Market Day

living outside my comfort zone

March 8th, 2026

Patagonia, Arizona

It's Market Day and I get up in the pre-dawn dark. It's cold inside Serenity and I dress quickly and put my coat on. I'm parked in a shady spot which limits my solar intake, so I make coffee and feed Lyra by the light of my headlamp to conserve Serenity's battery for the fridge. Lyra eats her breakfast and gets back into bed, watching birds out the window. I tuck a blanket over her to make a little cave, then open the skylights a few inches and crack the kitchen window, because I won't be back until early afternoon and it will have warmed up by then.

I lock up and by the time the sun is rising, I'm driving through the sweet little village of Patagonia, headed for the Sonoita Farmers Market twelve miles away. The sun is peeking over the tops of the craggy red-gold hills in the east, and there's no one about but a pair of mourning doves hanging out in the middle of the road by the auto repair shop. I almost have to come to a full stop before they actually take flight.

As I get on the highway, Artemis's seatwarmer kicks in and I tuck my frozen fingers under my thigh, alternating hands as I drive. A kestrel eyes me from a power line as I pass by. Greg Brown's song 'Not High' is playing through my headphones and I sing along, sipping hot coffee, feeling deeply content with this odd life I've found for myself, with all it's uncertainties and challenges and sudden breathtaking gifts of beauty.

The days go by

just like they know me-

they know just how to get my goat-

they kiss me hard, then grab me by the throat

then they sail away in a little boat-

westerly;

goodbye…

The Sonoita Farmers market is held in a large rectangular parking lot in in front of a long building that holds the post office and a few shops. It dipped down to freezing last night, and Arizonians don't like cold, but there are already other vendors here, setting up under the big bank sign in the corner. The morning is full of the woosh of traffic on the highway, the creak of table legs unfolding, the slap of plastic awnings in the chilly wind.

There is a pecking order to these little markets, and here the preferred spots are under the sign. The local vendors set up beneath it and the infrequent and new vendors like myself fan out on either side in a big L shape. I choose a spot on the west side near the end, and roll Artemis's front bumper right up to the split rail fence that encloses the lot. Then I drop her tailgate and start setting up. I don't have a folding table, so I took off Serenity's bathroom door and have been keeping it in the back of the truck to use at markets. I use my water-hauling milk crates to make two pillars, three crates high, and set the door on them. Then I cover it with a silky, slate-blue sheet and voila-I have a table.

It's somewhat narrow, but a lot of my items are small and it's a good height for people walking by. I picked up some beautiful honeycombed Cholla wood outside of Safford, and I get out my jewelry and stones and start arranging things in pleasing little still-lifes, replacing lost price tags and re-hanging stray earrings next to their mates.

Pick-up trucks and Subarus are filling in the spots around me, other vendors talking and laughing as they set up their tables and start arranging baked goods and African drums and organic eggs and handmade knives and prickly pear jelly. You can get duck eggs here, and tamales and 50 kinds of peppers-from jalapenos to poblanos, canned or fresh.

Every market, I buy a mini watermelon from Hector, who has a warm and ready smile, and always cuts one open and hands out free slices to people as they're walking by. One Market Day, the drum lady set up next to me and between customers, she gave me a lesson and we sat together patting out rhythms on Djembe drums. At another market, a woman gifted me a bottle of the *best* komboucha I've ever tasted, just because, and I gave her a little polished quartz crystal the same bright gold as her ginger-lemon- honey blend. Everyone is friendly and generous the mundane task of the week's shopping is transformed into a joyful exchange of items, energy, stories, smiles.

I arrange tumbled apache tears in a heart around a "free!" sign, and think about my first market a few months ago in the town of Sunsites- how nervous I was about finding a good spot and interacting with people and leaving Serenity back at our campsite with my solar panels outside. That last still makes me a bit nervous, but I've come to love the markets.

My first customer this morning is an archaeologist who hand-carves these beautiful little pipes out of steatite-a soft mineral similar to soapstone, which he collects locally. He shows me pictures on his phone and promises to bring me some rough steatite to mess with next week. Then a woman comes up and asks about a pair of earrings, and after that it's a steady stream of people with little gaps here and there that I use to research my next camping spot, since I barely have a signal where I'm camped now.

I used to sell my jewelry and sculptures through galleries, but here I get to see how people react to my work, and talk about the process, which is gratifying and inspiring. And I get to pet dogs and give free Apache tears to little kids and talk to people about rocks and hear stories about their rock-hounding trips, their monumental finds. Everyone in Arizona seems to love rocks, and they either have too many at home but have stories to share, or they see something on my table that calls to them and they buy it and we both go away happy.

It's funny because I brought a bunch of jewelry and rocks and art along to sell, but I was actually planning to do that through a website and ship them to people. But I had a bunch of unexpected expenses just before I hit the road, and then more a few weeks later and ran out of money. So these little local markets have saved me. If I had known I would have to hit the road with almost nothing, I wouldn't have done it, but by then there was no going back.

In my very first post I talked about Peace Pilgrim, how I longed to have the depth of trust in life that she did, but I never really thought about how you actually get there. And at first, I kind of froze up in fear. I thought I was failing somehow, had done something wrong. But I've come to realize that this is how you get there- you learn to trust life by jumping into the life you want, even if it's outside your comfort zone, and trusting that if you just keep taking the next logical step, things will work out. That's a lot easier to swallow as a concept than to actually put into practice, but I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of it.

And despite the challenges, I'm now living a life centered around the things that are most important to me, and I'm doing it in these beautiful, wild places and meeting all kinds of interesting people. During the week I juggle basic necessities-fixing things and getting water and finding new camping spots, with writing and making art, and on the weekends, I go to markets. So I'm now 100% supporting myself with my own creativity, which is something I've dreamed of for most of my life.

It feels wonderful.

And now it's time for some watermelon!