Witness two scenes—less than a week betwixt.
Scene I. I squat on my haunches, a stone the size of a smallish melon in both hands. My back is rounded; my shoulders heave. There’s blood on the stone. It’s 8 am, and the sun is already unforgiving, baking the yolk yellow desert floor. “I’m sorry,” I manage through ugly, gasping sobs. “I am so, so sorry.”
Bart the horny toad, one of my regular visitors during self-isolation in the southern Arizona desert
I’ve not slept more than three hours a night for the better part of a week—tiny scratches evoking visions of gnawed wiring, hidden nests set ablaze in my engine, interminable infestations, and contaminated food storage. Daytime temperatures have rocketed to triple digits. It’s time to move. Sans AC, traveling in the morning is imperative, and I’ve long missed my 6 am departure.
The stone drops. I scoop the motionless body into a bag. I can still see the shiny black beads full of life looking up below the hovering stone, the throbbing chest.
It’s not the death I find shameful per se. It’s the slowness of it. It’s the weakness in me that mutinied against finishing what I’d started, prolonging suffering. And isn’t that a sad truth? That more than we’d like to admit, it’s weakness, inaction that’s true cruelty.
My favorite cholla
Though this spot has homed me so long I can describe its contours with my eyes closed, I climb in the cab, start the engine, and don’t look back. Not with me, the mesquite and ocotillo I’d planned to harvest for a salve and a tincture. I don’t bow to the field of prickly pears, their marmalade midday blossoms an exquisite secret I share during modest, dusty pink nighttime cloister. I don’t cast a final grin to the psychedelic blue-green jumping cholla who, indeed, sent a barbed jumper or two my way on occasions I got too close. Nor do I turn over the slab to chance one last glimpse at the horny toad, Bart, who flattens himself expertly beneath it. And it’ll be a ways down the road when I’ll curse, giving thought to the rusting watering trough and the bags of garbage piled within—the detritus of thoughtless former visitors—that I’d meant to take with me.
Prickly pear, southern Arizona desert
Sunset at my desert home
Scene II. “Who’s your mama!?” I whoop, eyes wet, arms flung wide. I shimmy to the whir of the fridge fan singing my ingenuity, my capability. I strut to its falling temperature gauge. I am reviver! And I am blissfully indebted.
Outside Ruby’s doors beckon trails wending through thick ponderosa pine, sagacious alligator juniper, sweeping manzanita with arms so red they could be talking blazes, and jaunty holly bushes. Large boulders and patches of long green grass contour my home for the week. On my yoga “studio”, a bed of pine needles, the glossy blue-black raven who roams this field bounces his considerable body high into the air again and again, a seeming feat of magic and ritual, and then run/flies, taking off much in the manner I do in flying dreams.
Prescott National Forest, Arizona
Inside, I’m heady with a mix of candy canes and pumpkin pie and pride. For two blissful nights, nary a scampering has sounded.
When I arrived in this high-elevation forest haven late evening three days earlier, multiple evictions attempts (high-frequency plug-ins, engine revving, moving spots, the horridly inefficient snap traps) had proved perturbingly unfruitful. That I’d at least discovered a more instantaneous method of bringing about the demise of my squatters—a trap that administers electric shock (no kill-free traps to be found at the hardware store)—gave only a modicum of relief. On top of it all, the mechanic I’d seen earlier in the day for a tune-up had inadvertently pulled an already-too-loose wire (my doing) looser, melting my refrigerator’s 12v plug.
I crawled into bed, hoping for some sleep before the tiny claws and prolonged zap snapped open my eyes, the fully stocked fridge slowly warming. And I played with notions I didn’t fully mean, but self-pity can be tempting elixir. What have I done? How the fuck did I think I could do this? Where am I going to tuck my tail and crawl back to now?
In the morning, a good friend helped troubleshoot the electrical issues. Another reminded me to breathe, to trust myself. I let the fridge be.
Sunrise from bed, Prescott National Forest
I pulled everything out of the van, washed every nook and cranny, and sprayed peppermint oil like a teen deploying his first bottle of AXE. I probed the engine from above and below, peered under seats and shelves, and stuffed peppermint-soaked cotton balls into vents and along the tires. I planned to pee on the tires if that didn’t work. Boiling pots of cloves, I let the steam waft through Ruby’s inners. Need I mention peppermint and cloves are supposed rodent deterrents? As I worked, I was serenaded (from a safe social distance) by the guitar renderings of a fellow road dweller I’d first met at a gathering months back (Rubber Tramp Rendezvous).
Day 2, I hiked to Thumb Butte; communed with curious young mule deer with floppy ears, stink bugs with their ample black butts, and a new redder horny toad; played my entire short repertoire of guitar songs; read; and lay on the folding couch I take outdoors for long stays or nights under the moon, gazing at the stars until sleep tugged at my eyelids.
A sweet little spot to strum and read and gaze at the stars
Refreshed, I was ready on day 3 for electrical work. My mission—head to town for a cigarette lighter outlet rated for 15 amps or greater and a 12v plug matching the male end of the melted plug (hopefully, first narrowing options to avoid multiple stops during these pandemic times). The former, I’d wire into the fuse box; the latter I’d splice onto the fridge cord. Fortune smiled; I met up with a couple (who’ve spent an amazing 25 years of sans-brick-and-mortar adventuring together!) on my way. They had an even better idea. Skip the outlet, cut the plug off the cord, and splice it directly to the fuse box. I had everything I needed in my toolbox. No town visit necessary. My new friends offered their spot for my workstation, lest I had complications.
And voila! The joys of modern refrigeration are mine once more.
***
Timidity is a fill-in. It stands for old patterns. The allowing of others’ voices—real and imagined—to diminish the me-est parts of me. The stifling (and oxymoronic) condition of feeling needed and “good” as a prerequisite to following the quest of my heart.
I’ve known as long as I could imagine a life for myself that my soul’s proverbial drumbeat led far off the course presented me. And while anyone who knew me can tell you I jumped off it headlong at first opportunity, willy-nilly was at the helm, masking constraints with false bravado. So I stayed too long with a man who told me he’d supported my plans only because he thought I’d “grow out of them”—and sundry such concessions. I’ve also known since, as a kid I would forego sleep, stuffing a towel in the crack below the door so I could get away with reading till dawn, that I had the soul of a writer or at least wanted one badly. And the last time I submitted a piece, SASEs were a requisite, online submissions not yet a thing.
I’ve indulged, no doubt—in men, in whiskey, in guilt, in self-imposed penance. And I’ve dipped my toes in the nomadic life that has long whispered that, in it, I would be able to indulge in me. There were the few months in an RV alongside a river in Appalachia amid a cloud of post-divorce grief; a longer stint wending my way with a backpack up the East Coast to Canada; a couple months in South America; a couple more in the back of my Toyota pickup, Virginia “Ginny” Vulvina; a month bikepacking the Oregon coast. All were wonderful. But this time feels different—an awakening, a purging, a returning. It’s a moving toward, not away from.
A dear longtime friend—whose own story beams bravery and boldness—expressed curiosity about what I’m doing. Thank you, Bobbi, for asking. I’m riding the heady highs and cleansing lows of life on the road, be the experience altered greatly (as for everyone) by this pandemic. I’m living in the van I built out last fall and boondocking in national forests, dashing into cities, mask intact, to restock and scurry back out. I’m reviving refrigerators and long-held dreams. I’m bidding farewell, or trying anyway, unwanted guests. I’m indulging in me.
Thumb Butte, Prescott National Forest