CURRENT MISSION

I'm still planning to be a squirrel when I grow up

ABOUT ME

I like hearing stories, and I also like telling them. I like woods and streams and acorn caps and squirrels and foxes. I love the sound the peepers make in my backyard. I listen to Chopin and Bach and Dar Williams and Pete Seeger. I read science journals and post modernist short stories. I'm very silly

PHILOSOPHY

I am a secret dinosaur

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Previously, I've mostly participated as a host. I'm only just now starting to use this as a way to find places to stay

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

At my old place in Nashville I had lots of room, and put up lots of folks in a pretty constant stream.

Interests

Art, cosmology, mythology, dinosaurs, anvils, hammers, trees, little brown birds, hawks, owls, sledding, making things, taking things apart, bicycles, cameras, tiny old cars, graffiti, wildflowers, squirrels, old hardware, rust, ruined buildings, fairy tales, shadows, the way dandelions can grow through cement, bones, unexpected doors and windows, lots of things, really.

• birds
• arts
• cars
• cycling
• emergency services
• geography
• science

Music, Movies, and Books

I'm currently listening to a lovely recording of Pollini playing Chopin's Nocturnes. There's three half finished books on my bedside table: Murukami's IQ84, Native American Mathmatics, edited by Michael Closs, and The Language of the Birds, edited by David Guss.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

One thing? impossible! Ah... A friend and I were in Northern Thailand, and decided to rent a motorbike. We took it up the mountain to the temple we wanted to see, and on the way back down, decided to take a side trip to a waterfall mentioned in my guidebook. My guidebook was old, though, and had already lead us astray several times, so all info from it was being taken as no more than a vague suggestion. The guidebook said the park the waterfall was in would cost about the equivalent of 20 bucks to enter, and that it closed at 5h30. We got to the park, and the gate was wide open, and the gatehouse unoccupied- further, it looked as though that gatehouse hadn't been opened in years. So, we continued on in, spent some time at the waterfall, and, when we were done, started back down.
The gate was closed, and really quite locked. I figured I had some cracker packets and a water bottle, and this was rather a nice spot, anyway, but Dustin was having none of it. The gate only went over the road- on one side there was a sharp cliff going up, on the other a 45 degree gravel covered embankment going down. He thought we could get the bike by on that side. The bike was not large- somewhat bigger than a vespa, not not even comparable to a Harley, and it didn't seem impossible. We got the bike down and in front of the gate, and started trying to get it back up. Dustin started sliding down the gravel. At that point, my goal, in total, was to make sure the bike didn't crush Dustin, and I ended up managing to hook myself to a tree and lock my arms around the bike. This stopped it, but we were MUCH further down the embankment, and had proven an inability to move upwards at all. Dustin got the bike stabilized, and thought he would try to turn it on and possibly use its own power as an assist. I thought this was a terrible idea, and got out of the way. It turned out to be a great idea. When the bike turned on, it's headlight automatically came on. The police/park rangers who had just closed the gate were still at the bottom of the drive. They saw the light in the trees, and came to investigate. I saw them coming (there were as many as twenty, as few as ten) and Thought "yes! It's the police! they've come to save us!" and ran up the hill to greet them. Dustin kinda stepped behind a tree, having possibly a different impression of policemen. The police had learned much of their english from pop songs, and assured me that I was beautiful (complimentary, but not helpful) and that I should stay right where I was (surprisingly helpful pop song lyric), and went down to collect the bike. They found Dustin, assured him that he was also beautiful, and put him out of the way with me. They got the bike up the hill and, with utter disregard for the geography and very clear evidence, decided that rather than us being in the park after hours, we must have had an accident on the road (at least 100m straight downhill). They were amazed that we were ok after such a terrible crash. They taught us how to use the brakes, using only the words "beautiful" and "eyes". We thanked them profusely, and, in the spirit of things, assured them that they, also, were beautiful. And then we road our bike back to our room.

Teach, Learn, Share

I'm oddly specialized. I know trickster myths from all over the world and I know how metal moves. I can talk about either subject pretty much all day. If you're at my place, I'm more than willing to take you out to the studio and show you a few things about smacking copper around. I like learning about lots of things.

Countries I’ve Visited

Brazil, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Mali, Nicaragua, Thailand

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States