It's been about eight months since we decided to sell everything, put some in savings and invest the rest in our camper home. We were both quite enthusiastic, almost euphoric, about our little adventure at the beginning, in part because it felt transformative. We had cast off the material chains of our previous life to experience a rebirth in freedom of the sort that Kris Kristofferson sang about in Bobby McGee -- "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." We still have some stuff to lose --the camper, the Ram truck, and some of the accoutrements of camping like the generator -- but for the most part we have condensed our potential losses down to what will fit comfortably into our camper, what can be loaded up and moved to the next spot, and it did feel a whole lot like freedom. We spent most of the summer in the state of Washington -- first at Pacific Beach, where our grand daughter came to stay with us, and then at River Bend near Twisp and the Methow river. I won't say it was the best summer of my life, but in truth I can't remember a better -- the image of our adolescent grand daughter bounding about the beach in childish joy scavenging drift wood for the 4th of July bonfire, while frigid gale force winds blew in off the north pacific and Lora sat huddled like an Inuit against the cold -- waking early to just sit and watch the sunrise behind the Cascade mountains, at times blood red, obscured by the smoke pouring down from the Canadian wildfires. I actually learned the Methow River, its pulse and what worked to catch its fish.
The summer officially ended at Henry's Lake, near Yellowstone, when eight inches of snow piled on the roof of the camper, and we abandoned what seemed to us like paradise (minus the tourists) for the long trek south to Yuma, where we had decided to winter. As I write, just now, we are at the Hidden Shores Resort, just outside of Yuma near the Imperial Dam. Yuma brought us back to the reality that we had not transformed ourselves, only our circumstances. We may have cast off the material chains, but the transformation was incomplete. We should be glad that we've escaped the frigid cold that has clamped down on the rest of the country, and we're not really doing what we'd be doing had we stayed in Mountain Home -- what Townes Van Zandt (that most cheerful of songwriters) expressed as "waiting round to die." It comes close though. Yuma is a town designed to capitalize on the snowbird, most of whom it seems are over 80. They all seem hale and hearty enough (the infirm stay home in Missouri or Canada and wait out the remainder of their time in nursing homes and hospitals) but there is a generation's difference between us and the majority of the snowbirds. Buster epitomizes the differences. He's in his mid-eighties, a good musician who plays the rock and roll of his generation with an enviable ease, but the musical timeline ended for him at about the time the Beatles burst upon the scene. Of course, I'm aware of the irony that my references to Kristofferson and van Zandt date me no less than Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis date Buster, still, we're talking about my generation (pronounced guh-guh-gen-eration). It's a bit dispiriting to be perpetually reminded by those much closer to the happy trail's end that we will not be, as promised, forever young.
Then there's the desert. In the attempt to plan, we had booked an initial month in a resort on the outskirts of Yuma. We did so because the October temps outside were reaching upward toward 110 degrees and we wanted the hook up for electric so we could run our a/c. Our generator is sufficient to charge the batteries, run small appliances, including the TV, but insufficient to the a/c. The resort, however, was a dump. There's no other word for it. It was mostly filled with trailers that had seen their better days 20 years ago, most of which were empty and awaiting occupants most of whom wouldn't arrive until January. One of the few residents who was actually present subsisted on disability and supplemented his income by buying abandoned storage units, arranging the accumulated junk around his trailer, and holding a perpetual yard sale. He lived with his son, who had downs syndrome, and had not been treated well either by his ex-wife or the RV park where they had resided previously. They had also prohibited his "business," or so he told us, while this park allowed it, at least on the off season. At the first opportunity we moved to a park outside of Yuma, near the Colorado River. It was certainly more vibrant, too vibrant. The resort provided a convenience store, along with a bar and grill, and was occupied by party people, those for whom big boats and alcohol are the primary forms of entertainment. We weren't there more than week when the couple in the trailer next to (and I mean "next to," within inches) of our own erupted into a fight. There were two hours of drunken verbal insults, crashing and slamming that actually rattled our windows.
We stuck it out there for a couple of weeks, mostly because it was still pushing the high 90s and we needed the electric hook up, and we did some scouting in the area. We didn't exactly chance upon the BLM land near the proving grounds -- Lora had done her research -- but on first encounter it seemed almost like paradise after the two previous resorts. There were essentially two campgrounds, one set up for short term, the other for long term residency. The short term was near Squaw Lake, which resembled every bible illustrators idea of a desert oasis. From the bluff, we looked down on water that was a crystal cerulean blue, surrounded by reed lined banks and dotted with two small islands each with a stand of desert palms. There one found the showers, which had hot water and were clean. The longer term camping was on the so-called Florida Flats, the top of a bluff overlooking the second lake, Senator Wash. Although not quite so picturesque as Squaw Lake, it was water, and the campground provided the other necessary amenity if one were to boondock -- potable water and a dump station. On our scouting trips, we selected a site, and when our reservation at the resort ran out, we moved on over.
I am not adverse to the desert, per se, at least not quite so much as Lora. It has an austere beauty that appeals to me on a visceral level. When we first arrived, there were few other campers, and the landscape seemed uncorrupted by too much humanity. With the exception of a few desiccated cacti and the scrub brush that lined the wash that bordering our campsite, one could have been on Mars, as the rovers must have discovered it, a landscape of rock, and more rock, with rusty hills fading into a line purple mountains in the near distance, and in the greater distance a line of ethereal blue mountains. The desert has always been a place where one could live a life of bare necessity. It is a place returned to origins, scoured free of all the merely human illusions by an abrasive wind. It's a place where, if one listened closely to the surround outside one's self, with concentration, one could hear the voice of god itself, not unlike the distant howling of the coyotes or the alarming quick buzz of a hummingbird. It's perhaps not surprising that three of the great world religions found their origins in deserts, and I wouldn't want to denigrate or dismiss their prophets, who no doubt did find illumination in the sun baked clarity of the desert, though I have always felt that I am the impediment to a true religious experience -- literally the "I am." I have never been so enamored with myself to believe that I am created in god's image, which, conveniently, means that god is reflected in my image, god reflected in me, me reflected in god, back and forth in a tunnel of mirrors where god worship becomes a form of self worship extended into eternal life. I have always felt that, if we really want to know god, we must reduce the self, the "I am," to its vanishing point and then let it vanish. To do so takes a different sort of privation, a different sort of austerity that has always been beyond me, and no matter how hard I try to release myself, there I am, braying like a burro to myself.
So it goes. When we first moved over, the weather was still unendurably hot, with temperatures climbing into the 100s during the day. Although it cooled down some at night, the heat rose along with the sun. Outside, with no shade except that created by the camper itself, you could actually feel the heat sear your flesh. Inside the camper, with no breeze, the heat quickly became suffocating, and so we found ourselves hoping for a good breeze, though there seemed to be no median between suffocating stillness and gale force winds. We have a generator, but it wasn't sufficiently hefty to run the a/c, and even if it would have run the a/c, we wouldn't want to run it for 16 hours a day. Our best bet was shade, and we tried a couple of things to create shade for ourselves. The first, and least successful, was our portable canopy. We put it up and secured it to the ground, and it was fine for a day or two, until the wind lifted and twisted it almost into a ball, ruining it. The failure was disappointing on a number of levels, not least that Lora had hoped to create something that resembled an oasis for us. Throughout our marriage, Lora has had the unique ability to imagine almost any place as home, with all the comforting associations of home, and she set about making even the desert our own, putting out our square of green felt carpet, hanging a couple of decorative solar lights and surrounding it with tiki torches. It was, briefly, homey, and the loss of our little oasis simply reinforced just how hellish the desert could be.
The second, slightly more successful strategy, involved a roll of puffy silver reflective cut to fit the windows of the camper. It did help some. The sun still beat down on the south side of the camper, baking from the outside in, but it kept the sun from slating into the trailer and baking us also from the inside out. With most of the windows covered, inside, it was perpetually dusk and still with no breeze, even when the wind outside was strong enough the sway the camper on its springs. The third, slightly more successful strategy yet, involved shade cloth slated down from the roof of the camper and staked to the ground, which shaded the south side of the camper. It allowed us to open the windows again, getting some breeze.
For the most part though, we just endured the heat. Lora would run the sink full of cool water and bathe the dogs. They didn't much like it, but it did cool them down some, and our own showers became one of the highlights of the day for much the same reason. We would drive down to the showers in the Squaw Lake Campground, and luxuriate in the tepid water. On the worst of days, in the late afternoon, we went for long pointless rides, adding mileage and burning gas so we could sit in air conditioned comfort for a couple of hours. We did run the generator for a few hours in the evening, mostly to recharge the batteries, but we would watch a couple of hours of television from the list of channels available to our antenna. The local weather people kept assuring us that the heat was "unseasonable," though they also saw no particular end in sight, because a high pressure zone had stationed itself off the coast of California, keeping the cooler winds from the Canadian north from reaching us. We endured the heat in part because we kept expecting it to break. How long could the "unseasonable" persist? How many "record setting highs" could follow day after day?
There is a sort of madness associated with the heat, though it has nothing to do with divine sense. For my own part, I don't complain, at least not aloud. Lora does complain. She holds no secrets, at least not for long. There aren't many thoughts passing through her mind that don't find expression, and so I have never once had to wonder what she thinks or how she feels about something, and I absolutely love that about her. I am all secrets, not in the sense that I have malignancies of the soul that I must keep hidden, more in the sense that I live mostly within my own head, within Chrissy land as Lora sometimes puts it, and I really could go days without speaking to another soul unless drawn into it, happily preoccupied with whatever might be preoccupying me at the time. Normally that just means I'm introverted, and I rely (too much?) on Lora to draw me out, connect me with other humans, tether me to the Earth, though on those occasions when I am unhappy -- and the stultifying heat did drive me mad -- I can grow sullen, surly, selfish, and the last thing I want to hear is another's litany of complaint. I still don't complain, at least not aloud, but it isn't hard to imagine myself with a defiant glare that may as well shout, "shut up and suck it the fuck up." For her part, finding too little sympathy, Lora stood in our tiny bathroom and hacked half her hair off. The heat was driving us both mad.
It did, however, eventually break, and we settled into a routine or a succession of chores that facilitated daily living. Though Lora chided me about my single chore, which involved the hauling of water, fresh, grey and black. Near the entrance of the campground, the BLM provides both potable water and a dump site for waste. It is perhaps not surprising that the primordial task of hauling water to and fro takes on an outsized significance in the desert. Those that winter here every year have developed some rather elaborate methods involving trailers with two plastic 100 gallon tanks and pumps, along with the accoutrement of hoses and gloves. They store their water rigs for the summer at the Christian Center, who offer reasonably priced storage as a way of generating income in support of their evangelical activities. It's very unlikely that we will return her next year, and so our general rule applies -- if we acquire it, we must find a permanent space for it within the trailer, which, as it stands, would mean creating space by disposing of something else. My methods did not involve a rig, though we did have one accoutrement, what is called a blue boy, or more profanely a turd taxi. It holds about 25 gallons, and fortuitously Lora and I together give way to about 25 gallons of human waste a week. To be honest, I would not have thought it quite so much, but each Wednesday morning, there would be enough black water to fill the blue boy to the brim. I would haul it to the waste station behind the pick up, driving along at five miles per hour, and there I would dump and rinse out the blue boy. I would dump whatever other trash we had, and would fill the two blue plastic jugs set aside for fresh water. Each held six gallons of water each, which I would haul back and pour into the fresh water tank, completing the circle.
Likewise, once or twice a week, I would make a grey water run when those tanks filled. As it turned out, we created grey water at about twice the pace of black water, so one can do the math easily enough. When you are lifting and pouring water, you learn rather quickly to conserve it, though it's impossible to imagine a modern life that doesn't involve the consumption of about 15 gallons of water per person per week, and that excludes showers. Everyday, we would haul ourselves down to the Squaw Lake campground, where the BLM provided showers at the modest cost of a one dollar token for seven minutes of hot water. At first we showered separately, then economy won out over modesty and we began to shower together. There was a time when showering together might have occasioned an erotic adventure, and I can close my eyes and still see Lora as I saw her the first time, our intimacy has changed over the years. I wouldn't say for the better (there are times when we both miss the raw intimacy of physical desire) but I wouldn't say for the worse either. The subject comes up now and again -- the "what would you do if something happened to me" conversation -- and I am really at a loss at what to say. Losing her would create such a void in my life that I'm not sure how it could be filled, though I am relatively certain that I couldn't go on living really with it unfilled. I solve the dilemma by simply refusing to think about it, except when it is pressed upon me by a panicked imagination, when we are separated and she is late returning. In her more cynical moods, she says it's because she takes care of me, and of course she does in more ways than I can count, but it's more because she cares for me, and it's impossible to imagine anyone caring for me with the depth and breadth that she cares for me.
Lora's chores have remained pretty much the same. The rough division concerns outside and inside, which means I take care of things outside the camper, she takes care of things inside the camper. Many things cross the border of outside and inside -- like cooking on the grill or in the smoker -- but the one inside task from which I am excluded is house -- or rather camper -- cleaning. My job in that regard is to minimize my mess, particularly right after she has finished cleaning, the undoing of what she has done. I am not sure what occasions a thorough camper cleaning. It erupts spontaneously and doesn't seem to happen on anything resembling a schedule. From my benighted perspective the camper never comes close to the condition of filth, and only rarely is it really untidy, but there seems to be some internal valve in Lora that, when the camper reaches a certain level of dirtiness or slovenliness, it must be cleaned. I don't share in this task because, frankly, I would never do it well enough to suit her. She is the Maxwell's demon of our little universe, engaged in the perpetual struggle against the evil forces of dirt and disorder. When she goes into her demonic mode, I make an ineffectual offer to help, here and there, but mostly I just try to stay out of the way. In almost every way she is more spontaneous than me -- we wouldn't be on our little adventure were it not for her -- but there is a paradox deep at the heart of her spontaneity that seems anything but spontaneous. She abhors clutter, the accumulated disorder, which normally follows in the wake of those who would consider themselves spontaneous. Again, though, from my benighted perspective, her tidiness is a good trait to have when living in a small space.
All this by way of saying, we have a good marriage. It would be enormously foolish of anyone to expect that living on the road in close quarters would fix an ailing marriage. There is a line in a song I'm trying to write -- "trees don't move, but gypsies do, and so I've put my roots in you" -- that more or less sums it up. If one's connection to another is mediated through stuff, or through a place, then better to keep the stuff in place. There is another aspect to this "gypsy" reference, which distinguishes us from the snowbirds proper, those who have their homes in Missouri, or Idaho, or Quebec, and have come to the desert to escape the frigid temperatures of "home" through the worst of the winter. When we sold the house in Mountain Home, along with everything in it, we gave up on that idea of "home," and we more or less knew, when we did it, that there was no turning back, no starting over somewhere else. We're gypsies, on permanent diaspora. Lora commented the other day that we never quite fit, and in all our career motived moves in the past, from Alabama to New Mexico, to Michigan, to Illinois, to Utah, we have always made the attempt, but have never managed to quite fit, as though each place has sensed something in us and kept us on the periphery, just outside the boundary. We have rationalized it in any number of ways, but no matter where we go, there we are, always on the periphery, just outside of what might be called acceptance. As it must have been for the Roma, so it is for us, a perpetual mystery, and so we fantasize about finding a place to park at some point in the future, and eventually, no doubt, we'll need to just stop, but I doubt that we'll ever find a place where we really fit, a place to call home.
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