I ran into a friend, an ‘old timer’ the other day. He’s been here since 1980. He’s seen a lot of changes. “There used to be travelers coming through here, pilgrims from the city who were searching for meaning. Now we have tourists.”

#Mendocino

He cares about the environment. He saw the effects logging had up and down the coast. He lives simply on a piece of land a mile up the ridge. It’s a property where he knows the owner, meanwhile the price of rent goes up and up every year pricing out the old timers.

He cares about privacy and knows who Snowden is. It was Snowden’s influence that got him using Telegram. He uses cash like most old timers do. He wasn’t familiar with #bitcoin but a flicker of interest crossed his face.

Many old timers around here are techno-skeptics. There’s a feeling that technology is the problem, that if we could just get back to the land we’d return to a state of grace with Mother Earth.

After running into him in it crossed my mind that I’m becoming an old timer too, an old timer and bitcoiner.