Why, you may ask? Well, all of the supplies are garbage. That’s the plain and simple truth. And rather than sending it to be buried into the heart of the Earth and contribute to the further pollution of our glorious encrusted mantle, it was used for the good. It was used to please us. It was used to allow us to have relief and artistic creative juices flow through our minds. These outcomes allow us to be taken to an alternate state of mind and allow us to escape into a world of both the creative and beauty, both of which create art.

But, what’s more, this presentation follows a sustainable path, a path that reuses thrown away goods for any and all purposes. Now, it is true, it is just art. We aren’t getting some great utilization out of it, nor becoming benefitted resourcefully. However, if you think about it, it gives a sense of greater purpose. We have the ability to create out of the disposed and waste, a splendor. We can turn trash to art. If anything, this exhibit is more inspirational. With many people, including our very own President, acknowledging the dire environmental situation this country and the world is entering into this exhibit reinvigorates a motto that we as humanity should follow: no garbage or dump of a situation is difficult enough to be made beautiful once again. We have the tools, we have the resources, and all we need is the passion and creativity to create a movement for a masterpiece, or at least a masterpiece renovation.

We should take this into consideration as we decide more about our summer plans. As a crew, we have discussed the possible use of art to help spread our message of a sustainable life. Perhaps, Dartmouth students realized this project had much more impact than just being an art exhibit. They believe in it and what it says. I think the populous has spoken, why reinvent the wheel if the wheel works, art might be the necessary vehicle of change in our future months on the road.

I was crushed. The Big Green Bus was going to be the adventure of a lifetime, a chance to learn and grow and share my passion with people across the country. It was going to give me an instant family in a sea of new faces. Instead I attended the meetings of the other green groups on campus, took on some leadership roles there, and set off on a path that would shape my Dartmouth career. Two years later, while on the Environmental Studies Foreign Study Program in South Africa, I applied again, this time with much more experience working in sustainability on the Dartmouth campus and beyond. One week later I was crushed yet again, though slightly less so than before, to find an e-mail in my inbox conveying my rejection. I applied for a third time one year ago as a senior, not knowing what to expect and not nearly as emotionally invested as I had been three years prior. I had a family of friends and a role on campus in which I felt secure. Well, as you know, I was accepted on this third attempt and though I wasn’t looking for it, or even expecting it necessarily, I found that family I had envisioned as a starry-eyed freshman.

I have put off writing this blog for 10 days now. I’m at home in the suburbs of Long Island sitting on my front stoop next to my fluffy orange cat, and I have had serious writer’s block. So let me sincerely apologize to those blog followers who have been anxiously awaiting news of our arrival in Hanover. I assure you, it happened. The bus made it and is now safely parked in A-lot. The 2012 Big Green Bus tour across the United States has come to an end.

On September 5^th 2012 we rolled into Hanover, music blasting, friends running aboard the bus, huge smiles on our faces. We were home. It was like we had never left. We spent the proceeding 48 hours at each other’s sides. Our last dinner together was celebrated by hours of toasted glasses raised to the people who inspired us on our journey, to memories created and adventures completed. As the night waned to a close, I got – to put it simply- very sad. This was it, and I wanted some kind of capstone to this journey. It couldn’t just end. I whined aloud for a hug with arms outstretched. Lorenzo appeased but told me bluntly that there could be no closure to this experience. We all had to go our separate ways and jump into the next chapters of our lives, whatever they might be.

Writing this last entry won’t help me make sense of this yearlong journey with this group of people. So instead I’ve used this space to reflect and to share the wit, humor, and wisdom of my family with you. Their words of advice from three months on the road are here below for your reading.

Thank you for your support, love, energy, and passion. Thank you for coming on this journey with us. And thank you for your inspiration. Remember: reduce, reuse, rethink, recycle and rot (your compost).

- Kells Smellathon Smelly Poor Wet Vegan Strong Island Scabby McGlinchey

(Yes, that’s one name.)

Insight from a Bunch of Hippies on a Big Green Bus

Use a map, not list directions from your iPhone.

Double check the address of your destination.

Trust strangers more than you are used to. More often than not, they are wonderful people who will help, teach, and inspire you!

Bananas don’t live in the fridge.

Clean your god damn dishes.

Run alone.

Run with friends!

Eat ice cream, even if it’s vegan.

Write down what you are thankful for each day.

Check that you have your chocks before pulling out of the parking spot.

Inspect your vehicle regularly.

Don’t take any shit from mechanics, but be nice when they let you sleep in their parking lot and use their bathroom overnight.

Dance. Lots.

Make hot chocolate and listen to Christmas music.

Play “Call Me Maybe” on repeat.

Wear matching shirts at least once.

Actively work to believe in the people around you – believe in their goodness and their striving and their pure, pained, and beautiful hearts.

But don’t be afraid of anger. Be true to yourself and know what gives you strength and makes you happy. Revel in those things and those people.

Remnants from your cubby should stay in your cubby.

People do care. You can find instances of dedication to nurturing community and improving relationships with our environment everywhere.

People are quick to get cynical, but there is a lot to be hopeful for.

Ask people questions about themselves past the point where you feel like you’ve been polite – help others share their stories and you will be so delighted by what you learn!

Settlers of Catan isn’t that much fun.

If you see a giant strawberry, turn it into a speakeasy.

Eat raw veggies and hummus every single day. And vegan ice cream.

If you’re going to sneeze, sneeze on someone else.

Make an effort to ask people the hard questions.

When it’s hot, go to sleep.

When meat gets you down, go veggie.

Eat a primarily plant-based, whole food diet.

Spend every free moment of your day outside.

Being outside is essential to living fully and connected and grounded with the world.

Keep a journal.

Take hella pictures.

When a broken bus gets you down, go to Montana, or harvest some wheat.

If the stop engine light comes on, STOP.

Don’t keep leftover beans in ziplock bags and forget to refrigerate them.

Make friends who will wake you up gently and bring you coffee in bed.

You don’t need a computer.

Open yourself honestly to the people around – share your vulnerability and you will be so strong!

Two nights is too short a stay.

Passionate people are the best.

Lift from your knees!! For the love of your wonderful back, LIFT FROM YOUR KNEES!

When tensions rise sweat it out.

Bring reusable containers to restaurants if you’re going to get take out.

Carry a spork, nalgene, and mug everywhere you go, just in case.

Lose your smartphone as often as possible.

Or don’t own a smartphone, and depend on your friends’ smartphones instead.

Vegans have feelings too.

Listen before you speak.

Breathe before you listen.

Pause. Reflect. Breathe.

Sleep outside under the stars.

Open pressurized systems VERY slowly. Or wait for them to cool off.

If you insist on opening them quickly, dance as you get showered in a geyser of hot waste vegetable oil.

Take more veg showers (that is, showers in vegetable oil), and then don’t wash off for days afterward.

Smile.

Bask in the sun and frolic in the fields.

Adventure. Don’t miss the opportunity to do so.

Say yes to ridiculous ideas like spending 3 months driving a veggie-powered bus across the country.

Laugh at yourself.

Listen to the wisdom of people younger than you.

Start your morning with breath and a smile.

End your day laughing with people you love.

I was surprised by the beauty I found looking out from the deck of Charlie Winslow’s Ohio cabin. I admit, in my ignorance I did not know such naturally beautiful settings existed in Ohio, but I was intreagued when Charlie picked up the bus crew and drove us over dirt roads, along side cliffs and boulders, to an isolated cabin in the Northern Appalachian foothills. Charlie is a Dartmouth ’82 and a hell of a character, and he brought us to his cabin for a laid back Dartmouth Alumni Club of Central Ohio get-together. The details of the event are inconsequential, but it is clear that a fun time was had by all, including our recent stowaway Rohan Chaudhary ’12 who we swooped up after leaving St. Louis. Not only had we woken up to the immense kindness and wonderful food of the Guo family in St. Louis, but we were greeted in Ohio with the warmest and possibly most memorable of welcomes from Charlie and Katie Winslow, along with the rest of the alumni club. 

Needless to say, this event came to feel like a celebration of something tremendously special and important. During the course of the night our modest crew of six, plus Rohan, came to the sobering realization that our wild summer tour would reach its terminus in less than a week. We looked around the room at each other. Only Lorenzo and I were still current students, and most everyone else would soon be departing onto their various life paths away from Hanover. We passed around smiles that had emerged for countless laughs throughout the summer. We shared stories of triumphs and of moments of desperation. A whirlwind of images was spinning around the room. The Chattanooga campers and the Nashville heat, the New Orleans street scene and the mountains of Taos, the food of the Bay and the breakdown in Bozeman. So much to remember from a summer in motion.

As I sit here in a small nook in Lorenzo’s Ashtabula home on lake Erie, I seek words to describe what I have taken away from this experience of a lifetime and I find only a jumble of images and conversations. There is much to process as I return to the stationary life in tiny Hanover, New Hampshire. Around this country I have met so many people. Some have been supremely kind, some have been overt and skeptical. Some are inquisitive and some purely just want to talk with someone. Some know, some have yet to learn. If anything is to be said for the Big Green Bus as a tool for discovery, it is that encountering the vast diversity of passionate, curious, and sometimes blabbering people that inhabit our country is a stupendously important part of discovering how change is to be made on this planet, and how we are to live peacefully together with respectful understanding of eachother’s needs. The networks of ideas and activity that we have come upon and linked in with are invaluable. As are the bonds we have built amongst each other.

We have a few days left that I will cherish heartily. This last entry of mine is the first of many reflections I foresee. For now, I move to sign off and say goodnight from Ashtabula.

Goodnight.

Sign off -AK (Ari Koeppel)

The Gator.

In the afternoon we went to Harrah’s in North Kansas City for a Code Green event with other local environmentally conscious groups and representatives of Harrah’s sustainability initiatives.

Most importantly, we discovered the song Thrift Shop, which fits perfectly with our message (warning: it’s a little vulgar).

Day 78 we lost two bussers to their families–Sam stayed home in Kansas when we left for Saint Louis and we dropped Nick off at the airport in Saint Louis. And  then there were six.

We went directly to John Burroughs School and talked to some more students. It’s great to have school back in session, and it has sparked conversations on the bus about trying to run the program during a spring or fall term to get to visit more schools. Students are the best audience. The younger and more impressionable, the better! But on a serious note, it’s also awesome to converse with older students who are already engaged in the issues we’re discussing. The students at John Burroughs School showed us their biodiesel home-brewing setup, where they turn the waste vegetable oil from their school cafeteria into fuel to run a vehicle they design and build each year for a high mileage vehicle competition. The fuel also powers the school’s lawnmowers and other diesel vehicles.