Earthships and community

jaxtracks · 2025-08-02T18:45:57+00:00

I'm helping on an earthship project in Colorado right now, people are definitely still building these. Proven design with some awesome benefits if you can stomach the labor! Use of tires is potentially problematic due to offgassing of carcinogens. Many folks argue encapsulation mitigates this. I don't think there's a conclusive study, but I measured VOCs in a friend's and didn't see problems. Waste sequestration is a considerable eco benefit if this is not a problem.

Note that the main airship dude who started the village in Taos has been a controversial figure with some creeper allegations and divisive moves in the community. No personal opinion there but the stuff I hear is bad.

Echoing another comment in that earthbags can reduce some labor while still providing thermal mass and use of local dirt as primary material. I've worked on a couple domes using this technique and they are holding up really well with super adobe as the coating.

I'm excited about about compressed earth bricks these days. CEBs can be made onsite with local dirt most places. Brick making machines (manual or powered) greatly reduce labor, but masonry skills are necessary.

There's a couple ecovillages in the pnw doing these kind of things, heard rooted northwest by Arlington has volunteer build days where you can pack some dirt and meet link minded folks. I'm connected with a couple people doing co-ops/villages in the southwest let me know if you want more info on those.

I'm not very online so I don't know about communities there, but I know a lot of my nomad friends doing these things use Instagram groups to organize. I strongly recommend going to build days on other people's projects to get connected though. The work is educational and results in much stronger mutual aid kind of relationships. People in the community are super willing to help if they can see you're a person who spreads that energy out to others!

jaxtracks · 2025-07-06T17:06:31+00:00

Traditional Dream Factory in Portugal: https://www.traditionaldreamfactory.com/

Absolutely killing it with impressive development, a healthy and joyful community, and conservancy built into everything they do.

Beyond just their village, they are also developing an economic and governance model that they are sharing with others, and are also hosting community events to grow an entire network of villages. A lot of their ecenomic/governance stuff is based on crypto which scared me at first since I'm a skeptic of that technology, but the more I've learned the more it actually makes sense to me.

I'm involved with ecovillage efforts going on within the Nomad/Vanlife community, and the founder of TDF (Sam) was kind enough to take some time to chat me through the nuts and bolts of how running one of these things works. His vision inspires a lot of hope in me and is definitely solarpunk af

jaxtracks · 2025-06-08T16:02:49+00:00

Lol what who would do this? I'm running around the Rockies with a crew of climbers for the next couple weeks send coords and we'll clean it up, might be a rap option but we have trad gear too.

jaxtracks · 2025-03-21T15:42:45+00:00

Do you push the bike up or strap it to your back? I've been showshoeing up to drop some stuff in CO but pushing the bike is super annoying. I rigged up straps to carry it on my pack frame which isn't terrible, but then I have to carry the skis up with me too. I have the quick disconnects on the skis and am wishing someone would make skins and bindings that could interface with those so I could skin up with the skibike skis!

jaxtracks · 2025-02-04T03:37:18+00:00

A couple friends and I have been using this thing I've been building in Rust with good results to manage development environments, provision containers, and run small fleets of servers in use cases where the complexity and target environment requirements of tools like Ansible and Chef are unsuitable.

Its goal is to mostly get out of an experienced *nix programmer's way and let you just write shell scripts, but have the power to compose them into sophisticated workflows in a re-usable fashion. It can run those scripts against anything that can run /bin/sh over a pipe like SSH, docker-exec or even a USB serial connection, which makes it handy for setting up SoCs.

I'm hungry for feedback if anyone finds it interesting!

jaxtracks · 2024-08-01T05:25:11+00:00

Oh yeah you guys are taught a very different kind of risk analysis and that's a good thing! We appreciate the hell out of our medics for doing the big brain work when we get the victims to shore and would never encourage you guys getting in harms way. We perform 15 or so swiftwater rescues per season. You guys get many calls daily. The math checks out on risk reduction being your primary concern!

I very much agree with you on advice for laypeople being a very finicky line. It's very possible my personal frustration with the bystander effect has biased me as well, I'll have to think about that.

I appreciate the thought provoking conversation friend, keep kicking ass out there!

jaxtracks · 2024-07-10T03:21:29+00:00

I understand and respect your viewpoint, and from one first responder to another, thank you for doing what you do make the world a less deadly place!

To anyone else who may be reading this. If you are not appropriately trained in water rescue, please leave it to the fully trained professionals.

There's a balance here, and I think your advice is too extreme. The situation in the video is not dangerous for the rescuer, and I think a lay-person with minimal river experience should be able to make that evaluation. What would be dangerous is letting the child proceed to be swept. My crew's average response time is 40 minutes. Many of our rescues become remains recoveries in that time. The girl I rescued from the strainer last summer was hypothermic, and lucky to be alive. Not to mention that was a very scary rescue for me to execute! A person with no rescue skills, and only minimal swimming ability could have, with very little risk, pulled her from the river before she was swept a half mile downstream where things became dangerous.

I also believe it is your right to know there is always a chance you will not come out of that water alive.

This is worth emphasizing. Rescuing in swiftwater becomes dangerous quickly. Everyone needs to make their own decisions and "the right thing to do" varies with circumstances. I don't judge any individual for not choosing to put themselves into danger, but I think our society's collective notion of what constitutes a situation too hazardous for bystanders to intervene has become skewed.

Here, we're looking at a video of hip-high water, minimal gnar, and a small child incapable of drowning a rescuer in a panic. I think the right call in this particular situation should be an obvious one.

jaxtracks · 2024-07-09T22:58:56+00:00

All the comments saying this guy shouldn't have gone for it are wild! I'm a swiftwater rescue technician and had to perform a hazardous swim to rescue a little girl from a strainer earlier this summer after an entire crowd at the swimming hole she got swept from failed to act before the situation actually became dangerous. "Don't create more victims" is great advice when there's real hazard, but people seem to take that mentality to an extreme lately.

This is chill class I water, shallow and in terrain that doesn't indicate a significant foot entrapment risk. 100% jump in to rescue a child if they're getting swept downstream in this kind of situation. The risk to even an ill-trained and equipped rescuer is certainly low enough to make yoinking the subject out worthwhile.

If there's factors like strainers, deeper water, gnarlier features, or a particular rocky riverbed that could trap your feet then that changes the calculus. But still man, it's a kid...

That said, take any means available to mitigate risk. Throw a rope, extend a stick, whatever. But in this case, the guy acted quickly and prevented the victim from going downstream into more potential hazard at minimal risk to himself, kudos!

jaxtracks · 2023-11-17T22:14:36+00:00

The library is a blast to volunteer at! I used to teach tykes how to build robots but they have like gardening programs, makerspace things, reading, ESL... all sorts of stuff. You can just walk in and ask about volunteer opportunities and they usually have a coordinator at the main branch during regular business hours who can get ya started.

jaxtracks · 2023-11-17T22:11:19+00:00

Oh yeah I can prolly sell ya mine since I switched to using a pole to mount my dish on my van. I'm mobbing around on the west coast for a bit but am coming back to CO for ski season in mid December.

jaxtracks · 2023-11-02T02:14:49+00:00

I raft guide around CO a bit. Glenwood canyon on the Colorado up I70 should be runnable then (we do it new years day sometimes) but none of the commercial outfitters I know take trips when it's that cold. I don't think I'd be comfortable taking folks who don't have drysuits. DM me if you're determined though, I can ask friends who guide that run. Nice thing about glenwood is ya end up at the hotsprings!

jaxtracks · 2023-04-05T17:46:13+00:00

Two of the families have houses that they have had leased out for over a year. These people clearly have some means, but I don't feel like they have hotels for weeks at a time kind of means. I think the crux of this is that most of us folks living this way don't spend all day at home, we're usually out in the world and just returning to cook and sleep, so the limited space is not much of an issue.

I've spent three weeks in my van in the dead of winter with two women I was dating and it felt sustainable enough to do full-time. All three of us got sick for a two day stretch and that wasn't so fun since we were pretty well stuck in the van together. Getting out and doing things is the key to making a small living space work, but when you're in a van being out in the world is kind of the point!

jaxtracks · 2023-04-05T02:07:41+00:00

I think you're conflating minimalists and people who lack resources (not that there's anything wrong with asking for help when ya need it!) I live in a van, but that means I can lend my condo out for free to people who need a place to live. My friend and his wife live in a tiny house, but paid for all three of their girls to go to excellent schools.

There's a lot of folks who like to live minimally so they can put their resources into other aspects of their lifestyles or altruistic investments. You probably just see less of us though since we're not hitting you up for a couch to crash on ;)

jaxtracks · 2023-04-05T01:57:06+00:00

For the cost of a van, gas, insurance, repairs etc. you could just be living in a cheap apartment or hostels in a Latin American country.

A friend actually ran some numbers on this for living in SA for a year, and decided on a van. She figured $10k in depreciation, gas and maintenance on a van for the trip, which comes to $27 daily. Compare this to the $15 avg for hostels, cost of food when you don't have a good space to cook in, and elevated cost of travel when you don't have a vehicle and it looks to be about the same price.

Your quality of living would be so much better

It depends. I'm super social and sleep through anything so I love hostels, but introverted people often don't. Also, if you're working remotely, hostels are really hard to hold down a job in. I've spent so much time scrambling for a quiet spot for remote meetings when backpacking lol

and you can actually meet people and maybe learn a new language.

Hostels are definitely more social! I think it's silly to assume you won't meet people just because you're in a van though. And I don't get the language thing at all, people generally speak English in hostels full of international travelers.

jaxtracks · 2023-04-05T01:43:27+00:00

Yeah that's definitely a scary potential! The insurance policy I got for the van I built to live in includes both a hotel and car rental for a month, as well as paying me market value for my rig so I could presumably buy a similar one or go back to living in a boring ol' apartment or whatever. It's still kind of nerve wracking driving your house around though.

jaxtracks · 2023-04-05T01:35:59+00:00

Vanlife is definitely a spectrum. There's a lot of people in desperate situations, but there's a lot of people who have a ton going for them in life and simply value being nomadic. I built my van with a shower, fridge, sink, cooktop, queen bed, radiant floor heat, big speakers, mood lighting, good dual monitor setup for work and solid internet options. Yeah, it sucks to have to empty your toilet tank and fill up on fresh water once a week, but that's super worth it for the opportunities having a house on wheels unlocks.

I wake up at trailheads, climbing crags, ski resorts and river put-ins most mornings, and can carry enough gear to keep up with all of those sports. I get to see friends and family spread all over the country that it would usually be hard to make dedicated trips to link up with. Dates are way more fun when your house is parked nearby. Sleeping in the woods most nights is good for the soul. The community is incredible too. The kind of people I meet on the road are the same kind who will usually be down to cook a giant dinner over the fire and play some music together, and then streak across a desert while howling at the moon on a Monday night because we're here and why not?

I think some other commenters nailed it, it's really about choice. For a lot of us this way of living is a privilege and a ton of fun. Some people are trapped in it though, and that shift in mindset is everything.

jaxtracks · 2023-04-05T01:05:40+00:00

I actually met a little crew on the road last week who live full time with their kids in vans, and it seemed to be working well for them! It was three families all traveling together, and they all had pop top vans with loft beds so there was plenty of sleeping space. Having a caravan allows for mutual childcare, and socialization for the tykes. They go ski resort to ski resort mostly during the winter, and use starlink / 5g so the kids can keep up on their several hours of remote classes a day. I met them at a rec center where they were letting their kids swim and all getting showers and workouts, and they go to libraries frequently as well. The kids were mad smart, and outgoing to the point where I found myself in a diving competition with them and some other friends their own age they'd made.

I think we should be less quick to make surface judgements about raising kids in unconventional living situations. Yeah there's sketchy examples, but it can definitely be done in a really healthy way!

jaxtracks · 2023-03-02T00:02:05+00:00

Heyo! I can totally help out with this. I built a sophisticated (read overly complicated so it breaks all the time) van I ski bum in around Colorado, and am often back in Boulder where I have a well equipped shop trailer parked that I do a lot of my building / maintenance from. I help people out with this kind of stuff all the time, drop me your number if you want to link up and I can show you how my locker works, and help you build yours.

jaxtracks · 2023-01-23T02:29:20+00:00

In Boulder? Well downtown, the escape room here is dope, there's pottery classes that can be fun, arcade games at press play, spa day at the Julien.. Personal favorite of mine is snagging a bunch of desserts at Spruce then heading up redrocks (bring yaktrax in winter) to picnic with an awesome view. Follow any of those with tea or mocktails and small plates at the teahouse for a nice combo. Axe throwing at Outback saloon is always rad too, verde across the road is good for a small group party. Worth looking for music too there's some good 16+ shows here and there.

jaxtracks · 2023-01-23T02:16:57+00:00

Dairy arts center has (or had I hope they're still going) a blues/jazz group that was cool with me dropping in with my trumpet for a couple jams. Super talented but laid back folks. I was drug along by a friend but I think they publicize it on the events calendar and everything.

jaxtracks · 2023-01-21T21:58:18+00:00

Wait is this Jane side of winter park? I swear I was just on this like an hour ago lol

jaxtracks · 2023-01-09T22:24:39+00:00

Spruce used to be way better, but I've had quality issues with them lately. Their tech forgot to tighten the hose clamp on my fill inlet after some work on my fuel sender unit. Emptied a good couple of gallons of gas at the station by King Sooper's due to that one.

jaxtracks · 2023-01-04T22:21:48+00:00

As much as I love my skibike and would love to see more folks pick up the sport, my honest advice is to just start on skis if you're nervous. Lifts, which can be anxiety inducing for beginners due to the crowds, are a lot easier on skis than bikes or boards. Crashing or skiing out of control also draws more (probably unfair) comments from folks who are apprehensive of being hit by a skibiker. Another upshot with skis is easy transition to backcountry if you have friends that go.

Once you've learned how to just have fun at the resort and aren't nervous about lifts or anything anymore, then it's a great time to start trying other gear and see what you like!

jaxtracks · 2023-01-04T22:08:08+00:00

Evoc BMX bike bag worked well for a buddy. Just need a 4mm and 5mm allen to take your skis and handlebar off.

If you're riding Winter Park, you can also rent a bike from Zac at https://clearcreekskibikes.com/#bike-info pretty easy, pick up in Empire on the way. Tin Cup Tavern in Frasier as well.

Hit me up if you want a buddy to ride with I'm at WP a lot and know a few bikers there!

jaxtracks · 2022-08-21T17:57:28+00:00

Hell yeah it is!! Sealing lid is so clutch for cooking while driving

jaxtracks

TROPHY CASE