della

I was born in a San Francisco hospital in 1983.  I grew up north of there in a tiny one-story 1960’s kit cabin on 2 acres of land.  Town was a 20 minute drive.  My brother and I built forts and tried to catch cat-fish with dental floss and cheese in the little man-made lake up the hill. My father paid us coins to bring him cool bugs, the rarer the more valuable.

We camped, hiked, had long days on the Northern California coast. We had tons of pets.  My parents were/are both artists, raised as city folk, but had been drawn into an enchantment with the not-city.  Growing up, I read alot.  We watched lots of movies.  I played soccer, and I wore my bathing suit under my clothes, just in case we were near swimmable water.  It was a fantastic childhood.  In our middle class town, we were not middle class, and we were raised with the feeling that we were different than everyone else.  But I had a fine time of it anyway.

Fast-forward.  Once I hit 18, I went to school in Portland, OR.  Reed College.  I majored in English Lit, I took up running and climbing, haunted coffee shops, biked everywhere.  I met Tucker.  Over the next 10 years or so, we moved around together, school and internships and coffee jobs and sailing and house painting gigs, always scrounging our household items and building our own furniture, living on sailboats, in basements, on friends’ couches.  We’d build a home for a year, disassemble, move, rebuild.  From Portland west to Portland east, onto NYC.  While Tuck was finishing up school at Columbia University, I went off to get a masters in San Francisco, to be near my family again, I missed them very much, they are the core of my identity.  I studied Comparative Lit.  Then Tuck joined me.  We lived in the city of SF for 6 years.  I worked (and got paid to work) on a project doing the R&D for inflatable robotics and inflatable orthotics for 5 years (all hail the US government).  It was insanely fun.  We climbed at Tahoe and Yosemite.  We biked every inch of the city.  We spent time with my family.  We surfed at Ocean Beach.  We drank delicious beer.  We saved money.  And then we left on this trip.  And here we are.