“Labor Day weekend. Lots of ATVs and OHVs cruising around the roads up here, and too many fishermen at the lakes and ponds when I checked yesterday, so today I’ll focus on getting a load of slash to the depot.
Cleaning up this property is therapeutic for me. I hope to have the cell phone booster and electricity by the end of the week. Time is passing quickly now. Leaves that don’t face the sun have begun to turn, and there is a crispness in the air when I first step out from the camper.”
–Journal entry: Sunday; September, 2nd, 2018; 11:15 am. In my camper, Cochise
The summer is drawing down, like water in a bucket left out in the sun, evaporating to mist – and there’s nothing I can do but watch. I am that mist. I’m evaporating from this place, and will blow south soon to condense and precipitate in a warmer environment, before the cold, shuttering snowfall locks this property in tight as a tick. I’ll roll down to New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment, a place I’ve only visited and never really took the time to look beyond the tourist destinations of Taos and Santa Fe – but I’ll give it its due this time.
Their state park system covers the corridor from the San Juan and Sangre de Christo mountains in the north down to the Chihuahuan desert, running from the high plateaus of southern New Mexico to the belly of the boiler in old Mexico. I’ll stay north of the border, though. Keep my gringo ass out of the killing zones of the drug cartels, furiously fighting to meet our country’s insatiable demand for their poison pills and powders. Some things are best observed from a distance. A safe distance.
But first I must wrap things up here, in the high timber of the Colorado Rockies. Gotta grab what I need from the shed and shed what I don’t need from Cochise. Find that balance between traveling light and having the right things for a winter’s stay away. I’ll let you know how that goes…
One last swing in the hammock, staring into the treetops and blowing in the wind, gather up the garden tools and outdoor furniture, kayaks, camping gear, gas jugs, buckets, birdfeeders and whatnot. Secure the shed doors and windows to discourage bears and tweaker thieves, haul off the garbage and give it all my blessing. Adios, Shtudiop! (shed/studio/shop) Cathcha’ on the flip-flop. (Sorry for that…Lo Siento)
Rambeaux (my eleven-year-old, gentle canine companion) senses a change coming and doesn’t leave my side. She looks at me with bat ears, awaiting an explanation. I don’t give one. There are still chipmunks and pine squirrels to chase while she can. Who knows what critters we’ll find on this road trip? Hopefully friendlies.
I close my eyes and breath deep the ponderosa and lodgepole pine smell, feeling a bit dizzy from the altitude. The locals say it takes a year at this elevation of 9,000’ for your body to build up enough red blood cells to handle the rarefied air. The locals are right. Gotta love the locals, wherever they are. I’m hoping it’s that way when I get to New Mexico. Again, I’ll let you know…
I think of the quiet pleasance of being at this place, in this moment, each moment, passing from one to the next, connecting the dots to make a line – a lifeline. That’s what it is, isn’t it? Just a bunch of moments making a life? I’d like to think so. I’ve been reading a book on basic Zen Buddhism, and that seems to be the way they approach life. I rather like that. I’m going to talk about seeking enlightenment, searching for nirvana, shaking my chakras to shed samsara and see if I can’t get someone to ask me if I’m Zen Buddhist, to which I will meditatively reply, “Yes…but only for the moment…” (Again, Lo Siento)
I think of the creatures who’ve accepted my presence here and show themselves unafraid: the hummingbirds and Steller’s Jays, the mule deer – young does eating the wildflowers and velvet-antlered bucks coming out of the dark forest swamp below my property…where I fear to go alone with my dog, always seeing moose sign near the springs bubbling up out of the forest floor, turning in circles in case I’m cat-tracked by a mountain lion, waiting for that lethal pounce.
But, I’m not that anxious to see if there’s a heaven or if it’s reincarnation. Not yet. If there is a heaven, I would certainly hope to go there. I’ve tried to live my life accordingly, with only a handful of transgressions. And if it’s reincarnation, I would hope to come back as a dog, and have someone like me as the owner/guardian. That would be really nice. Not sure if I can let you know how that goes, though…
So, I stay out of the swamp, the boreal forest of my mind’s eye, as the good hobbits tried to do with the Forest of Fangorn in The Lord of the Rings, until given no other choice by those warg-riding Orcs and Uruk-hais, fortunate to find shelter with Treebeard and the ents. You gotta love those ents. I sure do. But, I digress…
Yes, the summer is drawing down, and I must prepare to move out. I’ll hook BroBo, the “Bronze Bomber” Nissan Pathfinder, up to Cochise, a 1978 Holiday Rambler “Free Spirit” model, and see if that V-6 SUV can handle a 19’ tandem-axel travel trailer over hill and dale – and a mountain pass – to get to my destination, wherever that may be.
To be truthful, I have my concerns. To be blunt, I’m scared witless. “What ifs?” keep popping up in my mind, and I try to knock them back down, only to see them pop up somewhere else in my thoughts like some uncontrollable game of cerebral whack-a-mole. I need a cerebral shotgun.
What if…some car, truck or animal jumps in front of me at 65 mph and I have to lock up the brakes? I have trailer brakes, but I don’t want to have to jump on them under those circumstances. If I go off the road, I lose my home. Trailers don’t handle accidents very well.
I’m not going to take the interstate through Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo pulling a camper. I don’t like doing that without pulling something. I’ll have to go east out onto the plains before heading south and take my chances on the two-lane highways, facing potential danger head-on every time a vehicle comes the other way. There are also deer, antelope and coyotes out there that don’t look both ways before crossing a road. I’d have to splat them, and hope they don’t take out my radiator. I’d eat the meat and tan their hides, to honor their spirits. But I’d still have to get towed to a shop if they take out my radiator.
What if…I have to park in a deserted campground or wayside stop or maybe even a Walmart parking lot and some amped up tweakers decide at 3 am that I might be an easy mark for some cash or pawnables. I sleep with a pistol under my pillow, but I don’t keep a round in the chamber. What if I don’t rack it and squeeze off a shot in time? What if I do? Somebody might get killed, and I couldn’t live with that – especially if I’m the one who gets killed. Dat ain’t good.
What if… I do make it down to New Mexico and find out it’s not as enchanting as I’d hoped. Do New Mexicans like Coloradoans? Are my green license plates going to make me a target? I’ve noticed, in my lifetime, that border states don’t always cotton to each other too well. In Wisconsin we talked trash about “FIBs” (F’ing Illinois Bastards); in Wyoming, they don’t always seem overly friendly to “Greenies” (referring to our license plates); anyone not from California or Texas might have their prejudices against drivers from California and Texas. I don’t (honestly), but some people seem to. Stupid stuff, but real.
But I don’t care – and I have no choice. I can’t stay here. The HOA doesn’t allow it (you don’t gotta love those HOAs – I sure don’t), and neither will the weather. Yes, I live in the woods in the mountains, and I have a Home Owners Association (actually, two of them) telling me what I can and can’t do. Welcome to America in the 21st Century. Don’t get me going…
So, I cowboy up and face my fears. It’s all about the adventure. And getting away from frigid weather. Having grown up in Wisconsin and then spending a year in Alaska before moving to northern Colorado, I’ve never spent a year without snow, cold and icy roads in the winter – except when I was 2 years old and my dad was stationed at Fort Huachuca just north of the border in Arizona. But, I don’t remember that.
This is the reason I sold everything I didn’t need, donated or tossed everything I couldn’t sell, and bought a vintage trailer to live the life of a rubber tramp. It sounded romantic and carefree, and for the most part, it has been. But now it’s time for the rubber to hit the road, and it’s frightening. I don’t even want to think of what could happen to Rambeaux if something happened to me. She’s grown rather dependent upon me, and I upon her. I try not to think of any of these things, but just try to control your thoughts. Let me know how that works out…
I like to quote Mark Twain in these blogs. I just like the way that guy thought, and wrote. America’s greatest storyteller was pretty witty with words. He said, “Worrying is like paying a debt you don’t owe,” and I’ll take his word on that. If I want to be a writer, I’ve got to have things to write about, and you’ve got to write about what you know (unless you’re a fiction writer, which I’m not).
So, I’ll prepare my ride and get my mind right. Lewis and Clark went from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean rowing, poling and pulling a fifty-five-foot wooden keelboat as far up the Missouri River as they could, and hoofed it over more mountain passes than they had imagined before building dugout canoes and shooting down raging rivers to the mouth of the Columbia. This should be easier than that. I sure hope so, anyway. I’ll channel their explorer spirit and say “Oh, the joy!” when I crest Raton Pass and look down into New Mexico, as Meriwether Lewis exclaimed when the ocean came into view. And, dear reader, I’ll let you know how that goes.
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