If you find yourself having to tiptoe around others, you’re not walking amongst your tribe.
~Tanya Markul
Good Morning All,
The week flew by. Monday brought gorgeous weather, so Cosmo and I went to visit Bonnie across the “road.” We sat out in the sun, sometimes chatting, sometimes silent, just taking in the day and sunshine. We both knew I’d be gone in a couple of days. We may meet up in Yuma or Bisbee before Bonnie goes back to Ohio for the summer, but that is very dependent on timing and weather. We hung out again on Tuesday, and I got a bit of sunburn on my nose.
Wednesday morning, I drove over to Bonnie’s site and Cosmo and I said good-bye. She is a constant in my life through the winter, even if I’m staying in Quartzsite and she remains in Ehrenberg. We keep in touch and see each other often.
We took our yearly selfie together and then Cosmo and I headed west. I had to leave early to go into Blythe to sign and notarize paperwork for the sale of my mom’s house. That has not been an easy process given that my sister is the only one of my siblings that I speak to, and she doesn’t speak to our other brothers either unless the other brothers are harassing her or accusing her of some misdeed while she was taking care of my mother. I was worried about finding a place to print and notarize the documents in Blythe. It’s a small town and although driving through it I had the feeling of a quaint little town, walking in the downtown area I immediately noticed it was a ghetto town rapidly heading toward being a ghost town. Many of the businesses seem to have left, and many of the ones who stay have signs on their doors saying “By appointment only: Please Call…” ending in a phone number to a person who would presumably open up the business if someone wanted to actually do business. I eventually found a REMAX office and got everything done after calling the phone number on the door and having an extremely kind and helpful agent show up. She got everything printed out, notarized the docs, got me an envelope and printed out a label and gave me tape to attach it to the envelope. She copied the documents to a pdf file and e-mailed it to me so I’d have a record. I then had to drive to Ace Hardware, just down the road, and drop off the envelope as they are a UPS pickup spot. I’m hoping that gets me closer to the finish line of having my mom’s estate wrapped up, and being done with my brothers forever.
Giving a sigh of relief (literally), I drove to BLM land south of Joshua Tree National Park. Kitty already had a spot picked out. The sun was out and it felt so good to be outside. It’s strange to be sitting out in the sun in shorts and t-shirt and flip-flops and look over at snow-capped mountains not too far away. Some of my friends back east are shoveling snow, so I felt particularly lucky to be soaking up the sun in the desert.
Kitty went home on Friday morning, and I packed up and moved down the road. The BLM land was particularly crowded this week, and I expected it might get even busier with President’s Day Weekend upon us. The BLM land is off to the left of the main road leading north to the south entrance (Cottonwood Visitor’s Center) of JTNP. There are two roads heading west. They are pretty rutted and wash-boarded, but easily passible if one drives slowly. I think of it as being three sections (although there are sections past the third section that I’ve never explored). The first is closest to the paved road. There are two roads with camp spots in between and then bigger, more spacious plots to the south of the 1st road. Kitty was parked in between the roads past the first wash. It was a big spot, comfortable for the two of us, but when she left I figured it was likely that more people would be coming for the long weekend, and someone(s) would certainly feel they could squeeze in next to me in my big spot. I packed up and moved just past the second wash into a very nice spot that was on a ridge above the wash. The way it was set up is that one would have to cross the wash on the northernmost dirt road, pull off and make a U-turn and head back to the wash. I felt pretty comfortable that I was not in a spot likely to draw anyone wanting to share my space because not only was it past the second wash (very lightly populated) but there was no way anyone could park on the other side because they’d be IN the wash.
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It was already a busy week at JTNP, but by Friday they started coming in droves. Having crossed the second wash, I was alone except for a small van parked a couple football fields away. By the afternoon, a man pulled in across the wash from me and took the equivalent of my spot but on the opposite side. After nightfall, he was joined by someone in a car who put up a tent next to his rig. When I was getting ready for bed, a truck pulled in between me and the other van parked on my side of the wash. They made a big ordeal of putting up a tent and then an E Z Up gazebo. They strung lights around the gazebo and set up chairs and a table and built a fire. I was thankful that they did all this quietly. Earlier in the day when Cosmo and I went for a walk, we passed where we had stayed with Kitty. Someone had already taken our site and next to them was 4 or 5 vehicles and an ant farm of what appeared to be high school kids. They were playing loud music and shouting over it to each other while they set up camp. I overheard one shout “Which cooler should we put the Red Bulls in?” I just laughed at how different our lifestyles were, even though we were staying on the same land. Fortunately, they were far enough from me that if they were loud at night, I didn’t hear them, though I did hear fireworks just before midnight, and I suspect it was them. Being south of both roads that run parallel to the I-10, there was nothing but land and scrub brush between me and the interstate, giving Me and Cosmo plenty of room to walk and play ball off-leash.
Lessons From The Road: I found myself slipping into a different mode this week. Last summer I bounced between two or three spots in Flagstaff, but still managing to stay close to the same sources of propane, drinking water and groceries. I felt very settled. In the late summer/early fall, I moved into Utah to camp with my friends Felix and Kent, but again, I knew where I was staying well in advance of moving. Then I wound my way down to Q and Ehrenberg, stopping at familiar BLM land north of Phoenix on the way. It’s been a long time since I was leaving with a final destination in sight, but unsure of where I’d stay along the way, and not knowing where to find water, food or propane. I started making tentative plans, but realized there were just too many unknowns to get much of a plan together, so from here on out, I’ll be winging it until next September. I have a vague notion of where I can stop along the way, but I have no idea how long I’ll stay at each place since many are unfamiliar to me. It caused me a slight bit of anxiety to venture into the unknown again, but this week I’ve resolved my issues and remember that I ventured into the complete unknown 3 years ago and made it just fine. I have three years’ experience under my belt, so whatever unknowns I encounter, I should be well equipped to deal with them. The minor anxiety has been replaced by a growing excitement and sense of adventure to be heading into the wild once more.
I also spent some time this week thinking about my tribe. Three years ago, anyone in any kind of RV felt like “my people.” I learned quickly to differentiate between weekenders and people living a life on the road. One of my first distinctions was size of rig. I thought that people in anything bigger than my van were living a life on the road that was totally different from mine. That turns out not to be true, although I must say that so far I’ve not met many people in giant class A’s (think Greyhound bus) who I consider kindred spirits. I’ve encountered people living in much smaller spaces who I do consider to be my tribe. Some are in tents, or even living in cars. All that being said, I am starting to realize that neither the amount of time spent out in the wild, nor the size of your traveling home are not good indicators of whether or not a person meets my “tribal standards.” I have found exceptions to all the rules I had in my head as to who is “one of us.” I don’t have any conclusion at the moment; just thinking out loud. But I definitely have ruled out some types. People who leave trash behind, whether in bags or not are not my tribe. People who smash bottles and leave cans in a campfire ring are not my people. Campers who run generators or play loud music late at night are not people I want to know. There are those who seem “tribe adjacent” to me as well. They could be weekend campers, or people traveling from one place to another and have ended up camping next to me. I’ve had some very nice chats, and meaningful conversations with such people. I haven’t decided if they are “my tribe” yet, but they are at the very least, a friendly, neighboring tribe.