping tear down their camp. Harry, Cindy and I were taking down a tipi, even without the poles, the canvas was still way worth taking. It's the main part of it, we could just cut and skin new poles in cherokee. This tipi, however, seemed to have endured the same winter that we had, all of the spikes and bottom edges were buried in thick ice. Harry and I used hatchets and rocks to try to get all of the edges free of the tundra. We basically had it, but every time we'd shift the canvas just a little bit, it would start to tear. This thing was going to fall apart before we could get it down. It was old and had been frozen all winter. Harry looked at me and we agreed that it wasn't worth working on during crunch time. Neither of us really wanted to clear that with Cindy, but we manned up and broke it to her. She was good. She believed again. We had everything we needed.

The yurt was empty now, but a big storm was rolling in and not only would it be a mess to take it down in a downpour, and not only would it be easier to load it directly into the van, but they needed a place to sleep tonight. Obviously we could have found them a space, in fact, my tarpee had some room... But the rain was moving in fast, so we reloaded the sensitive items and I took off, I still had a dinner to cook. I was walking down main street and ran into Bill, who also needed a little consoling. He lost some mojo when they got denied the bus and was resigned to returning to the treehouse. No way. I need you. If you trust in me, then just follow my lead. We're getting to that cabin. Got him. Then we saw a huge black cloud over Oceti. Not rain. It was smoke.

A structure fire. Panic's not the right word, we didn't panic, ever, but there was a really strong desire to make sure that everyone was ok. We took off running towards the river, but before we got far we heard a call on the walkie. Controlled burn. We've already covered this, how easy would it be for dapl to control a burn? Or how hard would it be to give us a little warning? We were burning a bonfire ourselves tonight, a massive one, but everyone knew it.

More importantly though, this was thick black smoke, not the smoke of organic material. You're burning stuff that has no business sending its fumes into the heavens. We are supposed to care about the environment here. Bill and I were not happy. With one match, you may have just negated all of the work and awareness we've accomplished all winter. How will we look in the media when there's thick black plastic smoke rising out of camp as we abandon ship? How about to our supporters? Will they still be proud that they helped us? Will they help the next camp? The argument that no one would see us was not valid. We knew that we were under constant surveillance. Not paranoia, TigerSwan aerial images of camp have been leaked to prove it, and right on cue here comes the bright yellow daplcopter. And a drone. Probably aired on fox news that night.

We didn't have time to be too upset though, the promised storm was about to break open and put the fire out anyway. Lightening storm. The only other lightening that we'd seen had been on christmas, and that had been an act of God. Tunkasila connecting all of our vibrations together. And then again on our very last night, everyone praying for a solution, all of our energies united and vibrating in unison as we all move from this step of our paths to the next. And then lightening started hitting the drill pad. Thank you Tunkasila. Wopila.

My camera was close so I went to grab it. If our mother was going to take out dapl, it sure would be cool to film it. It was raining, but I found a place to set it on a rock under a little bit of cover. It could handle getting a little wet, I'd given it up in my heart already anyway. Then I got on my knees. I'd been praying and believing more and more all winter. Harder and harder. Even preaching on the power of prayer. I'd pray for the end of dapl, our ultimate goal, but I knew that was a long shot. So I prayed more for the people of our camp. And for myself. Maybe throwing dapl in there too, but never a dedicated prayer for the destruction of the pipeline. Now sounded like a pretty good time to start.

For a half hour, seemed like it at least, didn't check my fancy watch, I knelt in the rain and lightening and prayed that a bolt would destroy the drill pad, or the equipment, or at least short them out and slow them down. Whatever works for you big guy, I'm not too particular. Please. I believe. I will still believe even if dapl survives. I will still follow the path I am led down. I understand that I may not understand the grand scheme. I don't have to have all of the answers to believe. But if you take out the drill pad on the last day of this movement, I can lead so many more people to you with a single youtube video than I'd ever be able to do with some silly old book. I can show people how to believe and show them that it works. I can wake up the world the way that I have been awoken. They will be as in awe of your power as am I. Please help us to save our mother. Mitakuye Oyasin.

Through all of this, the storm had been growing in intensity, lightening strike after lightening strike, some seeming like they were right on top of the pad, some on the bridge, and some on the dapl guards themselves. They eventually calmed down and I made moves to the mess hall.

So what happened? Well, what do you think? Let's assume for a second that the lightening did stop their operation, in whatever capacity. Would they announce it? Would they call Mr Murdoch and the media corporation of america. Would they tell the people that an act of God had intervened with their pollution pipe on the very last day before they paid the government to forcibly remove the people who claimed to be here on a mission from God to stop it? Yeah, I don't think so. So I'd say it's safe to assume that the lightening did exactly what it was meant to do, now I just have to keep up my end of the deal. But first things first, the last supper.

I got back to the mess hall, of course I was cooking our final dinner in there, so I threw on my apron and got started. Except that I couldn't find my apron. Not in the usual hanging spot or on the table or, wait, it had been rolled up in my pocket all day. It must have fallen out into the muddy lightening storm somewhere and was possibly a flooded river pollutant by now. I was kinda sad. We definitely had everything we needed, only one more mess to cook anyway, but it was kinda my pride and joy. It was my recipe book. My calling card. When I was in the apron, people knew I was serious. It had the remnants of every meal we'd cooked. It was the only keepsake I wanted to take away from camp. I imagined framing it to after we save the world and stuff. Like I said, I get it, it's a silly material thing that I don't need, I had it when I did. But it would be so freaking cool if it walked back into my life like that hat did. If someone saw it for what it was and saved it from impending doom. If the next camp I show up at reunites me with friends who recognized an important greasy rag when they saw one. Super cool. Just sayin.

So with no full frontal protection, I could have taken the easy way out. Nobody would have been upset if we'd have eaten a simple dinner on our last night. We all had stuff to do and everyone would have understood. But c'mon, you know that's not how I operate. Plus, I had Stephanie's help and couldn't send her off into the world with memories of me being basic. We kept it in the realm of the possible this time though. We still had cabbage, cauliflower and carrots, so I boiled all of it together in some vegetable bouillon while Stephanie worked on some biscuits. Couldn't not have biscuits on our last day, and garlic biscuits at that, what else could possible compliment spaghetti ramen. The epitome of camp style.

Garlic and onions. My last time putting love into them and I knew that they needed it now more than ever. Smells so good. Marzanos and a special twist on the sauce that I'd been getting dialed in all winter. As much for the extra pizazz, as for the excuse to use up the last of our produce. I sauteed some finely chopped carrots, zucchini, celery and raisins, then threw them into the mix as it cooked down. Added some mystery meat. Why stop now? And done.

Ok, so now that the basics were covered, we could focus on the real power food. Not some silly dessert this time. Or novelty item. I'm talking about legitimate food. No imitation fud will do. We needed some real energy. Honest to God vibrations. We all had daunting tasks ahead of us and needed now, more than ever, to raise our own internal vibrations. And I had just the thing. I'd already learned of its ultimate sacred power, next Leonard confirmed it and gave me some tips, then Gloria backed them all up and gave me another portion that had been gifted to her. The most sacred food that there was. Closest to God. Something that you could feel energizing you as you consumed it. Yeah. Wild buffalo heart. And we were going to eat it raw.

It was our last night, so we were pulling out all the stops, or at least we thought we'd be leaving tomorrow. Denise had heard a rumor and was trying to find out more, her rumors at least came from somewhat reputable sources, and they had told her that we may be getting a one day extension on our eviction deadline. I never put too much faith in rumors, even from the boss, but it sure would ease our evacuation attempt. There were already bulldozers working in Oceti, not by force, but in conjunction with water protector clean up crews.

We were making progress in Rosebud too, getting structures down and either packed up or added to our fabulous bonfire pile. So it was obvious that we were making an effort. They had a team of free labor tearing down what they'd otherwise have to pay somebody to do. They could save a few precious dollars. If they could get us to go peacefully with everything that we wanted, it would be a lot easier than having to push us out at gunpoint. Of course, the more they let us pack up and take, the more resources we'd have at the next camp. People were making runs into cannonball, getting as much as they could out. Word on the street was that there would be a roadblock put into place at midnight and we wouldn't be permitted to reenter once we left the venue. The extension seemed possible, but in the end unlikely.

There was also a rumor that AIM was planning to show up on thursday, they'd want us out of here before then for sure. Well, now it all makes sense, they must have known about the American Indian Movement's plan to roll into our rescue and that was the whole reason for the three day deadline to begin with. AIM is a pretty big activist group that has been around since the seventies, and they're not really scared of anybody. They've defended the rights of their people repeatedly and even stood up to BIA when, believe it or not, the people needed protection from the so-called protectors. So if they didn't get us out of here sooner than later, then they were going to have to face off against more than just a few peaceful pot smoking hippies.

I could already see them using weed as a way to discredit our movement too. For sake of dapl jacks reading this, I won't disclose what we did with it during raids, other than smoke it of course. Those who understand the spiritual and medicinal qualities of the plant already, would not be swayed in their opinions of our effort. Others with only the knowledge of its recreational uses, may label us as partiers and free loaders. I hope that even as cool as I've made camp sound, it's also apparent that it wasn't all fun and games. But the worst slander would occur with those that don't understand the herb at all. Those who have taken the bait of the anti-pot propaganda machine and believe it to be a habit comparable to selling heroin to babies and bunnies and little baby bunnies. Silly rabbit, drugs are for black people. And now we have a victimless crime that demands a harsher sentence than that of even sexual assault, eh, she was asking for it anyway.

I've personally had several conversations defending the legalization of weed that ended in such frustration towards the closed mindedness of those that'll believe anything. I've honestly heard people say that pot should not be legalized because it is a crime. Huh? The only thing that they had against it was that it was against the law. What? Pot shouldn't be made legal because it is illegal? Several times I've heard this. I think they had such a firm belief in the infallible system that they couldn't comprehend that laws would ever need to be changed. Man-made laws. They had no moral or religious reason not to allow the use of a completely natural plant, but because of a law written by man, they voted against the legalization of it in their state. Welcome to america. I tried to explain, to no avail, that their beloved alcohol had once been illegal. A man-made law prohibited the manufacture of a man-made drug, but then through the system that our infallible country uses to write and amend laws, it was made legal. Once again allowed to drink your blues away. Nothing. How about women voting? Nope. Slavery? Ha.

I think that a lot of people just can't fathom anything that happened before they were born as actually occurring. They see it as some obscure story in a history book, most likely a book they didn't spend much time with anyway. The "funny" part being that the same people who don't understand that prohibition and slavery were real things, or that indians actually existed at some point (at least other than the colonized version of Pocahontas and John Smith, who of course was employed by the Virginia Company), they somehow have no problem believing the literal story of a man living inside of a whale for three days, just like Pinocchio.

Those that can't process a time before their own, also can't understand a time after this one. Why should they care what happens to the Earth after they're dead and gone? I've heard that so many times. Come on man. Even those with kids and grandkids just don't get it. We are setting them up with such a burden to deal with. We've seen the Earth deteriorate so much just in our own lifetimes, I can't bring myself to think about what we're leaving for them. We no longer have the capacity to be able to see all that has gotten us this far and all that will go on after we are no longer.

Civilization used to do "great" things, as in the definition that means big, not necessarily good. We used to build massive structures that took hundreds of years to complete. Several lifetimes. We didn't care about the instant gratification of a 3D printed house, we built cathedrals over generations. Because we "cared" about the future. Our legacy. No longer. Now we put zero thought into tomorrow because we are convinced that nothing beyond our own lifetime matters. Convinced that everything that is, is there strictly for our use, for our convenience, no matter what impact it has on our future. On our children's children's children. God put oil in the ground for us to burn. So we're burning it. If it destroys the Earth it doesn't matter one bit, because that's his plan. End of times. Armageddon. We don't have to care a thing about our kids or their planet or future carnations of our own energy, because it won't be around for them to enjoy anyway. And to their credit, as long as they keep it up, they'll be right.

So no worry about anything else outside of our own lifetime, but we can worry so much about everyone else's. OPP. Other people's personal business. Their physical, mental and spiritual private lives that have absolutely zero effect on our own. I don't care how you pray. I don't care who you marry. Congratulations. And I most certainly don't care if you smoke weed or not, so let me do what feels right on my path. My life on this green planet.

Or am I just being paranoid? That is a side effect of smoking pot, right? Not at all. The side effect is becoming more in-tune with your true self and the universe. The paranoia comes from the incompatibility of the symmetry that you feel with the natural world around you and the walls of a broken oppressive system crushing in on that same space. You wouldn't be scared of getting busted smoking pot if it wasn't such a harshly punished crime. Illegal to do what literally makes you feel natural. It makes you more aware of all of the vibrations around you. It strengthens all of your senses. Gives you the ability to see the world in closer detail, that's why art becomes so mesmerizing. Vibrations. The vibrations of taste and smell and touch all become more powerful and music takes on a whole new meaning that starts to make you understand just how vibrations actually compose the universe. Pot is a gateway drug alright, a gateway to God. A stairway to heaven. No wonder they don't want us to have it.

Plus it's fun. Makes us happy. Just another vibration. A high one. Being happy is a healthy vibration. A lot better than all the low ones that are enough to make you sick. Like, physically ill. Just from a vibration. An emotion. A mood. And a bad one is dissonance from your true internal energy. You can feel it. Trembling with fear. Shaking mad. Vibrations with such low frequencies that you can literally feel them pushing your body away from your inner self. A negative pulse causing discord between you and the universe. Pulling you away from God.

You can affect that vibration consciously. You don't have to be a victim of your emotions. You can master them. You can take control and create your own happiness. Internal bliss. I know that it sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo, but it is literally physically true, it's just science. Physics. The study of the physical world. The physical manifestation that we are currently experiencing. You are not your body. You are an infinite spiritual being that is playing a vital role in pushing the evolution of the universe. You are in control of everything that you experience. You have to listen to yourself though. You have to do what feels right. You have to make yourself happy. That's the key to vibrating in-tune with your true energy. With God. It keeps you on your path, and on your path, you are in charge.

Guess what's next... You just have to believe. Proof is in the placebo. You just have to believe from your heart. That's what powers the whole thing. The whole universe. It all comes from your heart. Your brain is the control center for your physical body, for understanding the physical world, this simple manifestation of vibrations. Your heart is so much more. It's your connection to your spirit. It determines the synchronicity between your physical self and the piece of God living inside you. It creates your vibration. Your pulse. Your heartbeat. You can feel it pushing energy through you to power your physical manifestation, but you can also feel in it the emotional scale that your body has evolved to sense the connection that you have to spirit at any given moment.

Some have even evolved the ability to sense the energies, vibrations and emotions of others, but you don't have to be a psychic to know that if you see something unhealthy, you get out of its way. If you feel something painful, then you move your hand. So if you sense a negative emotion, you do something to make yourself happy. Move out of the way of whatever is causing you to vibrate at a lower frequency. "Raise your spirits." We evolved that power. Those that sensed fear, knew that it didn't feel right, so they ran and survived. They didn't live in fear, that's not natural. It only exists in man-made evolution. It's preferred in it actually.

Fear, worry and doubt keep a population of sheep from ever rising up and saying that enough is enough. But we can control our own happiness, through love, by believing. That's the last thing they want though. We'll become empowered, confident and self assured that we can stand up and make a difference. They don't want a difference. They want more of the same. So they try their hardest to keep you scared that you won't eat, that way you worry about money and doubt that you can ever change a thing. Then, once you have enough money that you should be vibrating on cloud nine, you realize that you really can't buy happiness. Love doesn't have a price tag. You can only believe from your heart and money is all in your head.

The heart is where you feel God. The heart is where the piece of the universe that is inside all of us lives. The heart is where our vibrations come from, which are simply a piece of infinite energy and the key to connecting with our own personal spirit. We're working from a deficit because of our man-made evolution and generations of a strict diet of artificially vibrating fud, but we can still feel God inside of us. So just imagine how powerful this is going to be. This sacred wild buffalo heart that we're about to eat.

Leonard said to keep it simple, just a little bit of onions and butter and barely cook it on either side. The rawer the better really. The nutritional vibrations of fruits and vegetables are widely known to be more beneficial when consumed raw, so why would meat not be the exact same? We've already eaten raw meat though, so there's no need to beat a dead horse. (Wait, there's no need to beat a live one either. Why's everything gotta be so violent?) Our carnivorous appetite evolved long before the science of fire did, but I knew that a bowl of raw buffalo heart might be a tough sell. Good thing I'm not a capitalist anymore.

I had the massive heart from before, and Gloria had given me another, slightly smaller one, which put us officially in the abundance department. I sliced it all up thin. Most of it looked like the reddest, tenderest, heartiest pieces of meat I'd ever seen. Real meat. Heart. The energy center of a naturally produced, highly vibrating, sacred animal, who had been living closer to God and untainted by man than any creature I had ever known. Some of the more internal slices revealed the vein-like infrastructure of the organ. The heart of the matter. I was fascinated by every step of this experience. I knew that it was going to be powerful, so I resisted the urge to sample a slice, like I would do with any other food I was preparing. This was something new though. Actual "food." I'd prided myself on eating new and weird things, which this seemed like at the time, but now I realize that this wasn't new and weird at all. It was the oldest and most natural thing I'd ever eaten. All that "fud" was the new strange stuff.

Of course, we've all eaten food not raised by man. Even if you've never eaten wild game, which is still likely to have been impacted in someway by our global domination, most of us have eaten wild seafood plucked right of the ocean. True. I love it. It's obvious that the rest of our species loves it too. The worldwide industrial fishing industry has made some pretty big advances in collecting all of the ocean's inhabitants for human consumption. Our overpopulation is successfully eradicating the God given abundance that is meant to feed the countless species that actually live in the water. We use hazardous artificial means to steal food right off of their plates and know that they can't do a thing about it.

Aside from the massive amount of well documented overfishing practices around the world, those that can somehow be rationalized by our need to feed our (for some reason) growing overpopulation, there are other downright evils being committed in our oceans. Some cultures have used dynamite since its invention to more effectively slaughter boatloads of fish than humanly possible, but now that's proving not to be enough. So they've traded dynamite for cyanide and they spray it on our ocean floor to poison the fish, then, when they float up, they're collected for human consumption. What was that again about fish being so healthy? Fish, which is maybe not so ironically also translated in french to "poisson."

We don't even really have to mention (but I will) the endless pollution of the ocean, perpetrated not even in the righteous name of food, but just for plain old greed. Barrels of nuclear waste, missile tests, trash islands and of course our dear friend oil spills. Our incapable minds can't fathom that amount of size. Most humans can't even visualize numbers as high as their IQs, so we don't even try to comprehend that our little old toxic sludge could ever affect something as large and magnificent as the ocean itself. We've treated the water like a trashcan and a grocery store simultaneously, gross, and now those that have to live there forever are forced to suffer the consequences. So now, if they do get hungry, their only option is to evolve legs and come crash our endless dinner party. What was that about a record number of shark attacks again?

But you said that there were countless species. That doesn't sound like we're running out at all. I'm pretty sure I heard somewhere that there's plenty of fish in the sea. Oceans of them. So many in fact, that we can't even begin to identify all of the species. We've never even been to the bottom of the ocean. It's so vast and magnificent that we can't even figure out how to explore it all, yet we feel like we're smart enough to control it. We don't know how it works, yet we think that bending the rules of nature for the benefit of one species is how God intended us to treat his planet? We think it is our greatest accomplishment. That time when we revolted against the laws of nature and entered the rule of man. Wow. We really do have a whole God complex thing going on.

Except that we can't comprehend "complex", so we always try to reduce things to simpler terms, something that the common man can understand. We're completely ridiculous. In the same breath we can acknowledge that man is weak and the planet is infinitely complex, then turn around and claim to be the heir to her throne and know what is best for all in the land. King of the planet and the sole recipient of every single scrap of sustenance that she provides. We inherited the Earth alright. When God died. When we killed God. When man decided that God was obsolete and we should no longer have to follow his rules.

Surprisingly, we're not as smart as we think we are though. We couldn't actually kill God. Turns out you can't kill something that you no longer believe in. We still had no idea how the infinite energy of God powered the entire planet, but that's never stopped us from running the Earth into the ground before. After the corporate takeover of the planet, God was no longer in charge, but we still needed his technology and knowledge, so we kept him on as a laborer. He was now our indentured servant. Man was of course now CEO, free to change the mission statement of the planet (love) to a business plan more beneficial to the new shareholders (money).

The rich got richer and the working class suffered hardship and loss. Man took more and more while God and all of his still faithful creatures became servants of man or were exiled from the planet altogether. We took millions of years of hard work, from millions of years of contributors, who built such a magnificent utopia from the ground up, and with literally zero thought, we traded it all away, for money. Plain and simple. Let me rephrase that for the common fellow to follow. We sold out God. How's that for simple minded?

But we were raising vibrations tonight. We'd all been brought together to set the record straight, and tomorrow we would disperse like a newly born seed pod spreading out across the globe to get started. We were graduating boot camp, complete with a fireside celebration, but our transformation wouldn't be official until we'd taken all of our lessons to heart. It was time.

Stephanie was getting ready to cook most of it, but we were intent on eating ours raw, in fact, our hearts were set on it. I grabbed a few others, those that I knew would be in without much convincing. We'd get the rest of the family involved too, but they weren't going to be willing to try it until after I did, plus this first round would really get the crowd buzzing. Literally. It was just like five of us. I'd already been talking to them about what I then knew about its sacredness and the energy that it would be filling us with. I only had a vague grasp of vibrations at the time, and honestly, it's only through writing this book that it's all starting to sink in.

It's been crazy to have been learning so much as I write it. I've been praying before and after and during and I've been blown away with some of the words as they come out. I'm no writer, you can believe in that. I am truly in awe. I believe in the wonders of the universe. I'm also pretty excited to read the end of this thing. Honestly, writing it all out has transformed me just as much as the winter did. I had compartmentalized everything, now I'm actually processing it and finding out how I feel about it all. (I landed on Love:Good::Money:Bad) It's only made me spiritually stronger. Just like this will. I know, I'm stalling, enough is enough, just get on with it, let's get this party started, on with the show. And just like that we each grabbed a piece of raw wild buffalo heart and in it went...

Step Twenty-Three:

Love is a simple thing. Just a vibration. A matter of the heart and the heart of the matter. The fundamental building block of all that is. Everything that we know and especially everything that we don't. Science can only account for 4% of the matter in the universe around us. We know that there is way more based on the math, the gravity, a law of nature that we have yet to figure out how to break. We named the other 96% of creation "dark matter" and "dark energy" because it is not visible to human vibration sensors, but it's actually light matter. Vibrating at such a frequency that we can't detect it with our silly man-made gadgetry. What do you suppose that is? This mysterious unseen matter that scientists say holds the universe together and makes the whole thing go round. Um... duh, it's God. The Great Mystery is Wankan Tanka is Allah is Tunkasila is the Universe is the Spirit alive inside of you is God. And God is love. That's why loving and being loved feels so good. It makes us happy. Raises our vibration. It is our vibration. We are love. Love is God. We are God.

The more you pour love into everything you do, the closer to your path you travel and the more love pours back out of the universe and onto you. Love is all you need. It really is. Those guys were onto something for sure. They had raised their vibrations, explored their spirituality, and truly broke ground in reconnecting mankind with God. They had a little artificial kickstart and then everything they shared with the world had a major impact on waking up a generation. The Beatles made a difference. Their music got the message into the mainstream and those that it affected were forever changed. They raised the vibration of the masses, a select group of them at least. Without them and the awakening of the sixties, our movement would never have happened. No wonder their most outspoken voice was assassinated. Lennon had some really interesting things to say about religion and government and possessions and the common link between most assassinations, money. I could see why those whose living depended on all that stuff might want him to be quieted. Remind me never to speak out about what I believe in.

But a man's got to make a living somehow. We already know that living and money are synonymous in that context. Life equals money. Guess you can put a price an a human life after all. It's $50,000 for most insurance companies, the same as a daily fine for dapl, hmm... And they sure do charge an arm and leg to keep the rest of you "healthy." So money is life. And money is food. And of course money is love. That's obvious. What's the easiest way to show that you love someone? Hallmark knows. And the more you spend on that diamond, the more it shows you care. Capitalism has such a grip on love that they convinced everyone that there is one day a year when love actually is the most important thing. So you better get shopping. Don't want your sweetheart to think that you don't care.

Plenty of people get that this is all a money making racket though, many people even hand make their gifts and/or megasweet valentines, excellent. Heartmade with love, absolutely nothing better. A lot of us even understand that we don't have to reserve love for one day out of the year. It's hard though, to fit in special time when you have to do what you have to do. Gotta make a living. That's how we show love to our family. We provide for them. We provide food, we provide shelter, we provide warmth. We provide money. We may not be around as much as we could be. And when we are, we're spent, energy drained from trading our precious life vibration for money. But we can just buy their love. That's how it works, right? Sure, we could work less, but then we'd have less money, and wouldn't be able to afford all of these distractions that occupy our family's time while they wait for us to get home from work. Huh?

If you're actually reading this, then you probably don't quantify how much you love someone by how much you spend on them, hopefully not by this point at least. But many do though. Most in fact. The same system that has convinced us that money equals food, has done the exact same with love. I know someone who actually keeps a notebook of all the gifts she gives her son "out of the kindness of her heart", that way she can remind him later just how much she loves him. That's pretty extreme I realize. I hope it is at least. But money equals life and what better way to show love than the gift of life. And for every gift of life we need more food, which means we need more "property", which circles back to needing more money. That's the circle of life, baby. The man-made one at least. The one where we replaced everything with money. Way more boring than God's version, but he was making us share it with all those, those, those animals. Yuck.

So food equals money. Land equals money. Life equals money. Love equals money. Man, money seems to be doing pretty well for itself. Even better than corn. But I thought that God was love? And God was life. And the land. And I thought that God was food. Maybe even corn. But... does that mean... does that mean that money is God? Welcome to Capitalism 101.

If you think that we don't worship money, then you've obviously been living under a rock, which ironically was itself currency long before the disposable paper product income of today. One flip through the channels and it's obvious. Forget the "life changing" grand prize game of money or the money you should send in to our ministry to save your soul or the money you'll get when you're the next fifteen minute celebrity pretending to live in reality. The tv itself was proof enough. The tv and the phone and the gadgets and gizmos and I just can't live without my electronics. If I didn't have them then I'd be forced to go out and... live. Well, I'd just die.

I get it. I love technology too. I've made my "living" with a computer for years. I'm not saying that it's the problem. I'm honestly hoping that we can merge technology with living in a good natural way. I have hope. Honest to God hope. No doubt this time. I know that I'm not smart enough to figure it out though, so hopefully we can inspire our youth to work on it before it's too late. Relying on destructive practices to produce technology is no good. Endangering the kids forced to mine conflict minerals in unethical ways from deprived lands for cell phone minutes, is not the call to answer. Cell signals that disrupt magnetic fields and the flightpaths of all of the mysteriously missing honeybees, aren't helping to save the world. And what do you think they do to your brain's flightpath? So yeah, solar instead of gas, great first step. Hopefully we can actually even pull that one off, but we have a long way to go. Given a choice though, I'd rather have the Earth than a google image of it.

Ok, so you don't worship tv or electronics, or even money. You're not greedy, you just need enough to live a simple life. Nothing wrong with that, right? As much as it sucks, money is the way of the world. Need it to buy food, especially if growing it is so bad for everybody. (See, I've been listening.) Need to pay rent, heat, water, trash and of course taxes. Sure, it sucks to pay for things that are only recent financial burdens to the history of man, but our overpopulation demands it. We can't all live in a magic garden in the sky. That's just the way it is. I'd love to quit my job and just write books all day, but some of us have real responsibilities. Bills to pay. What's your book even about anyway? Saving the world? Well, that's never gonna happen. You should just get a real job. The world is too messed up to be saved. Everything around us is falling apart. How can you ever fix that? Society is trashed, the environment is trashed, and half of our elected officials are trash. Plus, a nuke is coming any day to end it all. Unless of course we strike first, the continents aren't really affected by each other so we'll be just fine. Now where'd I put those launch codes...

I agree, the world is messed up and full of sinners, but that's just the way it is. Suck it up. I know everything feels wrong, but it's never gonna change. Just find something that makes you happy and forget about the rest of that stuff. It's too big for us to ever make a difference. Yeah, I believe in God, but even God can't save this mess... Sound familiar?

This is exactly the problem. It's never anybody's problem. It was either the last generation's problem or it's the next. Not ours. The complacent attitude of acknowledging that the world is doomed if we don't change it while not even considering that we can possibly change it, well it's exactly what they're banking on. It's what they're filling their bank accounts with right now, while we just stand around and twiddle our opposable thumbs. But what can I do? I'm just one person. No, you are a member of the greatest population of mankind that has ever existed. More than ever. That makes it our responsibility to save the world. We are an overwhelming eight billion strong. 8,000,000,000. They could never even think of stopping us if we all put down our drinks, cut off the tv and got off the couch. But they've convinced you that you've earned that chillaxation time after a hard day of trading your personal vibrations for their made up money. Sounds like a pretty contrived waste of time for a useless reward to me.

Maybe you should try something with a little more substance. Might be a little harder than their made up nine to five schedule. You might not get that imagined feeling of accomplishing something worth taking a break for. And I'm in no way saying that it will be easy. You're always on the clock and there's currently no end in sight, but the more people that sign up to this pyramid scheme, the easier it gets. Doesn't pay much money, but it pays all the life you can live. So why don't you quit being so lazy and get a real job, like me. I'm a Water Protector. We're the hardest working people you've ever met and we're going to save the world. Trust. In your defense though, you didn't try this buffalo heart. This stuff was like "Oh my God."

I barely even chewed it and it melted in my mouth. I didn't want to swallow it, I wanted to savor every second and within just a few I could feel it, honest to Tunkasila feel it, flowing through my body. The animal's energy spread from my mouth and made me feel lighter as it pulsed through my cells. They weren't kidding, this was real food. I looked into Stephanie's eyes, she was experiencing it too. Still happening. Incredible. It lasted for less than a minute, but the effects stayed with us for hours. I was in awe. It was the best thing I've ever eaten in my entire life. Period. Even better than frybread.

Looking back now, I think my vibration lifted at that moment permanently. I was changed. Another step closer to where I am now. Imagine eating this as a primary source of energy. Imagine when the plains were still full of buffalo and after you prayed on the hunt, and then prayed on the buffalo that sacrificed its life for God's eternal cycle, now just imagine cutting out it's still warm heart and consuming that energy. Yeah buddy. I'm guessing I just lost a few of you, it's a little out there for most, but baby steps.

Speaking of, this baby step was a pretty big leap for one. Cindy had been a vegetarian for five years and had been researching the sacredness of the buffalo and how it is honored in life and in death. She had told me that she was ready to try some buffalo, so when she walked in I had to go for it. I expected an immediate no and got the face that many shot me until they could see in mine that I was serious, this was a real thing. Then she was in. She went for it. Who even knows how to describe her experience with her reintroduction to meat being such a sacred vibration. She cried. Good cry, I think. Intense for sure. She needed to hug through it. I mean, if I gotta. Always there to take one for the team.

Seeing how it affected her, affected me. Thomas was similar, as it was happening in his mouth, he reached up, grabbed me and stared his wide eyes into mine, a deep intense stare as I could feel him experiencing what I had just undergone. You could feel the energy moving through you. Everyone that came had a piece and a similar reaction, I had another with Ernie, chef's perk, and then Stephanie finished up cooking the rest. It was still very special cooked. Still energizing. Still melt in your mouth. Not a normal piece of meat. Incredible taste, texture and still powerful, but not the same. I didn't label it or announce it. I wanted everyone to have some, even if they didn't know what it was. We needed it. No regrets, but next time, I'm not cooking any of it. Mandatory raw wild buffalo heart.

I also came up with a fantastic idea, but too late. I'd been wanting to do sushi all winter, even had sushi rice, but no sushi grade fish. Thought it might not be appropriate to add sushi tuna to a donation list. Funny though. But check this. Wild buffalo heart sushi. It's happening, just wait. I'd bore you with the spaghetti ramen and garlic biscuits with veggie medley, but how could I follow up the most powerful food experience of my entire life? And I can't even give you a recipe for it, some cookbook this is.

The only thing comparable to the magnitude of this experience was the height of the bonfire ready to light outside. Biggest one I'd ever seen, and I've been around. Never been to burning man though, which makes me think of Trent, miss that guy. Wish he were here tonight, he'd be so proud of this work of art. It was just that. Pallets and platforms cobbled together and reaching into the sky. I knew that once it was lit, it would look incredible as the flame climbed out of all the slats and gaps. I'd missed the first one, so I was going to be here to take in every bit of the last, camera in hand for posterity of course.

The pile was at least fifteen feet high, and the flames another ten, but it was the sparks flying upwards of forty feet that were the most mesmerizing. I super zoomed in on them and they looked like magnified amoebas or atomic particles, zipping around haphazardly in all directions. As I zoomed out to the next dimension, it was psychedelic fractals as more and more came into frame and you realized that the microscopic flutterbys were composing the universe, and that you were just looking at a tiny fraction of a giant a lake of fire and fry. Then, when I panned down and you saw the ignition source for all of these living particles, following their instincts to rise up out of the heat of creation, well, it was a cool shot.

I filmed the fire for a long time, but I wanted to be in the moment, so I found Gabby and gave her a five minute camera tutorial. She was astonished that I was trusting her with it, but I wasn't worried in the least. She was a water protector, instant trust, and her mom was a photographer, so I figured she knew how to respect the equipment. I was also experienced teaching kids to film, and the viewfinder never fully recovered anyway, but more importantly, it was just a camera. A material thing. What do I need that for? Maybe I do, but I always have everything I need, so it's all good. Everything happens for a reason. So if it gets messed up, then it was for a reason. We're leaving, I have the footage from the bridge on a hard drive, if the camera gets broken, then that's one less thing to worry about. When I need a camera again, I'll have one. And maybe losing this from my life opens me up to manifest a better one. Or maybe my purpose is no longer to document the water protectors. It's to be one. I'm not supposed to leave here and make a film about the revolution, I'm meant to leave here and lead it. There will be plenty of people on the sidelines taking pictures, let's give the something worth looking at.

We were in high spirits. Buzzing. Vibrating. Everyone shared their plans, some still not sure, nothing felt right, but no one seemed too worried about it. It'll all work out. People were tired and should have gotten plenty of sleep for the big day tomorrow, but how could you miss this? You only live once, this time anyway, and we were more alive right now than we knew was possible. People were happy-sad, gonna miss the family, writing down contacts and vowing to request friendships. I wasn't sad at all. Not in the least. I was so excited to start the next leg of the journey. I knew that we all had incredible things ahead of us and that we'd all see each other again, exactly when the time was right. I didn't write down a single phone number. I did give mine to a few, but made no promises of ever using it again. My phone was non-functioning in the tarpee and I didn't miss it a bit, especially knowing that it was tracking and listening even without a battery. I wasn't sad. It felt right. Felt like time to go.

As great as it was, and at first my resistance to leave, it was time to move on. We couldn't stay here just surviving forever. They were still drilling, end of story, but it's just the beginning of our story. We were ready to get to work. Ready to take everything that we had learned, everything that we had become, and set out to save the world. Some of us would be starting new camps. Some would be out raising awareness. Some might even write books. I can't wait to show up at a new camp and hear a familiar name on the walkie, it's gonna to be an intense hug when I arrive unexpected, and it's always going to be right when they need me the most. When I'm called to them. As long as I do what feels right, even if I don't understand it, then I'm always going to be right where I need to be. It's a beautiful thing and I can't wait to see it in action. It still blows my mind, but I'm not surprised by it anymore, it's expected actually. I know it's going to happen, because I believe.

I believed it was getting late too. The fire crowd dispersed, but most of us moved into the mess hall, not quite ready to let go of the night. I stood by myself in the back, leaning against a prep table and just taking it all in. Surveying the energy coming off of my family. I was living the greatest movie I'd ever seen. That's what it felt like as I looked around and saw all of the characters, montages of my bonds with them and imagined where they were going from here. Ziggy went on from camp to break the music industry with a setbreak of filibuster banter that lasted seven days in protest of his rider not being sufficiently fulfilled. Jess was tapped to be on the elite tiny ninja squad working for the good of all of lifekind. Dan loaded up a crew of protectors into his dreads and they traveled the globe spreading the best kind of medicine. (laughter, silly) And Stephanie and Pete and Ernie and Jacob and Miranda and Johan and James and it was just such an incredible moment. I felt it touching my heart, and that wasn't just the buffalo talking. I don't even want to stop reminiscing about it now, just like I didn't want to then, but the book must go on. You didn't think it was over did you? This was just the prologue.

Chapter one. In the beginning, there was... rain. Of course there was. Why would there not be? We had that slight lightening mist yesterday, but this was a proper rain. I had forgotten what it was like. It was wet. If it would have been the temperature it was a week earlier, it would have been snow and made it too difficult to leave. We'd have been forced to stay, what a bummer. But instead, it was a Goldilocks amount of difficult, just right to be able to narrowly escape. I got up and headed straight for the yurt. I know that I'd been told it would be "easy", but for some reason I was prepared for a little more.

Cindy had called the van rental company yesterday but nothing was available with that short of a notice. We were beyond worry though. In a good way. We'd brainstormed and determined that we'd stay at the casino for the night. That relieved some pressure and allowed us to focus on actually getting out, the rest would come together when it did. So now, we just needed somebody's pickup truck, that hadn't been loaded down already, so that we could take a load and pile it all up into a top floor hotel room. Would be a ridiculous amount of work, but what else did we have to do today?

Grant to the rescue. He'd driven to Cannonball to unload his truck so that we could use it. There was currently a roadblock, but he'd gotten back through with a completely empty truck and a promise to be helping with the mass exit. We tore down the yurt and started loading it into the bed, but just because it was raining don't think that it wasn't cold out, it just meant that now we were wet too. I'd never taken one apart, but we were making pretty good headway, and then we needed the ring at the top to be disconnected from the thirty or so rafters. Someone had to climb up the slick wet roof and detach the chimney first. Cindy said that she could, but there was more question in her voice than statement. Gimme the drill. "Water, I've been here protecting you all winter, please don't turn on me now." No problem. So then we had to set the ladder up in the middle while I stood on the top "not a step" and unscrewed each truss. Super fun. Oh yeah, it was super raining too, and cold, did I already mention that? We didn't even wait until I was done to comment on the irony of me surviving all that I had to make it this far, and then slipping off of a ladder being what finally took me down.

We removed a few from each side, back and forth, each time taking away a support for this heavy wooden ring that I'm standing inside of. Eventually, I was the one supporting the ring, from the top of a shaky wet ladder, while the last few boards were being taken off. Just a couple left. Me with no support. I guess I was the support. And then the force of removing one of the last rafters shifted everything and all of a sudden I was shoved forward. I was a goner. At least injured as I fell from the ladder with this heavy wooden ring and 2x4s chasing me. The crowd gasped. But Tunkasila wasn't letting me off that easy today. Somehow, I stabilized the rocking ladder and the heavy rocking yurt remains, as I bent forward and was able to re-balance myself. It seemed crazy and expertly ninja'd from my perspective and Bailey agreed from her outside view. I don't understand the physics of how I saved it or myself, but I don't have to, I believe.

We got it the rest of the way apart and all loaded up. I left them to get the rest of their stuff packed and I went to finish up the groceries. I was hooking it up. I had scouted a few things the night before and knew where some other must-haves were, so now I just rounded everything up like a wheat field. A whole tub of granola and another of dried fruits. Milk crates of rice, beans and tomatoes, marzanos of course, we're surviving the end of the world in style. Then I went crazy, good crazy, grabbing whatever extravagance I hadn't managed to serve during the winter. Fancy palm sugar, fancy nut butters, fancy jams, fancy ketchup, a gallon of molasses and a big can of chocolate syrup, you never know, ok? My favorite biscuit mix, curry paste, a huge tote bag of garlic, a tub of desserty items and so much other stuff. We weren't messing around. Then I shoved the bag of ground turmeric into my pocket, definitely going to need that.

I started loading everything up into the already full truck. I crammed the four coolers and some crates into the front seat, up to the ceiling. Just had to get to the casino, a straight shot, no sharp turns. What about the girls? Oh yeah, they rode Girl out of camp and into Cannonball. In the rain. Yep, well Trinity rode with Grant in his suv and Anya rode with Bailey in Cindy's car, but Hope and Gabby rode a horse out of Standing Rock. Cindy walked with them, escorting the twenty-first century horseback escape of women and children in the face of the US government led oppression of the indigenous people of america. Should be a pretty famous picture once we save the world.

The back of the truck was so full already, but I wasn't above doctor seussing it together. I trekked back and forth through the mud while I loaded each crate, finally somehow got them all on there and was going to run a strap around them, but when I turned around Harry had pulled out and was off. Eh, it'll probably be fine.

Next up, Justin's car. We'd realized that there was no way to fit everything that everyone wanted to take, but I had a solution. We strapped some things up top, including the wind turbine, nobody else was taking it so we might as well. I still hadn't packed my own stuff, food had been a higher priority, so now I ran home and got the few things that I was taking, plus the computer. Packed it in somehow, Wendy already had the car crammed full, but we managed to carve out a spot to load my couple of items. I ran inside to do a final sweep of the mess hall, grabbed a dirty frybread bowl and it was time to go.

But I had some see you laters to get through first. It was emotional. Good ones. Happiness and anticipation of whatever was next and the joyous time it will be when we cross paths again. People had really nice things to say to me, apparently I'd touched almost as many people as had touched me. The one that meant the most was actually from someone that I hadn't even really gotten to know, which was probably why it struck such an unexpected chord.

She admired the way that I had carried myself this winter and ran the kitchen without ego, always treating every single person selflessly with love and compassion. I deflected it and said the same for everyone, this place had taught me how and we were all figuring it out together. She replied that I was a few steps ahead of most and an inspiration to all. Blush. I didn't even think she liked me, she was a vegan and I cook meat, although I guess I had hooked her up a few times along the way. Other people had similar kinds of stuff to say, but they were all close to me, so they were contractually obligated. It really meant a lot that she made it a point to tell me that, she had noticed from the outside what I was working on inside, and now I felt an obligation to continue living in the way that had earned her admiration.

Hugs to all who were still here. Including Ricky and Megan. Megan throat chopped me. Yes! We fought and I hit her with a toxic styrofoam plate out of the trash, it was just like old times. Awww. She was even wearing the "old school punk" pin that I'd given her, Trent had given it to me when he left but it wasn't my style and more hers. Now I was happy. And scene.

Big hug to Pete as we bump into each other outside. My brother. See you soon. Back at the car, there's Aintcha, and she hands me a brand new pack of spirit roll ups. Woah, cool, thanks. I like to think that this place sparked a path of healing in her heart and the next time I see her we can really connect. This place.

1:58 pm, everything a go and shut the car doors. With us on the outside. The car was packed to the gills. So Wendy, Bill, Daniel and I walked out of Standing Rock in the rain, two minutes before the forced evacuation deadline. Top that. We finally made it to the roadblock two miles down the road, soaked, Bill had Sonny and I had my twenty pound camera bag which felt like a dripping wet fifty by now. Grant was parked at Dapl Dave's convenient store and saw us as we passed the snickering morton county police. On reservation land. Something that a day ago was unheard of.

Many were worried that the tribe selling us out, and allowing them jurisdiction in the sovereign nation, would set a precedent and it may be hard to get them to leave. I wouldn't get to stick around to find out. A car full of supporters were trying to get past the roadblock and into camp. Dapl cops weren't having it. They offered us a lift, so Daniel and Sonny piled into the back while one of the cops came up and was trying to hassle them, telling them that they couldn't be stopped right there, had to move along. They were parked on the side of a road, a road that was blocked to any thru traffic, what's the big deal? We're already leaving. We already left really, we're on our side of the barricade. You're not the rightful law enforcement of this land. Just how open ended was the deal between the tribe and dapl? Were they only charged with clearing the camp? Or were we about to get arrested for parking on the side of the road while we got a dog into the car? Over two miles inside of the reservation boundaries? I wasn't planning on seeing what the daplbots had to say about it. We had offered niceties and salutations as we had passed the several groups of them that had been stationed all along our hike out of camp. No response. We didn't hate them. They sure hated us though. They really thought that we were the bad guys.

Grant pulls up, truck still overloaded, so Wendy, Bill and I climbed up top and wedged ourselves in for the seven mile ride. We were soaking wet and now faced fifty mile an hour winds as we trucked along on my first trip to the casino. Wendy was behind the cab and ok, but Bill and I were freezing, maybe literally, so we huddled up and built a wind block with our arms, still beat walking though.

Made it. Out of camp, passed the roadblock, safe and sound at the stress free casino... well, maybe not exactly. We had to wait for an hour or two in the lobby, until our room became available, no prob, I could use a good sit down and warm up. Today was the first time that my boots got wet, super dry all winter and I'd been in the mud and water since I woke up, so I peeled off my socks and started to dry out. Bill was hiding in the stairwell with Sonny, no pets. Some hotel employees were sympathetic supporters of the cause, but official management's policy may not be so lenient. Grant and the girls were going to stay tonight too, so we were cramming thirteen people and a dog into one room. Certainly could be worse, although I was pretty used to living alone.

Finally the room was ready, so we made moves. I covert-opted Bill and Sonny's stealth maneuver and we were in. Definitely weird to be in a hotel type environment after being at camp for so long, but not necessarily the bad energy that I had heard about from every single visitor I'd talked to. Bill, Wendy and I went to the casino floor to smoke cigs, Wendy didn't smoke, but she always gave good company and often she had a pack of cigs in her pocket just to give away, menthol, blah.

I'd somehow managed to make time earlier today to raid my old camp and the igloo. I had recovered a pair of sneakers, my pink cords, a Moog synthesizer hoodie and I had my boomerang fedora. I was in proper street attire. It felt weird after being wintered up for so long, but at least I recognized myself. Every one else had no idea, I really was a hippie. I got used to it quickly and so did our crew, but anytime that we ran into someone we knew, it took them a second to adjust. It took a little longer to adjust to the blinking lights and sounds of the casino, but you could smoke inside and it was cold out. Then I looked up and saw Dan and Rick, nice. Big hugs. Told you I'd see you soon. Was everyone coming here? That might be kinda cool, although this probably wasn't the see you later that we'd had in mind back at camp. Then a couple more appeared, Thomas and his roommate, who you haven't met, but for some reason my heart dropped and it just didn't feel right anymore. Uh oh.

Not exactly the feeling that I wanted right now. Or expected when I saw some of our family. So what was that all about? Thomas's name had come up when we were originally in the tarpee, hypothetically manifesting the chain of events that led us here. Bill had mentioned that he knew that Thomas was still unsure of his plan, just like we were. We were still just hypothesizing about the spot in iowa, just the four of us at first, and when his name came up, it just didn't feel right then either. Far from dapl, he was good people, one of the crew for sure, but not the same energy as the three of us. Not that that was a dealbreaker, but this wasn't just an escape. I had plans to work on something big and wanted a team of people that I trusted with my life. People that would make me be the best I could be. There was just something about him that didn't quite vibe right with me. He hadn't been at the bridge, or the raids, had burned propane to heat his camper, went behind my back to stage a cleaning coup, but there was something else to it. Can't quite put my finger on it. Like he was kinda out for himself or something. Not here for a genuine purpose. He was giving still and helped out plenty, but not in a sincerely selfless way. No judgments at all. We were all on our own paths and needed all the help we could get. It's just that for this mission to feel right, I needed to be surrounded by those that I didn't have to question their motives.

Ah... I know what it was. He never prayed. Yep, I bet that was it. Not a sign of a bad person at all. I didn't pray my whole life and was still a pretty solid dude. But this was a spiritual trip. I needed everyone to believe. I needed everyone to believe in me. And each other. Even if you didn't pray to the mystery man in the sky, we all needed to believe that we were on the right path and trust that everything would work out. That's the only way it was going to. Even Daniel, who was the most hesitant to join the entourage, still believed. Still knew that as long as we did what felt right, everything would be just fine.

The other end of the stick is the naysayer. Someone who expects things not to work out and almost relishes in them when they seem not to. Gives up at the first sign of adversity instead of seeing it as an opportunity to grow stronger. A skeptic. Someone who requires all of the answers up front and even then just tries to poke holes.

I get it. That had been me. But at the same time, I believed in doing what felt right, I just may not have known why. I trusted in my path. I had been open to grow. I acknowledged that I didn't know everything. I trusted in the universe and in my own heart enough to evolve. I believed. I believed in myself enough to push through the challenges that reshaped me to a point that I could believe in something more. I could feel it. I believed with every vibration of my body that we were on the right path, with the right people, and no matter what was thrown our way or where we ended up, we'd be at exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Until I saw Thomas and Terry. I wasn't worried that they had some malevolent energy that was going to derail us, that wouldn't say too much about my belief if it faded that quickly. But I knew inside that they were going to try to get on our train. And I knew that we had a group of the most giving and selfless people that I knew. So how would they be able to say no? The camp had been all about inclusion, so it was our instinct to help anyone that we could, except that my instinct was screaming something else right now.

I hadn't put it all together at the time, but I knew that if they were along for the ride, that I would no longer unconditionally believe, which might mean that I was out. This was all unfolding in my head, still gathering my thoughts as our family gathered in the casino. I needed to talk to the party planning committee alone.

Thomas asked what room we were in, and so it begins. I was pretty sure that our thirteen person room was about to get a little fuller. Yep. I was just hoping that no one would hand him a ticket before I could call a meeting. We had no leader. We had been ready to follow Wendy to her place, so I guess now we were following Cindy, but I knew in my heart that it was me. I felt the responsibility. I knew that they all had complete trust in me. In my intuition. That I wasn't going to crack. I'd stay strong and level headed to help them through when they did. So if I didn't honestly follow my heart, then I was leading them all down the wrong path. We all followed our own internal compasses. I'd follow them almost anywhere too. But I knew that I had a gift of looking at things from a unique outside perspective and the ability to calmly and unimposingly speak everybody's language. I was ready for anything and I could feel that my energy rubbed off on them. So we needed to talk.

When we got to the door of the room, I signaled for a stairwell meeting and explained what had been endlessly running through my mind and weighing down my heart. I instantly felt better. They were with me. They trusted my gut. Bill had picked up on something, it hadn't been as strong and he was unsure, but as I spoke about my concern it became clearer that he had been thinking the same thing. Wendy was a robot. She had complete trust at all times that everything was right. It made me stronger. It also begged the question "If they ended up in our caravan, wouldn't that be for a reason? Even if we don't understand?" Absolutely. I'd been resigned back at camp that if someone ended up in our group that didn't quite vibe with us, it would still be ok, everything for a reason. But it was just the right group when we left and everything felt so very right, and now it didn't. This sinking feeling that I had could not be ignored. I'm not at all one for ultimatums, so this wasn't one, but I probably couldn't go if they did. It just wouldn't feel right.

She wasn't putting me on the spot, she was on my team, following my instinct, we were together in this. We just had a unique open communication thing where we could look at stuff from that outside perspective, she had that too, and I spoke robot. That's why she was also a strong leader and inspiration, we could analyze any situation from all sides, without emotion, but not everybody speaks that language. That's where I felt compelled to take the reins. Sometimes people need to not delve into all that stuff. Kinda like Dustin in the kitchen with Tina. He needed to dig into everything so that he could understand and defend his actions, but some people just don't react as well as others to that approach. So I didn't need to understand why I felt this in my gut, but I knew that I did, and everybody was with me. We were unstoppable. Then we saw Cindy in the hall and filled her in. She was with us too, plus she had only cleared the house for a small number of people and we couldn't overload the generosity of her friends like we had her hotel room. They might not even be trying to tag along, maybe I was just being paranoid, but I don't think we'd smoked any weed yet, so it wasn't that.

So cool, no matter what, we were good. We might be put on the spot and have to turn them down, but I offered for that to be put on my plate if it came up. We were tight on seats anyway, but I didn't want to take the easy way out with some lame excuse that could possibly be overcome, I would tell them the truth. It will set you free. They were still my brothers and deserved the honesty that I would feel compelled to give them, and I knew that I could deliver it in a well received manner.

Bill and Cindy left while Wendy and I talked for a little while longer. She wanted to know how I felt about her brother's involvement. I think she was starting to doubt in his unity with the group. We had a connection that went beyond honesty. We understood each other on a crazy deep level. So I let her know how I felt. Always. But she generally already knew what I was feeling, because she felt the same way inside. I'd followed her lead with him before, especially when we were going to their family's place, only made sense. She promised that once we got to know him more, that we'd see the goodness inside of him. I didn't think he wasn't good, not at all, but he wasn't one of us.

He'd only been a camp for a couple of easy weeks and he hadn't even been called there, he'd just followed her lead, and only after his parent had visited. I hadn't seen the drive I expected out of him after knowing her. He was not like her. He hadn't survived the winter or the bridge or the raids or any of it. But he was her brother. There was no way that I would ask her not to invite him, and for all I knew, we needed an outside perspective in the group. I didn't feel like it would be the detriment that an opposing energy would be. So I was cool if she was. She was still unsure, but couldn't not want the best for him. She was having all sorts of internal struggle with the journey as well. We were planning on going by her house and getting her van, seeing her parents, and then maybe if he wasn't feeling it, Justin would have an easy out. Just a lot on her mind right now. We talked some more and planned to talk again later tonight.

We popped in the room and it was crowded with snow hippies, and smelled like it. So much for a chill energy and a calm place for the kids to relax. Nick had shown up too, at the yurt I'd noticed that he had a thing for Cindy, and now was trying to work his way into staying in the room. He didn't have an energy that was a little bit off, he was straight up negative. Always. He had some things to work on and I was going to smoke. Deuces.

I got to the bottom of the elevator and there was some kind of commotion between a growing crowd of water protectors and hotel management. I couldn't tell what was up, so I skirted around the scene and caught up with Bill and Dan in the casino. It had been crazy down here. It never stops. We were supposed to be through with the chaos of camp, but it had followed us here. In fact, I started feeling less safe here than I had been there. That feeling kept building.

So apparently there had been a water protector on the casino floor who started getting harassed by some type of law enforcement. The place was crawling with them, private contractors, morton county and park rangers. Lots of park rangers. Fully armed to the teeth "park rangers." Weird. Had whatever deal the tribe made included free range of the casino? The obvious first place of refuge for the people that dapl wanted nothing more than to stop. Were they about to just scoop us all up after we ran right into their arms? I didn't want to be here anymore.

So they'd been harassing this guy, said he smelled like weed, asked him to empty his pockets and then when he cooperated and dug his hands in, they tazed him. On the casino floor. They went from no jurisdiction in a sovereign nation to tazing people when they were complying with their exact instructions. I had my bowl on me, so I made a break for it, stashed it upstairs and came right back down.

Water protectors were upset. Rosebud was out of it though. We were not easy to rile up, but others were getting loud. Management had kicked some people out and stood by their actions, so now water protectors felt discriminated against when it had been the police that crossed another line. I was expecting the situation to escalate, so I moved along. Wonder if my pink pants and untrimmed hair gave me away? It was not safe here. And then the next thing.

Harry's tipi had been stolen. Not from here, this had actually been going on since earlier at camp. He'd come up to Bill, Wendy and I and told us that someone was taking his tipi. And that Johan was a part of it. But Johan was my homie. He was a giver, not a taker. He was also a fast talker though. Harry said that it wasn't a crew being led by Johan, he was operating under the instruction of someone else. A native guy that I didn't know, and technically had Harry's permission, but only after he'd been pressured and felt like he had no choice. So the three of us went back there to see what was going on. There was a crew rushing around, breaking down several tipis to take to another camp, supposedly with permission and with only a few hours before the eviction notice would be served. I walked up, found Johan and small talked him for a minute, this was probably also our see you later since it looked like he'd be busy for a bit.

While I was getting his story, Wendy started questioning the leader of the group. He wasn't having it. She was taking the vinegar approach and it wasn't going to work. We hadn't come up with a gameplan, just gonna wing it like anything else, but I probably should have officially taken point on this one. You can catch more tipis with honey for sure.

I walked over and good ol' boyed him. I'm from the south where we know how to shoot the stuff and break the ice. The ice was a bit colder to break here though. I got him off of the defensive and into a real conversation while we smoked a cig. Part of a balanced breakfast. He affirmed the permission he'd gotten and I could already see the pressure he'd used to make an unrefusable offer. During the talk, a protector who'd been staying in another of the tipis showed up, she was equally surprised of their removal. It was definitely shady, but it was also coming down to the wire of dapl moving in with a bulldozer. Or, this crew could handle their removal and house children with them. Helping tiny little orphaned indians, awww, can't argue with that. Which is why I personally think he made it up and was just raiding the camp for profit. There were some other things he said that made me consider that, but I think that Johan thought he was doing the good work. And in the end, it's just a tipi.

It was obvious that they weren't going to relinquish the tipis without a fight. We could have gone and returned with a posse, we'd have won, but it would have left a bad taste in the mouths of everyone involved. On our last day here. Everyone busy and in high spirits. All leaving in a good way. Did we really want to end on this note? For a tipi? We always had everything we needed, plus we could just take at face value that they were helping itty bitty babies with the supplies. A tipi was not worth lowering the whole camp's vibration over. So I walked away.

But now, at the casino, Johan was here and Dan had a few words to say to him, including the part about wanting Johan to get Harry's tipi back to him. I didn't get too involved, just related my experience with it and where I felt the confusion of the supposed permission came from, other than that, I just sat and listened. And watched dapl cops walk by, hoping that our serious conversation turned into something more, that way they could taze us and claim another victory. I don't need any tipi that bad. I just wanted to chill in a quiet room away from all of the "park rangers."

Upstairs was ridiculously packed, people already sleeping in the floor and piling up all around. Harry had paid for the room and he was stuck in the corner. We were all a family and didn't want anyone left in the cold, but there was disrespect and assumed privilege all around. A bunch of white people stole an indigenous person's room. Oh, and displaced three little indian girls. Not a good way to leave the legacy of Rosebud. Dan and Rick had gotten a room and everyone else was in ours, so as soon as they opened up, Cindy got a couple more and we evacuated our sanctuary. For the second time today.

Finally, some safe-ish space, and after a little recuperation, we went down to the buffet. I could tell that Wendy was still a bit off, it had been a day for sure, so while everyone else fixed their plates, we found a corner to talk in. She was feeling it. We'd figured out how to survive at camp pretty good, but if this is what the real world was gonna be like, then it was gonna be even harder out here. She was going through a similar thing that I had when we decided on the cabin in Cherokee. She wasn't ready to go home. I feel you. I was willing to make a pitstop by her parent's house if she needed to, but she was already feeling the pressure to stay longer than what was going to be healthy to her spirit. Her family couldn't understand why she needed recovery time away from society. Including her brother. Her parents had been to camp, it was an incredible experience, but they didn't need recovery time. So why did she? Justin had been there even longer than them and he didn't understand either. Why was everyone so adamant about needing time to heal? Why were we going all the way to NC? What were we going to do there? And now why was she not even wanting to go home at all?

With Justin not understanding it himself, he was unable to do anything but worry his parents further. Not only did he not understand our needed recovery, he didn't understand our belief that we were going to be working on things that would change the world. We had seen each other do the impossible for months and had complete confidence in our ability as a team. We knew beyond words that we had been called to action and had been brought together to build this faith for a reason. We didn't need to have all the answers, we didn't even know all of the questions, but we knew that we were meant to change the world. We believed.

We wanted that to be enough for those that loved and trusted us, to be able to believe too, to believe in us. You can't tell somebody about it though. Their path has to lead them there. Justin just didn't believe. Unlike her dad and my mom, he couldn't understand that it was just something he couldn't understand. He needed all of the answers. He approached our conversation, put her on the spot, and began guilting her, and all while she was obviously going through a personal crisis. I lost all respect for him. He began acting like a child, a little brother, not a man, not a water protector. Then he moved beyond disrespecting my sister and said something that belittled everything we had just sacrificed the rest of our lives for. Our entire movement. He said "I don't see what the big deal is, pipelines are safer than trucking it across the country anyway. It's not like we can go without oil." Woah. So this is what we're up against? Not just convincing the gas loving mainstream america, not just nudging the inactive members of the already conscious community, but we still had to wake up people who had actually been at camp. We really do need to get to work.

This was the first time I'd seen my strongest family member cracking, and instead of building her up and making the family powerful again, his actual biological family, he just poked and pushed buttons like an immature selfish brat, with no concern for anyone but himself. He just wanted to go home to his mommy. And I wanted him to. Wendy knew that I understood. She knew that I'd be there for her when her blood family couldn't be. She was good. We were strong. But the food sucked. What was this garbage? No love in it at all. I missed camp.

Bailey was sick, so I grabbed supplies for onion tea from a few different vehicles, got them to Cindy, and I went to bed. My first night of the pseudo-real world, and it happened to be the great George Washington's birthday. Such a good commander-in-chief that he even destroyed 40 Iroquois villages in a single year. It was his birthright really though, his great grandfather murdered five chiefs under a flag of treaty a while back. Guess nobody told them about the sanctity of our treaties. Of course, George also was publicly quoted speaking about the illuminati and their negative involvement with the beginning of our country, so he was apparently just a conspiracy nut too. Never told a lie though.

Got up the next day and hoped to figure out our departure plan, Dan and Rick left right on schedule, and also right on schedule was Thomas's roommate, Terry, trying to jump on the bandwagon. As much as Thomas's energy wasn't the right fit, Terry's was even more off. He had all of the same issues as Thomas, plus, other than him milling around the mess hall, the only experience I had with him was on the day before we left camp. Everyone was all over the place, endless work abounding, and Thomas called me to their house to check something out. I knew that he had a full size propane cookstove and a cache of items, so something to do with that maybe. Nope, just a safety meeting, cool. Except that Terry was just chillin in bare feet and shorts, midday, on the day that we needed the most help campwide. So... no, you can't come. You gotta help fry the bread if you wanna eat it. Yum, gluten.

He didn't ask me, pretty sure they already knew that I was going to be a no, I'd already tapped the crew that I trusted. He'd approached Cindy, the most compassionate of us and the least likely to turn them down. Well played. Now, I don't want it to seem like a theorized conspiracy to exclude them, don't want to sound like a wackadoo or anything, but we'd kept our plan under wraps and tight knit and it seemed like they were conspiring to stowaway. I'd felt it before it even happened, and then he talked to her in the hall about their indefinite plans and claimed to be really interested in what we had going on. Why? We hadn't talked to anyone about our plans, all they knew is that we were heading to carolina. They didn't know what we were up to, so they couldn't have been genuinely interested in what we were doing, they just saw a team that had it going on and they wanted in. How can you blame somebody for that? Had I been in their shoes, I'd have done the exact same thing. Not knowing what to do next, and here is a family that is solid, yeah, take me with you, please. So I still felt bad having to deny them, but my gut always wins, must be all that bacteria. Probably should have tried earning our trust sometime before the very last second when you were backed into a corner. The corner of Harry's room where you took up shop to be specific.

Not leaving today though, too much to figure out. We got the first room cleared out and reserved it for another night. Smelled bad. But we were back together, thirteen of us in one stinking room. Nick had text Cindy at four in the morning that he was leaving, probably hoping for a "noooo..." He'd been in the original room, uninvited, like he'd hoped for, but probably thought she would be there too. He'd been taking up a bed while Harry, a native who was older than him and had paid for the room, was forced into a chair in the corner. It was brought to his attention that he might not be acting in the most respectful way and he left in a huff. But he's white, shouldn't that count for something?

Anyway, enough of all that, we already had a lot on our sub-par buffet plate. We were going to give the bus place another go. They had a good deal on one online, and Dylan told us that if you remove all of the seats, you can legally drive it without a CDL. We decided who should go negotiate, I was elected, so Bill, Harry, Cindy and I headed to town. Got there, sweet talked the lady working at the desk, eating out of my palm, no problem. Except that they couldn't find the bus. They kept saying that the main salesperson wasn't there and walked around the specifics, but in the end, it was missing, or at least at another location. Misprint online. We think we figured it out though. We came in for a great deal for $2,000, but it was missing, well we do have this even better bus over here for just $3,500, it would be way better for your long drive anyway. Yeah. No worries. Not meant to be. Got it.

We stopped by the jail so that Cindy could visit Torch one last time before we took off. The three of us waited nearby and Bill began having a breakdown. Oh brother. He was watching live feeds of them bulldozing Rosebud. It was happening right now. People were live feeding it all from up the hill towards Sacred Stone. Our home was being demolished. He couldn't tell for sure, but it looked like he saw Pete getting surrounded in front of the inipi. Then it looked like they bulldozed the inipi. Our sacred sweat lodge and altar. The tribe claimed that the invaders had agreed to leave sacred structures alone, so they were definitely going to keep their word to the indians and respect our sacred sites and prayers. I bet.

Just like how they respected all the desecrated sacred sites around the globe, areas of strong energies that connect us to our planet and our planet to our universe. Just like how our chakras are the energy centers of our bodies, the Earth is a living being too. Do you think it's coincidence that these places of elevated sacred energy also happen to house large underground pockets of gold, oil and uranium. I'm kinda thinking that we're not really supposed to mess with those. But the system is scared of the sacred. So as the industrial machine of capitalism weakens each site, we lose some of the possibilities of our connection to spirit as we become lost in the fog of materialism, but they will not succeed in their global takeover of Earth. She is fighting back. She is standing up. We stand beside her.

I had no desire to watch. The images of it in my head were already bad enough. I'd prefer to remember camp at its best. Looks like I made the right choice. Bill was losing it. His oil fueled PTSD was hitting him right there in a gas station parking lot. He felt the full weight of being one of the ones responsible for stopping them. One of the only ones that even cared. He knew just how bad everything was. But they had won. Pushed us out. Bought the tribe and the government. The world was now facing impending doom. He felt like he just wanted to charge the bridge, guns blazing, furious, one of the calmest brothers I knew was losing hope and getting desperate. I feel you man.

We just have to get home. We just have to keep it together for a little while longer. Keep focused on our mission. Not worry about dapl. Keep our family safe and strong. If we fall apart, so will they. And once we get there... then we can lose it. We can crack and crumble and go through whatever it is that's coming. You can go crawl into a cave and cry for all I care. I still didn't know the extent of my PTSD, but after seeing him and Wendy fraying at the edges, I started thinking that maybe I wasn't as solid as I had hoped. I was good for now though. I was in the zone. I was handling everything that got thrown my way. I was vibrating really high. I could feel it. My belief only got stronger with each piece of adversity we faced. Bring it on.

Cindy reappeared, in tears, she left a piece of herself in there every time. Always trying to show the guards love, one returned it, sympathized with Cindy's concern as she left town indefinitely, but another absolutely hated her. Hated that somehow Cindy could still pour love out to everyone, including them, even when they were nothing but awful to her. Must be one of those hippindian prayer people things, but they never have any money, so they don't count. "He's a criminal. I'm going to treat him like a criminal." He's also a human. How about treating him like one?

We stopped by a grocery store and there was an Enterprise across the street, maybe a sign, so I ran over to check on van rentals. None in stock, call Uhaul. So I got Cindy's phone and did. They didn't do vans for one way trips. The girl I spoke to wanted to quote me a truck, I'm kinda funny so I humored her, but it was probably going to be too much. Cindy had already checked on one and it was going to be like $1,800, nearly the price of the magic school bus. She was super nice, I didn't mention who we were, which could feasibly help our case if she was a supporter who crossed paths with ours, but we had a good old time on the phone regardless. I know what I'm doing, plus we were vibing. Something must have compelled her to look out for us, she figured out a way to price match a made up Budget quote, $950, wow, then she kept typing and talking and got it down to $850. Ok then. Thank you, you beautiful and sexy voiced Uhaul representative.

We still had an hour to go pick it up. If it felt right. Still a lot of money for a rental, but it would mean easily transporting the yurt and well over $500 worth of food. Cindy and I pro'd and con'd it for a while and landed on yes, we were doing it, felt right. Got there and the quote wasn't in the system, and the marvelous woman I had spoken to was based out of another location. Great.

He was going to try to get a Budget quote to compare it to, but I think she had pulled a few extra strings that he might not. Internet kept freezing. Too close to quitting time to try any harder, so he gave up and just manually entered the discounted price. Score one for the home team. Then somehow, through some crazy chain of events and numbers and math and the strongest belief in good vibes I'd ever felt, we walked out of there with an $1,800 truck for $650.

I got out of there without getting too excited and jinxing it, then outside I hugged Cindy in celebration of the plan finally working out and whispered what we paid. "Told you that bus wasn't right for us." It could have broken down, brought unwanted attention to a menagerie of traveling hippies and indians, or who knows what else. If we didn't believe before, we certainly did now.

Bill and I drove the truck and he'd done a complete one-eighty from an hour ago. He joyously pronounced his astonishment and belief in me, he already believed, but now he was hooked. I had this. We had this. I needed them to believe in me. Trust me. Even if they didn't quite understand. It was obvious that we were on the right path now and I wasn't planning on getting off. Let's do this. We had unloaded Grant's truck at a nearby relative's so that he could try to get another load from camp, the gang was already there waiting for us and were just as hyped up about our new ride as we were.

Back at the casino we were buzzing. Then something that Wendy and I had hypothetically speculated and maybe possibly considered as a cool thing for our family, happened. Grant and the kids were coming with us to NC. Yes. Sweet. Felt right as freezing rain. Adds a whole new level of importance to our mission. And another level of complication too. Including lice. Yep. Not my department. I can only do so much.

Wendy needed to talk some more too, about the new edition, and still struggling with family stuff, but it was obvious that we were on the right path. It didn't take much to strengthen her resolve, but we encountered a little sketchiness along the way. We were on the second floor, mainly water protectors, so we went up to the third floor to find a secret nook, and it was bad. Bad energy. Could feel it. No one around, but do not disturb signs on every door down the entire hallway. Dapl. For sure. We gotta get out of here. We talked in the stairwell connecting the two floors. The couple of people that came through with take out boxes were definitely dapl of some sort, not us and not casino patrons, militantish buzzcut daplbots.

There was also a supposed water protector that popped in to drink a beer beside us on the stairs. Looked like he'd never even left the hotel and was extra nosey in our business. We'd heard of infiltrators at the hotel, getting intel while people were drinking and their guards were down. There were also "protectors" who had never been to camp, facebook protectors, hope that works out for you when the big day comes.

Today had no doubt been a big day here too. Pretty "lucky" that we weren't around. There had been room raids of the entire second floor, I think looking for people with warrants. "We finally got them to leave, so let's snatch up whoever we can while we have jurisdiction." Warrants mean that you're wanted, possibly for real crimes, but could also just be for a failure to appear in a court whose jurisdiction you don't believe in. I think it was Bill who had seen two dapl guards consoling each other in the stairwell, checking in to see how they were doing and telling each other that "They could get through this. It was almost over."

We were getting through to some of them for sure. They were having to commit acts of aggression on people in prayer. No matter what your political views or pledge to america happens to be, that can't be easy. Especially if you have a relationship with spirit. If you can go home and genuinely pray from your heart, then how could this possibly feel right? Even if you don't acknowledge that the first god ever prayed to from this continent is the same as yours, even if you think that the native god of this land has as little right to be here as the people, how can any of this feel like you're treating your God's creatures with love? It doesn't matter if you believe the way I do, I still love you. And we made that plenty clear to dapl. What are the casino's odds that their God would want the same from them? But when someone did crack, they just sent them home and replaced them with five more, it was just a job. Us, sacrificing all for what we believed in, risking our lives for the planet and for all of life. Versus them, all about the benjamins, not here for a heartfelt love for oil, which would have somehow been better. Nope, just here for the money. Hope it's worth it. Hope they realize that their family drinks from that river too.

My family was drinking something else though. Onion tea all around. The single serving in-room coffee maker worked like a charm. With the new roster, we had more complex conditions for getting out of town. I was feeling a strong desire to get on the road, but we were relocating a family from the only home they'd ever known, so I managed to call up a little patience. I couldn't stay here anymore though, we were going to stay in a new hotel in bismarck tomorrow. That night Bill, Bailey, Wendy and I stayed up all night doing stunts, extreme feats of physical prowess, you know, wall climbs and such. Training. Let's do this.

We'd end up needing to hang out in ND through the weekend, but once we made it to the new hotel, we were all in a way better place energywise. Except Justin, he kept his attitude, I saw him giving Wendy the stink eye several times and then he emptied all of our stuff out of his car and threatened to go home. Cool. Then he loaded it back in and still left in a huff super early in the morning. With my computer haphazardly thrown into his trunk, upside down and no longer wrapped in a blanket. The computer I mean. I got her to get him to bring it back. I should have just let it go. He claimed to be going home and then tagging back up with us. He also claimed to only feel compelled to stay because of the kids, yet he called the group "the most disrespectful people he'd ever encountered" because we were being loud and he couldn't sleep. At nine at night. With thirteen people in one room. On the lam. With a three, eight and eleven year old. And another stink eye. Grow up man. The kids were way more mature about their entire life being uprooted than he was.

I hadn't wanted to call my mom from the casino, wanted to wait until I felt safe, safe enough anyway. I called and filled her in on our plan, not where, but that it was closer and I'd eventually be able to make it back that way. Seeing what Wendy was going through made me so grateful to have such a supportive mom, even if she couldn't know, she had complete trust that I did.

We were getting close. Everyday a different list of tasks. Cindy went to the girls' school friday and broke the news. They didn't want to lose them. Were worried about some white woman adopting them and taking them away from the reservation to colonize them. A valid concern. Has happened plenty. We're not your average white people, but we are most certainly coming from colonization and indoctrinated in ways that we don't even realize. We don't want to brainwash them, we hope that they will help to deprogram us, but it'll be hard to survive in babylon. Good thing I'm not planning on returning. This is my life now. I'm ready to get started. Are we there yet?

Nope, back at the casino. Noooo. Felt super sketchy still, but we didn't go in, just stopped by the parking lot to say goodbye to Dylan and Maria, yeessss. They even expressed slight interest in our mission, so maybe... Also, not sure if you're keeping up with the madness, but Gloria wasn't with us, she ended up going back home to handle some life stuff, I'll see her soon though.

And then we had to go back to camp. What? I'd actually already tried to get past the road block once with Grant to get more supplies, worth a shot, but it wasn't happening. We were also on a mission to retrieve Ziggy's car, the one that we never got started, it had been towed to Dapl Dave's, so we pulled it back to Grant's house a few miles away. First time I'd driven in a while, even if the car was off and being pulled by a sketchy short rope. Adventure time.

Today's trip to camp might actually work, we were going to the still-hanging-in-there Sacred Stone to get some gas cards, in and out, we need all the help we can get with our four vehicle caravan. Bailey, Wendy and I went, and of course it was a whole deal. All day. We waited for five or six hours. They were breaking down camp. Expecting their own raid soon, but going peacefully. So maybe no guns. We'd heard a rumor about the exact opposite a few days before. We heard that the national guard believed that Sacred Stone had moved in large wooden boxes full of semi-automatic weaponry. What!? They were the more radical protectors, a lot of vets, and some of them talked a big game. All the other camps were gone, was it now or never? How could you ever win that battle though? Dapl vs dapl is no good for anyone. And why did the other side even think that? Also sounded like a good unverifiable excuse to wipe out the most resilient of us. Assuming that it wasn't true, just the belief that it was, would make for a dangerous enough situation. Looked pretty peaceful to me up here.

Especially Greg. Ahhh, felt so good to see him. I'd talked to him on the day we left camp, still looking for a ride out, but Erica was planning on getting arrested with those that stayed. She hadn't, and now they were waiting to get hooked up with a ride to washington dc for a #nodapl march. It was so soothing to get to talk to him for a while, hope I get to see him sooner than later. This was why I was here. Waited six hours so that our paths would cross. Still here, five days after I walked out of camp, for this exact moment. Everything. Always. Trust. We got the gas cards, not as much as we'd thought considering what they gave single cars with two people and we had thirteen in four, but we always have everything. Just like when I had another reconnecting moment, back to back reunions, I stepped outside and there was... the one... the only... Megan. Ha, great, just like old times, pranks, kicks and throat chops:)

Eventually Ricky popped out of the woodwork too. He'd been a couple of tents away smoking and chilling this whole time. Dang. He got me to look below the belt and may have scored the tie breaking point of the season. Speaking of smoking, I showed him the ground score I'd manifested and Wendy had found, a bona fide legit Standing Rock gas mask, complete with mace residue and all.

He also had some first hand info. Enough of this rumor stuff. He'd been in Rosebud when they came in the front gate. He'd been with Pete and a group of twenty or thirty. They stayed far enough back that as the forces pushed into camp, they could slowly retreat up the hill. Pete had escaped! He was ok. He couldn't confirm much else, still not sure about the inipi or sacred fire or any of anything. My tarpee and worthless cell phone probably sat in a pile somewhere. Think I also "accidentally" left the camera charger and the laptop power supply. Guess I don't need them for a while. (Editors note: Now, I'm typing my handwritten words into that same laptop, I didn't stress it, just believed that one would manifest and kept talking about it. One did, the day before I was ready to start typing. Trust.) All of those supplies and food that could have helped support so many starving humans in otherwise food barren regions, just bulldozed over.

And the best part? No flood. Never was. Just another empty threat of impending doom. Just a scarecrow to justify the selfish actions of a sold out tribe. They did it for our safety. They did it for the river. They did it for the water. They did it for the money. They left a bad taste in a lot of mouths, they brought us here and inspired a movement, but many left feeling hurt and betrayed. Not just now at the end, this happened continuously throughout camp. In their defense, it never was the tribal council that called us out here anyway. It was the indigenous youth, those uncorrupted by fear and doubt, the seventh generation of spiritual warriors. Those that still believe. A lot of people woke up for the first time, stood up for the first time and put it all on the line. It might be hard to convince them to do it again if they left feeling mistreated by their own team. Money equals power though. Even to the people that know it doesn't equal life. Water is life. I love you water.
Step Twenty-Four:

And finally, yes, for real, we were at last wheels up, outtie five thousand. Bill, Wendy and I rode in the Uhaul for the first leg, the three of us in a two seater truck. We'd spread out later, but we needed to be together as we kicked this thing off. This was us. We had done it. The simple idea we'd considered in a tarpee safety meeting had manifested itself into this amazing family and a journey across the country. Felt good. Right. We believed. It would have been impossible not to. All was good. This time it's not a setup to tell you that all was good... until it wasn't. It was a hundred. We were going home. Standing Rock was over. Rosebud was over. Everything else was just beginning. We were safe and together and ready to go save the world. We'd survived. Such an epic adventure and the three of us were by each other's side for every bit of it. We'd made it happen. We'd helped so many people. We'd connected to the universe, spirit and unwavering belief. We trained for anything that they could throw at us. We were ready. We reminisced for a while, laughed, tried to imagine the people we'd been when we first arrived at camp. It seemed like so long ago. So much had happened. It was hard to believe that I'd ever been doing anything but this. This was it. This is the only thing that ever felt this right. We all felt that we'd been training our whole lives for this moment and camp had been the final exam. We aced it.

Who had I even been before this? Well, short story long, I grew up on a farm. Ha. I'm an agriculturalist at heart. Not a commercial farm, but we grew way more than we could eat. Excess. We grew an acre of sorghum cane just to cook down and make molasses that half of us didn't even like. At least we didn't use pesticides and artificial fertilizers, and really, who could have ever imagined that what we were doing was hurting anyone. My dad was just trying to teach us the value of hard work. Well, I guess we did spray poison ivy with diesel fuel, a plant which happens to only grow as a defense mechanism after a forest is clear cut. And we did pour gasoline into those annoying beehives and fire ant hills. Sure, we built a house on top of theirs, but didn't they get their eviction notice.

We "owned" fifty acres, one and a half of it was a pond for swimming and fishing, a creek, treehouse, campsite, trails and even a sawmill. We milled our own lumber, drilled our own wells and built a lot of buildings. I learned how to frame, plumb, wire and roof as a kid, once I even wrote up a napkin contract that I wouldn't eat if I didn't have to lay shingles. Maybe I'd been on to something even back then, back before my colonization was complete.

We heated our house and water with a two thousand gallon water stove, you could raise a cow with that, and we had to burn a small pickup truck load of wood everyday. A ridiculous amount of wood to have to cut, load and haul, everyday, my dad wanted me to work. The wood would heat the water and it would circulate under the house to warm it, while a copper tube of potable water was heated and ran under the yard and into the house. So before any showers in the morning, you had to venture outside and build a fire to warm the water, in the cold winter and in the summer too. Good thing I didn't take many showers then either.

Grew a big garden, used electricity to pump water from the pond for irrigation and spent many hours picking stuff, even indian corn. And rocks. We had to take care of a bunch of animals everyday too. Two pastures on opposite sides of the land. Forty goats (including a couple fainters), two donkeys, turkeys, rabbits, chickens, a pig and other livestock from time to time, plus dogs, cats and a couple of hedgehogs. We never ate any of them, just some eggs, they were pretty much all just pets. Lots of work, buckets of food to each pasture and break the ice in their frozen water dishes before school.

Farm animals as pets isn't the strangest thing. Before pets existed, people favored particular animals over others and had their buddies. So how did pets even come to be? We know that they're not natural, been over that, so why did we decide to take a creature living perfectly in harmony with nature and take them away from God? Obviously the answer is money.

Coincidentally enough, it was the medical industry. Or hamsters to be exact. Dogs may have been domesticated way long ago, but they were bred for purpose, the hamster perfected the sitting around and looking cute game. The rodents being used by laboratories weren't reproducing fast enough, so one scientist went abroad and returned with a single golden syrian hamster and her litter, and now every single pet hamster in our current version of civilization is a descendant of her bloodline. So maybe they're the illuminati... The scientist tried to set up hamster breeders all over and published a book that ended up being more of an advertisement. He wanted the new network of breeders working for "science" to buy their supplies from him. In the book he also claimed that the breeders could sell hamsters to their neighbors as "pets", which they did, and the crazy modern day world of pet peeves began.

I once bought a dwarf red tailed possum from a pet store, he was mean, wild, of course he was. A wild animal, perfectly in-tune with nature, zero degrees of separation from God's pure vibrations, and I had him in a cage. The oppression of an opossum. He probably felt the same way that the pure american natives, who were living in a good way, felt when we stole their world and locked them away in giant plastic running balls. We are so convinced that wild is bad and civilized is good. We for some reason think that the more of God's natural creatures we can destroy and the more of his laws we can break, somehow the closer we become to him. And they're the savages?

I heard about God a lot too. My dad is an outspoken conservative baptist who liked to tell me how to believe. Tell me how to live. He didn't always show me though. Don't get me wrong, he's a good God fearing christian, has helped countless people throughout the years and has taught me how to help those in need. He truly instilled a strong work ethic and great values in me, even if the value of a dollar was at the top of the list. He did always want us to make up our own opinions on issues, but he only ever gave us his biased perspective and expected our unique opinions to match his. He was unable to impose some of his values though, like primarily just helping white people, being outspoken against interracial relationships and teaching me not to be racist, while in the same breath displaying clear prejudice. The ironic part, is that now he has three adopted kids from ethiopia currently undergoing a thorough indoctrination of colonization. So, I'm pretty sure that proves he's not racist... not sure who they can date though.

He's pretty big on judging other people's relationships in fact, and very against homosexuality. I get it. Two consenting adults who are just doing what feels right to them, ever since they were kids being raised on a diet of man-made hormone disrupters, enough so that when they tried to suppress their God given feelings to try to fit into an oppressive society, it just felt wrong. Well, what could he possibly do with his energy but hate them? He also believes that the Earth is only 6,500 years old, apparently his God isn't as powerful and amazing as the one I know, the one who created an incredibly complex evolution of life and love. Unconditional love.

And he's no idiot, phd and everything, maybe an internet college for the last bit of it, but he's definitely a smart one. He was also a life long boy scout, Eagle scout, as am I, though he of course denounced the organization at the inclusion of "the gays." I learned a lot of useful stuff in scouts, thought I had fires figured out until I got this winter's flaming humility lesson. Knots, boats, first aid, archery, guns, citizenship in the country... all the good stuff. Went on a winter backpacking trip across the Appalachian Trail, snow camping, who would do that on purpose?

Really did learn all of the good stuff, my first foray into the job market was at camp where I started smoking cigs, smoked some resin, snuck out and wrecked a car, first heard about acid, learned to shoot pool and even kissed my first girl. Even back then I didn't mess around. I taught rock climbing and rappelling, more knots and ropes and high adventure and once I was back home, I used my construction skills to convert the treehouse into a climbing wall. I built forts, paintball courses, ziplines, go cart ramps, dirt bike trails, rabbit race tracks and even ate actual "food." Wild muscadines, blackberries, hickory nuts, persimmons and we even had a small elderberry tree, although I knew nothing about it back then. Scouts taught me a lot about trees and plants, through campouts that evolved from cub scout marshmallow roasting and snipe hunting, to fifteen year olds with smuggled alcohol and smoking peanut shells.

I was driving a stick shift diesel isuzu pick up with no power steering at twelve, loading wood and hauling rocks, the makings of a good sweat, all along side a younger sister and even younger brother. We were secluded out in the woods, away from neighbors and society, so we were close and friends, sometimes. I was also pretty relentless with my eldest child complex of always being right. (In my defense, I normally was.)

I may have been my favorite, but we were all my mom's. I already told you about her, absolutely amazing. Enough so, that we all actually turned out alright. Soft spoken about her liberal, non-judgmental beliefs, instead choosing to pour love out in all directions. She showed us how to live. All three of us have taken her lessons and follow her lead in our own, very different ways. My sister, an incredible mother of two, putting more energy into a single birthday party than I did into an entire winter of garlic. And my brother, often giving away his last dollar to someone in need and volunteering as a fireman in the small rural town where a lot of the family has moved to. Mom never once told us how to believe, she didn't have to, when you're actually living it, the words aren't necessary. Must be why my dad was so good at talking.

They didn't divorce until I was an adult, after which he tried to convince us of our mom's sins, condemning her for once writing a bad check to take us to the doctor when we were sick. Seriously? This was way before I'd denounced money (or doctors for that matter), but I doubt that a smear campaign of accusing love over money is going to sway her biggest fans. And no need to really. Love isn't some limited resource to start a war over. It's infinite. If you want our love, then just love us. Unconditionally. No negotiation necessary. But words don't count if there's no vibration behind them. Money also is not a valid currency, traveling a lot to pay bills is not love, understanding is. I can talk to my mom about the toughest things and never feel judged, I feel her humility patiently trying to help her understand what I must be going through. I don't know what it's really like to talk to my dad. Not really. It's always him projecting and judging within the first few seconds.

He's just a product of his environment though, we all are, environments have always shaped who we are, even after we took the environment out of the equation. People learn how to be a family from family, his was broken and my mom's was close, so no judgments at all, just the hands they were dealt. He really did love us greatly, he just didn't quite have a firm grasp on how to show it the most effectively. I grew up mainly hearing him talk ill of his family. None of his brothers and sister got along, they all super hated my uncle because he had been the favorite and they never grew out of their childhood resentment. There were business deals between my dad and uncle that went sour a few times, so I grew up with only negative words about his "sibling", not his brother. Money was more important than love. So this is the example you have for me on what family means to you? You're always right and they're always wrong, poor you, they're to blame for everything wrong in your life. Thank Tunkasila I experienced the inverse too.

My mom's family was just that. Getting together every sunday after church, I was super close to all of my cousins, a tight bond that helped shape me into who I am. Her parents moved into a house we built for them overlooking the pond at our place. My grandfather and I were best friends for a long time. I spoke about him earlier, reminded me of Smokey, and he impacted my life in great ways. Shaped my manhood. Never imposed his views on me, only his knowledge. He had some backwards old school opinions from a different era of the south, but he didn't pretend otherwise, and he didn't expect me not to live my own life. He had been an electrician by trade and I learned both residential wiring and industrial three phase electrical engineering from him. I do all of my own gas guzzling auto repair, at least I did back when I had a car, and I got it all from him, many times coaching me over the phone as I replaced a part on the side of the road. He also taught me a lot about humor, I like to think so at least.

Dad also tried to turn me against my grandparents by blaming them for the collapse of the marriage, um, just stop, if your words haven't managed to brainwash me yet, you're probably not going to turn me against the most influential people in my life. Again, don't get me wrong, dad taught me a lot. Obviously. I was doing stuff at twelve that plenty of grown adults wouldn't touch, which has all helped me tremendously in life and even more so at camp. Work ethic and skills that I absolutely would not be who or where I am today without. Things you can tell someone. Just not things that require any humility. I've never really seen it in him.

No worries though, I moved out when I was seventeen and dropped out of school. I was already the assistant manager of a papa johns and aced my GED exam, one clear advantage to being smart in a dumbed down education system. I worked a lot, lived with a few coworkers and made bank. $1,500 a month in the nineties for a seventeen year old was pretty sweet, plus pizza. Good thing I learned about money being more important than happiness. I did find some happiness though, my sheltered upbringing left me wide open to party with my newfound freedom. Smoked mad weed, shwag ninties weed, seeds and stems and all. Started to figure out alcohol and then tried acid. This was cool, being an adult and everything. It wasn't spiritual back then, not at all, it was a party, but it still connected me to the universe and the oneness of life and love. I just didn't know what that all meant. Everything looked really cool though.

Fell in love for the first time too. The forbidden sister of my drug dealer. I'd sneak in her window and narrowly escape capture, but then we had to end it and things went dark for a while. Moved from acid to ecstasy, now it was a party, life was rolling along. Tried coke twice, not for me, I liked feeling the happy vibration. Psychedelics and pot are the only two that I currently condone, if responsibly used in moderation and taken with respect, they're medicines in my book. This book. Crazy times, party days, clubs, narrowly escaping arrest twice. I experienced dirty cops first hand, they planted my weed on another guy because we was being mouthy, new years 1999, and apparently we partied like it was.

At eighteen I went to work for my dad, go figure. He'd been trying to lure me away from pizza for a "real job", so I gave it a shot. Our relationship was better now that I was on my own, but we were both still us. I still partied every weekend with my tattoo artist roommate who was seven years older than me and a mentor into the "real world." Plus, now I had a proper paycheck and weekends off. By day, I was learning to repair industrial woodworking equipment, moulders, grinders, learned autocad drafting software and cnc router operation, worked in a machine shop, drove a forklift, designed prototypes, packed and shipped in a warehouse, exhibited at trade shows and a lot of other stuff. So yeah, I was also an industrial revolutionist.

I also got a call from texas, my first girlfriend had moved, sucked, but now we could openly "date" without her brother's approval. Fell in love for real now, visited a lot, she'd meet up with me in the cities I was working tradeshows in and we'd have mini vacations together. Taught me how to make cashew chicken. Puppy love, sweet. I went with my dad and sister to romania on a mission trip to help little baby orphans, aw. Yep, I'm a missionary too. Go JC.

Ended up planning to move to texas to be with her, she was the only thing that felt right and here I was just partying and working a job I didn't care about, for money to able to visit her with. Dad ended up talking me out of it, "Make sure you're thinking with the right head." Shoulda talked to mom, she would have recommended using my heart. Instead chose money over love, even though it didn't feel right, gotta be a man, an adult, plenty of fish in the sea. He'd put money first and he was doing just fine. Should be able to buy a big box of happiness any day now. We broke up pretty soon after that, long distance is tough. I partied harder, best friend was dating a stripper, lot of strip clubs, really fun when you're a part of their posse. They spend their money on you. Manifesting money from strippers, man I'm good. Money is fun.

Stayed in my buddy's sunroom a few days a week when I drove down to party, a new girl moved in there, I didn't really move out. She talked junk, me too, got along, rolling at the club one night, almost had a threesome, the third bailed, we continued, claimed she was on the shot, I stayed in, two weeks later she was pregnant. Oooh.

Wouldn't know if it was mine for a while, I moved to the beach for the summer to help my sister settle in for her first away from home home. I was pretty good at this adulting thing by now, secretly had a last hoorah as a non-parent, only twenty though so I couldn't go too wild. Guess I was just messing around. Good times, lotsa parties, telemarketed beach vacations, I'm pretty good at sales if I need a day job after we save the world, became great friends with my sister's BF, laid off the drugs and pretty soon I was back in "reality."

While I was gone, my dad had cut my pay, company no longer offered the services that I performed, wow, cool, over the summer I had happened to meet with my uncle, his despised brother and business competitor, and he'd offered me way better money for a better job, so... "Tell you what, I'll give you a raise back up to what you were making before." Ha, guess I'm moving to asheville. Second big decision for money, but this one felt right, felt good, plus unknown to everyone but me, there was a chance I'd be having a kid soon. Gotta man up and sacrifice my own life so that he knows I love him, of course I'll be a few hours away now, but it's good money, so it's cool.

I'd have to work for such a terrible guy though, my uncle, except it turns out that he was the only one of them that wasn't ridiculously selfish and backwards minded. I loved it there. I knew my stuff because my dad truly was the best in the industry at what he did, so here I took that knowledge and worked hard enough to gain the respect that made me feel appreciated. It was definitely a business, my uncle was a capitalist, business is about money, so yeah, there was money involved. I'd grown up hearing about him flipping out over an overcharged nickel, admittedly he had, on an order of 50,000 of something. That's a lot of nickels. I learned the flipside of all of the horror stories I'd grown up with, only ever hearing one side of a story gave me this impression of him that was completely wrong. We are great friends now, more than any of his siblings, and he also was a strong supporter of me heading to ND.

We had indian in our blood. Cherokee. I'd heard it growing up, but that was it. Never anything else. No exploring our native roots. No energy spent on understanding a way of life other than colonization. Our heritage also linked us to June Carter, she was my great grandmother's first cousin, and her husband Johnny knew about the oppression of the indians rather well. He recorded a whole album about it, including a song about Ira Hayes, an indian who historically fought for the US and played a big part in the war, and then eventually died poor, oppressed and depressed on the reservation. Another cut on the album was about the dam that Kennedy built and flooded the vast home of the Seneca tribe, wait, there's still indians? Never heard it until recently, we only heard his Jesus music growing up.

Back to work. My aunt and uncle worked there too, I know, they hated their brother, but it was the best job they could find. Money, money, money, money. It was a ridiculously good job and they looked the gift in the mouth over and over again. My aunt made $80,000 a year to crunch numbers and answer the phone, yet never even spent the energy to learn the basics of the products that I knew as a kid. Instead completing personal business at work like it was owed to her and pitching a fit one year when the company didn't give out the bonus she'd grown used to. I'd grown up hearing her tell of his greed, I saw only the opposite. I've also never been to a restaurant where she didn't have a special order and then also complain to the waiter about something... she would not have done well in Rosebud. My other uncle, the hypochondriac, negative vibrations physically making him ill, he was so good at it that once, a coworker left early and within an hour he'd contracted the same ailments. She had menstrual cramps.

He caught them from the boss uncle's stepdaughter, she was my boss and we became close, not blood related mind you, so we started dating. Lived and worked together, that's a lot, especially with two aries, but I'm easy to get along with so it worked out. I was jaded on love though. I had thought that I had been in love before, but once it was over, it didn't hurt as bad as I thought it should. I'd grown up with the doctrines of the church and society about what love is supposed to be. The one. The one person that you know without a doubt you want to spend the rest of your life with. Love means forever. Forever and ever amen.

I didn't feel that for this girl. Nothing more than for that first love, and that hadn't been the final destination, so this must not be love either. I eventually said it, I mean, I had some feelings, but I didn't really think love was a real thing. Not for me at least. I only said it five times in five years. If it were love, then I'd want to get married, right? Well, I don't, so it's not, and the non-thoughts of the future probably made me treat the present differently, like, I probably could have been more present. Emotionally at least. I still enjoyed a long relationship with her, it was still good, we had lots of fun. We liked to have food challenges where we had to use what limited ingredients we had, to come up with something cool for dinner, loser buys groceries.

We had started out as friends, so it was easy to get comfortable, lose passion and eventually just become friends again. We bought a house together, we made tons of money, should be pretty happy alright. I was 25 making $47,000 and she was my boss making more. Couldn't imagine another job with this kind of salary, that's what really matters, so guess we had to stick it out. I had a car, a truck, two motorcycles, pool table, turntables, big tv, playstaion, cable, a lawn mower, a really nice grill obviously and most importantly, a son.

He was mine, undeniable, looked and acted just like a blond version of me. I got him every other weekend and tried to teach him the way I was taught to love, and tried to counteract his backwards racist south carolina upbringing. I made good money, had to prove that I love him somehow, so we skipped court and I made monthly payments to his mom. But she still treated me like garbage. We had never officially dated, I was fresh out of something and she wasn't the one, so we never really developed feelings and no jealousy kind of stuff. So sometimes it was good, but only because I have a high tolerance for abuse. Verbally assaulted regularly, she'd curse at him too, I never spoke a bad word about her to him though, I knew first hand that it was not the way to show him how to live. When he first learned to talk, she had him calling another man "Daddy." That hurt. I get it, she was with that guy throughout the whole pregnancy and everything, but I'm his dad. I saw a lawyer about custody rights, she clued me in on the honey vs vinegar techniques. I just had to suck it up and take what I could get. He was a great kid and physically well taken care of, so I just had to trust.

We also adopted my girlfriend's two nieces, her sister had issues with drug addiction and subsequent neglect, and after five years of DSS involvement, we were awarded custody. I loved them as my own and my son did the same, I saw them way more than him too.

I built a club with a bar, pool table, dance floor and dj booth in the basement and started messing around with music production. Broke my knee doing parkour stunts, decided that a career in jumping off of buildings was no longer feasible, professional poker player was a bit too risky, so I decided to pursue the safe option of music for a job. I knew nothing of actual music, but had gotten pretty good at twisting knobs and programming my synthesizers, so I wanted to take some classes at UNC's asheville campus. While researching training courses however, I was very strongly called to a school in san francisco. Just felt right. I couldn't think about anything else. But I had a good job and a mortgage (whose root words literally translate to "death grip"), not to mention a GF and a son.

The girl was surprisingly supportive though, that's what pushed me to do it really. We had grown comfortable and complacent, never fought, but no spark left. I think we both knew that we might not survive this distance, but maybe that was for the best, never vocally covered that, but we'd be naive not to consider it. My son was five, if I'm gonna do it, then now's the time, be back before he's too old, it was just a one year accelerated program in california. It seemed far fetched to be dropping everything and moving to the other coast for a new music career, but I just kept talking about it for the next year and it all fell together. Quit my job, cashed in my retirement plan and put everything I had into a blind jump to a new life, while I forgot all about money. My first decision based on my gut with no consideration for dollar bills. I was officially on my path. Felt right. Very right.

I was one of the older students, 27, saturn return, I was starting a music career at the same age that all the best musicians die at, so it was easy to rise to the top of the class. Not being a twenty-one year old first time partying in the city helped. I was an adult, paying for it myself, I knew the value of a dollar, kid at home waiting on me, work ethic already solid and I put my all into it. It was fun. It was my calling.

All of my roommates were studying music, crappy apartment in the mission and we had a 24/7 loud as you want policy. Music surrounded me. Mainly latin percussion and it was pounded into my head as I slept. Got really close to my roommates, one in particular was inseparable, I wasn't a hippie yet but he was starting down that path. He introduced me to fancy green drinks, herbal supplements and the new age bookstore where I saw that water crystal book. Was just for the first time being exposed to "good music." I'd grown up with nineties country and oldies, not even classic rock. Then I was into 90's alternative, grunge, only what was on the radio with the exception of my beloved steve miller band. Here I discovered that Michael Jackson and Prince were more than just the butt of jokes. I was studying electronic music but didn't know Daft Punk or Justice, now two of my favorites.

Small school, thirteen people in my class, only two graduated. Teachers all wrote books about music production, industry experts, any dummy can write a book though. Two awesome studios that I could use for personal projects, learned video game audio and could have gotten an internship at playstation, but I gotta get back to my kid.

Girl and I broke up while I was gone, her call, I was sadder than I imagined I would be, but got over it quickly. I didn't believe in love anyway. Not for me at least. I had also been starting to not believe in God before I went. Little did I know that God is love. I was still officially a christian until my mid twenties, but I had never really believed, not since I was a little kid. Just scared to not believe. Eternity in hell if you don't. Can't tell someone to believe and definitely can't scare them into it. Fear is not a vibration of God. I'd been studying science. Books and forums on quantum physics, evolution, space, the inaccuracies of the bible and I was officially an atheist. Or agnostic at least. I wasn't saying that there was no God, just that we couldn't know, certainly not the personal God of the war mongering bible whose stories were obviously just folk tales. Which chapter was Paul Bunyan in again? I couldn't denounce science and every christian apologetic claimed that I had to. No compromise that allows both. So science it was.

Moved back, girl screwed me over with some money, guess that means she doesn't love me, so I had to restart with little and held a grudge for a year or two. Realized that holding on to it and working myself up when I thought about it, was only hurting me, she was unaffected, so I forgave her. Had no need to talk to her, but no longer felt ill will towards her. I'd first realized that hanging onto negative energy was unhealthy before I went to school, back when I saw my uncle making himself sick with thoughts. I used to greet the truck drivers there with "oh, I'm surviving" or a sarcastic "just another day in paradise", now it's "great", "fantastic" or maybe even a heartfelt reference to paradise. Genuine positive vibrations that do make me feel great and fantastic and also generally illicit good vibes out of whoever I'm talking to. In high spirits, I moved back east and lived with my sister and her family for six months. She was married to a different guy than before and we also got really close.

I was closer than ever to my son too, and one day we went to visit my best friend's tattoo shop in the cool part of town. There were hippies, hipsters, artists, musicians, art and music on the street, coffee shops with pretty girls, tattoo parlors, bars, art galleries and just a great vibe, reminiscent of san francisco, a place I was already missing. On a whim, I poked around for a warehouse to build a recording studio in, just a hypothetical long shot, but we know how those seem to work out when you believe. Perfect spot, half a block from all the action and already had eighty percent of a studio built in it. Felt right. Signed a lease and opened an underground recording studio. It was an incredible space, massive abandoned creepy warehouse with a huge hardwood recording room, complete with sound baffling and a double paned window into the control room. And the roller girls practiced downstairs.

Before I'd really gotten embedded into the community, and still not a hippie myself, I met another girl. Went to my first yoga class and before it was over, started falling for the teacher. I hung around after class and we talked for an hour. She was a musician too, so I took a cd of her rough tracks to do a little pro bono mixing, and in return she introduced me to energy work. Reiki. She ran energy on me and could feel mine buzzing, probably a little more than normal while I laid in her apartment. We went to the park, smoked a bowl, talked late into the night and then worked our energies a little more. We had a really intense, passionate thing going on, this feeling that I'd never felt before, couldn't focus on anything else but each other, perfectly in-tune physically, but our paths just weren't ready for each other. She was a couple days out of a long term relationship and building a small yoga business, I was starting a whole new career in a new city, and here we couldn't concentrate on anything but each other. Sounds magical I know, it was, but she had to call it off.

Then back on. Then off. And on. I'd never experienced anything like it. She was a hippie, my first, and told me about manifestation as well as felt a calling to give me the book Ishmael. I didn't really buy the manifestation thing, but it inspired me to talk to the universe a few times over the next couple of years. I also didn't read Ishmael right away, but eventually I did, and it started me down the path that brought me here, although not completely the first time. I can see know, what she may have known then, I wasn't ready for her. I needed to follow this trail that I'm on and get somewhere closer to where I am now before it could ever have worked.

Eventually, I had to push her away, well, at least convince her not to come back. I knew that I couldn't turn her down if she popped up and I knew that she needed time to live her life and heal, without whatever it was that we were doing. She had to not call me, I took her off facebook and I tried to move on from what could possibly be the greatest and shortest love of my life, not before some lightening storm romance from the studio rooftop though. Magic. I still saw her out a couple of times and texts over the next few years, still something there, still not the right time. Then she moved to LA to pursue her music career.

Before all that though, mine was actually taking off. Taking off in an underground local band kinda way, but I was making moves. I knew only one person in the neighborhood when I moved in, but I just kind of assumed that it would all work out and went for it. And it did. The studio was half a block from five venues and a band rehearsal space, so quickly everyone knew me and wanted to record. Plus I had that fedora. I did some free stuff for a band of bartenders, word spread and soon I was connected everywhere. I didn't know it at the time, but I was manifesting stuff left and right. Doing free projects all the time for people and in return, getting free stuff by the bushel. Food, drinks and I didn't pay for weed for about four years. I was broke most of the time, but always had everything I needed. I had actual paying clients too, made enough to pay rent and child support, though I was late on both a pretty good bit.

My kid loved the city though, our vibrant neighborhood with an outdoor stage rocking every weekend, I was able to expose him to so much culture that he would otherwise have never known. He gave me tattoos at my friend's shop, legit tattoos, first one when he was seven, hurt bad. Shot music videos, snowboarded, filmed concerts and did parkour. We ran that place.

The neighborhood was like a soap opera, and I knew all of the secrets. But I'm good at keeping them. I was eventually elected onto the board of the neighborhood association and didn't even have to blackmail my way onto it. I was the only non-homeowner and the voice of the artist community. For some reason they saw fit to put me in charge of the art committee with a $25,000 budget for neighborhood events and projects. Cool. My brother-in-law moved his t-shirt shop into my building and I expanded with a five classroom training center downstairs.

I also spent a lot of time at an afterschool program that "happened" to open up right across the street and had artists mentoring underprivileged (that means not white) high school kids. We had comic book and grafitti artists, breakdancers, animators, musicians, poets, singers, sculptors and I taught music production, videography and chess. It was magical. It eventually grew to include middle school kids, but that first year was something special. We saw these quiet outcast kids grow into a family of performers. I was hooked. I became super close friends with the director of the school who had hired me, she had found out about my projects and neighborhood clout from these commercials we were running on tv. Rewind...

So, I'd been building a strong web of bands that I'd become great friends with. The closest was this thirteen piece avant garde zappa sounding group whose leader was a creative genius, a mad scientist of vibrations, and became one of my most best good friends. After we'd recorded two of the ten minute songs, which took months to finish, we all went to a cabin in the woods to record some jam sessions. Everybody left the next day, except the five of us that decided to stay and take acid. I hadn't even thought of it in twelve years. Not only did it connect us to each other and reconnect me to the universe, it changed the way I saw music forever. I'd already given up a real job to pursue music, dedicated my life to it, opened a studio and recorded a bunch of albums, and this was the exact moment that I truly figured out what it was all about. I understood music. Understood that it was the secret to the universe. From my current perspective, I can see that this was my introduction to seeing that vibrations construct everything that we experience. I was now officially a hippie. A jam band kid. Music was life.

On my thirtieth birthday, I was reflecting with a director friend of mine about big ideas and started a brainstorm that in three days was a fully formed business plan. While I did so much stuff for free for the whole neighborhood, I was still a capitalist. Not greedy, but had big picture ideas that I wanted to blow up enough to not ever have to worry about money again. It was a monthly ordeal. I was beyond living paycheck to paycheck. Had to struggle to pay bills and take any gig I could get, even if it didn't line up with my way of life. Funny enough, maybe, my most profitable job was a training video for the BP fuel company's southeastern hub. Yes, I was a private contractor for the oil industry.

So my new plan? An independent record label with a lot more going on under the hood. I was taking four bands that I'd already worked with, teaching them how to produce themselves in my studio classrooms, they'd all record each other while shooting music videos, running a super local AM radio station and we were making a documentary of the whole thing, to help launch a proposed reality show about the neighborhood. We had over twenty wacky personalities with the bands and artists involved, so should be pretty fun to watch them work together, and not. Plus really good music. I thought it was genius. So did my dad and he invested in the project. See, he does love me, look at all this money. He also helped me get a camera through a few woodworking video gigs, the same one that I now use to film us saving the world. He really isn't a bad guy at all, genuinely wanted the best for me, believed in me, supported my move into music, especially away from my uncle, he just happened to have different opinions than I about what was best for me. His is all money and Jesus, and this new plan had potential for serious money at least, if i didn't screw it up.

He thought, and I agreed, that the part of the project that would be most marketable was the kid's band. I'd produced an acoustic kid's album for a friend and it included an electronic song about broccoli that we wrote and produced together. Funny story, it even had a verse about corn, but instead of the extensive list of nutrients that the other vegetables had, corn was pretty bland, so we focused on it's many uses. Comes from the ground, eat it by the pound, even fuels my car so I can go far. Yep, my kid's band taught about the importance of corn and driving automobiles. So it's certainly not only a global conspiracy to push the doctrines of the empire, it's just so ingrained (get it) in everyday life that it is commonplace. The kid's band was popular. I was the frontman even though I can hardly sing, but I'm really good at dancing around and acting crazy, everyone knows that's more important than talent these days. We played at schools, children's museums, festivals and and even did a "funraiser" for some hippie friends of mine to go to hawaii for a dolphin assisted water birth. Freakin hippies. They were super hippie and into "no money" and "doing what feels right" way before me, the dolphin thing was a little out there though, even I gotta draw the line somewhere. And then cross it.

My dad gave me a pretty big chunk of change, not completely selfless of course, but it was just a kickstart to run a kickstarter campaign to get an even bigger bankroll and grab some national attention. Kickstarter was blowing up in SF, but no one knew anything about it over here, so half of the campaign was teaching about the website. We had tv commercials on mtv and adult swim, temporary tattoos, t-shirts and I thought we were unstoppable. I believed hardcore. But I projected some of that faith onto my posse and only got the commitment from a handful of believers. I also found that I was pretty low on humility, it all started going to my head and my gravity that had coalesced this beautiful energy ended up tearing it apart. Not apart apart, but we didn't have it together enough to hit our fundraising goal. I still had the studio though, and nothing but time, so we were going to make it happen, just not on such a grandiose scale.

I taught and filmed a month of intense classes and we started recording, it was nice for them to have an understanding of the process, but I was on the hook to do all of the production still. I'd essentially exchanged the few bands that actually paid me, for a free program where I ended up with partial ownership of the material. Broker than ever, but I still believed, and I was having the time of my life. The money didn't matter anymore, only the music did.

Then I met another girl. The first that I liked beyond FWB since yoga girl. She didn't want a boyfriend though, and I think resented me for her liking me so much, but I got a really good slow game. She insisted that we keep it open, free to do as we pleased, she didn't want to feel caged and that was all cool with me. I was starting to see that if you like who somebody is, you have to let them be who they are, you can't try to fold them up and put them in your pocket.

She was far more aware of the evils of the food industry and government corruption than I was, I was still eating free styrofoamed take out for every meal and living in an abandoned warehouse, nothing but music all the time, no room for rest of the world. She told me about the woes of big food, GMOs, pesticides in strawberries, MSG labeled as natural flavors, and on and on. But she told me. Over and over. Relentlessly pointing out why I shouldn't be eating what I was. She preached food in a way that didn't make me want to follow her anywhere, although I would have there for a little while. I still adhere to most of what she taught me, but she pushed me away in the process. She showed me that you can't tell someone how to live, even if you have a lot of it figured out already and just don't want them to make the same mistakes, everyone's path is different.

I learned so many good food things from her, a lot about cooking, she was such an excellent chef. We learned how to make pizza together and co-developed persimmon salad. She taught me about garlic and elderberry when I was sick, and she always told her water that she loved it. I also learned how to love her and let her be free, and be free myself. I had a second girl for a little while and saw how it was possible to have different feelings for two people at one time.

I still wasn't sure about this "love" thing though. I knew that I had a stronger connection with these two than the girl I'd dated for five years, but I still didn't feel a forever kind of thing. I doubted I'd ever marry, and especially not to someone who didn't even like being my girlfriend. She just felt a lot of angst in her life. She felt like she was meant for big things, but was just killing time working at a coffee shop with a college degree. She was supposedly a writer, but never wrote anything. She was reading the Shock Doctrine and Jung and would share with me the evils of our military industrial complex and concepts about social archetypes and the collective unconscious. Now I see the correlations between this shared web of instinctual knowledge that has evolved along side us through generations back to the beginning of time, and Tunkasila, grandfather, our ancestors, God. We are all related.

She also spent a good amount of time with a vodka bottle, not an alcoholic, but now I see it more clearly. She was full of unease because she was not surrendering to her path, not vibrating with her inner self, and the alcohol kept her away from that connection while helping her ignore her dissonance and remain complacent with being a part of the broken system. She had a great impact on my life, but eventually I had followed my path long enough and raised my vibration to a point that I had to cut it off.

Back while I was still happy being with her, I was experiencing a strange sensation in the rest of my life. Simultaneously having the highest vibrations and success in some aspects of my life, yet also going through legitimate depression. I was compartmentalizing the depression, and once I finally climbed out of bed and stopped worrying each day, I just went into denial and focused on the things that were going spectacular. I was recording all of the label's albums and they all sounded so great. I volunteered at the afterschool more than I worked on the clock and were were changing lives, saving lives, we inspired kids that would otherwise have no other safe outlet and mentored them through some tough times. I was making a real difference in the world for the first time. I was elected to the board and had all the neighborhood politicians and businesses in my pocket, in a good way. I contributed monthly articles to our community's newspaper, I threw successful neighborhood festivals, I was on tv and the whole neighborhood was benefiting from our relentless promotion.

Financially at least, the businesses were doing good, but the artists and musicians that made it all so vibrant could no longer afford to stay. Including an extremely prolific psychedelic artist who was part of the label, a close brother of mine who saw the world for what it was and had a hard time conforming to the system. He often relied on drugs to cope with the confines of a faulty society, but that same painful perspective coupled with his positive vibes and sheer talent, created art that opened minds and forced you to think. Music venues started shutting down for tall condos to be built so that they could house our growing overpopulation. We'd made the place an even more popular tourist destination than it already was and now they'd taken over. Our neighborhood was being gentrified by bankers, colonized by the outsiders that saw a good thing, but didn't quite understand how it all worked, so they ruined it. For money. We were in it for the art, the vibrations, but money always wins. And I helped it.

I was the neighborhood food critic with a write up in the paper. Consultant and connector for neighborhood events. Represented the neighborhood at city council meetings about the noise ordinance that the gentrifiers were trying to use to squash the vibrant and apparently loud live music scene, the one that had attracted them in the first place. Kinda like discovering the garden of eden and then deciding that you can do better. I ran an "analog internet" dating site out of my notebook with over three hundred members and paid ads. Co-produced a gameshow for bounceTV, ran sound for discovery channel occasionally, worked at venues and had my face plastered on the wall of one. Filmed everything. Went to NY as tour manager for an act on america's got talent. And of course had so many raging afterparties on the roof of the warehouse. I was living the life.

But I was also in the middle of a destructive battle with depression. Over money. All that other stuff was out of passion, but my life was falling apart over money. I was losing the studio, which including losing my brother-in-laws print shop. It was a long, drawn out process of late rent every month and empty promises that I'd make it right. I had to pay $1,500 a month, so even with a few decently paying gigs, it was still a constant struggle. Always putting the landlord off until my next break. I would try to buckle down and focus on the ever so important money, but it would never work out. Couldn't force the dollars to roll in. I noticed though, that if I focused instead on doing free work for the good of others, genuinely not expecting anything in return, then money seemed to show up at just the right times. Just had to really believe. It worked for a long time, but it was hard to keep up, especially because I didn't really believe in anything specific, just that things would work out for me. The more I volunteered, the more things appeared in my life. But I had so many pressures to focus on money, even though I felt in my heart a direct correlation to this unhealthy energy that was slowing me down, but I had to "come back down to Earth and join the real world." I wouldn't answer my phone a lot of the time and my dad tracked me down in the neighborhood to lecture me on money and not giving my time away for free. He'd invested in me financially, wasn't looking to collect or anything, but was trying to push me into this construct that I could feel ruining my life.

But I did need money. Everybody does. So it became increasingly harder to believe that I would have what I needed to survive, but the more I focused on money, the broker I got. Eventually the doors of the studio were padlocked and I lost a lot of gear, plus stuff belonging to my band friends that they'd entrusted me with. I always seemed ok, always happy on the surface, even through the pain, so they didn't even see it coming. I lived at the studio too, so now I was really in a pinch. I still had a secret way into the spot through the roof though and I'd creep in late at night, sleep, and be gone before the landlord showed up in the morning to his business downstairs. There was even a point that I was sleeping on an air mattress on the roof of the warehouse and narrowly evading discovery. I was officially homeless. And somehow simultaneously the most successful I'd ever been, a respected member of the community, in charge of a huge art budget, the only neighbor responsible enough to apply for alcohol permits for our festivals and juggling two girlfriends that knew about each other. So many things going great for me, but money was tearing my soul apart. And tearing my son away from me.

I was perpetually late with child support. She may have been a b-word from the beginning, but honestly, she was way more forgiving over and over again than she could have been. She didn't agree with my hippie musician way of life, but she wanted me to be in his, as long as I had that money for her. Sometimes I didn't, and would go a month without seeing him, then two, and then I'd get a big check and all would be good, until it wasn't again. I tried at one point to go against what I felt inside and get a real job, but couldn't genuinely believe enough to manifest one and it only pulled me further from the giving lifestyle that was the only thing I'd known to work.

Eventually, I rented a house in the neighborhood and was scraping by enough to see him regularly. I worked the door at a venue for ten an hour instead of putting all that selfless energy into the universe, so when the summer hit and the afterschool went quiet at the same time as the concert schedule, I had neither money nor karma credits to cash in. She'd had the last straw and I wasn't going to see him for a while.

I went to visit a friend in asheville, the woman who had originally hired me at the afterschool, and I ended up moving up there, into a brand new house in a popular art and music neighborhood. I was now a colonizer, a gentrifier, living in a big fancy house that just months earlier had been a wooded ecosystem next to a creek.

They said work was hard to find in asheville, but mine had dried up here and I just broke up with ol' girl, so it was a chance to start over. I had a pretty wide skill set and quickly had three jobs. Another afterschool program, teaching kids is fulfilling and I'm really good at it, plus it's a nice schedule for finding other work. The corporate music superstore Guitar Center was moving to asheville, most were against it's takeover in a local business conscious town, but I needed money and beat out eight others for the lead music production instructor position. It was a mega capitalist corporation, but I only had limited hours, a sweet discount, they referred me a ton of outside gigs and everyone that worked there were rad local musicians. I made great friends and started breaking into the asheville music scene pretty quickly.

One connection there helped me get the job I really wanted, my dream job, which was saying a lot considering the dream I'd been living in the studio for years. I got hired at the Moog synthesizer factory. They invented the synthesizer back in the sixties and make the most revered brand of the instrument in the world. I was a big time personal fan and their only factory happened to be in the small mountain town that I just moved to. If I didn't try to add this to my resume then I'd be an idiot, jury's still out on that one.

I worked in the warehouse, it had been the only job available at the time and I had bookoos of experience. We'll say coincidence. I also held many industry certifications, had run my own studio and produced tons of albums, a little overqualified to be packing boxes, but I actually showed some genuine humility. I was grateful to be a part of such a magnificent company. As far as capitalism and manufacturing go, they were great. Lots of perks, deep discount, even deeper relationships with amazing people and eventually they even became employee owned. They are active in the world and do great things with their brand.

The monday through friday, eight to five factory job was outside of my recent repertoire, so I just treated it like summer camp and considered that I should be paying for the experience, the connections, and the resume booster. Plus, it was a steady paycheck to send off to my sons mom. But the damage had been done. I pleaded, started sending more than ever, tried to explain the depressive hardships I'd been facing and that I was now on a better path. She said it wasn't up to her, he'd been hurt by my money induced absence and didn't want to see me. That hurt more than her words. I wanted to write to him and she ok'd it, so I wrote letters while I paid on time payments and tried to live in a good way.

I also met another girl. She was a friend of my new roommate and I'd actually met her on that first visit, proclaimed my crush on her and began our textual relationship. She was slow to open up and my friend explained that she was complicated. I had the slow game figured out by now and gave her plenty of space and time, wooed her with buffalo and broccoli pizza and finally landed a first date. It was magic. Felt like we were tripping, but weren't. Nothing seemed to be going our way so we just went with it and manifested the greatest adventure. Best first date ever. None of the bars seemed to work out, so we ended up wandering through the neighborhoods, yards, climbed fences (down with the fences) and finally made it over the river and through the woods back to my house. I made her a sandwich which earned me some kisses and she stayed over for a PG cuddle puddle. I was smitten. Already had been really, but now she had me. Too bad she didn't want me. Too bad for her, that's exactly my type.

She actually was complicated it turned out. She'd recently gotten out of an intense relationship with someone who she felt a soul connection with, the love of her life, the one. And it wasn't completely over. Complicated. And then she kissed me, hoped to feel "that thing" because we were hitting it off pretty good, but it just wasn't there. I didn't push her, I lived my life for me, and got her to come over for enough cuddle and crossword sessions that eventually she couldn't ignore me. Still no real feelings on her part, but we always had a lot of fun and I wasn't asking for anything more than what we were doing. Things progressed, slowly, and eventually I even got to come back to her house.

She had a nine year old daughter and we were best buddies, they both knew that I was fun, always happy and they just liked having me around. No pressure, I get it, and I was genuinely happy to just be near her and occasionally I even got a little something more. I stayed at her house for the four days leading up to christmas and wrote her a song as my first gift to her, songs are just songs, but it was enough to scare her a bit when I spoke of trying no to fall in love with her. She didn't feel this way for me. Her heart was still damaged and hung up on this other guy, even though she knew that it was unhealthy and that I was perfect for her. But she knew that the heart is where it's at. If it doesn't feel right there, then no amount of overthinking is going to change it.

She still cared for me and didn't want to hurt me. I get it. I'm good. I'm a master of my emotions and I can keep myself from getting too wrapped up in her, but I still want to stick around for whatever I can get for as long as I can. I've done a no pressure thing with a girl that didn't like me, I got this, and I think that's what sold her on keeping me around. I didn't need her to love me. I didn't need her to hurt me now to save my feelings down the road. I just wanted to do what feels right, and that meant experiencing as much of her as I could before it was too late.

I've always been a big believer in it being better to love and lose than the other option. I'd never felt that I was madly in love before, or think that it was really a possibility, I just knew that I liked everything about her and she made be happy. I made her happy too, and as with every tough conversation that we ever had, we came out of it stronger and more connected. Our open communication, humility and my desire for her to be the person I was falling for, brought us closer. We also started tripping together at an amazing festival where our music minds were blown three different times in all directions and then we were further mesmerized by blacklit contra dancing. We had the most magical time together. That was when I knew, but I still had some work to do to convince her.

New years was another epic trip and music experience and by the spring we were officially a thing. I'd managed to keep the pressure off long enough for her to make the first official move. Still open. Still no pressure. Just another step on our path together. The other guy had all but disappeared and it was more and more obvious that we were meant to be, at least for now. We were two peas in a pod. Everything that I valued important in a partner, she had on lock. I was in.

At the springtime version of the same festival we revisited our first trip together, this time dancing the night away. We had become pretty adequate contra dance partners, a fast paced dance akin to square dancing with dizzying spins and a challenge to keep up with. We danced all night, connected even more, felt so right and I was hers. The next morning in the tent she told me that she loved me. I had done it. My patience, humility and understanding had paid off. She actually loved me. I made her wait a minute, but eventually returned the phrase. Of course I did. Unconditionally. I always had. She said this was a new type of love for her, a new experience unlike the love that she knew in the past. We still may not be forever, this didn't change anything, but it meant so much to me. It opened my heart in a new way, a selfless way, and allowed this new vibration to pour through me. I was officially in love for the first time.

My first puppy love still felt like it had been real, but it was so long ago and I was such a different person. This was something new. For the first time since yoga girl, I was with someone who I wouldn't have dropped in an instant had she returned into my life. That was how I was able to understand what my girlfriend was going through. I also had someone from my past who I'd had this crazy connection with that unparalleled even what I currently felt. That didn't mean that I didn't want to be here with every part of me, it just meant that things were complicated.

Looking at it all now, it's just vibrations. The different chords that we create when our energies combine. I think that this girl was like an exact higher octave of my same note, my frequency. So we felt great together, perfectly in-tune, but zero dissonance, which adds flavor and complexity to the sound. We were too perfect together, without some turmoil, the beauty just isn't as beautiful. But she loved me, so I was more than happy, and being with me was good for her anxiety. We raised each others vibrations.

We went on vacation together to the Grateful Dead reunion shows in CA and chicago, really just mentioned the off-chance possibility and everything came together so that we could. Manifested so many great times, including a seemingly impossible commute to the show that ended with free hash, a food that we're not sure if it was plant or animal, and then walked into the venue as the first song started up. Guerrilla camped in golden gate park, on pride weekend, three days after gay marriage was legalized. Crazy. Got bumped from our flight to chitown and had to wait ten hours in the airport, couldn't have had a better time, as long as we were together the world was perfect. Plus we dosed and snuck into the family bathroom. Met up with friends in the city, manifested a floor space at a hilton hotel room across from the arena and got miracled tickets to the fourth of july show. Our acid magic was strong together. A power couple. All of our friends knew that we were perfect together. It was obvious. I knew it and she almost believed it too. And then we broke up.

She still had her issues going on. I was good. I don't get jealous. It's a low vibration. I would have loved to have all of her attention, but I knew what I was getting into. She needed to end it for her mental clarity, to clear up her emotional clutter, the other guy had resurfaced and things were complicated. I wasn't going to argue. I understand. You can't guilt someone into loving you. It still broke her heart to break mine though. I held her while she cried and just kept on loving her. It was ok. I wasn't mad. She'd always been very open and honest about it all. We knew this day would come. Sure, I was super sad, this was the love of my life we're talking about, but that meant that I needed to let her go when that time came. Friends claimed that we'd get back together, we made too much sense not to. I doubted it, I grieved for a few days, started trying to move on and a week or two later, she called me.

I had told myself that it was over, even if she called, we knew how it would eventually end again, but I agreed to meet and slowly we started back up. She'd had the space to realize that there was still a lot more that she wanted to do with me while our paths were aligned. She might not have those feelings for me, but she had other ones, and loved every minute that we were together. I couldn't not be in. If it's better to love than lose, then how could I not jump at the chance to spend more time with the love of my life, even if I'm going to get hurt again?

We only hung out a little at first. She missed the greatest musical experience of my life. Steve Miller Band at the casino in Cherokee, iconic music from the last twenty years of my adolescence summed up into one drop. Or maybe two. And just like camp, it was a crazy strange transition from the vibrations of utopia, into a dirty feeling gambling hall. Always bet on red. Go money.

We grew way closer than we had before, she had gained a new appreciation for having me in her life. We achieved "power couple" status. We threw legendary parties, epic fondue-a-thons and gratuitous meat extravaganzas, complete with mario kart and 3D printers. And stackers. Still to this day, there are so many other people that reminisce about our relationship. She was an incredible chef, inventive and had such a wide range of knowledge. I learned the most from her and cherished every second that we were in the kitchen together.

Our open communication about tough topics was astounding. Our understanding of each other was unspoken. And I understood that I couldn't understand some things. I didn't have to. We were so similar, it was written in the stars, our birthdays were only a couple weeks apart and made for a fun month long celebration of extravagance. Then my roommates were both moving out and we super hypothetically mentioned moving in together, then it snowballed and manifested and everything seemed to fall right into place. It just felt right. So right.

Moog put on pressure to commit more time, but I was already feeling out of place in an 8-5. My planned year of experience was almost up and I'd established myself in asheville enough to begin freelancing again. Plus, I had the support of the most amazing woman I'd ever known. All you need is love. I did it. Felt right. Back on musician's time. Recorded one of my closest clients for a jampacked recording session and he had a new saxaphone player in the group. He ended up coming to camp in december, the single person that I knew from the outside. He showed up one day and looked unsure about my igloo accommodations, went to a meeting at the dome the next and they told people to leave if they weren't staying the winter, impending doom, I tried to deter him from jumping onto the first rumor fueled life raft, but the next day he left. Snowed an inch.

Living together was great. We actually got to truly experience each other. I was more in love every day. I hadn't even believed in it before this. I never considered marriage in my path, bought a house with a girl and still never imagined it, but I would have married this girl in an instant. I knew that would never work for her though and I was quite content with nothing more than exactly what we had right then. I knew that any moment I got to spend with her was a gift, against all odds, and I treated every second just like that. For the first time in my life, I didn't take a person for granted. Not just girls, I mean anyone. I really did love her unconditionally. I didn't need more. I didn't need her to change. I didn't want her to. I loved her for exactly who she was. I just wanted her to be happy.

I'm a fan of the open thing too, it kept me on my toes. I couldn't grow complacent and lazy with how I treated her, I had to continuously love to my fullest capabilities. I also knew that she wanted to be there for every moment that she was. She wasn't there because she felt contractually obligated, she could be anywhere she wanted to be without consequence or having to hide it, but she chose to be right here, right now. Never any jealousy. Never any suspicion of lying, what could she possibly need to lie about? Being able to be apart only brought us closer together. I'm a fan.

Next thing. We wanted to got to this bluegrass festival that the kids band had played at before, so I called them up and offered some type of impromptu kids music somethingorother in exchange for a couple of tickets, they were all about it. I'm pretty good at jumping around. Over the course of the next three weeks, we'd fully developed my new full time music project, poster, website, costume and videos. She inspired me to come up with the concept and was a sounding board for my ideas, I absolutely could not have committed the energy that I did without her support. She believed in me. In my drive, passion and energy. She knew without a doubt that I would succeed and had my back the entire way. I was able to focus a hundred percent of my energy and never look back, I knew that with her by my side, I had nothing to worry about. She was the most amazing human being I'd ever met, so if she believed in me, than I must be onto something.

The project was Captain Champion, a superhero DJ for kids. I got a discounted digital DJ board from GC and we made custom foam gauntlets, cape, flatbill hat, painted skate shoes and ironed on t-shirt. It was good. Plus I had amassed a bunch of good kids music, not cheesy stuff or pop tunes, but funk fusion tracks, 90s hiphop adventuretime mash-ups and some real heady stuff that was mainly for the parents. I played the festy, it was a hit, obviously, and I booked a gig at the same festival we'd professed our love at a year ago. We hit birthday week, that's what we called it even though it lasted way longer, but this year it didn't quite have the same magic as the last one. Something was off. Time for a talk, they always help work through some angst and set us back straight. I could tell that she wasn't happy. She was trying to hold it together for birthdays, but she agreed, something was wrong.

She was feeling the weight of not only living together, but now also getting wrapped up in my new project, which was obviously going to be the next big thing. The non-committed commitment was piling up. I got it. I always did. We were so much alike. That's what made it hard to imagine not being together. I knew that she needed space. We'd been taking nights off, but we lived together, so it was complicated. I suggested that I move out, that would help for sure, would make us miss each other a little, that would probably fix it all. Slow things back down, we were good at slow, I was good at space. I didn't regret moving in one bit, if anything, it had been an amazing experiment that changed the way that I thought about love and now desired it in my life. I could move out and we could see how that was for a while, probably make us closer, but before the conversation was over, I concluded that it wouldn't work.

I couldn't go from this, back to slow. I couldn't dial back my love for her. We'd either slowly and painfully fall apart, or we'd be back in the same pod in a month and the same predicament in three. She needed to be able to move on. She needed to follow her own path and have space in her life for the right person. As long as she was holding onto me, she couldn't manifest anyone better. We hadn't been a mistake, we'd been such an important step on each other's paths. We taught each other so much. We grew and healed together. We were shown what kind of magic is possible when you just believe. We had nothing but the highest regard for each other and the way that we treated one another with honesty and respect. I couldn't at all be mad at myself for messing it up either, nothing to regret, I'd defied odds and gotten the girl that didn't even like me, to fall in love and let me move in. Even she was shocked I'd made it this far.

I was feeling a little under the weather at the time and we agreed that I couldn't go stay with a friend with a cold, plus we still had four bonus levels of super mario world to beat. Like always, this tough conversation had been so real that it had our hearts connected closer than ever, so I stayed for another week before we officially broke up. It was still birthday week, we didn't mess around, and she gave me a copy of the Omnivore's Dilemma, the book that taught me all about captain corn. Got to go on one last trip and take each other in. It was beautiful. I was sad some, but I was so grateful to have this extra time, to get to grieve side by side with the love of my life. Ultimate closure. I could have hung around in her life. We'd have been able to fall into some type of rhythm. But I felt it more than the times in the past when I'd said it, if you love someone enough, sometimes you just have to let them go. I did. Absolutely. I didn't let her go just to hope that she came back, we already did that one, this was for good. No regrets. Unlike yoga girl, I'd gotten to experience her. Fully. I got to see what it was like to really be with her and it was the most incredible thing I could have imagined.

Friends who knew about my disbelief in love, and then how hard I had fallen for the only person like me that I'd ever met, they were worried that this would jade me from ever allowing love back into my life. Quite the contrary. I now believed. I believed in love. I had this whole part of me woken up and now knew what was possible. I'd spent my whole life naysaying, but now I believed, now I couldn't wait to find the next one. The one. I felt like the whole world had just opened up. I now had so much to look forward to. And if I could find someone like her who felt the same about me... whew, life is good.

I needed to take time for myself. Just do me. Follow my path and make myself happy. The rest will come. Still went and performed at our festival, hung out with friends, talked about the new project and ideas just started downloading. My vision was to perform locally this year, LA next year and a TV show the next. Then the concept of the show started forming, manifesting, I already had the camera equipment, so I just kept brainstorming. Or maybe heartstorming. Then I had a solid dose and a bottle of whiskey in the car and stayed up all night working through some stuff. Worked through the closure of my relationship, it had been so important, but now that it was over, I had big things in the horizon. I worked through things with my damaged relationship with my son and told the universe that I would gladly forget the girl, if it meant having room for him to reappear in my life. And then the entire vision for the TV pilot manifested itself. It was good. Solid. I had the next big thing. And then the next weekend my son called me. It had been over a year and a half. I missed him real bad. He missed me too and had never gotten the letters that I'd sent. I couldn't even be mad at his mom, I was too ecstatic to hear from him and we arranged to see each other the next week. He was thirteen and growing into a man. So freakin happy.

I also put all I had into preproduction on a low budget pilot. I believed. It was hard for people to see my vision with only my words, but I saw it clearly in my head. It took a lot of logistics and favors, but people could see how completely I believed in it, and it was all working out. Then I got an offer to go help a friend who was in the TV industry, my sister's first boyfriend, who I'd kept up with through the years, he needed help on a real TV show. He said it was entry level grunt work, moving stuff and the like, but I couldn't pass up a manifested experience with real reality tv, plus I'd also get to see my homie. I didn't even ask what the show was, I didn't watch much TV and assumed I wouldn't know it anyway. Wrong. It was Bravo's Top Chef. I crushed it. So yeah, I was kinda on Top Chef, no big. And I wasn't some twenty year old trying to get into film because I like movies, I was a versatile experienced doer with follow through. There were twenty five people doing what I did and I was the only one offered work in LA. Looks like I had a new career if I wanted it. But my own show was my focus.

Don't think I can go back to tv now if this saving the world thing doesn't work out, can't vibe with the tactics of a big production. This seventy person crew for a major network's big show, where every person drinks a lot of bottled water to survive twelve hour days in the hot sun... and they didn't even recycle. Suvs sat idling for hours just so that the air conditioning could run for producers. Money was no object and was the only thing of concern, nothing else seemed to matter. I excelled because I could do anything, but I won't do that.

Once that show was over, I got a gig on another reality show closer to home, although my home was my car and couches at this point, wanted all the experience I could get and of course I had to have that money. Became irreplaceable and negotiated for more of the green stuff, that's what life's all about, and worked three days a week while I used the other four to produce my show. This one was about a sixteen year old who's super famous and rich from instagram, no actual talent, and he was a douche. Plus, surprise surprise, reality is super fake. But I worked with really cool people and got lots of connects and more offers for work in LA. I can recognize a good sign when I see one, so I finished up my show and headed to LA with it.

Meanwhile, I'd been seeing my son again, it was so great. I was real with him, always was, he already knew that I wasn't perfect and I didn't try to make excuses. I've always talked openly to him, he likened "the talk" to health class, far more informative than the baptist nontalk that I got. I've always been careful not to impose my views, doesn't work, I can see things from many perspectives, so I'd explain both sides and why I feel a certain way. I can't say that it's not at all a biased approach, but certainly better than the other option. I was so proud that without any discussion from me, he said "I sure hope that guy doesn't get elected, that man's a racist and is gonna start world war three." Yes. Where'd he get this from? Certainly not his republican mom. Nope, came up with it on his own. He's connected to the world wide web of collected consciousness and able to draw his own conclusions. So proud.

He helped me work on the show, developed his own cartoon character, complete with dubstep cannon and recorded the voice too. He's gonna be a great dude. I can't take credit, I've only been a small part of his life, but I've always tried to show and not tell, and I think it may have rubbed off. I took him to his first music festival, small one with a bunch of bands I worked with and he loved it. Then I heard a rumor that my recent ex might show up, but this was my place, my people, I thought I was over her, been crushing it all summer, but this news made me realize that I wasn't. He didn't want to hear it, he went to school everyday with two xgfs. Suck it up. Point taken. She never showed anyway and the next week I flew to LA.

I didn't have any leads to sell my show for millions or any work on other shows lined up, but I believed. I met so many amazing travelers in hostels, some even in tv production, and they all loved the show. It's a psychedelic jamfunk music, art and performance showcase. It features interviews and demos with ten year old creators, kittens, puppycorns that turn pollution into rainbows, former students breakdancing, the old wacky man I'd managed for america's got talent, my insane psychedelic artist friend, music from that crazy thirteen piece band, over the top sock puppets, comic book animation, a local funk bands music video, jugglers, tacos and more. All short clips that transitioned in crazy ways, it was a mix between Off the Air and Peewees Playhouse that was hosted by a superhero DJ with awkward on-the-spot humor. Not for everyone, but if it was up your alley then it was a win. Like adult swim for kids. And their stoned parents. I tracked down the agents that I wanted and hung out near their offices, I believed, so who knows?

I emailed any agent I could find contact info for, all day everyday. Eventually I worked my way up to getting legit rejection letters. Yes, they actually watched it. Then I got some work out there on another reality show with a producer I'd worked with over the summer. I was working in a beverly hills mansion between the houses for The Bachelor and Big Brother. My first day I drove Mike "The Situation" from the hotel to the mansion. He loved my show pitch, so now I know I've really got something. Eventually, I had to move on from LA, hadn't sold my show yet, but this was just the first visit and a mere introduction to the industry, so who knows. Don't think I forgot that yoga girl was in LA. Wouldn't that be a fun twist? I text her, but she was "unavailable" to hang out while I was there. Maybe one day.

I popped up to SF for a while to visit school friends, I found out that my bestie roommate had moved to colorado, oh well. Then I found out just how easy it was to get around out there, I could fly to texas for super cheap, where my puppy love still lived. Let's go. I'd actually seen her a couple times in the last few years, just for a day here and there when she was in town. I stayed with her for a week this time and it was magic. We'd learned everything from each other, so it all just felt right. We'd taken two very different forks in our paths, even before I veered as far out there as I am now. She was an actual adult. She had transitioned from a teenage Phish tour kid to an office job, dressed nice and meetings and stuff, classy, and of course made plenty of that all important money. And here I was, turned into a dirty hippie musician.

She didn't care though, it was way intense and passionate, a connection unlike any other and was reciprocated from both sides in full force, but we'd have a hard time being together for real. We were different people now, especially considering that she worked for a company in the steel pipe business, specifically, the oil pipeline business. Yeah. I swear I couldn't make this stuff up. My first love works for the oil industry that I've dedicated my life to stopping. Talk about a Capulet Montague style of twist. It's just a job. No worship of oil. She just needs the money. Oil is big in texas. It's a necessary evil. She's just doing what she's gotta do. But I didn't care about oil back then, I was getting ready to be a big TV star, or at least a writer for nickelodeon, drill baby drill.

Then I hopped on a bus to austin with no place to stay, several crazy coincidences and manifested run-ins with friends that I hadn't seen in years. Got a $40 ticket to denver to visit a friend, loved it, planned to maybe move there, got offered a job at the famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre, hung out with a colleague who later encouraged my trip to ND by saying "you will make a difference", whatever man, I'm just going for a week, and then I caught a bus to Boulder. There I finally saw my long lost college roommate and he took me to a Standing Rock action meeting where my life was forever changed. Whew.

And now I'm here, in a cave, on top of a mountain, freaking out. I'd compartmentalized everything that had happened so that I could survive it all, held the camp together and got my new family safely tucked away out of dapl's reach. Of course, as soon as we got here, a big crazy looking low flying plane flew right over the cabin. And police helicopters fly over every single day. Probably looking for dastardly pot farmers, but certainly seeing me hiding in a foxhole as they trigger my PTSD and anxiety. I still have the north face jacket I got at camp, I started cutting it open when I'd find weird plastic pieces sewn into the lining. Is it so crazy to imagine a GPS tracker in a donated coat after everything else I've seen? Keeping tabs on the last to leave camp. Those that walked out at the last minute. Those that they filmed filming them. And now TigerSwan has admitted to continuing surveillance of activists even after the camp was dismantled. I'm starting to feel a little less crazy now. And just remember that the recently fired director of the FBI and the founder of facebook both tape over their webcams.

They don't scare me though. No fear. It's ok. Even if they are watching, they can't possibly know what I'm up to. Even if they had me bugged, the pen has been silent. So far at least. I won't be wearing this jacket anymore. I won't be carrying a phone. I'll cringe every time I hear a helicopter from now on. I'm probably just paranoid, for now at least, but I'm messed up. My whole world is crashing in on me. How could I possibly function in a society that I now know to be an illusion and the sole catalyst in the destruction of everything that actually matters? When I started writing, I thought it would help me work through some stuff, which it has, but it's also shown me just how big the problem is. And if I wasn't on dapl's radar before, this book is way more likely to get me on their list than any bestselling one.

They will not silence me though. I have been called to be a voice for this movement and I can not turn my back on my planet. They will not pay me off. I'm not even selling this book, I'm doing all I can to give it away for free, so if you gave any money for it then you overpaid, but you already knew that. (Seriously though, copy this, reprint this, email it to everyone. If you think this book can do good in someone's life, by all means give it away. It'll manifest more goodness into your life. And mine. Plus, what am I gonna do, sue you? For love? No, you now have my explicit permission to reproduce and distribute this literary work in its entirety, I don't suggest the karma of trying to sell it though. Hemp paper preferred.)

They can not scare me off. They can not convince me that there is nothing that can be done. I will not believe that they are too big and too powerful to be stopped. That this is just the way it is. That humans are incapable of living in a good, natural way. I believe. I have been called to make a difference. I will succeed. I don't have to do it alone. So many of you know that we have to do something. Soon. It's not a losing battle. It's only a lost cause if we lose hope. We can do it. We can stand up and save the world. We don't need to wake the entire overpopulation up, they will follow our lead, that's what they do. We don't even need a majority to have a voice, the last election proved that one. We just have to believe. In ourselves and in each other. Plus, it's been proven that it only takes 3.5 percent of a population to stand up and topple a corrupt government. We're getting pretty close to kickoff time.

I've been in your shoes. Knowing that the world was not perfect but thinking that its problems were too big to fix. So I focused on my own neighborhood, on my own stuff, which is exactly what they want us doing. The world is not fixable, so just forget about it and make your little community as bearable as you can. But the world is crashing. If we don't unite to save it, then we sure won't have to worry about our little community problems anymore. I know that I can't tell anyone what's right for them. Everyone's path is different. I can only show you what I've learned from mine. I can't tell you what the most important thing you could be doing is. I understand that everyone has their own journeys, lives, jobs and families that are the most important things to their hearts, but I also know that the destruction of the planet will destroy all that stuff too. I get that everyone has to make their own mistakes, I just hope that we can keep from making the biggest one in his-story.

Claiming that it's not your problem, is exactly what makes it your problem. You may not have caused any of the turmoil that our mother is facing, but you will most certainly feel the consequences. And were you thinking that the people who are causing it are going to do anything about it? Saving the planet is absolutely the most important thing I can be doing, without it, the rest of the world is meaningless. I've been a country boy on a farm and a big city dweller. A christian, an atheist and a free spirited hippie. A gamer who came from a close family with a loving mother and a broken family with a judging father. A partier in the service industry and a salaried 9-5er with a commute. I've gone from penniless to a nice paycheck and a 401k, and then back to penniless. A homeowner with a $250,000 mortgage, four vehicles and a long term partner of five years. And I've been homeless. I've been jaded by love and experienced the love of my life. I've had the greatest, most understanding child that I could possibly imagine, lost him, and then got him back. I've adopted others as my own and loved accordingly. I've given up money for passion, went to college and began a career that fulfilled me. Music as a job and festivals as a workplace. I've mentored hundreds of kids and was a voice to many more through music. I was a local politician and tastemaker. I've worked for my dream employer and been my own boss. Built a possible career in tv and produced my own show with a positive message that was from the heart and just felt right. I have truly done good in this world. But this is the most important thing I could possibly be doing with my life.

Without this, the rest of it is pointless. I haven't even checked my email in months, I might have sold the show for a gajillion dollars, none of that matters anymore. The most fulfilling career accomplishment of my life has zero value to me now, unless maybe if Captain Champion decides to make an appearance at the frontline. This feels more right than anything I've ever done. I haven't spoken to my son in over six months. I was supposed to send his mom some money in december, but I didn't make it home. I had to stay. I was doing this for him. And his kids. And their kids. She kept him from my family and certainly hasn't spoken highly of me, but I've been shown that continuing along this path is the only way to get him back into my life in a good way. I trust that he will see what I'm doing and realize that it is bigger than me. Money will not bring him closer to me. I did manage to get to asheville for a day and sell the car that was still at Barry's so that I could send her a chunk, but I cannot consume myself with money. Even for such a noble cause. I believe that as long as I do what feels right, I will always have what I need and I'll send her any money that manifests along the way. But without a planet, none of that matters. I hope that my distance doesn't cause him to look at our movement in a negative light, I pray that instead he sees the good we are doing and comes to join us.

Having a family to take care of is no excuse not to join the revolution to save the planet, it's the biggest reason to stand up. The next generation are the ones that will suffer the most from our carelessness, so we owe it to them to show them a better way to live. We have a better way. We haven't figured it all out yet, but we're getting there. I get it, it's hard to walk away from the conveniences of modern life. To leave a mortgage or a business or netflix or gas heat and nuclear power, but the planet is collapsing and none of that stuff will matter anymore. Won't take much to shut down the infrastructure of society, we don't even have to wait for martial law to set in, just a simple collapse of communications and electricity would cripple all of everything. If you haven't figured out an alternative already, then you'll be the one left in the dark. Or you can come to camp and simultaneously learn how to live in a good way and show the destroyers that enough is enough.

Standing Rock is over. They were drilling the day we left and pumping soon after (Although now a judge has ruled that there was all sorts no-nos and shenanigans involved and ordered a proper ecological review), but there are camps all around. The destroyers are desecrating our mother all over. There's uranium mining and processing contaminating our greatest lakes and blackest hills, they're trying to eradicate the largest wild salmon run for a gold mine, and of course oil pipes are going in around the country through sacred sites of the most spiritual. They know the power of the Earth's energy and they're scared of it. Yet they still laugh in our faces because they think that they have us all convinced that we can't stop them. As bad as the film industry is for pushing colonization, the kids movies got one thing right, if we all stand up together, we can defeat any bully that threatens us. They will turn and run like the cowards that they have always been.

We can do this. We can stand up. It's not going to be easy at first. People will naysay. They are in denial that there is even a problem. Farming is natural. Oil is good. Money is great. Oil will be the easiest to get rid of and even that's gonna be a toughie, but we've only even had cars for a hundred years and already we can see destruction in everything around us. People will fight it all the way to the end. Our pollution could completely destroy the globe and still people will think that money can fix it. No water, just buy some. No air, just charge it. If we don't start making a change now, then by the time the mainstream is polluted enough for them to take notice, it'll be too late. But if instead, a small minority of us, those that claim to be awake, to care, if instead of fifteen thousand at camp, we had fifteen million, then they couldn't ignore us or convince america that we were just a few freeloading extremists. If we can make saving the Earth the next big thing, a new crazy fad of caring about our planet, if the sheep that believe anything believed that we could change everything, then we might just do it. I believe in people. I believe that we want to be good. I just think that they've done a fantastic job of confusing our species into thinking that we have been.

I can't lie and say that it's not a little overwhelming, I mean, I am hiding out in a cave because of all the pressure I feel pushing down on me. It feels like an impossible task at times, but it doesn't feel right to give up. I would rather die trying to save God's abundant planet than live in the excess of a man-made material desecration of it. I'm pretty sure the big guy's on my side for this one. I know, God might not be your jam, wasn't mine and that's cool. I was still living on my path, believing in the scientific explanations of our undeniably abundant planet and universe, and that was just fine. In fact, that should make it even more apparent that we can't buy our way out of this one. Science says that the planet is in turmoil and its global temperature increase is reeking havoc on every facet of life on Earth. In fact, a glacier the size of delaware just broke off of antarctica forever and is "currently" affecting the world's everything. It's happening. Even christian scientists can't deny that our pollution drives species to extinction every year, so if you personally believe that there is no God to come and save us when we break the planet, then science says that we have to act fast before it's too late. And as for the so-called "believers" eagerly awaiting God's return, how happy do you think he's going to be with what we've done with the place? We should probably clean up a little before mom and dad come home.

I, of course, believe that everything happens for a reason, which means that somehow, all of this destruction is included. It's a tough one to fathom, but I know that I don't have to understand, I just have to do what feels right. Perhaps we had to evolve from instinct to fear, which led to reason and knowledge, which is bringing us full circle back to instinct. Maybe if we can have the humility to understand what we've done, we can take our knowledge and love and design the technology of the future.

My belief and commitment to following my path grew all winter and by the end I was vibrating pretty high. Everything was working out just like it should and I believed with what I thought was every vibrating fiber of my being. I felt that I had found God. Tunkasila. I spoke to him. To the infinite energy that was inside of me. I saw miracles happen before my eyes, but I wasn't there yet. I began believing more and more from deeper and deeper and from a place in my heart that I didn't even know about. I followed my path and intuition until it led me here. Then, at the cabin down the hill, it just didn't feel right, didn't feel bad in general, I just needed to be with nature, with our mother, with our ancestors, with Tunkasila. I left those closest to me down there, couldn't even process myself around those that had experienced it all by my side, and up here, all alone, I feel the closest to God that I ever have. The most connected to spirit. Completely in my mother's hands.

Then one day I began praying from a place deeper than I ever had and I had an honest to God religious experience. Like, for real. The kind of thing that they can only write about. I was only on page one hundred and something of writing this when it happened, and it changed the course that my life, and the book, would take. It changed the way I believe. The way I live. The way I trust in the magnificence of God the Universe, all that he has put on my path to lead me here and whatever he has in store for me next. I saw the future. I spoke to God. I prayed from a place deeper than I ever had, truly believed more than I'd known how, and this time he talked back to me. He answered my prayers with visions of the past, present and future. I know, it sounds crazy to anyone who hasn't experienced anything like this, believer or not, but it was real. It changed me. So here's what happened...
Step Twenty-Five:

I was praying, but more than just my usual four or five minutes that I do a few times a day, this was more of a heart to heart with the Great Mystery. Kinda like that night I spent alone at Echo3, a lot like that actually, digging deep and being more truthful with myself and the universe than I normally am. The weight of tearing up the relationship with my son pulls me down more than anything, but if I'm really to believe that everything happens for a reason, then I have to believe that the destruction of his faith in me is as critical as the destruction of the planet. It's something that I struggled with, even when everything else made perfect sense. I prayed at camp and believed in the ultimate wisdom of the universe, really believed, except that. I had messed it up. How could I chock that up to the universe? How could I relieve myself of guilt for something that I had obviously done? I knew that guilt and regret were not the way to live with God, but how could I forgive myself for hurting him? For pushing away the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I prayed. I prayed hard. And I felt an energy. I felt God's presence. Felt him inside and all around me. My whole body was vibrating. And then I started having visions.

My eyes were open and I could still see everything around me, it was more like the most vivid thoughts I'd ever had. My subconscious, my inner energy, my God was speaking to me. Not in words, or even pictures, it was this other thing that I've never experienced before. I kind of imagine it was through my third eye, my pineal gland, my direct connection to spirit. I was shown my path, what had led me here, such an incredible web of coincidence and destiny to bring me to him. Specifically, I was shown people. People who were brought into my life to nudge me along at the exact moment that I was ready. People who had a lot of it already figured out, but then propelled me even further.

I was shown that my mom played a fundamental part of me being able to accomplish what I had. It was her incredible path that showed me how to follow my heart and do what felt right. The next step wasn't until I met my college roommate, he played an integral role in my awakening. We had been learning about the world together, exposing ourselves to some way-out-there hippie stuff, he helped to open me up and prepare me for my upcoming journey. There was a big gap of time between those two, and I know it all happened for a reason, but I think that I wasn't completely following my heart for all those years. Not everything I did felt right. It wasn't until I gave up the constraints of society and money, did what felt right in my heart, completely believed, that's when I started manifesting the people into my life that were unknowingly leading me to this moment. I saw yoga girl. Saw that she appeared only briefly in my life, but had such a strong impact, prepared me to embark on my slow transformation.

The two most powerful visions of people were the conscious psychedelic artist and the insanely talented composer savant that I'd crossed paths with and we'd all affected each others trajectories. I had absolutely no business getting to work with either of these amazing artists that early in my career. Such prolific and truly inspiring abilities to capture the essence of God's universe, and the destruction of man, in works of art that on the surface, were just really cool to look at and listen to. I was fresh out of school and my path crossed with creators of a caliber that most would never get to work with throughout the entirety of their ever. Tunkasila showed me that it wasn't a coincidence. Their hearts had been opened and our paths pulled together in such a way that I was changed forever. I vibrated higher because of both of those relationships. I would not be anywhere near here today, if it weren't for those two people coming into my life years ago, and changing the way I viewed the world.

I was shown a more recent friend, a coworker who I'd had an immediate connection with, and just before camp, we'd shared several life changing conversations. He shared with me concepts of the universe that changed everything. We were two of many that worked together, in different departments, but we both felt called to each other. And because of us doing what felt right, we enlightened each other exponentially. He also felt called to come to camp, but couldn't break free from his commitments in society, I bet he'll be at the next one though.

I saw my most recent relationship. This time, it wasn't as much her, as it was the love itself. The part of my heart that had been opened up. This newfound belief in love that I had been too cynical to acknowledge could even exist. I now believed beyond any doubt that love was real. It was that love that led me to be called to camp and build a relationship with Wakan Tanka. If I had happened into camp without having experienced this love, I'd have stayed a week, brushed it off, and still been guzzling oil. It took me feeling unconditional love for someone who I truly had a soul connection with, and then letting that person go out of selflessness, in order for me to have the capacity to connect with God in the way that I have. It had absolutely happened for a reason. I had been strongly called to her, and persevered through what would have scared anyone else off, because I believed that there was something incredible there. She made me feel like I'd never felt before and I was opened up to love in a way that I could never have imagined. It was that love and humility that called me to camp and powered me through all that I endured. I was ready.

I saw that my tv pilot had been there to help me focus all of my energy on doing what felt right. To complete the goal that I felt inside was possible and prove to myself that anything was. I believed and it came true. So many factors had been at play, I just went with it and it all worked out, and that directly led me to find out about camp. I was instantly called and vibrated just high enough to know that I had no choice but to follow my heart. My newly opened up and vibrating higher than ever heart. God is love, and once I'd actually acknowledged and experienced love, I was able to open up to God.

I can't possibly write this in a way so that it is a fraction as powerful as it was in the moment. Guess you can't really write down a religious experience from the Universe. It was more of a feeling that opened up in me, a new sense, and it blew my mind as I saw the magnificent construction of the plan for me. I was humbled. I was truly in awe of the wonders of the universe that had led me to become who I am now. I was shown that my words are going to be powerful. That I'm going to be one of the voices that inspires and wakes up a generation. A leader of a movement. That as long as I continue on the path ahead of me, as long as I believe, then we can do this. We were brought to camp to be brought to God, taught how to pray, and those of us that truly believe will be the ones that can change the world. The clout we gained from being at camp, and the network of protectors that we built, will be enough to spread our message and spark a revolution.

I am so grateful to be one of the people. I thanked Tunkasila. Thanked the universe for leading me here. For charging me with inspiring the world. For me having the trust in him, to know without a doubt that I could do it. I can do it. I can change the world. I just have to trust in my path without wavering, and believe every step of the way. I don't have to know how to change it, I just have to do what feels right.

I continued to be humbled, to the point of tears, only a few though. I was in awe of everything and felt the energy pulsing through me. I was humbled to the point that I couldn't stop repeating "I believe." I couldn't formulate any other words. I could feel my heart actually believing. If I started to think about and analyze the feeling, it went away, but if I just went with it, then I believed unconditionally. That's when he showed me the Garden of Eden.

I hadn't put together a concept of the abundant utopia at that point. Everything I've written about it in this book has been inspired by this vision feeling and developed into more complex concepts through simple logic. And prayer. If we all believe, in our hearts, then the Garden of Eden is very real. I felt my body physically lighten. It felt like I weighed less and I rose up into a higher plane. My vibration raised and it was as if I was in a different dimension of the same reality that's all around us. I could feel the incredible abundance surrounding me. It was like when you stare past something and it goes out of focus, like a magic eye illusion, as soon as I started to try to figure it out, I lost it. I felt heavy again and was back in our three dimensional construct, then, when I let go and let my heart simply believe, I felt lifted back up. It was the most incredible thing I've ever felt. Ever.

I went back and forth several times, trying to understand how this infinite garden functioned, but it was impossible. The instant I tried to figure out the knowledge of the gods, I fell out of their utopia. I felt a physical sensation of added weight and downward motion. When I finally stopped trying to reverse engineer an explanation, when I just gave my heart over to it, it was the most amazing place anyone could ever imagine. I felt ultimate completeness. I was connected to everything. We were all related.

In Eden, if I just thought about food, it manifested and fruit grew right in front of me. Not in this three dimensional world, but in this heightened perception that I was experiencing. My other concepts about our planet being this secret garden don't include this direct type of manifestation, they are more big picture ideas and propose that it provides enough for all, as long as no one takes more than their share. This vision may have just been a metaphor to show me how the planet is supposed to function. But knowing what I know about manifestation in action, even out in this man-made dystopia, I personally believe that once we return to this magical place, we'll be able to literally create food by thinking it into existence. Brain wave vibrations. I know. Crazy. So let's assume it wasn't literal, but I did manifest fourteen cases of tomatoes in a blizzard, how hard could one in a garden be? It wouldn't just appear out of nowhere. I'd be on my path, doing what felt right, and my inner energy would have me in the right place at the right time. It's pretty freaking beautiful.

I was still mumbling about believing. I was completely flabbergasted. Grateful to Tunkasila and in awe of all of creation. I still thought about how entangled and complex my path had been to put me here. One tiny thing different and I'd be nowhere close. I was in "awe." I'd finally worked my way up to being able to say that aloud, in-between muttering "I believes." Now I understood that I could never understand. The universe was too amazing in its complexity for me to even begin to figure out. My past was perfectly formulated to prepare me for my future, and so was everyone else's. How could an intelligence so great exist as to weave such a magnificent master plan with everyone's unique paths converging to create such an amazing story? I cannot put into words how blown my mind was. Just that I was in awe. Grateful. Humble.

I'd been sitting up, but now I got on my knees at the foot of a nearby tree and put my head to the ground. I humbled myself. Tunkasila is infinite and I am but his servant. I saw now that everything really does happen for a reason, in such a more specific web of life than I'd ever imagined before. "I am humbled in your presence. You are magnificent and I am in awe of everything that you have provided me. I will follow your path blindly, I understand that I don't have to see." I began to cry. For real this time. Face in the dirt, runny nose and streams of tears. And then I felt the humility that I'd been praying for flow through my body. Like, I legit felt it.

I thanked Tunkasila from deep in my heart. I prayed more. So grateful to feel this energy that I'd been working towards all winter. I cried and prayed. I felt the infinity of God inside me. Because he'd humbled me enough to allow him to flow. This is what all other lifeforms experience at all times, life without ego, true humility and a complete trust in the universe. I had been given a gift. My prayers had been answered. This by no means lets me off the hook of praying for humility, but I've felt the magnificence of eternity inside of me, so now I have no choice but to believe in the awesome power of God. I had a new inner peace. Internal bliss. A heightened vibration. A new calm in my heart that lifted the pressure I felt to change the world and replaced it with the unending faith that I would succeed. I don't have to understand. The more I try to figure it out, the less it will work. I've seen unexplainable miracles in my past to get me here, and I will experience more, because I believe.

I started to sing a Lakota prayer song and it put me in an even more connected state, as I did, I saw visions of how the universe works, and of the future. I eventually stopped singing, but the visions kept going. I saw the source. The vibrating energy of the universe. Completely outside of the construct of the physical world. I felt it. I was part of it. I guess it was an out of body experience. I didn't see my body from the outside or anything, I was still in it in the physical sense, but I was beyond it in another. I felt myself being a part of the infinite energy. I wasn't myself. "Myself" had just been a piece of that energy, constrained by a physical ego, which had now completely disappeared.

It reminded me of a person that Bill met in the hotel. She had a jar of water that she'd been adding to at every natural body of water she visited. Every molecule of water vibrating in unison. All mingling together with a perfect five sided molecular structure, which makes all of the particles connect as one. It doesn't stay separated, that's not how water works, it all becomes the same water. And she gave him a vile of it. Wendy had a similar jar. All Bill had to do was mix his vile into hers, and all of the individual molecules combined into one water. All of the vibrations from the different waters became one. And then he filled his vile back up. It wasn't any less of the original experience, wasn't watered down, it was an even more complex experience of mni wiconi. It was watered up.

Each drop of new water heightened the vibration of the collective, a small piece of that broke away to exist separately in his physical vile, but it was still that same water. That same vibration. That same energy. That's God. The eternal energy of the universe. I had simply left my physical vessel, this manifestation of my body that contained a piece of this energy, and I rejoined the collective energy of the universe. I wasn't me. I was just part of the larger jar of water. That's how God works. We are God. A piece of God is in each of us and we are here on Earth raising our vibrations. Once we're done, we'll rejoin the infinite and increase the vibration of the universe. Our body is just a temporary vile and underneath it all, we each hold all of the secrets of the universe.

The universe is everything, a completely white light and each of us are slides through which that light is projected. Each of our paths are completely different, almost beyond compare, but when you start to understand the physics of the white light pouring through us, then you start to realize that we're all the exact same thing. We are all related. Our physical manifestation, our slide, it is nothing really, just a filter for which the all encompassing white light can create beauty. You just gotta follow the white light.

Then I felt myself separating from that energy and coming back into the physical world. Slowly. It felt weird and awkward and I wasn't sure what was going on. Coming from this infinite energy, back into a limited physical form, I didn't want to. It wasn't my own body at first, not for a while, I was slowly being encased by an evolving animal. It kinda gradually wrapped around my energy and transitioned from translucent to more opaque. It was almost squirrel-like in facial structure. I saw, and again, all of this was felt more than seen, but I was shown how it all works. Our energy pushes evolution. That's our purpose on Earth. The meaning of life. God showed me the meaning of life. I haven't thought of it in those words until right now, and as soon as I wrote it, I felt his energy flow inside of me. Woah. Deep breath. I've felt it a few times while writing, when I let go and just believe, I can only hope to build the kind of future where I can feel it this strongly at all times. Hang on, I'm gonna go pray... Aho, Mitakuye Oyasin.

Our energy powers life, through the heart, and through believing we push adaptations which drive evolution. I saw it all. This physical form that was coalescing around my energy started evolving, slowly, and eventually into an almost human face. I could feel how this energy is pushed from the heart. How believing pushes it outward in a two part process. The double beat of our hearts. I could see a heartlike organ, didn't recognize it as human, but I've also never seen one in person. I could sense its two halves. Two physical halves. As you believe, it pushes energy from one half to the other and drives it to create more energy. Then when you believe from the other half, it pushes it back. It's the continued belief from both pieces that propel each other into this energy. The power of the creator. The path for God to enter our bodies. I can't quite describe it. Guess you had to be there.

I could see this duality. This two sided life force in all of nature. I saw an acorn, with its two distinct interior halves. I also saw that my physical hands were nestled inside of each other, and could feel that the way they fit together, was related somehow. I could feel remnants of my evolution to humanity. I could see that however this construct works, it's in every single living thing. It's the foundation of our double helix. Upward spiral. I wasn't able to truly understand it, but I knew that I didn't have to, I just knew that it works.

Our energy has been propelling evolution since the beginning, cycling through countless renditions of life and driving the planet on autopilot, all the way until us. We always followed God's way, never questioning how it could all work so perfectly, just believing. Seeing was believing. We were in the garden forever. And then we stopped believing. We lowered our vibrations and fell out of paradise. And now, with the knowledge that without believing in the system, it wouldn't work, it's like we were too scared to believe anymore. We instead had to overthink about it and did our own thing, which only made us that much further from believing. Animals adapt by believing. I clearly felt that. Physical adaptations. It's just a physical manifestation that God is constantly developing through the piece of his energy living inside each of us, we are God. And we have his power. Believing in your heart opens up a path inside of your physical body for God's energy to perpetuate his infinite plan.

It's hard to imagine a personal God's plan to develop complex life at that level, but I have been humbled by his astonishing power, and through past events, I've been convinced that literally anything is possible. It's less like he's doing it for us, and more like he assigned us to do it for him, but he gave us all the tools we need to create. It explains a lot of the unknowns in evolution, and also in quantum physics. Like how an electron particle can literally be in two places at once. It's at both and neither, simultaneously. Until it is physically observed by someone. So weird. It was always the one element of theoretical physics that I couldn't comprehend. It's called "the observer", look it up. I get it now. Maybe. Maybe that's how manifestation works. Things are everywhere and nowhere, until someone thinks them up. Just a thought.

So that's how the universe works. No big. God just showed me the meaning of life and the mechanics of planetary evolution. Could also just be a delusion from spending too much time alone as a caveman, but you know that I believe. I've got no choice. And the things I saw from my past prove to me that the rest is a no-brainer, so I don't have to think about it.

I saw images that represented the establishment of christianity and organized religion. I saw how they worked. That they were built as ways to get people to believe. The fall had already happened, but if they could convince people to believe in their hearts, then manifestation still worked. That's why the rules are so strict. To push the followers to unconditionally believe. I saw that, as backwards as I feel some of my dad's beliefs are, not at all in line with what I feel about the right way to live in the world, he unconditionally believes. He believes that homosexuality is wrong, without any doubt, unwavering, and that unwillingness to consider any change to his belief keeps his heart at full throttle. That's only part of the equation though. It is the humility that is key to letting God flow though you and guiding you along the right path. You have to release your ego.

I didn't see all that in the vision, I felt an image of a cathedral that I knew represented the organization of religion and explained why so many people claimed to feel it working in their lives. They do. I had naysayed the possibility of christianity being real for so long, but now I saw that all ways to God are valid, it's just the believing from your heart that matters.

But it's the planet that really matters. The entirety of the global ecosystem that is God's green Earth. I saw the future of the planet. I saw my own future. I saw the future of humankind. I saw that soon it will be time for the next leap in evolution. We will be advancing as a species. Evolving beyond what is even currently conceivable. We are literally going to adapt into a better version of ourselves. Our physical manifestations are going to improve and we are going to become exponentially superior to our current selves. It would be comparable to the differences between man and ape, just another step higher. Another step closer to God. With the ability to perceive and manipulate more universal vibrations. It was absolutely beautiful. I didn't clearly see the future product of evolution, the vision was more of a feeling, the concept of our impending greatness. But I also felt the catalyst.

Evolution: It is adaptation, survival of the fittest and natural selection, and it only works in the face of adversity. It doesn't happen with global complacency. It doesn't work with survival of the weakest and man-made selection. Evolution is fueled by rising above the challenges of life. Competition. Adaptation to excel in different environmental conditions. We have to work for it. It's not handed to us. No silver platter. You can't buy evolution. I was clearly shown that something big is going to happen. I wasn't shown details, I don't know if it was natural, man-made or a combination, but I saw a global catastrophe. It wasn't scary though. It was incredible. I could see that those who trusted in the universe with their hearts, the believers, would push through the adversity and breathe new life into the planet. This was the plan all along. A plan that couldn't make sense from the inside, through all of the destruction, but from the outside, it was clearly the destruction that made the beauty of life possible. Just like a mouse surviving the extinction of the dinosaurs, struggling to survive through global catastrophe, unable to see the greater purpose outside of her own timeline, but believing in her own instincts, and eventually following her path to the entirety of the mammalian bloodline. It was the catastrophe that empowered us to begin with.

I understood that this was the so-called rapture. The believers wouldn't be transported away to some magic kingdom in the sky, heaven is on Earth in the fully functioning Garden of Eden. Civilization as we know it would collapse and those clinging to it in fear would have no chance of survival. Passengers on an already sinking ship as it plummets to its death. Cities won't last long after the government and the food import business shut down, but you have to work on monday, so you better stick around town. Gotta do what you gotta do. It's just a job.

The believers, those following their paths, vibrating high enough to trust in the universe around them, they will be the progenitors of a new evolutionary path. We will survive. We will adapt. We will trust that we always have everything we need, and we will. We will struggle. It will not be easy. The planet will be in turmoil and may take tens of thousands of years to recover. Or more. This is a planet we're talking about. We will adapt in the face of adversity. We will not all survive through every struggle that we face, but the most equipped for each struggle will. As a species, we will grow stronger. We will face different environmental conditions around the globe, so we might even adapt differently and Homo Sapiens could evolve into new, distinct creations. Or we could fall with style and use technology in a good way, uniting the globe with peace and love and positive vibes. A new united superspecies. We will evolve stronger senses, the ability to feel more vibrations of the universe, we will become enlightened. The believers will follow their instincts and rejoin God in the Garden of Eden.

Believing doesn't mean an hour on Sunday, spent reciting a rehearsed line of prayer that doesn't pour out of your heart, just to forget all about it throughout the week as you hop back on the money train. You can't buy your way into heaven. Living your life for material things is not believing. Judging others for their paths while not genuinely seeking humility in your own, is not believing. Preaching a belief in an all powerful deity and then perpetuating the destruction of that deity's planet and creations of life, is not believing. Withholding love from any other living creature because it is different than you, because it scares you, because you cannot trust in God enough to see that we are all his creations and play vital roles in this magnificent work of art that we call life, is just simply not believing. Not trusting that we always have everything we need, and taking it into our own hands, therefore taking it out of another's, is absolutely not believing.

Believers don't take more than they need, because they believe, they know, they trust that they'll have everything they need when they need it. They believe in the wonders of the infinite universe and trust that all is good, they don't need to understand it. They don't need to take life into their own hands, they believe in something far greater than their own limited physical manifestations, so it seems ridiculous to try to handle God's work themselves. Who would they even want to when the universe has provided utopia?

Sometimes creatures die, but believers aren't scared of death. Death is beautiful. Sacred. It is the driving force of life. Of evolution. The weakest die and their energies are reborn into stronger physical manifestations. They are not lost, they are transformed into something even better and closer to God. We are all God, and as long as we believe in him and trust the path laid out before us, then everything is beautiful. Even death. Especially death. Death is the most sacred thing there is. It is God's energy fueling the circle of life and bringing all of his creations closer to him. Cheating death is not believing. Artificially extending life in physical manifestations that are not equipped to survive, is not believing. Being scared to once again become one with God, a fear of rejoining the eternal energy of the universe, well it doesn't really sound like you believe in the same place I do.

I used to be scared to die. Even when I started to believe in the possibility of something like reincarnation. This life was wearing me out already and an infinite journey seemed daunting. Overwhelming. I just wanted to chill in some magic heaven somewhere, not have to come back and do this over and over again. It's a broken world. It's hard work here. It's a world of suffering and pain. Fear and terror. An eternity on Earth is no heaven to me. But now I see, the planet is evolving, heaven is returning to Earth.

When I am reborn, I will not have to suffer through the turmoil of man, relearning lessons that have taken me a lifetime to discover, I will be born enlightened. I will believe and will return to a world once again run by God, not by man, and believing will provide me all that I could ever want. I will be in heaven. I will not suffer or fear or feel the pressures of man-made anxiety and depression. Everything will be perfect again, because the natural world will once again be in nature's hands. I will be reborn into a more equipped physical manifestation and will experience the Garden of Eden. I will feel God inside of me at all times. I will know heaven on Earth. I cannot wait to die. Because I believe.

I'm in no hurry though. I've got a long road ahead of me and it's not paved with gold. What would I do with gold anyway? The difficulty of the road is the best part. The journey is the destination. Every setback pushes me that much closer to my internal vibration. All winter I prayed for humility from the heart, and when I was presented with challenges, I took them as the lessons I had been begging for. I didn't get angry at the universe, I didn't get upset at myself and I didn't lash out at others. Instead, I grew, adapted and evolved into a completely transformed version of myself. If it had been easy, then I would still be an ego driven slacker musician on the search for fame and fortune, but instead I now have the universe rolled up in my heart and together we are going to save the world.

So what's the point then? If I've seen that it's all going to come crashing down, then what use is it to try to change the current path of humankind? That's a good question. I wasn't shown the answer. I don't know. But I don't have to. Every bit of my instinct, my vibration, is telling me that this is my path. To wake up as many of my brothers and sisters as I can. To show them how to live in a good way. I still have hope for mankind. I hope that it's not too late to wake up enough people, to positively affect the vibration of our species, and change the way that we treat our mother. I have hope that we can come together and truly make a difference. That when global catastrophe does happen, it's not at our own hands, and we are able to work together in unison to overcome it. To evolve. United. Together.

The destruction of everything we have ever known doesn't have to be as bad as it sounds. We've known some pretty terrible things and they can all be wiped away. Shaken away like an etch-o-sketch in an earthquake. We can survive anything that God throws at us. It's literally what we're designed for. He understands, better than we do, just how much we can handle. This is how it works. Always has. Back before we broke it anyway. Program not responding. Control Alt Delete. Hard reset. Personally, I miss the cold already. I wouldn't be too upset if it was time for the eventual return of the ice age that ended twelve thousand years ago and lasts, oh, a hundred thousand years or so, give or take a few millennia. My vision didn't show me that part, it ended right where my story did, but Tunkasila wasn't done talking to me.

The next day, in the woods, I was looking for this cool place that I'd run across before. I searched for a while, but somehow made a giant circle and ended up back where I started. I got slightly frustrated for just a second, not bad, I was in a whole new place of believing and knowing that everything was for a reason, but I still wanted to roll a cigarette and gather myself. I pulled out my pack of spirits and as I was opening it, I started talking to Tunkasila. I get it. I'm not lost. I'm right where I need to be. Then the wind picked up and as I looked down, it emptied my entire pack of tobacco, except for enough to roll one last cigarette. I got that too. I'd planned on quitting at some point soon anyway, but I was suddenly overcome by the overwhelming feeling that the time is now. I had been shown that I was one of the lucky ones. I'd be helping to push our species along its path. I would inspire. But I would also have to survive. It would be difficult. I needed to be the best that I could be, so that I could become even better. I couldn't get out of breath as I chased a turkey up the mountain, or as I was chased by something bigger back down it. I get it. I was left enough for one though, so I smoked it. Then I quit.

Haven't had any alcohol since before camp either. Have no urge to. My mind and body feel incredibly clear without it. I'd imagined that I might have a beer when I got done writing, but I'm getting pretty close and it's the furthest thing from my mind. Could use a toke, although I'm already buzzing pretty high without it these days.

I'm excited to see what's next. I was shown that writing this was the most important thing I could be doing. The first step to waking up a generation. I spent absolutely zero energy planning beyond that. I don't make plans anymore. I do what feels right. I'm signed up for the family plan. All of our brothers and sisters. I believe. I know that as soon as it is time, my path will become obvious to me and I will be exactly where I am supposed to be to jump on board. I'd imagine that you could find me at other camps at some point, sharing knowledge and developing a way to live in harmony with the planet. We have a lot of insight into building a functional camp, into organizing the chaos of an influx of protectors, and we're going to be having a lot more showing up really soon. I'd like to evolve the kitchen practices of survival to be something truly sustainable and obviously I have a lot of thoughts on the food supply chain as well. But I have no expectations. I have complete trust in the universe. I'm just along for the ride. I'm riding my vibration through a universe of synchronicity.

Synchronicities, coincidences, serendipity, happy accidents, deja vu, 11:11 and everything just seemed to work out. Right place, right time. When you're on your path, you see them all over the place, even psudosciency people are with it. The swiss psychologist Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity, after becoming convinced of the interconnectedness of everyone, through a mechanism he called the Collective Unconscious. The group mind of humanity. Not the personal subconscious of his colleague Freud, but a shared layer of consciousness, that is then filtered through our individual egos. So what is consciousness? Are you kidding me, there's only a few pages left of this thing, that would take the next half of my life to research.

Before there was consciousness, there was just "is." The entire planet was one. One living being. All working with one mind to evolve in perfect harmony. Tiny particles of vibrations forming atoms, who hang out in molocules, who compose every biological cell on our living planet. Each cell doing its part to construct every living organism, every organism playing their role in the planetary ecosystem, each planet a participant in its sun system, each sun but a drop in the bucket of stars in its galaxy, every galaxy out there living the life in the macrocosm, but turns out even they are only a small piece of the next level up. Look at us from their perspective and we are the cells of our living planet. Before us, each species functioned like a group of components composing a vital bodily organ, without having to think about it, everyone was part of the same thing. Part of our mother. Like an ant colony, we were all doing what felt right, all of the time, because we had one central leader. The Group Oneness Director.

Then consciousness hit us. Maybe we just evolved it randomly, maybe God implanted it into Adam, maybe the star people of the Pleiades have been nudging along humanity this whole time through celestial vibrations of radiation, either way, we realized we were naked. We now knew good and evil, right and wrong, yin and yang, and the very worst of them all, us and them. We live in a consciousness of duality. It's not our fault, that's just the way it is, spirit was now separate from matter, our conscious mind became aware of itself outside of this collected oneness. Our ego. Our own personal filter to experience the all inclusive white light of the consciousness of one. We evolved into me.

Jung said that we spend the first half of our lives growing our egos, and the last half breaking them down, I think I'm right on schedule. His collective unconscious is this network of knowledge accessible by all of mankind, at least when they haven't cluttered up their connection to their inner self. Well, now that just sounds like some indian mumbo jumbo to me. Like some silly native wisdom about carrying the knowledge and experiences of the last seven generations of ancestors. Like walking the red path, keeping a balance in all things, and allowing your spirit to guide you along the map imprinted on your heart. Your upward spiral of genetic greatness. In harmony with the yin and yang of taoism, allowing the universe's energy to work through you. Just go with the flow. I didn't know about the tao back then, but I've been floating down the river of life for a while now, and it's been littered with synchronicities to lead me here. (Don't worry, they're water soluble I think.) It's the mechanism for manifestation, and I think it happens in the fifth dimension.

If you're one of those silly science people, then that doesn't sound like the ramblings of a crazy person, science and math tells us that there are twenty-six dimensions. And if college level science doesn't mesh well with your religion, then we can just think of this as the spirit world. Another plane of existence. Getting heady enough for you yet?

Dimension one: Boring. Imagine a single hair, one straight line, one dimension. No matter what you intersect it with, exacto knife or bulldozer, it will only ever reveals one tiny point at the end. Unless you have the duality of split ends of course.

Dimension two: Now we're getting somewhere, X and Y axis, up/down and left/right, like the controls on a roll-around Pac-Man arcade game. Sorry, I meant Ms. Pac-Man, freaking patriarchy. She can only see in four directions. If we could somehow talk to her from outside of the game, it would appear to her that we were some omnipresent being from a higher dimension. A higher realm of consciousness. We could see outside of the limitations of her two dimensional construct. We would know what was behind every wall and could guide her to safe areas that manifested food, as long as she trusted in us. If she started to get scared and quit listening to the intuition that we programmed her with, well, the bad spirits in her dimension might catch up to her.

Dimension three: This is the one that we've been trying to figure out forever, not quite as simple as the eight-bit games of the 80s. This is the known observable universe. Observable by us anyway. There's quantum microcosms way down there and multiverses of macrocosms on the other end, so 3D is just the middlecosm. The dimension of existence that our level of consciousness is evolved to observe. ScienceGod may be the ultimate observer, watching the glorious orchestration of the everything from the outside, but we are all God. God is just that energy stuff we keep talking about, we can call it essence for now, and there's a literal piece of it inside you. A piece of the everything, that is then filtered through your dna and environment to create your unique personality. Who you are. Your ego. But that's not who you are. You are a spiritual being inside of a physical manifestation of limited dimension. So God is the big picture observer, and you are perfectly designed to observe and interact in the third dimension of existence, because you are God. You are a cell in the organism that is the everything. It's why we are here.

Dimension four: It's about time. We may be the observers of the third dimension, which is why we can manipulate the environment around us, but that just proves that we exist on a higher plane. We exist in the fourth dimension. Through time. We are the series of still pictures that compose a film strip, able to manipulate the environment within each frame, but unable to edit the film itself. No worries though, the film is only a holographic projection as the pure white light is filtered by the physical manifestations of our worldly experience. Can't wait to see how this thing ends.

Dimension five: Finally. And...? What, oh, I don't know, I thought you did. It's even farther out there than I am. We could think about that fourth dimension film strip, except that now the movie is just a single pixel in the universe's jumbotron. Too big to wrap your head around? Let's just pretend that we live in 2D and we'll try to imagine the third dimension, the one that we pretend to know so well. Well, when an energy from the third dimension intersected with our flatland, we would only see the small fraction of where it crossed our plane of existence. When it crossed our plane in multiple points at once, to us they would seem like unconnected coincidences, I ran around the corner and there was a giant strawberry just sitting there. I can't conceive of this higher dimension, not yet at least, but I can understand that I can't understand. The same way that we see outside of Ms. Pac-Man's world, an energy in 5D could see outside of our timeline. The same universal energy that is in you, is in everything in that dimension too, but it's not limited by an unevolved three dimensional ego. Synchronicity comes from there, but you have to trust, you have to follow your intuition, you gotta do what feels right.

We are spiritual beings in a physical manifestation. An evolving physical body. For millions of years our bodies evolved, then our minds were separated and our collective knowledge of rationality grew, as our intellects evolved. And for the last two thousand years, our connection to spirit has been slowly evolving as it overcomes surviving in an existence full of adversity. Human consciousness. We have been on a path to evolve out of a consciousness based on duality as we return to the ultimate oneness. We are working our way back to the white light of everything. Our experience is colored by the chemical hard-wiring in our physical bodies. Before this, we were all one, so no dissonance to make the beauty really pop. Our duality and personal experiences are what made it possible for those in the fifth dimension to observe all that was possible in the fourth. And they're looking out for us. If you let them.

We are beings of light. We are prisms of information, through which this "everything" pours into and is then projected outward as a spectrum of seven colors. Just like the seven cosmic rays, just like the seven stars of Pleiades, just like the seven councils fire, just like the seven days of creatio.... wait, did you say cosmic rays? Yeah, and whatever is causing it out there, or in here, there's something big happening, right now. We're in the middle of a global awakening. It's starting to snowball. An exponential waking up of the consciousness of man. You've probably already started feeling it. Feeling disconnected from this reality, like there's something else you are supposed to be doing, something big out there, just can't quite put your finger on it. It was already happening before Standing Rock, but we were a milestone on this universal path, we were a tipping point of the evolution of consciousness. People woke up and evolved at camp, but the directors from the fifth dimension had a few other irons in the fire too. People are waking up all around the globe at an incredible rate. I've only seen a limited amount of the outside world since camp, and I've synchronicitically crossed paths with books, videos and people who were obviously influenced by similar visions from the universe as I was. It's about to get really cool.

We are approaching the end of duality. The end of spirit versus matter. We are transcending the material world. Transcending the ego. Everyone that can trade fear for love anyway. We are all the same energy, the same essence, we are all connected, and as we are able to let go of the physical, our energies will unite and transcend consciousness. Once enough of us have joined the party, our combined frequency of love will dissipate the vibrational aura stench that currently surrounds our planet and keeps the sheeple at bay. Only then will we be ready for the next level of who we are. We will once again feel the infinite universe inside. We will once again be a part of our planet, instead of her enemy. We will once again be one. It's already happening, but that doesn't mean we can just sit back and relax. We have to follow our gut. If you are being called to be a part of this global transformation, believe me, you do not want to take an acidraincheck on this one. Trust.

Ok, now we're getting a little spacey, sounds like some kind of Age of Aquarius stuff, a transformative astrological era of peace and harmony, which we happen to be entering, like, now-ish. Marked by a global cataclysm that evolves humanity's collected essence and trades the material for compassion and love. Ok ok, next you're gonna tell me we're all made of stars or something. I'm definitely not falling for any stars that easily. Although, Jung's model of consciousness did evolve as he stayed always open-minded and followed the synchronicities, and by the end, he realized that planetary positions and solar proton radiation at the time of birth, did seem to correlate to the preprogrammed blueprint of a person's physical manifestation. And he was a doctor. Kinda. I could never fathom how the planets could affect us before, from that far away, that would be like the moon creating waves of energy across the surface of our planet or something. But how? Well, how is love? I don't know, but I know that it works, so I don't have to understand it. Exactly.

That last girl I dated was really into the stars, I thought it was cool and liked to have her look at my chart, but it was whatever really. I knew that I was an aries, textbook example, so there probably was a little something to it. Then, since camp, my path crossed with a book that looked at the charts for both medicine men and spiritual leaders in other religions, they had a lot of similar stuff going on, so now I was kinda interested. I looked up my chart, which means a lot more than just my sun sign of aries. It's about where each planet was at the exact minute you were born, in relation to where you were at on the globe, and in relation to all of the other planets. There's actually a lot to it, certainly a pseudoscience compared to economics, but all those ancient civilizations that were apparently way smarter than us, seemed to be pretty into it.

So anyway, I looked up my stats as I was almost finished typing this thing, and it was kinda ridiculous. Like, when I was born, uranus was in sagittarius, which means that I have a strong intuition, I'm always digging deeper and I'm not content with the system. I'll seek an alternate way of living and, get this, I'll have a new philosophical idea for the future based on visions and uncanny premonitions. Ding, ding, ding.

Other aspects of the chart talk about my witty humor, dramatic mind and my ability to get to the bottom of deep philosophical topics, sound logic and arguments, a thinker, a counselor, speak from the heart, focused on the big picture and large scale movements but also involved in underground activities, all of humanity is my family, personal magnetism, life of the party, enjoy solving problems, emotional freedom, quickly bounce back and easily earn trust and favors, loving, generous, energetic, different, innovative, a natural diplomat, comfortable in intense action, teacher, student, ability to dig through the BS to the bottom line, dig deep and hold on tight to behind-the-scenes areas of the secret psyche, use imagination and understanding to delve into the areas of the mind held most private, depth psychology, an expert in explaining the mystical and mythological in practical terms and putting thoughts into words.

Then it said that midlife I would travel to another nation and experience a spiritual transformation, I would write a long book digging deep into religion, philosophy, psychology and the government. Yeah. It also said I was a midwife to the spirit and would be able to help with spiritual rebirth in others. So holla. Oh, stars shmars, you don't have to take some hippie's word for it, but you know that I believe they're there for a reason.

But I've been through a lot to get here. I can't expect an entire generation to wake up overnight and have the same unending belief that I do. All I've done is tell you about it, and you can't tell someone how to believe. I get it. You've got to follow your own path. It's your path that perfectly leads you to your own understanding of the universe. You have to face your own challenges in order to evolve. Reading this book can't grant you the humility in your heart that will leave room to believe and raise your vibration. I can only show you my path and hope to inspire you to simply do what feels right. Listen to your heart. Your instincts. Following the money is not where you'll find the secrets of the universe. Quite the opposite. Make decisions based on love. Selflessly pour love out in all directions and it will rain back down on you.

If you feel lost, if you feel out of place in the system, if it feels like nothing makes sense in a world consumed with consumption, you're not broken. You're evolving. You are already vibrating high enough to perceive that something is wrong. Those around you may not get it. May not feel the same thing that you do. You can try to wake them up, but remember that their path just might not be there yet, so don't let it discourage you enough to lower your own vibration when they don't see the light. Do what feels right. Always. People are brainwashed. Money has talked for a long time and it is very persuasive. Society will tell you that you are the crazy one. That you are living in a bad way if you don't buy into everything that they're selling. Just keep believing. Don't let them lower your vibration. Burn some sage and pray or talk to the universe or meditate or just be silent and visualize your vibration rising as you recenter yourself. Stay strong. I've seen those that went through it with me at camp, get sucked right back into the machine. We didn't stop dapl this time, so they feel like all hope is lost. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe we can't save the world. Maybe the answer is at the bottom of this whiskey bottle.

Not me. I believe. I trust. I can see that it was all part of the plan. A vital part of my path. It built this faith in me. Inspired me to inspire. I don't need a million people to buy this book to add to their collection, I just need the right person to download a free copy and be inspired to change the world. Maybe it's you.

So what can one person do? What if no one around you understands? You can't wake someone up who's not ready. You can't tell someone how to live. But you can show them. You can join us and show the world a better way to live. You can get a head start on evolution and come to camp. There are many. You can come learn how to survive. You can strengthen your physical manifestation and your mental resolve. You can open your heart and be shown how to believe. You can teach. You can inspire. You can connect to a network of the greatest human beings that you will ever meet. The fittest to survive. I know these are the people I want in my corner when it all goes down.

Plus, if enough of us wake up in time, if we all show the world how important the planet is to us, if we all stand together and say that we're sick and tired of being sick and tired... we can make a difference. The pollution of capitalism only works because enough people buy all that crap. So stop. There is no money in the destruction of the planet if we invest all of our energy into its future.

People know that the world is messed up, they just don't know what to do about it. They've been convinced that it's out of our control. Too big of a problem to be fixed. It's broken, but that's just the way it is. We can show them a better way. In Rosebud, I lived in the most incredible, love based, solar powered utopia, and it was all in a forty below poisoned blizzard, at gunpoint. We can do this anywhere. Everywhere. The more of us that believe, that wake up and stand up, the more will follow our lead in an exponential snowball that won't even be that poisonous. It is no longer enough to be awake and just stay in bed. We have to get up. We have to go out and wake up the rest of the world.

Pollution bad, got it, but what can we possibly do about agriculture? How do we ever convince anyone that it is the man behind the curtain. That it's behind the pollution. Behind money. Behind dapl. It's going to be tough, I know. Even after the collapse of industrial agriculture for profit, people's first instincts will be to feed their families the only way they know how. Even on the Walking Dead, faced with zombie apocalypse, they started growing food again. It feels "natural" to humankind, a defining characteristic, but that's just because of the global indoctrination by the agriculturalists who wrote the history books. It's the exact opposite of nature. By definition. And if we can manage to forget what they've told us should be on our plates, we'll see an incredible abundance of food everywhere we look. Nature is a candy store for all that believe in it.

I get it. You may get it. But how can we ever tell the world about its greatest mistake? You can't tell someone how to live. We have to show them. It may seem like an impossible task, but I've seen the impossible crumble at the fingertips of a believer. We don't have to understand. We just have to follow our paths. Perhaps as we evolve and become more aware of the source energy inside each of us, maybe belief will take over and show us the right way to live. I could see myself Johhny Appleseeding the globe after its collapse. Not agriculture, but spreading the seeds of life and allowing the fittest to prosper on their own, just giving Eden a kickstart on her rebuilding process. I'll probably at least spread the seeds of my most favorite medicine wherever I go.

Horticulture, it means gardening, as in tending the Garden of Eden. Indigenous tribes around the globe were active participants in their local ecosystems. They helped along the evolutionary paths of their fellow Earthlings, not through greed and fear, but through love for all and a belief that we are all related. We can interact with the natural world. We can once again be part of it. We can step up and assume our roles as caretakers of the planet, but that means that we have to take care of her.

In the short term though, once this mega icequakenado stops our destruction, there will be hoards of food all around. It will mainly just be "fud" still, but it will help get us through long enough to escape babylon while the planet begins to regenerate itself. I will certainly not prepare my own cache, not food or any other supplies. I am going to take in all that I can about wild edible plants and medicines, knowledge that used to be passed down generationally, since before we were even people, and instinctually even before that. It's the collective unconscious of our ancestors, our grandfathers, Tunkasila. I always have everything I need. I believe. The more I fear that I won't, and the more material things I have weighing me down, the less is out there for others and the less I can manifest into my own life. I can't wait to put my belief to the test.

So no ultimate solution in the end. No blueprint for rebuilding the world. Not yet at least. Just live in a good natural way, which means sharing everything with everyone. All species. Share the power of belief with all and trust that everything is in accord with the universe.

So that's after the collapse of whatever's coming to push evolution, simultaneously decreasing our overpopulation and alleviating most of the factors that plague every other species of life on Earth. Species that will also be pushed by the same catalyst to evolve. Possibly intelligence comparable to ours, ha, we know first hand that that's overrated. It will be our job to teach them how to live with love and to believe in the infinite power of our planet. To show them, not to tell them. They will follow our example, so it is our duty, and honor, to lead them into greatness and to be proud of every bit of life that our universe comes up with. We can't kill an animal because we are scared of it, because we are worried that it may harm the life of a loved one. That animal should be a loved one too. Plus, we'll never evolve to be a formidable competitor if we don't let nature take its course. If we kill every beast and pest that we can, we become weaker as they become stronger. Personally, I'd rather not end up an exhibit in their zoo.

Got it. Don't take life into our own hands. Our own species or others. But what do we do now? How can we live without agriculture before this mysterious life changing event changes the game? We're so overpopulated and dependent on growing our own food, what could possibly be done? Man, these are getting harder and harder. Are we there yet? Even if every person on the planet drank the magic water and woke up to the realization that agriculture has destroyed everything beautiful in the world, what could we do about it at this point?

We can't live in excess. Abundance is naturally occurring. It's always there for all to enjoy. Excess is greed. It's taking more than our fair share. Excess is what drives overpopulation. Excess is what created the need for money. Money is what turned God's gift of food into a business. We have to learn that food does not equal money. Commercial agriculture has to be the first to go. Food for profit. I'd imagine that the commercial agriculturalists won't like that plan very much, it'll make it a little hard for them to make a living. To make money. Which is obviously why we have to do away with money and actually start living.

Good luck with that one. Well, you said if everyone hypothetically woke up, and hypothetically, it's more than possible to live without money. It's only natural. A much better standard of living for most actually. But even without money, we have to eat. The for-profit farms wouldn't need to be forced to stop, it's a side effect of the money thing, but what about all of our community gardens? We've been over it, with our overpopulation and colonization of the globe, the ever providing abundance of Eden is broken. We can't just go around eating nuts and berries to survive. Not all of us at least. So it's hard to see a way around modest sustainable gardens in the beginning. But we have to share the land and its bounty with all of life, birds to bugs to bacteria. And the less we brown sugar coat the life cycle of our vegetables, the more natural they become and the higher we will vibrate.

We don't have to hold underevolved species captive so that we can eat inferior meat. You know I'm planning on eating meat, so what's the plan? If we just share the land and the food with everyone, then everyone flourishes and there will be plenty of everything to go around. The most organic grass fed beef that the money stuff could possibly buy, and we don't even have to pay for it. The free-est range of chickens. Buffalo heart all around.

We can grow through a transition period, but we have to be on a path working away from farming altogether. It has been the cause and effect of the rising food production and rising overpopulation that got us into this mess to begin with, so if we are going to manage a gradual reparation to the planet, then we have to backtrack pretty drastically before the drastic happens all on its own.

The overpopulation is the conundrum, without it, the food problem becomes way more manageable. Short of the universe doing it for us, I could never condone a thinning of the herd. I'm called by my faith in my mother to love and respect every single lifeforce living on her planet. We are all a part of her. So, we need to find a way to have less offspring. We could start by not glorifying overgrown family units. Countless television programs casting the larger than life family as the greatest contribution to the human race imaginable. It's not. At least not as long as the non-believing, fear based convenience of survival of the all is the world's worldview. If two consumers have more than two kids, then they just added more mouths to the planet's problem. The worst part, is the failure we're setting them up for as each generation becomes less fit to survive in a world that is continuously growing more and more difficult to live in. But hey, at least they'll have that college fund.

Just like with agriculture, we've been domesticated, and every bit of society, common sense, and colonized religion says that breeding is why we are here. In that case, maybe we are more successful at it than corn, I just wonder who's farming us?

Plus, if it's on TV, then it must be true. Just like the countless medical shows that teach us that saving every life possible is the most honorable thing that one can possibly do with their own. Even if it takes a cocktail of meds to treat a sickness caused by a lifetime of rotten food. Or if the person has a genetic disorder that leaves them unfit to survive in a world full of adversity, they should still live a long, reproductive, drug induced life. I know, it sounds inhumane, unhuman, but they don't. Someone unfit to survive is not fit for survival. It's not even in the definition, it's in the actual words. It would be so sad, especially to a nonbeliever, but it makes us all stronger and gives them a fighting chance in their next, more highly evolved, physical manifestation. It's the most humane in fact. Not condemning them to a lifetime in an inferior broken vessel because of our own fear, but instead allowing them to follow their natural path to God, where they get to try out the latest greatest model of being that life has to offer.

So what if the evolution isn't a factor? Ailments that occur after a person is done breeding don't have anything to do with evolution. Especially when basically all of them are caused by an environment devoid of anything natural. That one's actually true, best I can tell at least. Something that doesn't hit you until late in life doesn't affect your reproductive chances and has either been passed on or not by that point. It still affects overpopulation though. Artificially extended lifespans are a major factor in fact. A longer lifetime swimming in the mainstream of capitalism means more food consumed, more oil burned and more space needed to store bottled water. Thirty years of consumerism added onto a lifespan is like having an extra thirty year old added to our overpopulation, too bad you only get to vote twice in florida.

The kicker is that if we could convince ourselves that capitalist medicine is even half as bad as it is, we'd all be way healthier to begin with. Oh, you're sick? There's a plant for that. And if you add to that equation a naturally vibrating energy source, an actual "food" supply, then we all live long and prosper. The closer to our localized nature that we eat, the higher we vibrate, the easier it is to believe, the less we get sick and the longer we live. GMOs, microwaves and glutens aren't natural. We didn't evolve on pop-tarts. As much as I do love the yummy goodness of "part of a nutritious breakfast", I also know that it doesn't grow on trees like money does.

Oh, but I'm old and I've been eating this crap forever and look at me, I'm just fine. Of course I need high blood pressure medicine because my blood is too thick, and after my bloods thinned out I have to take this other pill, and it's side effects make me need this other one, but I'm doing just fine. Plus, I don't even have to pay for them, your taxes gladly help keep another mouth coming to the table. If medicine were no longer a profitable business, I bet we'd see a lot more onion and garlic prescriptions instead of all these hazardous chemical compound patents. But then our pharmaceutical giants wouldn't get paid. So our politicians wouldn't get paid. Which means that the wizards behind their curtain wouldn't be able to add our paychecks to their most valuable collection of George Washington portraits.

Don't laugh at such an idiotic hobby, such a worthless pastime of money collecting, people used to pet rocks for fun too. This fad has certainly lasted longer than most though, definitely a household name from a very young age and it's addictive qualities have ruined more lives than meth, corn and reality tv put together. Those that have the biggest collections have the power to print it, but they know that it's just not the same that way. They need people to believe that it's "theirs" temporarily, expend all of their energy for it, that way it can suck the energy out of society before they put it away in their vault. They must have read the chapter on vibrations. They need us to love it. To pray for it. To put all of our lifeforce into chasing it so that it feels like it's not the useless piece of garbage that they see in the mirror.

Money is only a thing because we think it is. Because they have used every aspect of civilization to convince our entire overpopulation to believe in it. To work everyday of their entire life for the sole purpose of collecting these little pieces of paper. It is admittedly many people's very favorite thing, and most of the rest of us obsess over it in a negative way, which is even more damaging to our vibrations. How about a currency that raises the vibrations of all that it comes in contact with? Freely given and exchanged. No global shortage of this universal abundance. There's not even a grocery list of privatized utilities that we'd be required to purchase. No paid membership service plans, because before you even knew that you needed help, there would be eager volunteers by your side just begging to jump in. No taxable retail goods, because everything is everyone's and it is a race to give away anything that you can, which only opens up room for more in your own life. No property. No "mine."

The currency of course, is love, but you already knew that. And if it poured out of everyone at once, we'd all receive it at exactly the same rate. A perpetual motion machine of manifestation powered by the very vibration that constructs the universe itself. It sounds a little too good to be true. A fanciful fairy tale worthy of an Elton John original soundtrack. A Magical Kingdom. Utopia. Heaven on Earth. A Garden of Eden. Beyond Belief. But I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. I felt it in my own heart. It may have been cold out there, but I believed my way through that too. We can do this. We can make a difference. We can come together and save the world.

"Good morning happy little yeast, it's time to get up and make some pizza."

