“Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning
And the first thing that I knew
There was milk and toast and honey
And a bowl of oranges, too
And the sun poured in like butterscotch
And stuck to all my senses\
Oh, won’t you stay? We’ll put on the day
And we’ll talk in present tenses”
-Joni Mitchell
It’s been a beautiful week here at the Magic Circle. It started out hot, but there was a breeze, so we managed. Monday was supposed to cool down, but as usual, the weather forecast was wrong and it was in the upper 80’s with very little air moving. But the wind picked up, and by Tuesday morning it felt cold with all the van windows open. It dropped down into the low 50’s and only got up to around 70 during the day.
Cosmo and I are taking walks every morning and afternoon. We are surrounded by trails and we’ve taken the one closest to us (just about 30 feet outside the back door of the van) and walked it. It makes a loop just slightly over a mile and returns us home. It’s good exercise for both of us and we often meet people along the way. I think walking the trails is the main entertainment here in the Magic Circle.
The sunrises and sunsets are spectacular nearly every day, and I wake up at the first light of dawn and sip coffee as I face toward the east and see the sun set the clouds on fire before making an appearance. It is a religious experience.
I’m taking this move to Q as a starting point to start new and better habits. I’m eating better and exercising every morning using rubber bands (big ones, not the kind in your desk drawer). Then we go for a walk before breakfast. The days feel easy with very few chores that must be done.
On Thursday I drove over to Ehrenberg to pick up something at the post office. I decided to get a P.O. box and I now have an address through April. I will be needing to renew my license plates from South Dakota and my passport which expires in January, so it will be good to have a safe place to have them sent. Also, if I need to order anything, I now have an address to send it to. After that I drove into Blythe, CA and got groceries, to Ace Hardware to get peat moss for my composting toilet and then back to my old spot on Ehrenberg BLM land. It wasn’t the same without Bonnie there. She is still in OH recovering from shoulder surgery. She is missed. I spent an uneventful night there in my huge spot overlooking the “asphalt mine.” I’m not really sure what they do down there. It is a huge quarry-like hole in the ground where lots of trucks and bulldozers and conveyor belts move lots of dirt. Trucks come and go delivering asphalt to road crews throughout the state. They have weird shifts; Sometimes they work 24/7. Other times they are silent. Sometimes they are quiet for days and then start up with some sort of sifter that makes a horrible racket at 11:00 p.m. They were quiet while I was there.
On Friday, I finished up chores by picking up a package at the post office, getting gas and propane and stopping inside the LTVA to fill my fresh water tank and dump trash. I returned with everything topped off and won’t have to move for at least 10 days.
With the onset of November, the snowbirds are gradually arriving. I’d enjoyed not having anyone parked near me. That was short-lived as two giant, Greyhound bus sized rigs pulled into “my neighborhood.” One is several football fields away and not visible from inside the van because of trees in between us and them. The other is right on the other side of the walking path. It’s an older couple with a dog, so it is unlikely I’ll have to deal with noise from them. Still, with 450 acres of land for people to camp on within the Magic Circle, I always have to wonder why anyone would feel the need to park 50 yards from someone they didn’t know. My new theory is that they are “city folks” and since their house is probably only a few yards from neighbors on either side, they consider parking 50 yards away as a huge distance. I’ve decided that the Universe is going to force me to get over my issues with people parking too close to me by continuing to bring me new interlopers wherever I camp.
Lessons From The Road: I noticed something when I drove to Ehrenberg Post Office and then into Blythe for groceries. I never checked the time once. There has been a subtle difference being here between Q and Ehrenberg along the I-10 corridor. It is almost imperceptible, but it feels more like home than almost any other place I stay throughout the year. I am more relaxed (If I get any more relaxed, you’ll need a sponge to soak me up off the ground). I didn’t look at the time, because it didn’t matter. Often, I rely on a clock to tell me if it’s time to eat or to go to bed. When running errands, it is a habit to look at the clock to see if I am running behind schedule (a phrase that holds absolutely no meaning to me, but is still engrained in my thought process from 50 years of working, mostly in my own business.) When I realized I didn’t care what time it was, I also realized what a good thing that is. It is irrelevant what time I finish my chores, or what time I return to my site at Ehrenberg. It just doesn’t matter. I have been fighting the clock since I got on the road, trying to get more and more independent of “time.” Not looking at what time it is while running errands means that I’ve finally let go of that feeling of “better hurry up if you want to stay on schedule.”