After two months in “civilization”, our return to Lone Bobcat Woods was welcomed by a delicious snowstorm and cold temperatures which kept the ground white for most of a week, here where snow usually melts off the following day. We gave thanks for fossil fuel as the portable propane tanks kept our “little house” cozy, and thanks for several sunny days generating electricity from the solar panels and stored in the “house” batteries.

We spent the two months parked in Janaia’s mom’s driveway in Tracy, California in the San Joaquin valley east of the Bay Area. We easily biked to shopping and errands several times a week. We enjoyed generous family time, including watching Donaldson family home movies from the 1950s of our water-skiing family. We gleaned pomegranates and grapefruits, while eyeing well-laden lemon, orange and persimmon trees planted by early twentieth-century homeowners in the older section of town.

After a pretty stressful fall, we relaxed into luxuries and amenities not available at the edge of the wild…unlimited electricity and internet. We discovered internet radio stations full of beautiful interesting music, and treated ourselves to a small battery-operated Bose speaker whose sound depth and clarity astound us. We relished quite a few internet movies.

And with that unlimited electricity, we dug into editing the most complex show we’ve produced, Sail Power Reborn - Transporting Local Goods by Boat, episode 208. It stretched our process and our time (about 100 hours between us). We’re proud of the results, but it confirmed our preference for the lighter-production bi-weekly conversations. They let us highlight so many more leading-edge people and projects.

But the suburbs were so, well, domesticated — like the semi-feral cats lined up for the five pm feeding by the “cat woman” next door. We were assaulted by the sounds of suburbia: garbage trucks at 5 am, suburban assault vehicles (SUVs) roaring down the street at all hours, sirens, the blast of mowers and leaf-blowers (may they be forever banned!).

And we missed the wild. After catching our breath in the “comforts and elegancies” of which civilization offers so many, we were drawn back to Lone Bobcat Woods. Syncopated Raven greeted us in his/her castanet-like click language, and a pond full of frogs heralded February. Now we’ll return to our regular Peak Moment TV production schedule, and finish homestead projects before turning towards the next Peak Moment tour in summer.

All quiet on the Peak Moment front during this seasonal inward-going time. We’ve taken an extended holiday to visit family and take advantage of unlimited electricity and internet while churning and upgrading internet, email, phones, and getting an iPad online (an investment for our off-grid energy budget). We’re also editing the next program (far more time- and energy-consuming than usual) while taking a welcome break from infrastructure projects at Lone Bobcat Woods.

When our friends at Undriving™ sent this 26 second NASA video, we stopped and watched it. And watched it again, mesmerized to see global temperature changes since the 1880s. What do YOU see happening, especially since around the year 2000? Hint: hockey stick.

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Summer is gently turning into fall, with beautiful poison oak leaves fading to soft crimson and dusty yellow, and our first brrrrr crisp morning. In harmony with this seasonal contraction, we feel inclined to contract a bit ourselves after three years of extensive output.

We’re taking a travel hiatus as we rent our off-grid house, live in our RV/mobile studio, downsize further, and produce shows we taped on our trip to the Pacific Northwest.

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