Last month, I spent 3 incredibly rewarding days in downtown Austin, working the travel convention. My favorite perks as volunteer staff was meeting some of my favorite authors, motivational speakers, and world travelers. I was surrounded by the most uplifting, exciting, and adventurous group of people. It truly was a life changing experience.
During one of the workshops, they discussed BLOGS and sticking to a THEME. Since this was a travel convention, the majority of the attendees (more than 600+ from around the world) were travel bloggers. MY blog however, wasn't exactly about travel. In fact, I was breaking all of the rules. My blogging had no theme and was all over the place with topics like --- camping trips, sewing, dehydrating food, raising chickens, walking a rabbit on a leash, worm farm, visits to the museum, theatre, bad weather, food reviews, my travels abroad, natural remedies, archaeological, what I ate, what I bought, and Big Foot. Yep, I was all over the place. I thought about deleting this blog. But on my final night of the convention, I was standing in the doorway of a Speakeasy in dowtown Austin, inspecting passports and convention badges. It was the ending party and one attendee was raving about a man standing next to her, calling him the "granddaddy of bloggers" as he had been blogging for years.
I thought about how this blog has been helpful over the years by refreshing my memory on dates, recipes, links and old photos. I wasn't so sure I was ready to erase the "granddaddy" once I hit delete...
And in a very interesting way, I can see that the majority of this blog HAS fallen into a theme... Let me explain.
Growing up in the Missouri Ozarks, I've experienced some serious country living with copperheads, black panthers and poison ivy --- my family lived off grid on family property in a one room cabin. It was a temporary situation till we moved back to the city, but I remember bathing in the creek, collecting water from a well, the outhouse, hunting for food, cooking and heating from a wood burning stove.
As children, we traveled frequently back and forth from California to St. Louis, as well as riding from the back of a Chevy pick-up truck. Our summers were full of camping trips, roadside picnics, and one winter month, we skipped school pitching tents from North Carolina, to Georgia, and Florida.
When a Navy recruiter appeared at my high school, I jumped at the opportunity to travel.
After the military, I joined my family in Texas during the oil boom of the 1980's and have been here since.
While my kids were young, we homeschooled and began volunteering at a living history museum. For the next 10 years we stepped into a time tunnel with Laura Ingalls and lived the bulk of our day without electricity, air conditioning, and running water. We demonstrated for the public how to churn butter, prime oil lamps, wash dishes, cook stew from an outdoor firepit or bake biscuits from a dutch oven, care for livestock and gardening, while modeling the practical fashions of the 1800's. I even started a business sewing and selling pioneer dresses, bonnets and pantaloons.
It was during this time that I took a hard look around me and realized that we (as a society) had become too dependent on the grid. A whole lot of WHAT IF crossed my mind when it came to power failures, water sanitation, food shortages, as well as illness.
This wasn't about fearmongering, but about HOW can I use the skills I've learned from our ancestors to ensure our family can handle these types of situations? Not to mention, being able to immediately handle a power failure with all of our back-up supplies is.... very rewarding.
Over the years, I've traded my teflon for cast iron, I've collected rain barrels, learned sanitation and compost toiletry -- for when there are no utilities or trash-pick up. I've collected books and taken medical classes, conquered fears, field trips to learn wild edibles, took master gardening classes, learned a new skill as a sewing machine repair technician, pressure canned my own meat and put together a long term food pantry --- all the skills that our ancestors did by instinct, because they had to.
Fast forward today and preparedness is BIG NEWS - with the media keeping us busy on evacuations for hurricane and forest fires. As I type, Austin Texas is under a major water boil ban due to the record breaking floods.
It is becoming more evident the importance of knowing these self-sufficient skills.
So this is where the blog is finally tying together with a THEME and a mission.
With plans to eventually hit the road traveling more with the possibility of full time, we can see how everything is connecting together. Just like those who live in their RV's full time, they too experience life like our ancestors (in covered wagons) when it comes to safety, boondocking without electricity, running water and sanitation. All of these pioneer skills are beneficial not just for emergencies, but for travel.
So now this blog has a theme and a mission . Whew! -- TRAVEL, and PREPAREDNESS.
