Happy Solstice, Happy Hannukah, and Merry Christmas. Cosmo and I moved to Quartzsite, AZ on Monday. I had ordered a couple things online and anticipating a visit to Quartzsite, had them shipped to a postal (copy center) place there. Quartzsite is an easy journey from Ehrenberg. It’s fewer than 20 minutes to the east. I pulled in and went to the same spot I occupied last winter. It was empty and was big enough to share. My friend Kitty was coming for a few days, so it was perfect for us. I met some of my neighbors across the “road” from me. One does leather work. As a kid, my father did a LOT of leather projects, and so I was familiar with some of the tools and most of the jargon. Jake is a very nice man, and he has a three-legged dog named Trip. We spent some time outside together, talking and sharing stories. It was nice getting to know him. Next to him was another man, Greg, in a large Skoolie. He too seemed very nice, but we only had a brief conversation before it got too dark (and cold) to stay outside for long.
The town of Quartzsite was coming to life. It is a tourist town, with (according to the Great Google Machine) about 2500 year-round residents, and nearly 2,000,000 humans from the northern states and Canada crowding in during the winter months. The copy center where I receive my packages was buzzing and I recovered one of four packages. The others wouldn’t arrive until Wednesday or Thursday and I ended up collecting them before returning to Ehrenberg.
The weather was still a bit cooler, with lows in the 30’s at night but it got to the upper 60’s during the day and the sun sure felt warm on my face, so no complaints. You don’t have to shovel sunshine off your front steps.
The Winter Solstice was nice and mostly quiet. Kitty and I built a fire. We lit it as soon as the sun set over the mountain. We wrote two lists: The first was all of things we wanted to let go of in the coming year and the other was of things we wanted to be more present in our lives. We tossed the lists silently on the fire with little fanfare and then sat back and just watched the sky as the longest night of the year settled in.
The crowd in the section of Quartzsite where we were camped was a tad annoying. There was a loud, obnoxious young woman parked across from us, slightly up the road. She would come out of her camper in the morning and yell “Good morning, world.” I’m sure she thought she was cute. She went out of her way to strike a yoga pose when anyone passed, and when she talked to anyone, there was always loud, intolerable laughter, which always sounded to me much more for show than to acknowledge something humorous. She seemed to always be doing something that screamed “Look at ME.” Up the road was a skoolie with three feral children all under the age of 5. They had two aggressive dogs that were always off-leash, and the first day, they came charging toward me and Cosmo, with the kids running barefoot after them over rocks and broken bottles and a woman standing by the skoolie screaming for the dogs and kids to return. They made me uncomfortable. I thought perhaps I was being judgmental but when Kitty arrived, she was there only a short time before saying “This part of the BLM land feels a bit sketchy to me.” So it wasn’t just me. Throughout the day, quite a few rundown rigs pulled in, stopped for a bit and pulled out. It seemed there could be some drug-dealing going on. Kitty said she was sure the loud woman was on speed. She (Kitty) had worked in rehab before and said “Oh yeah. Definitely a tweaker.” I think she probably was right. By Friday morning, we had both grown weary of our neighbors and Kitty said “Let’s move back to Ehrenberg. I want to see where you’ve been staying.” We drove east 17 miles and pulled off at exit 1 on Route 10 in Arizona, and up a steep and rutted road to my campsite, which was still empty. I pulled in and Bonnie came out down the road and waved both arms. Kitty got pulled in nearby and we went down to chat with Bonnie. It felt good to be home.
At night we built a bonfire and Bonnie joined us. The weather had warmed up a bit and it was very pleasant to stay outside around a fire. I was so relaxed to be back in Ehrenberg and away from some of the craziness in Quartzsite. Kitty stayed with me until Christmas Eve, then she headed home so she could do Christmas with family.
Cosmo and I went down to visit Bonnie, and later drove down the hill to Ehernberg (about 2 miles away) and topped off our water supply and got a few things at the dollar store. We came back and sat out in the sunshine, where it was in the mid-seventies. The sunset, as always was gorgeous.
Life is good, easy and best of all, warm.
Lessons From The Road: I happened to look up at my pot holder, hanging by the stove. I had bought it over 2 years ago, the same week I bought my van. “Live Your Dream” held so much promise. I’d watched so many YouTube videos of young couples. Wherever they stopped for the night, they opened up their back door and looking out from their bed was either the ocean with the setting sun or hoodoos with the Milky Way above them. They were always the only ones in these beautiful spots, far removed from the rat race. Their vans were always pristine, the bed always made (except if they were in it and even then, the comforter and matching pillow shams were always like someone had staged it all for an open house. I looked at my once-new potholder.
I felt a sudden sadness that the potholder was scorched from dropping on the stove at some point, and had a hole on one side, and had clearly been used and abused for two years. And then a smile spread over my face. The potholder looked like this because I AM living my dream. If it had been wrapped in plastic and tucked away in a drawer, it might still look like new. It doesn’t. And I’m sure I show the same wear and tear from two years of living in a van. And I immediately felt proud of each new scar–two from dog bites nearly a year apart, some from cactus thorns, scraping across my bare legs and arms as I explored the desert, and some cracks on my fingers and feet just from the scorching sun and dry dust that I am exposed to on a daily basis. “Living My Dream” looks nothing like the YouTube videos, or like the pristine scenarios I watched while preparing to get on the road. And yet, I wouldn’t trade the real version for the YouTube version. I like the scars and scratches and the new lines around my eyes. As Mae West said, “Growing old is not for the faint of heart.”