The last day of Skoolie Palooza I was awake at 5:00 a.m. I watched as the sky in the east became lighter, and then blazing red and then the sun came up like the sky was on fire. It was extremely quiet as most of the inhabitants of Skoolie were on a very different sleeping schedule than I was. Some were probably just going to bed after a long night of partying.
After getting fully caffeinated, Cosmo and I and Terry and his dog Rocky walked down to the central camp area. Several mornings, there had been a woman making breakfast for a donation of any amount and I wanted to support her. She was indeed cooking breakfast, and I had the same idea as 50 other people who were all in line to get whatever she was making. I didn’t wait, but we walked around. The camp was mostly quiet except for the people who were on MY schedule. I had a few meaningful conversations about community, dropping out of society and the government fiasco that most avoided by living in school busses. We were in a different world. A world where everyone (for the most part) got along, despite differences. A world where we could feed strangers, or trade what we owned but no longer needed for something someone else no longer needed. There were “Free” signs everywhere, and blankets or tables full of “van life stuff.” I didn’t need anything, and I’d given away stuff in the fall at an RV park that had the same kind of “give something/take something” table. (I traded my TV for a can of refried beans then, and not only got the TV out of my way but enjoyed a delicious burrito later that day.)
I decided that I really wanted to join the festivities that night. On previous nights, I’d gone down too early; one night just after sunset when everyone was eating or getting ready to go out, and the next night a little later. Both nights it seemed very quiet and so I went back up the hill to my van only to find that by the time I crawled into bed, the festivities were just beginning. So I took a nap. When I woke up, many friends from previous adventures had shown up. Terry is a friend from Delaware who I’d never met until we were at a meet up in AZ last year. Marcos was one of my first friends on the road. We’ve camped together several times when our paths crossed. Heather and Rich, Bridget and Amanda were there as well. We’d met at a Gay Van Gathering last January, and Tim, who I’d met in Q last winter had given up van life, moved back to Baltimore and just last week changed his mind and headed west in his van again. He showed up the last night and all of us went out dancing at 10:00. Somebody had some chocolate infused with psilocybin mushrooms, and most of us had a piece. It was a miniscule dose, but enough to make the music a little more celebratory, the fire a little warmer, the night sky just a bit more spectacular. But most of all, it made the people jumping and dancing and laughing around us just a little bit more of a cohesive tribe. Nobody was a stranger anymore. We were all part of one big, happy tribe on the road.
I lasted until just past midnight. The party was just getting started, but I was beat. I went home and took Cosmo out for a good-night walk (Cosmo is not a fan of crowds and fires) and as I curled up with him in bed, I could still hear the thump, thump, thump of the bass down by the campfire. Rather than an annoyance, it felt comforting, and I soon drifted off to sleep.
In the morning many people were packing up to leave. I walked down to the main area with Terry. It was quiet. The party had apparently just ended right before sunrise. Already, there were lots of empty spaces. I considered moving my van down to the main camp since most of the official festivities were over but ended up staying one final night where I was just far enough up the hill to be away from the loud music at bedtime. It turned out to be a wise decision as that night they had one final post-event gathering which lasted into the wee hours. I spent some time in the morning with my friends, and then decided I needed some down time and Cosmo and I spent the afternoon in the van. By evening, I was once again ready for some socialization, but the wind had picked up, dust was blowing, and the temperature had dropped at sunset. We stayed in and went to bed early.
The next morning I decided it was time to “go back home.” That involved driving about ¾ of a mile down the road to my old spot. Bonnie had gone back the day before. When I got there, someone else had taken the spot I’d occupied since October, so I drove just a little further and parked on the opposite side of the road. The new space was huge, hundreds of yards away from anyone else, and overlooking a small canyon. After a week of crowds, it felt like heaven to have so much space and so much quiet. Cosmo and I walked down and resumed our morning routine of sitting outside Bonnie’s van and catching up. It was sunny and windless; we sat outside in shorts and t-shirts and by noon the sun was hot on our skin. By nightfall, the clouds had rolled in and the temperature dropped and we had bursts of rain and high winds all night.
Tuesday was “an inside day.” I caught up on e-mails, made a nice omelet for breakfast, and did some cleaning and photo editing. With the high winds it was fairly cold in the van, so I bundled up in my blanket and listened to some Audible Books. It was a good recharging day.
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I pulled into the BLM land just south of the Cottonwood entrance of Joshua Tree National Park. The weather was warm, and most of the sites were occupied. I drove past where I usually stayed and couldn’t find an open spot so drove back toward the entrance. My friend Chasen arrived soon afterwards. I’d met him one day at Skoolie and he had left for Palm Springs. He joined me at JTNP. We had dinner, built a fire and enjoyed a night in the desert. Kitty arrived the next day around noon and we got settled in, but weren’t ecstatic about our spot, so the following morning, we all hiked down the road and found the perfect spot.
The three of us set up camp with plenty of room to spread out and no one else anywhere nearby. It was heaven. I didn’t know Chasen very well but it took no time to be comfortable with him. He, and Kitty and I all got very comfortable, hanging out when we wanted, walking off alone if we felt like it, getting up and going to bed as we pleased. It really was a good combination of energies. We had an amazing bonfire that night and a potluck. Chasen made an amazing salad and I made burritos. I slept soundly and Cosmo was so worn out from all our walks that he slept in quite late.
Life is good. REALLY good. It is so easy to sit out in the sun, to take walks and collect fallen branches for our fire at night, listen to each other’s music, and just laugh. We laughed a lot.
Lessons From The Road: There is another world other than the one I grew up in and other than the one that CNN reports on 24/7. It is full of people who have dropped out of the political media circus. It is a world where winning doesn’t mean having more than others, but rather sharing what you have or don’t need with others so we can all be winners. It is a world where material stuff is not nearly as important as dancing with a stranger, where making breakfast for anyone who is hungry raises the vibrational level of those who are fed and flows on to those who were already full. It is a world where people I met a year ago find me again, tell me what they’ve learned, and then hug me, wish me well, and send me safely on my way until we meet again. It is a world where if your van won’t start, 5 people will offer to give you a jump, where if you run out of water, someone has extra to share. It is a world where you can sit silently next to strangers looking up at the stars until someone says “Wow!” and then you all laugh because nothing more needs to be said. That is the world I now occupy and I will never go back to that other world.