Practice extreme sharing

Following this guy in a worn-out hoodie up his driveway… Is he going to kill and eat us? There’s no reception, nobody will ever know where we are. Two big dogs joining us on the way. Coming to his property, big area with a trailer, school bus, some sheds, multiple cars, outdoor kitchen… We can see these signs all along the way: “Welcome!” “Don’t shit and bury the poo in the woods” “No bad dogs” “Practice extreme sharing”

Everything started half an hour ago when we stood at the road side looking for a place to camp. Suddenly a car pulled by and a middle aged guy chatted with us a little and then offered to camp on his property. We weren’t sure. To set you up, about 15 miles back the road we passed a small town full of weird looking people and this didn’t help our trust. Why is he doing this? But we decided to give it a shot.

And we will always be grateful for that. For not letting the prejudice take over and the fear to win. Our dogs found best friends, Muy and Cowboy. We slept in amazing school bus that once followed Grateful Dead on their tour. In the morning Anders made coffee and shared with us his views of life. He once grew weed but now decided to grow organic fruit and veggies and sell them to people driving by. He bought this property to build two houses for his two daughters and give them the prosperous farm as well. Once a year he organises a music festival for his friends, pays for everything himself though he doesn’t make much money. He likes giving. Andersfest! There are young, old, dogs, babies. All happy and together sharing the time. The signs we saw come from this. The main motto: Practice extreme sharing!

We cooked porridge for all of us for breakfast and talked further. He’s partially Swedish and his parents kicked him out of the house when he was 15 as he wasn’t fulfilling their expectations. He lived in Mexico where he experienced extreme hospitality from the poorest who would share their last beans with him. He was homeless for almost 2 years so he knew how looking for a place to sleep looks like so he could figure out what we are doing by that road. He said he couldn’t leave us out there as there are some people growing weed around who may not appreciate our presence. We chatted and chatted and it was midday when we finally set off.

Thank you, Anders! You probably won’t read this as you don’t do internet and facebook etc but meeting you meant a lot for us. Somebody who thinks more about wellbeing of others than his own. Somebody who showed us not to judge by the cover. We loved listening to you, playing with Muy and Cowboy, learning how to find pine nuts in cones and other stuff. Straight after our visit we played Grateful Dead on Spotify. And for the future, we’ll do our best to practice extreme sharing :).