YouTube, where were you then .....?

I am a prolific watcher of this entertainment medium, following quite a number of creative souls who film themselves in a variety of pursuits, such as .... well, for me .... it kind of started with vanlife. I became obsessed with this topic early on and consumed as many vanlife (or van-building) YouTube channels as I could find. Some of those early channels have since morphed into other ventures since vanlife can only last so long before becoming saturated and redundant .... like, how many ways can you visit a national park in a van (yada, yada, yada) .... But those channels led us to building our own beloved van so we can all say they served their purpose well. 

Now I watch topics like traveling, decorating, home-building, and even ones that tell me what I should be buying at Costco this month. There's this rugged little gal living alone in Sweden who is remodeling her remote rustic cabin. Or a couple in Portugal who are rebuilding an old water mill into a home. (Did you know -- in Portugal, kitchen cabinetry might be built out of bricks? I mean ..... Who does that?) There's the guy who, on weekends, just cleans up badly overgrown yards of neglected or abandoned homes. He, by the way, has over 500K subscribers which has me wondering why he bothers with a fulltime job during the week. I follow the progress of people building their own off-grid homes, from northern Idaho to Virginia. Or those intrepids who live aboard sailboats, navigating the world. Or the single gal from Holland who travels the globe ALONE on a motorcycle and is currently in Iraq. 

IRAQ! 

What's intriguing is the money potential. The gal in Irag has 2.5 million subscribers which is some serious income, WELL into the six figures and maybe more. Not that this is easy work by any means. When they're not filming, they're editing and uploading and scrambling to come up with more ideas (aka "content") of what to film next. 

Which causes some reflection ..... 

Could we have done this? 

YouTube was not a thing almost 50 years ago when we were starting out. It (and the internet) might've been found in some futuristic novel, and certainly not in the imaginations of anyone I knew. Who would've ever thought that with some basic camera equipment, an interesting hobby, and a minimally pleasing personality, you could develop a lucrative career? And that millions of strangers would eagerly tune in each week to watch you pound nails, or visit Baja, or powerwash a sidewalk? Who knew?? 

Because we've done a lot of stuff over the bast 50 years, that many other people have not done.  For example: 

We designed and built two homes, both on acerage that we cleared, which involved well-digging, septic trenching, paving, finishing, gads-the-list-goes-on-and-on. Plus out-buildings. 

We have backpacked across and around mountains. 

We've traveled thousands of miles on a motorcycle, often utilizing our backpacking gear to camp along the way. 

We ran in multiple 200 mile relays. 

Husband rode in a dozen 200 mile (in one day) bicycling events and I ran a marathon. 

He and I organized many running and biking events for groups, small and large. Most were successful, others we won't talk about. 

We flew across the country to buy and drive home, a sight-unseen car (twice!).  And did the same (twice again!) to buy camping trailers, because (apparently) we cannot seem to shop locally. 

We sold our home, bought a motorhome, and lived in it for two years while traveling throughout the western US. 

We drove our van to Alaska and then to Florida.  

Husband started a business which he ran for over 25 years before handing it off to one of our sons. 

All while raising four spectacular kids and holding down a gazillion church responsibilities, including our current prison ministry. Could we have monetized any of this in a YouTube channel? (Probably not the prison thing since we can't even take our phones in there.) But, other than lacking personalities with any hint of pizzazz .... who knows?  

The Eclipse and I

No, I'm not talking about the 2024 eclipse that would have required us to travel long distances to areas of intense price-gouging, with no money-back guarantees if the sky chooses to cloud over.

I am talking about the one that practically landed in my backyard.  

It was 2017 and our property here in the high desert of Central Oregon had a large excavated spot where our house would soon be.  We were living a few hundred feet away in our motorhome.  

The epicenter, AKA Ground Zero, AKA the PLACE TO BE ..... for this eclipse was proclaimed to be none other than little Madras, Oregon.  (Population: not a lot)  Why?  Because it was smack dab in the middle of The Path and it's in the desert where the sun usually shines and the sky is clear, right?? .... But what the proclaimers didn't think about was that it was August, also smack dab in the middle of fire season with its ensuing smoke.  Much too common in this part of the world.

Our property is within an hour's drive from Madras and Husband, in full faith, was making plans.  Big plans.  

Included in his vast list of hobbies, is photography ..... especially and almost exclusively taking pictures of anything in space .... planets, stars, galaxies, oddly named things like the "Orion Nebula".  His collection of  telescopes, tripods, camera setups that track planet movement, etc, is ever-growing.  Needless to say, he was determined to photograph every phase of this rare event, come hell or high water. 

Meanwhile, the media, with its constant thirst for viewership, was in full throttle with ominous predictions of what was about to descend upon little Madras and its surrounding communities.  The highways would be bumper-to-bumper, they said.  Food and gas would run out.  Strangers would trample upon private property.  "Human sacrifice!  Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!!"*  In other words, we needed to stock up and hunker down as we awaited the Apocalypse. 

So we did.  Gas tanks were filled (causing some local gas stations to temporarily run out well before any crowds arrived).  Groceries were purchased and No Trespassing signs popped up all around.  

A couple of days before the big weekend, we were about three hours away in western Oregon.  We decided to drive home early in the morning, hoping to be ahead of the east-bound, eclipse-seeking traffic tidal wave.

"Strange", we commented to each other, during that trip.  No traffic.  The towns we passed through as we got closer to home, were eerily empty.  In fact, as we later learned, other than congestion on the main street of Madras (easily avoided by driving one block to a side street), the highways were completely normal.  There were some well-behaved crowds of people camped in and around Madras, but besides that, you'd never know anything was happening.  The only thing close to disastrous that I saw was (and you might want to sit down for this) Dairy Queen ran out of some menu items.  (As it turned out, the overhype of the media scared a lot of people away.)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch as they say .... we woke up that morning to .... you guessed it ..... smoke.  Still hours before start time, we jumped in the car and drove about ten miles, hoping to find blue sky.  Nope.  However, by the time the eclipse began, the smoke cleared.  

Husband was ready.  He had planned this thoroughly.  NASA and/or the Hubble Telescope had nothing on what was going on at our place.  

His cameras were set up on our aforementioned excavated building site, and pointed skyward.  I was enlisted to sit there with my finger poised on a camera push button, and click (take a picture) ... count to six ... click (another picture) ... count to six ... click ... count ... click, until told to stop.  At the same time, he was doing something similar with another camera.  Our bases were covered.  Nothing could go wrong.  We even, as I vaguely recall, rehearsed.  

It began as planned.  We clicked and counted, over and over, as we watched the event unfold.  But then things went awry.  Husband being so excited over what he was seeing, suddenly exclaimed,  "OH NO, I lost count!"  "I messed up!"  (Or something like that.)  

"I'm clicking!  I'm doing it!" I protested.  But frustration and disappointment replaced the excitement as Husband fretted about failing.  

After it ended, I walked quietly back to the motorhome.  It didn't help when all the Facebook photos began to pop up online by friends who had had happy social gatherings, sitting together and enjoying the eclipse .... noticing odd shadows, animal reactions, or whatever is supposed to accompany this rare phenomenon.  

That said, the photos turned out beautifully, all was well, and lessons were learned .... meaning, if I ever experience another eclipse, I will do nothing but sit with my funny little cardboard glasses ..... and watch.  

(The Orion Nebula)

*Ghostbusters