Let Me Introduce Myself. Part One: My Story.

Today I made 50 days on steemit. It has been amazing, I truly believe in this platform not only as a decentralized social media site but also as a means for a public shift, a beginning to controlling our own destiny's collectively.

I have not done an introductory post. I have never participated in a social platform before, I was always adverse to them to the core, avoided whenever possible. Which was always. The internet was for reading the news from my carefully selected sites and researching, that was it.

But steemit has changed that for me. Dreams of writing and sharing my thoughts on the world and personal realities materialized. A site I felt was not against my core values of human rights, one that rewarded good content, taking back quality control and giving it to the people that invested and use the site.

So for todays post I will do my intro, 50 days late, but much more open then I have ever been on the web. Thank you for witnessing it.

I grew up on a windy, wild north coast of the Big Island of Hawaii in the middle of the pacific ocean, I lived in a old plantation house what up a winding country road. The kind of road that you would only be on if you where meant to be there. The house was painted red with white trim, it was built in 1902, and had lots of history that no one remembers but everyone feels when they are there. The old energy radiates in your bones, and as a child it was vivid and dense. Hard to distinguish from shadows.

I was raised wild, free to roam the ranches above our house. My hippy parents letting me be the master of my own world. I loved horses, and would take my black and white paint with blue eyes up into the mountains alone all day since I was nine. Being alone in the wilderness is my comfort, I read the land and she whispers in my ear. We have been communicating for a while, long before I discovered my passion for survival and backwoods exploration. Because that was how I raised myself, by observing nature.

The Big Island was an amazing place to grow up, a powerful place to develop who you are. With the ocean, volcano and snow the island erupts in the elements, recreating herself everyday.

I moved out when I was sixteen, finishing high school with my GED and starting getting jobs doing things I wanted to learn. I became a great cook by working in different restaurant kitchens that's food I liked, I was an adventure guide, a ranch hand. Never was I board with that I did for money. I had a general aversion to money from a very young age. Money are a necessary tool, resented at every step.

I had always painted and drawn portraits, and a little while after my 18th birthday I was getting a tattoo (my only one! Ha, now I am covered) A sketchbook of nudes I had drawn fell out of my backpack. The tattooist saw it and hired me as an apprentice that evening.

Tattooing was a sharp catalyst into the kind of metamorphosing one does when you enter a creative dark world as a super naive wilderness girl. Where dark people exists that even your darkest though could conjure up, along side the sweetest most intimate moments with people getting over grief. A statement of age, old or young. A memory so important that you needed something permanent to prove it was real, had happened written on skin. A wearable slice of history with a mystery expiration date.

Needing further adventure in my life, and my souls need for more expansion I left for South Africa, I was nineteen years old and completely alone. I was there for two months, so much happened. Refugee activity from a bordering country, my first time seeing extreme violence. Being in a place more alive then anything you could think possible. Just being there pushed me into some of my first spiritually shattering moments alone in the veldt. Africa was amazing, transformative, heartbreaking my personal vision quest. I own much of my perception today to the seeds it planted that the world is much bigger than it seemed.

After Africa, I could not go home. So on a layover in England I decided not to get on my plane but stay, work at a cleaning company and tattoo in Colchester, England. For three months I was up all night working, or on days off mobbing around the city with new friends or by myself. I would watch everyone interacting and smile at similarities and differences. I lived in a tiny town with three pubs, a church with an old graveyard and a store. I would ride the double-decker buses into the city. Or walk through an onion field at dusk to clean a country club at night. I loved England, it was like a warm blanket after some of the things been through. The people I met where fun, lighthearted and always up for a pub crawl. I had My twentieth birthday in a old house with fire dancers spinning in the garden. England is a memory that tastes like tea, cider, old musty houses with romantic history, moody mornings, mysterious milkman and laughter.

I flew home at the end of three months, for my Dads wedding. It was weird returning to a place you grew up after you have changed so much and you know it had not.

This picture was taken my first day back, revisiting a favorite childhood beach, with a wild beach horse one of many I grew up with.

There was a question in my mind, a search for a solution brewing under the surface of my consciousness. I enjoyed living where I traveled, but how could I do it without taking resources from the place, not have to relay on monetary commerce , more trade. And I was in control of my own space so I could relax and feel safe and secure so I was free to create something new to share with the people I met. That was my perfect flow.

One day someone mentioned to me at an Irish pub I was tending that their grandfather always wanted to sail around the world. I made him explain to me how people did that. Lived on boats, sailed the seas. I knew that was my destiny.

I packed my bags and flew to Newport Beach California where I had a contact in Balboa Island, a place to say for a few weeks.

Another metamorphosis, and the cocoon opens slowly.

Bought my first boat, a Catalina 27 moved aboard with my cat Midge.

I got a job at the balboa island ferry by walking in and telling the manager that I wanted to get my captains license by getting hours on the water so I would make a great employee. Its obvious you should hire me. And laughing he did. Sis months latter the shop boys played a trick on me, they asked if I wanted to help with bilge cleaning. I was just learning terms so I agreed just like they knew I would promising to teach me after ignoring my questions for months. I was the only one that didn't quit, it was that bad. That also left me to do all three boat myself because I was the only one who could fit down the man hole. Impressed they hired me in maintenance, I was able to learn how to rebuild wooden boats.

I ended up managing a fuel dock and taking my dinghy to work everyday. I hardly ever was on land.

While living on the first little boat I learned some things that I have always wanted to learn, I excitedly grasped at every new experience.

Rock climbing became a favorite past time when taken away from the sea. The slow intentional ascent up a mountain's face is something to behold. I learned to get past panic on a rock, a valuable lesson that has saved my life a few times since.

I fished for my food. I become quite the open ocean fisherwoman.

The ocean has given me so much, I am so grateful. I don't know who I would be without the sea.
I am now at twenty three years old in my story. Writing this now I am thirty one.

I have so much story to tell, I am going to make it into two parts.

This concludes part one of my story. Thank you all for being so supportive of my writing. I am so thankful to you. My heart swells open with love, mine and yours.

If you like my writing, lets be friends and follow me!
Big Love.
Ren