When I was 56 years old, I realized that things were not quite working out as I had hoped they would. This was 2016. The country was finally coming out of the “Great Recession” that had dominated and decimated the economy the previous decade. I was coming out of the recession too; I just didn’t seem to be any better off than when I went in. If anything, it was worse.

   Suddenly, I was on the outside of the bubble looking in through the backside of a one-way mirror. It was then that I realized that something had to change – drastically. Now. Ahora mismo!

   I was working in the same industry that I’d been working in for over 25 years, but I was being paid less than two-thirds of what I’d been making a decade earlier, and the price of gas, groceries, rent and almost everything else necessary for survival had more than doubled. My standard of living was quickly diminishing. Industry wasn’t screaming for aging Baby Boomers who lacked mac daddy computer skills. Artificial Intelligence (AI) was infiltrating the workforce, assimilating the tasks that were binary in nature, doing the “if not this, then that” calculation at Mach-plenty.

   Working a dead-end job that paid subsistence wages so I could maintain my existence in a run-down apartment in a deteriorating neighborhood just didn’t make sense. Hell, it was straight-up depressing. Thinking about it made it more depressing. But try not to think about it. You can’t. What you can do is take action. So, I did. Faced with the universal algorithm that was an anthem of the Clash (one of the early punk rock bands) in the 80s, I asked myself, “Should I stay or should I go?” I favored the latter.

   So I bought a cheap piece of dirt in the mountains near the most beautiful lake I’d ever seen, in a magical valley partly created by the Cache la Poudre River as it divides the Never Summer and Medicine Bow mountain ranges in the Colorado Rockies about 12 miles south of the Wyoming border – at a little over 9,000’ feet in elevation.

   Dowdy Lake is one of many that comprise the Red Feather Lakes Village non-metropolitan area. The Village, as it’s called, is home to a little more than 500 souls year-round, but in the summertime it swells well beyond the thousands as folks from the flats come up to their summer homes and cabins, or camp in the developed campgrounds or boondock it on public land. The mountains have their allure. A siren call to some, a summons.

   I began shopping for an affordable camper trailer that I could put on my property for the summer months, and head south with when the weather started to turn. I’d heard great things about New Mexico’s state park system and how cheap it was to camp there. I found an inexpensive, “vintage” camper made in 1978 called the Free Spirit by Holiday Rambler, out of an area in Indiana that was the camper manufacturing capital of the US after WWII. It was an instant fit. I had graduated high school in 1978. And, as far as a Free Spirit? Well, hell…

   Through an experienced contractor who provided mobile service I brought it up to the 21^st century with a new furnace, gas lines, fittings and tanks. I changed the lights from incandescent to LED, cutting the kilowatt draw to one-sixth of what it was and bringing better, cooler light. New tires, fresh grease and seals in the wheel bearings, a top-shelf marine grade battery and some cosmetic details, and I was no longer dependent upon a landlord or mortgage to live. I felt like Lewis and Clark when they first saw the ocean, knowing their journey was coming to fruition. Oh! The joy.

   Now, I just had to get rid of anything that wasn’t absolutely essential and – somehow – would fit in the limited storage of a 19’ camper. No sweat. I posted things on Craigslist with lots of pictures. I tried some other sites too, but I’ve always liked Craigslist. Just have. What I couldn’t sell I gave away, and what I couldn’t donate or recycle I tossed. It was cathartic. I felt unburdened, and sore. Too many CRT TVs, furniture, tools, boxes of kitchenware, books, knick-knacks and bric-a-brac. My lower lumbar was sending me messages. I ignored them out of necessity. I’d given notice to my landlord, and I needed to get out.

   I ended up having to rent a small storage space just to get out of the apartment on time, or pretty close to it. I knew I could put a 10’x12’ shed on the property, so I figured I’d build that once I got settled, and everything would be jake. I’d built several sheds over the years, and had a buddy in Cheyenne who was willing to help. He had a compressor and nail gun too. Seemed eminently doable.

   Quick came a lesson: In the mountains, the weather rules. My plan had been to put the camper on the property May 1^st, and I didn’t need to be out of my apartment until the end of May. I had a buffer. My apartment in Loveland was less than an hour from the property, so I thought I could shuttle back and forth with my 4’x8’ utility trailer once the camper was settled. Then came a late snow.

   My son and I had been ice fishing at Dowdy and West Lake for the past couple years, and this winter had been a short season because of warm weather in December and January. We finally got on the hard water in February and March, but one Saturday in late March we showed up to open ice – soft water. Fortunately, as property owners we were allowed to fish the private lakes and ponds in our area because it was developed as a subdivision when it opened in 1969, called Crystal Lakes.

   The man who built the community had the vision – and the financial ability – to develop nearly 5,000 acres into 1,600 lots (about half of which have permanent structures while the others are for sale or used for RV camping during the summer season – not allowed in winter). He damned Panhandle Creek to create small ponds and one large lake (Panhandle Reservoir, but known locally as The Big Lake). He cleared paths through the forest to build nearly 100 miles of dirt roads leading to all the properties. He constructed a communal center, called Basecamp, with office hours, community meeting rooms, bathrooms/showers, laundry and a payphone for emergency calls. There’s mail service, road maintenance, hiking trails, water fill stations, RV dump stations, a trash compactor and a very capable volunteer fire department. All funded, of course, by HOA fees. Gotta love those Home Owner Associations. But, I digress…

   We left the open ice and sunshine at Dowdy and drove up to Crystal Lakes, nearly 1,000 feet higher, going into a different world. Clouds blocked the sun here, and the wind got funneled through the mountains, gaining velocity as it gets squeezed. Ice covered the Big Lake but the wind was intimidating. Hard to set up the shanty when gusts are over 30mph. Bad idea. You could end up chasing your blowing shanty over thin ice covering 60 feet of cold water. Not good. But we found 20” of ice on a small pond sheltered by trees, and we had a blast. But again, I digress…

   The snow was above my knees on the property when I visited it in late April. Solar exposure was limited by daylight, a soft angle from the sun and seventy-foot lodgepole pines that pulled the curtain early. I waited for the weather. It didn’t seem to care.

   I was anxious to get my camper out of the back alley at my apartment complex. Loveland has a meth (and opioid) problem – like the rest of our country – and the local tweakers (meth heads) rather like to break into vehicles, garages, campers and anything else that might provide pawn fodder for the next high. Gotta love the tweakers.

   Time to take action again. Dowdy Lake campground is one of the busiest in Colorado during the “season” (Memorial Day to Labor Day, basically) and you can only make reservations online (it books up very quickly). During the off-season it’s different. The water stations are shut off because of freezing, but the electricity is still on and the pit toilets get maintained. It’s self-pay, and not cheap at $20/day, but if there isn’t a host on site nobody checks on you. These are gifts from the camping gods. Be grateful, and quiet.

   So, I pulled my camper up to Dowdy and found a dandy spot in early May. Now, I had two homes: a vintage camper in the idyllic mountains, and a ghetto apartment in Tweakerland. The ultimate binary domicile option.

   But that’s another story…