Serendipity goes by her own schedule. There are times in life where she graces you with her presence in regular glimmers, reminding you of the mystery and wonder that life can hold. I’ve also had periods where it feels like she has, if not deserted, at least taken an extended hiatus to a distant land where she’s considering setting up permanent shop.
Whether it’s because of the nature of the place, or because I’m paying more attention these days, serendipity does seem to like to make surprise appearances in Desolation Sound. Like, this day, when I was trying to test the line from this solar panel to the new Jackery power bank that my husband got. Solar power is our life line up here. While I’m using butane for my stove and gas for my boat (another long story as we started out with a 9.5’ tender with an e-motor and I had hoped to stay electric, but it wasn’t really feasible for me to do that…yet), for all our electronics and our power tools, the sun is our source of power. Which makes Desolation Sound a little bit like a solar punk lab, testing the limits of what regular folks can do to not just survive but thrive when detached from grid power. But solar punk isn’t just about using renewable power now and then. It has to go harder. It’s punk after all. So, I’ve been thinking about what solar punk might actually look like out here.
So, back to the Jackery power bank. As I was saying, it wasn’t charging for some reason, and I saw that there was a little console on the cord where you could plug in a USB, and so I plugged in my phone to it to test it. To my surprise and delight it started charging my phone directly! “Wow!”, I thought to myself, “That is so cool! It’s like I’m plugged right into the sun. Could that be classified as solar punk?” And then, as I was thinking this thought, serendipity came along and gave me my answer…
