I decided to attend SkooliePalooza this year. It is an annual event for people who live in converted school busses. This year they invited us van folk to join them. I arrived a week ago on Friday to the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land just outside Parker AZ on the CA side of the Colorado River, and by Saturday, the rangers informed us that we were being kicked out. There were lots of rumors as to why this happened, and enough blame to go around, but in the end, a large caravan of skoolies and vans made it’s way to the new location just over the AZ border near Cibola. A few of us remained behind (we had 24 hours to decide before we had to leave). I was having so much fun on Friday evening and Saturday morning. They were my people…ALL of them! I ran into people from three of my different tribes along the way, and over and over, I felt “this must be what Woodstock was like.” Then, the next day, we were unceremoniously evicted and it felt once again like Nixon sending the National Guard in to quelch students who were promoting peace, love and music. It left me stinging and I had to return to get rid of that feeling. So I went to the new location. There were hundreds of skoolies and equally as many vans. Long hair, long beards, tie-dye, and love beads. Everyone I passed flashed a smile and a peace sign. Don’t laugh, but I well up with tears just typing this. This was the promise of the ‘60’s. This is the world I thought we were creating. This is the world that Richard Nixon stole from me. I had to take it back.
That night I went “into town” (Skoolie town, just a half mile down the road. I didn’t want to be in the thick of it as there was loud music, acid and mushrooms and partying until 4:00 a.m. (I’m still a hippie , but an OLD hippie. I need my sleep.) I was camped out with a variety of friends I’d picked up along the way. There were 5 vans gathered at the top of the hill. We walked the 10 minutes down into the main camp and joined the masses. The smell of pot and patchouli was thick in the air and I just couldn’t stop smiling as everyone who made eye contact had a smile and a gracious greeting. If someone brushed against me, they’d grab my arm and say “Oh, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going.” I’d reply, “No worries, neither was I.” We’d exchange smiles and fist bumps and say “Take care.” It was sincere, kind and meaningful.
At sunset, the group from my camp wandered down to center camp. We walked about a third of a mile down a dirt road leading into the thick of things. A few musicians played at center camp, and they had a blazing fire of used pallets. There were jeans and tank tops and much more elaborate costumes. I think it was impossible to not fit in. The highlight of my night was a man who came and said “I saw you earlier. You have great fashion sense” and when I looked he had on the same hoodie as I did. He said his grandma bought it for him when he left Alaska. We had to take a photo.
The added bonus is my friend Ben in the back, giving us the eye. When I showed him we both laughed at his unintentional photo bombing us.
My people left to go back to our camp a bit after 11:00 p.m. and although I would have liked to stay, it was way past my bedtime, and I wasn’t sure I could find my way back up the hill in the thick darkness of the moonless night, so I left with them. I went to bed around midnight.
The next morning I took Cosmo out for his morning walk and ran into my friend Marcos who I met several months ago at Joshua Tree. He was staying “downtown” in Skoolie City. I walked with him back to his camp so I could visit the coffee bus and get an extra shot of caffeine. We had a nice talk on the way.
I came back to our camp and mostly just hung out during the day. It was very sunny and temps in the low 70’s. It just felt good to sit out and soak up the Arizona sunshine. In the afternoon, Lauren and Ben (Friends from the LGBTQ+ van gathering a few weeks ago) were going back down into town (there really isn’t a town…it’s still BLM land, but we’ve taken to calling the center of the skoolie event “downtown” sort of as a joke, I guess. It’s huge, and does feel like a small town). I walked with them and we took in all the sites. There were vendors selling stuff from their busses, or on tables outside of their vans. There were people riding bikes, unicycles, small dune buggies. There were people doing aerial yoga and playing frisbee. Anyone I made eye contact with smiled and said hello, or waved or (my favorite) flashed the peace sign.
At night, a new person arrived at our site. It was Dani who I’d briefly met at the LGBTQ van gathering. Dani is vegan, and offered to make everyone Impossible burgers for dinner. We all sat around our campfire, cooked up the burgers and onion slices and tiny little rosemary potatoes in olive oil, roasted in foil. People brought out ketchup and mustard, and relish, and hot peppers. It was a feast. Thank you DANI!!! After we ate, most decided to go back into the festivities. I had pulled a groin muscle the first night here, taking a shortcut where we had to navigate a pretty deep ravine. I don’t remember doing anything specific, but by morning I had a swollen muscle in my right, inner thigh. After too much walking that day, I decided to stay behind with Tim and Jennie. We sat around the fire and shared stories of our travels. I went to bed earlier (we’ve been staying up to almost midnight most nights since we arrived here) and slept until Cosmo and the sun shining through my window decided I’d had enough sleep.
I got up and caffeinated, and some of us walked “into town.” It’s totally different during the day than it is at night. Perhaps there are two totally different “shifts”—the day shift and the night shift. Daytime brings out a softer, gentler spirit. It’s the same look of long hair, beards, love beads and tie-dye; maybe a little less of a carnival atmosphere, yet I think most of you reading this would probably think it was still pretty much a three-ring circus. There was a woman hanging from a tall tripod, many feet in the air, suspended on long bolts of fabric, doing yoga poses. Our friends Nat and Abbie that we met at the van pride event were selling vegan burritos (they were delicious with beans, rice, pomegranate, and maybe some sort of nuts?). There was a couple playing guitars on top of a large bus. They did a mash up of Beatles songs, and a few others that I knew. The guy was quite accomplished playing guitar and keyboards, and the woman had a beautiful voice. We watched what was left of their performance.
While eating my burrito, I met a man (I’d seen him around) with a carabiner as one earring, and a fairly large bolt as the other one. He had fingernails painted alternately turquoise and purple. I said I wanted a turquoise fingernail and he said “Well, come on over to my van and I’ll hook you up. I went over and he did indeed paint my left index fingernail turquoise. He asked if I wanted a cupcake and they were chocolate, so you know I couldn’t resist. I took one bite and said how delicious they were, and he said he pulled them out of the dumpster that morning! (Not to worry…they were still in the original, over-packaged, clear clamshell container). I had to laugh that someone was offering such delicious garbage and was a bit sad that the expensive bakery preferred to throw away day-old goods rather than donate them to someone who was hungry.
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Yesterday was my birthday. When I woke up and took Cosmo out for his morning walk, I heard shouts through several open van doors in our camp of “Happy Birthday.” I was touched. When I turned to come back into my van, I saw that someone (Dani) had hung a Happy Birthday banner across the side of my van.
Later, Tim and I sat outside and talked and his girlfriend Jennie asked if we wanted a sandwich. I, at first declined and then she said “Avocado, Mexican Mayonnaise, tomato, jalapeno and cashew.” Tim informed me it was amazing, so I said “Maybe a half.” Jennie brought Tim and herself a sandwich and handed me a half. I pretty much inhaled it and she went inside and brought me the other half. She beamed “Nobody eats half of MY sandwiches.” I was not about to prove her wrong, so I devoured the other half. In the afternoon, Dani asked if I was ready for my birthday coffee. Soon, a vegan latte with some sort of vanilla oat milk was handed to me. I have to say, it was quite delicious.
Around sundown, all who were left in my camp (Dani, Tim, Jennie and Bridget) went down to the main camp . (Dani drove ). We thought there was a potato feast, but when we arrived, we realized that we were supposed to bring our own potato; someone(s) were providing a table full of “fixin’s.” Tim and I were starving, so he, Jennie and I came back and made our own pot luck and ate in my van. We wanted to get back to main camp because there was going to be another live band, some fire jugglers, and other entertainment. So after we ate, we walked back down and found Bridget. (Dani had already returned to our camp. ). So the four of us stayed around the campfire of the people having the potato bake, and chatted for a bit. We each knew some of the people there from past camping experiences. It was a good group.
Then we wandered over to the main circle where they were having “Western Night.” Many of the people put on cowboy hats; some wore a bandana around their neck. A guy I’d heard before was on top of a bus/stage playing his electric fiddle. He was remarkable. He had a sound system that allowed him to play a percussion riff on the face of his guitar soundboard. He’d record a couple of bars and press some pedal and it would keep repeating that percussion sequence. He’d then record a fiddle score and add that to the background recording. He put the fiddle down and pulled the guitar strung across his back to the front and played a song, with full orchestration, provided by him. He was quite talented and a very good entertainer.
The crowd loved him. While he sang, fire jugglers came to the circle and performed. An aerial yogi performed (more Cirque du Soleil than yoga master).
After the concert concluded, a DJ came on. He was OK. The crowd thinned and we came back to camp. Dani had finished a work conference call and came out and lit a fire. Tim and I sat down and soon Bridget and Jennie came out of a van with a birthday cake ablaze with way too many candles. Bridget said “I bought eighty candles. We tried to put sixty-nine on, but they wouldn’t all fit.” They sang Happy Birthday, and we each had a slice of cake and sat by the fire. It was one of the nicest birthdays I’d ever had, and certainly one of the wildest parties.
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The next day, I woke up very late (for me, anyway.) The sun was up and I felt totally jet lagged. I looked at the clock and it was already 8:30. I normally get up around 6:00, so it felt like I’d slept through half the day. I didn’t do much for most of the day, but in the afternoon, I offered to cook soup for dinner. I gathered all my veggies in the fridge and put them in the Instant Pot with some vegetable bullion and tomatoes and beans. Turned out to be delicious. I had a loaf of bread and some garlic butter. We all sat outside and ate together.
After dinner I walked down to see my friend Jody and his girlfriend Amy. They were doing a concert at sundown. I ran into another man who I’d met at Quartzsite. Kenny is about my age and I was told he had recently had a stroke. He has made an amazing recovery. I’ve mentioned him before. He teaches gun safety programs. I believe he works for Fish and Wildlife in some capacity, but I don’t know what. Every time I see him, he grins ear to ear and always comes over and gives me a bear hug. Tonight was no different and he said “I’m so glad to see you again my brother.” I believe he meant it. He hugged me a long time and I hugged him back. My hat fell off while I was hugging him and another man behind me was holding it and dusting it off to hand it back to me. I thanked him and Kenney said “I love this man. He gives the best hugs.” I truly believe he does, and I truly believe that I do.
SkooliePalooza was to end Sunday at noon. The wind howled most of the night on Friday, and continued into the day on Saturday. Friday night was quiet from our vantage point up on the hill, just outside the skoolie camp. Bridget, Dani, Tim and Jennie and I were the only one’s left. Later Friday evening Terry (from DE) showed up. He is on his way back to Delaware but stopped to say good-bye to all of us. He was having second thoughts as he kept getting weather updates of the huge snowstorm blanketing DE with lots and lots of snow. We all sat outside our rigs and built a fire with what little firewood was left. We were geared up for a big skoolie concert like we had on Wednesday, but it seemed to not be happening. We still stayed up too late talking.
Saturday, everyone slept in. It was windy so no one seemed to want to get out of their vans. Terry came over and shouted outside my van asking if I was awake. I invited him in. I was awake, but still in bed, reading and drinking coffee. He came and sat in my front passenger seat (now turned backward), and I sat up in bed and we had a long talk about Delaware, life as nomads, where we would go next, when we may see each other again. We’ve known each other less than a month, and much of that time we were in different places, and yet, he feels like family to me. We hugged and he got in his van and drove eastward. (He just texted and had made it to Tucson where he’ll spend a couple days alone.)
By noon Dani and Bridget left. They both seemed tired and anxious to move on. They did so without much fanfare. So it was now just me and Tim and Jennie. They had planned on leaving on Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday. It was now Saturday and both of them, I think especially Tim knew it was time to go, but kept procrastinating. Tim got his drone out and took some aerial shots of us with the gathering of busses in the background. I’ll post some of them in my next YouTube video if he sends them to me.
Alone in my van with Cosmo. I could hear bass and drums from the event. And cheering. Lots of cheering. Part of me wanted to hike down and be in the thick of it; another part was quite content to sit there and listen from my van, and pet the dog snoring gently on my lap. The latter part of me won. So much happened this week, and it all happened so quickly, so intensely that I’d not had much time to process it all. I saw so many old friends I’d met on the road, and they had all, as far as I could tell, all left earlier in the day. I made some new friends, and I’m certain I’ll run into them again. Every time I went into the event, some stranger stopped me to compliment me on my hat, or my new hoodie, or my beard, or my smile. I have never, ever in my life been around so many happy, loving, kind people. I tend to think nice things about people often, but don’t voice it for fear they will think I’m weird, or hitting on them, or that I’m just some sort of freak. But when people say something nice to me, I am so renewed, and sometimes overwhelmed. I’ve learned this lesson: If you think something nice about someone, voice it! The world is too full of people who voice hate, aggression, division. How easy it is to say “Hey, I like your beads.” I truly believe that’s how the world starts to change into the world I’ve lived in this week.