Debbie Jones was my first online friend. She was traveling around Europe and Africa with her family when I came across a blogpost she wrote on wings. Promptly falling in love, I sent her an email and we messaged back and forth about bus living and traveling.
Not long afterwards, Nigel and I were pulling into Nomads Land and who do we see walking across the field? Debbie Jones! No way! The traveling blog lady in the flesh. Another six months later, Nigel and I are in New Zealand doing hair at Parachute Music Festival. We glance up, only to see the entire Jones clan standing in front of us.
Small, small world.
The Jones family visited us a few times while we were New Zealand. They would pull their massive house truck, Maggie, up in front of our big green bus. On one of the visits Debbie spied an old chaise lounge that had been sitting in the shed for many years. She wanted to recover it. Not just by throwing some new fabric over it, but by stripping it back to its bare bones and seeing what was inside.The long way around.
So, we started to peel the layers off. We learned that the people before us had decided to take short cuts when redoing the couch, there were about 5 layers of different fabric. We also found a bone handled pocket knife tucked in the depths of the couch. We wondered about who had lost that! Debbie had us get some new straps for the bottom, to hold the springs in. She explained how to finish the project, and then waved goodbye and left us to it.
That is the kind of person I knew Debbie to be. One who was not scared of process, who preferred to take the long, slow way to get somewhere. One who would rather experience the depths than to splash around in the shallows. One who taught and enabled others. And one who saw beauty, where others saw only trash.
