I have this Bag.

not for End Times but let's End These Times

In 2007, I started a farmy homestead.

I had been dipping my toe in the organics movement at my restaurant for a decade and I wanted my own flock of chickens with marigold colored yolks. Maybe some Babydoll sheep? I dove deep into ethical slaughter, grass fed beef, Biodynamic wines, regenerative agriculture and the It’s not the Gluten it’s the Glyphosate that ruining everyone’s bread experience.

When people say they are “going down a rabbit hole” I laugh a little because I live in the rabbit hole. I have renovated the rabbit hole. Sometimes I come up for air. I’ve almost tunneled through and out the other side. Remember when Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit’s House because he ate too much honey?

After a few funerals of beloved and estranged family members and my very special dog, Billy, the Border Collie, I settled in for a nice, predictable, unannounced nervous breakdown in the Georgia mountains. I might still be having it.

I was feeling empowered about breaking up with a guy I stayed with for too long (five years) and then feeling gutted that he had already started a WHOLE OTHER FAMILY with someone he met while we were together (in my restaurant nonetheless, whilst surely robbing me blind) I had earned my breakdown.

I put all my efforts into soil, compost, worms, chicken husbandry, crying, water filtration and stocking the pantries for the inevitable collapse of society. Did people realize what fluoride was doing to their pineal gland? I detoxed and red light therapied and got the mercury out of my mouth. I bought 50lb bags of Sea Salt to soak in.

I got into stocking non perishables. Hoarding water. Learning how to build a solar oven. Mapping out natural Springs in a three county area. I had Go Bags with filters, iodine, medical supplies, copies of my passport. My neighbor stocked up on guns and I stocked up on canned goods.

Then one day I realized that I wasn’t interested in surviving the collapse of society where I’d be on my roof trying to take a shot at someone crawling up my driveway looking for canned sardines or a bottle of water. What am I even doing? Ten years after my Plate Clearing of 2007, here I was again. More funerals, more Realtors, more yard sales.

Prepping for collapse put me in doom energy all the time. Even though the grocery store was 2 miles away and open to 11pm and stocked with 20 different types of overpriced ice creams. Water flowed from my tap, I still had internet and the roses were blooming. Why was I living like post war Poland?

I like being prepared, but it had gotten out of hand. I come from a family of Midwesterners who had tool drawers where everything was labeled where there’s a glue for every repair and a jar of screws of every size. My dad was a Marine. It wasn’t until I rolled my van and saw all my special salts, organic oats and in case tools strewn all over the highway that I realized what a fool’s errand I was still on

I have been getting ready for everything but life. That stings a little. What is this unknown Bogeyman? And then, and then. Aha! I knew it! A bioweapon! Where’s the gas mask?

Six months after I rolled down the driveway in my van ready for my new free life, the world had a complete shut down and everyone panicked and wrapped their heads in plastic and decided that you couldn’t buy food but you could buy booze and everyone wore a face mask riding around in their car or standing up in a restaurant and I saw a girl at a roadside motel in New Mexico pour a bottle of hand sanitizer over a credit card machine and wrap it in plastic until it shorted out over the flu and I knew that the zombies were not long for this world.

I drove west and then south through Arizona and saw groups of old people in a 55 and over “community” fighting on a street corner over Trump and Biden for the last election that made everyone lose their minds. I crossed the border at Nogales and never looked back.

Now I live in a place where people don’t plan for anything except who’s bringing the booze for Semana Santa. It’s not my tribe here though I do enjoy the Mexican NO PASA NADA vibe. I don’t think I’ll ever fully embrace it, though I feel neurotic buying more than 3 cans of tuna at the tienda.

I still have That Bag though. Hanging on the back of the door. Passport, cash, matches, emergency blanket, road flares, filter straw, socks, pair of slip ons, hunting knife…

For more info on my dog rescue where I help abandoned dogs in a remote pueblo in Sonora, MX linktr.ee/lolasdogrescue

Matteo and Dusty