Peg Leg Sam, born 110 years ago in Jonesville, South Carolina, here performing “Bumble Bee” in 1985

instagram.com/dusttodigital

• From @lloyd.kahn’s Instagram

Our truck, “The Greasy Devil,” all set up for a clear, but windy night’s sleep in Wyoming. We have an awning to add over the feet if the weather is raining/snowing or too cold.

Dear Lloyd,

I just wanna say thank you for putting out such great books over the years! I found Shelter Pub by way of picking up a Whole Earth Catalog in a thrift store while in high school about ten years ago and have been a fan ever since. Homework was my lockdown reading of choice last year!

I am writing because my husband and I are currently on a long road/camping trip and will be driving through Baja next month. Our rig is a 2018 6-cylinder manual Toyota Tacoma with a homemade sleeping platform and a Softopper (we jokingly call it ultralight overlanding since the softopper weighs about 40lbs). We just did about 5 weeks throughout Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and Northern California. Next week we will leave our hometown of Boulder, CO to travel through New Mexico, Arizona, southern California, and Baja for the next 2 months.

I have gone over your blog posts about camping in Baja and was wondering if you have any tips or recommendations you would be willing to share. It will be our first time there, my first time in Mexico and we cannot wait! Our truck is pretty off-road equipped, with a 3″ lift, an air compressor, and recovery gear so we don’t mind going through tough terrain. We love mountain bikes and motorcycles (even though we are not planning on bringing any, maybe rent for a day or two?) and are beginner surfers with a love for the water (the one problem with living in Colorado!).

Anyways, thanks again for all of the wonderful work you put out. I have gone to multiple lectures while I lived in Oakland during college, always leaving inspired and hopeful. I actually had Marianne Rogoff as a writing teacher my freshman year, who told me she worked for you back in the day! I love following along your posts online, your trip to Rome looked simply amazing. I have always wanted to write to you to say thanks, but felt too shy, until now that I have an extra reason to say hi.

–Jessica Milavitz
SUNSHINE CANYON FURNITURE COMPANY
www.sunshinecanyonfurniture.com
instagram.com/ultralight_overland

Note: For lots of info on Baja from my travels there, see: lloydkahn.com/?s=baja

Crystal Voyager: Echoes from Jacob H on Vimeo.

In 1971, Bob Easton and I were putting the finishing touches on Domebook 2 at his home in Santa Barbara. Bob said his next-door neighbor was a surfer and liked to use the large white walls of Bob’s house on which to project his surfing films. Should I invite him over, said Bob. Well, duh…

When it got dark, over came the neighbor — George Greenough, with a projector, and as we watched George’s footage of hot dog surfers in Southern California, Bob played an Albert King blues album.

Later in the early 70s, when Bob and I were working on the book Shelter in Bolinas, George came up from Santa Barbara with the footage for this film, and we showed it to friends in my dome, and then to everyone down at the community center. He subsequently made a deal with Pink Floyd where they projected this footage along with their song “Echoes” in concerts, and George used the music in his 1973 film, “The Crystal Voyager.”

George was the originator of in-the-tube surf photography, using a homemade 30-pound waterproof camera mounted on his shoulder, riding a homemade spoon kneeboard. Resolution is a pretty crappy 240p, but you get the idea: you are inside the chamber of the tube with the barrel getting smaller and smaller, like the f-stop on a camera, until — wham! — psychedelic bubbles, turbulence, and spinning.

George went on to become a surfing legend legend and now lives in Australia.

World’s largest log cabin, the Forestry Building in Portland, Oregon. Built in 1905, burned down in 1964.
@lostfoundartny

Full details (from Shari Dell): rarehistoricalphotos.com/world-largest-log-cabin-portland

• From @lloyd.kahn’s Instagram

This all started by finding two rusty cast iron wheels in the nettles whilst on a lockdown ramble during the Covid pandemic in January 2021. I had workshops sitting empty since retirement as a woodworker and was looking for a project.

I decided on a ‘Shepherd’s hut’ seeing as I had a partial starter kit. These were originally moveable temporary night shelters for a shepherd during lambing time on the higher marginal land of Scotland and northern England. The modern incarnation appears to be a lucrative Airbnb rental in which I have no interest, although addressing the chronic housing shortage for local young people does.

Our youngest son, Lewis, was due to return from Canada in the autumn and needed a place to live. That crystallized it. It was now April.

I started with the notion of using locally sourced and second-hand materials but the realities of the world markets were there from the start. Steel for the chassis, plywood internal walls, pine T&G exterior cladding, galvanized sheet for the roof, plus components, fixings, finishes and most of the rest. Only the sheep’s wool insulation and timber framing were local … and the rusty wheels. Two matching rear wheels were specially cast in England at eye-watering expense.

The chassis, 420 kgs of steel channel, was the only detailed plan drawing. The rest was make-it–up-as–you-go according to the dictates of found or bought components.

After four months of working alone, Lewis turned up just as the interior was getting a start. He’s a competent carpenter, so the pace picked up and we were finished by the end of October, 7 months since the first weld on the chassis.

Lewis and his cat now live in it locally.

Location: SW Scotland
Internal footprint: 2m × 5.7m
Height: 2.2m
Power: 12-volt solar panel
Propane cooker. Cat flap. Water collection from the roof and an additional tap supplied by a refillable onboard tank for drinking water. 2 kW wood stove. Double folding ‘Murphy’ style bed, from the underside of which is a drop-down table. Seating on the wheel arches.

–Lewis Crosby