Help Bear & Michelle finally move into a home!

HELLO friends, family, & people we’ve never met!

We are Bear & Michelle! We are building a house together & are reaching out for your support in making it a home.

After losing our house in the CZU fire in August of 2020, and 3 years of living in a 16 square foot cab over camper, on and off the road, we are FINALLY moving into a yurt home this Fall & are so excited to be in a stable home after being displaced for so long.

Here’s a bit about us:

We absolutely love hosting; it’s something we did & have continued to do in our 9 years together. Our favorite places in the house were in front of the stove, cooking something delicious & in front of the fire. Most evenings we could be found, playing card games & deciding what record to put on next. We want to make this new abode not only a place we can stretch out (literally), but also a place to serve a good meal to those we love.

After our home burned down, we evacuated to a warehouse with only a toilet, no shower. We slept on the floor there for 3 months. This was during Covid times, so we had to strategically ask for showers from friends, while keeping everyone safe. After 3 months, without jobs or a place to live to tether us to Santa Cruz, we hit the road with a plan to be gone for 6 months. We ended up spending a year and a half traveling the West & living out of our Bigfoot cab over camper which is held up by our baby blue Ford F250. We saw and experienced some amazing things and feel very privileged to have had that time to explore, and mostly, to heal.

In March of 2022, we returned to Santa Cruz & to the property where our home once stood. As of June 2023, we have been living in our camper, completely off grid for over a year. We feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to return to this land and to tend to it as it finds its way forward. It’s been a year full of: hauling water in five gallon jugs, rain, mudslides, flooding, solar power, generators, ticks, tears, fallen trees, mold, wind, lightning & hail. We have also had: uncontrollable laughter, five star meals, rainy hikes in the woods, bonfires in the fireplace, star filled skies, unbounded generosity, dance parties, moon rises, sun sets, many many games of scrabble, cribbage & gin rummy, sleepless sleepovers, & countless creative cocktails.

This Fall we plan to move into a yurt! After being mobile for a long time, it feels so comforting to be able to think about laying down on a couch in front of the wood stove, having space to make some gluten free sourdough, & take a bath! It’s the little things that you start to miss in a tiny space such as our camper. During evacuation, we also managed to save some things, that have been in a storage facility ever since. We look forward to having our treasured art, vinyl & Michelle’s great grandmother’s rocking chair to enjoy once more. We haven’t seen these things in 3 years and are very excited to be reunited. We miss using ceramic mugs made by friends (we have been using plastic because it's lighter and more durable). We miss using a salad bowl (we have been using our soup pot, because we don't have space for a salad bowl). We are SO eager for this transition; it’s something we have been looking forward to since the day we saw our house in ashes.

With the funds raised here, we will be buying things to fill out our home space. Ie: everything that you would find on a typical new home registry plus things like power & carpentry tools, linens, rugs, furniture, lots of kitchen supplies, and possibly some landscaping things like potting soil & paving stones. Our priority with these funds is to feel stable and grounded again. If you would like to, when gifting funds, add a catergory that you would like to donate specifically to, such as kitchen tools, sound sysytem, or gardening funds! We will think of you everytime we use each item. We hope that you can help us on our ongoing journey and PLEASE, send this to everyone you know! We are hopeful this fund will reach far & wide, & many many hands will help us make this house our home. It takes a village, & we sure are glad you are a part of ours.

All our love,

Bear & Michelle

PS: if you have some cool outdoor furniture that isn’t getting love, or a record player that isn’t played, we love giving second hand items new life! Our space at the moment is limited so please reach out first before sending anything our way!!