we're just trying to be people

My freshman year of college started on a Monday. By Wednesday of the next week, I was laying in a hospital bed with my roommate, Wes. He had been placed in the bed, and I in a chair facing him. Once the nurse left, I wobbled across the floor and climbed into the tiny bed, squeezing myself in between my friend and the safety bars that were in their upright and locked position.

The sleeping pills had worn off just enough for me to cognitively process about 14 percent of what was going on around me. Wes was probably around the 5 percent mark.

Laying in the bed, cradled by the cold metal bars, we simultaneously had a sudden urge to urinate. Wes fumbled for the nurse-call button. He pushed it.

"Hey, we really need to go to the bathroom."

"Ok, someone will be right there."

Minutes, possibly a few seconds, passed. We rang again.

"We still need to go to the bathroom."

"Just one moment, sir."

One moment passed. We rang again.

"Look, I don't mean to be a pickle in your butt," Wes said, "We just really have to pee."

The nurse's response falls into that 86 percent that I didn't cognitively process.

We decided to take things into our own hands when the nurse failed to escort us to the bathroom after a third request. We stumbled out of bed, and began to tiptoe through the hospital corridors, searching long and hard for a white porcelain oasis. The Mission Impossible theme song was playing audibly in my head as I peered around corners and skipped past scrub-clad henchmen.

I remember coming to a door that our brains told us was an acceptable place to relieve ourselves. Whether it was an actual bathroom or not is impossible to tell. All that I can say is that we both urinated somewhere in that maze of hospital hallways.

A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins

I just finished reading this book. It is the true story of Peter's journey from Alfred, New York to New Orleans, Louisiana. As a young man, Peter had become very disillusioned with his country and with himself. Before he gave up hope in himself and in this land of the free, he wanted to really give it a chance - to really get to know it.

In the autumn of 1973, with his loyal half-malamute dog, Cooper, Peter began walking. Near the end of this section of his journey (the rest is retold in the next book, A Walk West) Peter reflects this way:

"From my first searching journey out of Alfred, I had lived a life of extremes, I had starved my way through the Smokies and stuffed myself Southern style. I had frozen my feet in West Virginia and boiled my brains in Alabama. I had shared outer and inner spaces with a hermit mountain man and been nicknamed Albino by a loving black family. I had almost died in a storm-pounded shelter on the Appalachian Trail and had shoveled horse manure on an Alabama ranch. I had loved and lost my forever friend, Cooper Half Malamute. I had been elevated by a nameless man who gave me five red apples on a Virginia mountaintop and befriended by a gutsy, generous governor named George. I had strained my back in a North Carolina sawmill and lived leisurely in a Montgomery mansion. I had lived on a long-haired commune in Tennessee and had learned how to pray at a far-out revival in Mobile. I had started out searching for myself and my country and found both. I had come face to face with God and accepted Him as my own."

I found myself continually pulled into Peter's story, not only because of the adventure in journeying through unknown places with just a pack on your back and dog by your side, but also because Peter seemed accessible. He was not a writer. He did this for himself - the book was an afterthought. He had a deal set up with National Geographic, where he would take photos of his travels, but he never intended to write an extensive retelling of the story. But he did, and in his imperfect description, and elementary word choice, I am able to throw myself in the middle of it. I can be there. I know where that is.

Of course, my favorite part of the story is how important his dog was to him. He would not have been able to survive without Cooper - both physically and emotionally. Cooper saved his life more than once. My favorite quote from the book comes during Peter's time living with a poor black family in Murphy, North Carolina. A young boy he met playing basketball has invited him home to eat with his family and the mother (Mary Elizabeth) reluctantly decides that she wants Peter to live with them for a while because she believes God has sent Peter there to test her faith.

"Weeks after I'd become one of her sons, Mary Elizabeth told me how she had been kind of scared the first time her boys brought me home for dinner with my sun-bleached long hair and untamed red beard. But when she saw how Cooper loved me and I loved him, she knew I was alright. 'Dawgs don't lie,' she said."

But this book is extra special because it was given to me by my Dad this past Christmas. He read this book years ago when he was at a "crossroad" in his life. Peter's journey itself was taken as a decision at a crossroad, as is most every turn he makes along the way. My Dad knows that I am at a place in my life where I am at a crossroad. My struggle is, and always will be, to figure out where to go when there are so many different roads to take.

I do know that when I "settle down" someday, that I will always have a quiet place with some shelves of special books. Thanks Dad.

contact information

This was wrong last time I posted it, so I changed it. This time it is right:

I probably should have done this a while ago, especially after several people have asked me for it, but here it is - better late than never:

Ben Rucker
PO Box 1007
Frederiksted, USVI 00841

No mailing address, just a PO Box. Once a week or so, we'll go into town and someone will check the box to see if anything is there. Yesterday I got my new knife in the mail! I was still able to use the Bass Pro Shop gift card that the Alston's gave me for Christmas - thank you again, Mr. and Mrs. Alston!

Also, we don't have any cell phone reception on the farm. So I can only call on weekends when I am at the beach, or somewhere else in town, down outside of the rain forest.

That, my friends, is why I get on this thing as much as I can...

goodbye, late night with conan o'brien

My favorite television show host isn't exactly leaving television, but he is leaving the setting we all know and love, Late Night. So, to pay homage to Conan on the day of his last show, here are three of my favorite moments (there would be several more posted if NBC would wise up and make their footage more available...):

don and dan

This past week, we received a new addition to the farm in one Don Young, an energy expert who will be here for the next few weeks. Don met Ben several years ago at a permaculture gathering in Asheville, NC, and they have kept in touch over the years. Don comes to visit the farm for a month or so every winter. Last year, he began setting up a biodeisel lab in the container pad. Ben hopes to continue working on the project and eventually get the farm off of fossil fuels.

Don has a background in electrical engineering and computer electronics. He spent a few years in the late 80's designing computer chips in Japan. He eventually got into solar power after becoming disillusioned with the inefficiency and decadence (among other things) in the industry. He even became disillusioned with the solar power industry after spending several years installing very large solar systems for rich people who didn't care to reduce their consumption, but merely used the fact that they consumed solar power as a way to justify. That is where cognitive dissonance comes in... but I digress.

Don has been teaching me so much about the way energy works. It is definitely something that I think most people in America take for granted, and it has been enlightening to realize exactly how governments have chosen to distribute energy throughout the world. People like Nikola Tesla discovered that the universe is literally pulsing with energy, but their work was disregarded, even burned, and they were ostracized, while people like Thomas Edison were praised for their (far less advanced) work because someone saw a way to gain economically from it.

So it has been a blessing to be able to learn from Don everyday. He brings out the voracious learner within me, which is something I never want to squelch. As Don puts it, so many people are satisfied to learn for a while, find their niche, and then "fart, drink beer, and watch football."

My other main teacher, Dan Glenn, is my focus area adviser.


Dan has been living on the farm since the beginning, about 5 or 6 years ago. He and his finacée, Jen, will be moving back to his family farm in Georgia after their wedding in May. Dan has already given me a great foundation for learning about electricity. It has been inspiring to see the system he has set up at his home here on the farm.

If nothing else, though, Dan has reignited a lost passion of mine: chess. Almost every night for the past two weeks, there has been a highly competitive chess match after dinner. Dan is usually involved, and Dan always wins. Except for one time, when Marshall somehow pulled out a victory - one that required much bloodshed. Maybe when I get back home I will spend my free time carving a personalized chess set.