Ben Zumeta

I think Jay said exactly what I was thinking while reading the original post.

I might consider keeping some emergency water jugs in the shade but obvious enough for people who are just desperate, but would rather not vandalize. I think this would be the majority, if for the simple reason of not killing your goose for future use. As a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hiker that is forever thankful to trail angels who leave water and food throughout the mojave sections, providing drinking water in the desert is a great way to make friends.

Seeking Self-Realization in Wilderness Service Learning
- Benjamin O. Zumeta

Link to Google Drive Doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s7BX1gxZKkg7kLi6gOo88JC52VczPo-_/edit?usp=drivesdk&ouid=113400777387711007626&rtpof=true&sd=true


It was published through Prescott College in 2011, but is not easily accessible or shareable. A friend in the Adventure Education and Adventure Therapy world (Sydney Williams of Hike My Feelings wilderness programs) found it valuable when I shared it with her recently. If you’d like to be one of the few non faculty or family members to read it, enjoy! While my perspective has since evolved, with many contributions from better understanding and practicing permaculture, I figure this 156 pager was a lot of work and will do more good if made easily accessible. I do still standby the central thesis that working to serve nature and others through protecting our shared planet is a powerful way to find oneself and community. I invite your feedback and reflections on your own self realization through service to nature.

I’d encourage any homesteader to take a Wilderness First Aid, or better yet a Wilderness First Responder course. These have paid for themselves many times over for me in reducing medical bills and having a better idea when affirmative care is needed. I also have met wonderful people in then, and they may well become part of your friend and community network, which would be another point of emphasis. Even as a relatively capable guy, I run into things on my homestead that are unsafe or inefficient to do alone all the time. Sometimes these are inherently frustrating, unpleasant jobs that are best done with someone who cannot divorce me so I do not want to ask my wife, who also has her own work to do. Trying to be helpful to my neighbors and community, including letting them know I could and would want to help if they get injured or ill, has paid off many times over as well.

I also endorse big dogs. My pyrenees-akbash has been the best partner in homesteading and food forest establishment I could ask for. He also comes to me and makes me feel better when he senses I am depressed, whereas a gun might end up being a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Glenn Herbert wrote:If you are in a mild climate, you really don't want a big high-mass heater. A small heater with minimal mass around it would be optimal. If you already have a modern relatively efficient wood stove, it probably doesn't make sense to scrap that and build a new RMH. I would do as you suggested and add a bunch of masonry around but not touching the existing stove.

Thanks for the confirmation. I do try to always burn a hot, clean burning fire based on what I have learned largely on this forum about RMHs. Particularly, I try to create thermosiphons of oxygen rich air over hot coals and get the chimney and stove to the high end of safe (450-600f) before throttling airflow. Doing with more thermal mass would be much better. Any ideas on conveying the wood stove heat to thermal mass more effectively?

I love the idea of a rocket mass heater to use wildfire fuel thinnings and orchard prunings from my property for heating instead of over harvested and laborious or expensive to acquire hardwood. I also hate how any energy I might buy, including wood for heat, tends to come with paying people with environmental values and practices I oppose.

My reasons for not having built one yet are many. My wife is skeptical of it as a priority over other homestead projects that I am more qualified to undertake on my own. The one local person I know who has built one also has told me he doesn’t use his much anymore because in our mild climate (rarely below 25f, but cool and rainy from Nov-April) it tends to easily overheat his house for hours. He does have a cob house that holds a ton of heat and makes his alternate wood stove more efficient as well, but this did take some wind out of my RMH building sails. We also have a top of the line woodstove that came with our house (purchased 2020), and I think my wife would be much more inclined to let me build a hearth around it for thermal mass than to build an RMH. Even so, to do list will have to be cut down before I get to any such project. I should get to that now!

I’d try yarrow tea,, but apparently, brushing your tongue is the most effective way to curb bad breath (from Ologies podcast on coffee, and reducing coffee-breath).

My favorite part of Thanksgiving was always the turkey enchiladas my SoCal raised Mom or Aunt would make the next day. A batch of red and another green. Still may be my favorite meal.

Our Wild Rivers Permaculture Guild went in together on a Ring of Fire Kiln through Kelpie Wilson. It works incredibly well. Once going will rip through tons of brush in a few hours with virtually no visible smoke.

If in the Del Norte-Curry Co. area of NW CA/SW OR, let me know if you would like to put it to good use. We may even be able to organize a biochar burn party. We can also connect landowners with help clearing fuels to make biochar with through our Fire Safe Council.

I have used hugelkulture beds for these purposes before, up to 7ft in height. Sepp Holzer and Paul Wheaton have done much larger.  They settle, but vegetation grown on them will make a nice weather break.

Allowing for drainage of potential flood waters—with all its debris—and for cold air, would be major considerations for me. A 1%+ grade for drainage around the hugel would be needed.

Another consideration might be how the ideal wind diffuser blocks about 60% of the air flow, not all of it. Behind a complete obstruction, air turbulence is increased relative to 60%. A full wall also requires much greater strength.

I would try to put as much curve and undulation as possible into the structure as possible to diffuse the wind’s force rather than try to straight up block it. Parallel straight lines create wind tunnels, and straigth walls are sails.

This song by my friend Tom Shindler came to mind:



As did this amazing Beck Conducted performance of Bowie’s Sound and Vision: