Oh Mooshie! <3
Since Snaggy Mountain is an art and music loving environment, and Jared is quite the talented circus performer, musician and artist, there are a lot of toys to play with!
By "toys" I'm referring to things like the circus ball I never even saw or tried playing on, and managed to learn to walk on easily while playing there! As well as hula-hoops, tons of juggling balls, painting and other art materials, literature, diverse variety and quantity of musical instruments (of course!) all over the place, nature; cultivating and wild-harvesting, exploring and playing, and of course many interesting uniquely creative individuals constantly passing by to share the epic love-fun-filled experience together! <3
This is the art barn where many people hangout and spend hours, or days and nights making art nonstop! It's full of art and musical instruments and even has a room for people to rent to stay!
Here are some friends we made during that trip; Claudine, Morgan, Space-cowboy (Matt), and Erik!
Awesomely friendly and uniquely talented bunch!
Here's one of Erik's many epic paintings! <3
I did some modeling for my first time to help with an art class they were giving every week! It was a pretty funny experience since I didn't know how to pose and felt shy/embarrassed about it... especially since I had to stay still for longer and longer each pose. I was extremely use to moving nonstop! I had a reputation there for barely speaking, always smiling, and ALWAYS moving my body! xD
Here's a better picture of the bus-house where Neeko and I stayed!
We got all sorts of walking sticks available here! Hehe, that's a joke about the broom, though we did collect a bunch of natural walking sticks from the forest! Piling them at the entrance to the bus, then we would use and share them every day everywhere we went! :)
A view from inside the bus, where we had generally raw, but always vegan feasts together!
Our romantic set up to indulge on freshly harvested cucumber slices combined with all sorts of other delights! This was one of our largest private feasts, which is why it's the only food picture I took that entire trip before we began to munch-out! x)
Before breaking the raw fasting diet, we would primarily eat raspberries and blackberries, along with our favorite at the time; CUCUMBER! As well as plenty of greens and veggies!
All freshly harvested! <3
We would add bananas and raw nuts to fill ourselves up more if needed. Though we tried to do a lot of intermittent fasting in between meals, not counting our superfood smoothies we drank to sustain us for the most part of every day!
After a couple of days from my arrival we became more accustomed to moving through the thorny berry bushes barefoot and shirtless, as it became easier and easier for us to get deeper into the bushes! We didn't mind getting stabbed or scraped by the thorns as we were rewarded by getting to devour thousands of berries!
One day before we set off to go swim at a river in search of a waterfall we must've eaten at least 500-1000 blackberries each and nothing else!
Combined with our excessive exercise, raw fasting diets, and healthy digestion, we were almost always empty stomached and effortlessly digested only what we ate each day!
Naturally, berries are SUPER EASY to digest! So believe it or not, thats a picture of 100% blackberry poo, I hope it doesn't gross you out since its literally nothing other than purely digested blackberries! :P
That came out during our hike down the river to the epic swimming spot where we climbed a bunch of rocks and trees and jumped around and into the water! <3
It even started raining as we were playing there, but since it was only Neeko and I that day, we didn't care and just kept playing even harder as the rain poured! <3
We also much prefer avoiding using toilet paper and would always make an effort to wipe with water instead, especially being grateful for the naturally abundantly flowing super medicinal, drinkable, freshly cold mountain waters! <3
Here's a random interesting little critter that landed on us, please tell me what it is if you know! <3
Here's some friendly ducks that roamed around freely quacking loudly as they played in the streams and searched for nesting hiding spots! :)
There were also some free roaming chickens that climbed up to the tops of the giant pine trees, along with their baby chicks too!! Hopping all the way up, and even jumping all the way from the tippy tops and gliding down with their flightless wings (because I tried joining them, climbing up with them, and they got scared.. hehe)!! I wish I took more pictures and videos to share some of those epic bad ass tree climbing and jumping chickens! <3
There were also "roads" to get around Snaggy mountain better with awesomely unique names like DELICIOUS Lane and FASCINATION Drive!
Going up Fascination Dr lead to a cabin in the woods as well as a giant walnut tree right before it!
Here's the view of the big walnut tree from in front of the cabin! Obviously I don't have any pictures of the cabin because I LOVE trees so much that it was clearly my priority to take pictures of the tree instead! xD <3
I LOVED this big walnut tree so much and was wishing to climb it every day, though it was extremely challenging at the time!
I was most definitely not use to trees that I couldn't climb on my first try before arriving to North Carolina! So this was a first! Either I could climb it in one try, or didn't think I could climb it at all!
I did manage to climb up the bark my first time getting up this tree, and getting about half way up when I found the tree to be soaked somehow at the "hardest" part that day since everything there happened to be super slippery... so instead I tried knocking down a humongous dead branch that was hanging on the tree, not even connected, but even that was too hard, haha. I was happy I managed to get up the tree!
Here you can see the green mossy slippery spots between each branch splitting that I was referring too, as it did rain pretty frequently while we were there! Perhaps you can see the dead branch I was talking about too, it's near the top middle-right of this picture, and it's WAY bigger than it looks, especially since the thicker side of the branch isn't even visible in this picture as it's hanging on the other side of the live branch it's hanging from!
Though usually for these kinds of trees/climbs the easiest way is actually to climb form a tree limb dangling by the floor... but I was kind of against that at the time, as I was obsessed with climbing from the base of the tree trunk, up and down, hahaha.
Like this branch that I used the day I climbed it to the tippy top, which I hope to have pictures of to share when the story reaches that point... as I keep finding/looking through my disorganized bunch of pictures from all our travels! Hehe!
Amazingly on my second trip to Snaggy Mountain with my brother, not only did I succeed in climbing this big walnut tree to the tippy top, but I also climbed MANY trees I had previously deemed IMPOSSIBLE during this first trip! :)
Like the rope swing tree! Which for some reason we didn't take ANY pictures or videos during either trip (of the tree and rope swing!), even though it was so much fun!!!! A little dangerous since it was a rope swing over a valley making the potential drop higher and the proper landing really important! I'll share the full rope swinging and climbing story and video on this previously "impossible" tree climb later when I get to it chronologically! Hehe, just as my climbing evolved in that time, so did our rope swinging skills! ;)
I don't know who this person is, but you can clearly tell how much fun the rope swing I'm referring to is just from this picture! x) It's the ONLY picture I managed to find of the rope swing!
Here are a couple of interesting people we do actually know and met at Snaggy Mountain!
This is Max, one of the friends we made while there, a beautifully peaceful nature guitar playing and singing yogi!
This is a link to one of his songs if you want to listen! You can also check out other snaggy songs on that channel!
This wild mountain man, named Matt, though we call him Space-cowboy, is full of bad ass survival skills, equipment, tools, and toys!
We've never met anyone like him before, and even though he's the total opposite of a vegan as he LOVES meat, we still loved hanging out with him and learning how he does what he does!
Regardless of labels we really just like to go with the flow of the moment doing what feels right. So even though we started off the trip as raw vegan (unless the bugs/insects inside of the wild fruits doesn't count as vegan, but a label is no more than a label, and its raw none-the-less x), then continued as vegan, we would make occasional vegetarian exceptions to enjoy certain rarities we wouldn't get to enjoy freely anywhere/anytime!
For example this kitty Diane I introduced in the first part. During the middle of a solar powered night-time jam session "party" we were having in Jared's cabin at the top of Snaggy Mountain, all of a sudden we heard a super loud squeal over power everything! To our surprise it was the sound of a rabbit dying because Diane freshly sustainably hunted a tiny wild bunny! Normally she eats them herself, but she also likes to offer it to her human friends! So Space-cowboy took it, skinned it, and cooked it on the spot! Everyone ate a little piece since there wasn't much to begin with, but everyone was curious to try!
He's a hunter, black smith, and skilled artisan hand crafter using leather, bones, shells, sticks, and more!
One day he showed up to Snaggy when Neeko and I met him, he was planning on traveling around the US with his motorcycle but fell in love with Snaggy and ended up living there instead! He even built himself a tent to live in and experience all the seasons with! That worked out so my brother could meet him too when we came back for round 2! :)
Please contact him on Facebook here, if you'd like to ask him to handcraft you something super uniquely epic for you!
Here's yet another very snaggy bloke! This is a song he wrote about Diane the cat! :)
Danny Blose, a famous snaggy resident, or ex-resident, as I'm not sure what he's up to now a days, but he has lived and been making LOTS of music on Snaggy Mountain for quite a while! :)
Mmmm I feel it's a lot easier/more fun to share the full experience with pictures and videos, and flows more smoothly and effortlessly from what I've noticed as I can remember so many memories and go into a lot of detail... but then writing isn't nearly as fun without the visuals, at least, for me when it comes to sharing our experiences...!
I wish I had taken pictures of some more of the insanely epic super fun tree's at the top of the mountains! Tree's that I didn't even think I would climb or be able to, especially getting to the tippy top naked...! Surprising myself and Neeko, and to my surprise finding random spikes/thorns along the climb up!! We always went there to get away from everything though, especially phones, as naked as possible, barely even bringing water and no food, only our favorite sticks!
<3 As well as a bunch of other tree's we climbed naked, even in the rain! <3
Before ending this part, I wanted to share this funny mini-story that I didn't mention earlier due to lack of pictures... but really wanted to share because I think it's really funny, and hope it's as clear through my writing as it is in my memory! x)
This little story is about our experience getting use to the cold waterfall shower we bathed in daily, since neither of us were accustomed to the cold much, especially cold water in already relatively cold weather! Especially after the sun was already setting! x) So to make it funny and more fun, and easier to get into the water and embrace the cold I suggested that we SHOUT!
But... it felt weird to just shout randomly, and though I would've forced myself to get in the water without shouting, I wanted Neeko to do it too, hehe. So every time we would submerge ourselves under the tiny waterfall we would yell "BLOOP BLOOP BLOOP BLOOP!", and some "AAAAAAAAAAAH's" in between! xD Always at the top of our lungs! It made the cold a funny joke! We couldn't even feel the cold because we were laughing nonstop while screaming "BLOOP" and "AAAAH" so much! <3
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