I didn’t feel like I got the mental break I wanted by camping, Albany was fascinating, and I had a great spot to camp so I stayed an extra day there. Capitol Hill there has an exceedingly strange feel to it, with a hodge-podge of building styles on a large and well-maintained plaza with very few actual people on it. Once you get off the plaza and onto Central Avenue, it becomes clear how incredibly diverse this city is. People seemed to be running into people they knew, constantly. There are abandoned houses everywhere. The Albany Social Justice Center has a storefront, and from their calendar and fliers the largest presences there seem to be the IWW and Food Not Bombs.

I’m finding that mostly hitchhiking is working very well, and if I have a particular time I need to get somewhere it can feel inconsistent and stressful, but if I’m careful to have no expectations I can go with the flow pretty well. It was very difficult to get out of Albany though, and it took me most of a day to get to Boston. My last ride was a political science student at the Naval Academy in Maryland, who had just been listening to a podcast about anarchism, which he had never heard of as an actual philosophy. We had an amazing conversation, and he dropped me off right by my friend’s house. I didn’t have time to get an impression of Boston, but I’ll be back through there next week and hopefully in less of a rush.

I made it to Portland, ME in a day, and met two cousins and my sister Grace at the airport. We drove up to the Carpenter’s Boat Shop in Bristol, Maine, where my cousin Elly has been an apprentice here for eight-ish months now.

This place is wonderful. There’s a set routine each weekday of breakfast, build boats, tea, build boats, lunch, build boats, dinner, with time built in everywhere for reflection and contemplation. Apprentices rotate acting as the “Domestic Engineer”, who spends all day in the kitchen with a full-time house manager preparing the meals. While I’ve been here I’ve worked full days in the workshop, sanding and cleaning and sewing leather onto oars, mostly things that don’t require direct supervision. Wednesday was Elly’s turn to cook, and the house manager was out of town so I did this with her.

Seeing family was wonderful. The apprentices, instructors, and staff here are wonderful. I’ve loved doing physical work, and the sense of community here in work and meals is incredible. Nine months is a long commitment, but I can’t say I haven’t thought about applying for this myself. It’s also reminding me of how important community is to me! This is a really unique example, and the care that people show for each other makes me feel like I can take that and share it with the world. Now I am plotting to visit as many co-ops and intentional communities as possible while I travel.

Next: Back to Boston. I have not planned any farther than this yet.