“If the rain comesThey run and hide their headsThey might as well be deadIf the rain comes”
~Lennon/McCartney
Good Morning All,
My friend Charlie lived in Rehoboth Beach, DE during the summer and in Key West during the winter months. One year I rented a small cottage in Dewey Beach, and he gave me some advice: “Treat holiday weekends at the beach the same way you would treat a hurricane. Stock up on supplies, get inside, lock your doors, and hunker down until it passes.” He was of course comparing the hoards of tourists (the locals at the beach often refer to them as “Tourons”) to a devastating storm. I didn’t fully understand until my first 4th of July weekend actually living at the beach. The small beach town that I lived in during the winter was sparsely populated. Many of the tourist attractions closed down for most of the off-season, and even grocery stores selling necessities closed early most days. But in the summer and especially on holiday weekends, the small town of a thousand locals was invaded by tens of thousands of people from Wilmington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC and beyond. They came to rape and pillage. They packed the bars and restaurants, and spread out their blankets, chairs, and umbrellas, claiming huge plots of real estate on the beaches. That week they had paid a lot of money to vacation where I lived all year long. They brought with them a sense of entitlement. They’d cause a scene in the grocery store because there were three people ahead of them in line to check out. They’d ask for the manager at a restaurant that had made them wait over a half an hour for a table. They’d honk their car horns in traffic that was at a standstill because they were heading to the outlet malls, never thinking for one minute that *I* was heading to work and stuck in the same mess as they were. From my perspective, the derogatory label of “Touron” was well earned.
I bring this up, because last week here outside of Flagstaff, I settled into a nearly deserted forest. The weather had cooled off quite a bit and there were afternoon thunderstorms. There was mud that stuck to everything and threatened to suck the shoes off my feet, but there were also wildflowers and billowy clouds, and mountains and tall pines. It was sheer bliss for the most part. The man at the local RV park where I get propane and drinking water told me the season was over here. He said most kids were back in school and everything quiets down from here on out. Normally, the places I stay start to get people coming in on Thursday nights and they clear out Sunday mornings. The “weekenders” (the forest-dweller’s version of Tourons) come and go and I realize it is a part of nomadic life in beautiful, free spaces.
But nobody came on Thursday night. The forest where I was staying remained relatively empty and I had a huge spot to myself. In June, I had the same spot and shared it with 4 other vehicles. Friday night, a couple small rigs came in and parked far down the road. I gave a sigh of relief, prematurely, it turns out. As I slept Friday night, they invaded. I woke up to a large group of campers on the other end of my site (several football fields away and separated from me by many tall pines). Down the hill was a man setting up for what seemed to be the long haul. He had a tent, and an Easy-Up canopy. He zip-tied a camouflage-printed tarp between two trees. He hung a hammock and stretched a rope across two other trees, basically blocking the “driveway” into the site I occupied. I couldn’t figure out why, until later I saw he hooked his two dog’s leashes to the rope, giving them the run of the site. He set up a makeshift kitchen, and a “living room” consisting of several folding chairs (even though he was alone.) He maneuvered his car to block the other entrance into his site. All this took several hours, then he sat in one of his chairs and listened to some sporting event on his cell phone. It reminded me of my grandmother who used to sit in our living room with a small transistor radio listening to the Phillies baseball games through an earphone. He was close enough to me that I watched with amusement and far enough away to not really be a nuisance.
When Cosmo and I walked down the road, there were several other spots normally occupied by one rig, now with a half a dozen pickup trucks and Jeeps parked next to 4 or 5 tents, and a few canopies set up to be makeshift kitchens and gathering areas. This was new to me. During the summer when I stayed here, there were mostly single rigs parked in any one spot. Occasionally, there would be two vehicles sharing a campfire ring. I guess the Labor Day Weekend brought out these groups of friends for one last hurrah before the winter creeps in.
The weekend was muddy, so Cosmo and I stayed inside as much as possible. Going out meant developing a new ritual of me removing shoes caked with mud before re-entering, and coaxing Cosmo to let me wipe his paws, and pick the Swedish meatball-sized chunks out from between his pads, with only partial success. The neighbors seemed to stay inside their tents or sat in their cars playing on their phones.
On Sunday, the sun was out, the weather was gorgeous and most of the mud dried up quickly. Sunday night, as I prepared for bed, I could hear the large group next to me and the one down the road playing loud music and whooping and hollering. From my window I could see campfires—the fire ban of the summer apparently lifted. In the winter in the desert, had I seen a fire, that would immediately be an opening for me to go introduce myself to my neighbors. I thought about doing so, but realized these were drunken college kids; many were what my friend Kitty calls “Woo-Girls” because they just shout “Woo” half the night for no apparent reason other than they can’t hold their liquor. They were closed communities, even though they were interspersed with those of us who will remain living here long after the holiday passes. I looked out to the few Class C RV’s and vans I could see from my hill. No signs of life. They had taken Charlie’s advice and treated this Labor Day Weekend the same as an approaching hurricane.
By Monday, the sun had dried up the mud and the ground was once again hard-packed clay. The air was cool, and the sun was warm. It was perfect weather, made even nice by all the weekenders packing up and leaving, presumably to go back to work on Tuesday. I’d never seen the part of the forest at Marshall Lake so deserted. It was a hot spot all summer long. Now I felt privileged to be one of “the locals” who got to stay and enjoy this beauty with only the diehards who were living here, at least temporarily.
The rest of the week was fairly status quo. I went into town one day and replenished supplies. While at Walmart, I took my BP. It was slightly higher than usual (mine has ALWAYS been 120 over 70.) That bothered me and so I looked up causes and remedies. The most likely culprit is my weight and lack of exercise, so I started an exercise plan. I don’t think I’ve ever been so out of shape. I decided I needed a plan, so I started slowly, following a Blood Pressure Lowering Exercise Plan I found on YouTube. It’s hard for me. I’ve gotten so sedentary, but I started. I’ve been saying I was going to lose 10 lbs. for a long time. When I DO drop weight, I suspect it is mostly muscle as my belly doesn’t seem to be any smaller but my biceps, chest and shoulders seem to be shrinking. Not good. I’m hoping the combination of aerobic and body weight exercises will make a difference.
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I woke up Saturday morning and looked at the clock. It was 8:07. Was something wrong with my clock? Nope. We just slept in way past our usual time. I can’t remember the last time I slept that long. I went to bed just past 10:00 the night before. Maybe my body needed the rest after my first day of my new exercise program? I slept deeply throughout the night. Previous nights’ sleep had been interrupted by lots of animals. As I dozed off most nights, I could hear the cows by what’s left of Marshall Lake. Shortly after that, I often heard a blood curdling scream. The first time I heard it, I got up and looked outside (which was futile because it was before moonrise and therefore pitch black). By the next night I had realized that it continued on and off for about an hour and had to be an animal. I know foxes scream, but this seemed a bit different. By early morning, just before sunrise the coyotes started singing, and several times Cosmo joined in. My bad. The first time we heard coyotes, I howled until Cosmo did too. I thought it was funny. Then when I’d hear them, I’d say, “Cosmo. Coyotes!!!” and he’d howl along. Now he joins in every time he hears them, unprovoked by me. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
The animals were quiet on Friday night. Before sunset, I saw the cows all lined up near the lakebed and they were lying down. Maybe we all just needed a quiet night off.
Before bed, I had to go out and check my location in the grand scheme of things.
Ah. Right where I thought I was.
Lessons From The Road: Burning Man happened this week. It has made the news most days as 70,000 people were out in the desert in the rain. Reading the many articles in the New York Times brought up a variety of emotions for me. First, I felt resentment. Many years ago, a customer of mine suggested I go. He said, “This is right up your alley.” I investigated it. I was in Delaware at the time and the logistics of getting to Nevada and renting a vehicle to drive 3 hours to the middle of nowhere, and to figure out a way to haul in all the supplies I would need to survive for a week seemed quite daunting. In the end, I decided I couldn’t do it. Last year I decided to go. It would have been a piece of cake. I already drive to places and bring with me everything I need for survival. This would not be a hardship. This is my LIFE. I could live a week in the Nevada desert just as easily as I could in the forest, or the southern Arizona desert. I talked to a fellow nomad about joining me and he said flatly, “Burning Man is over.” I assured him it wasn’t going to happen for another month. He said that what used to be Burning Man was now just a gathering of rich gawkers wanting to scratch one more thing off their bucket list. He explained that what used to be a free (and later very cheap) gathering of creative artists and free-thinkers was now a group of wealthy onlookers. Tickets now cost $800 (and upwards) once you added in car passes and fees and taxes. He told me Elon Musk had gone the year before in a giant, fully equipped, bus-sized RV with his entourage in similar rigs parked nearby. He told me that there were still some of the original folks, who created a community and lived a week with the goal being self-expression and radical self-reliance, but for the most part it was just rich people wanting to be able to go home to their cocktail parties and say they had been a “burner” for a weekend. I also felt sad. The news this week talked of the crisis that was 70,000 people stuck in the desert with rain and mud. I just scoffed at that. (Remember my flip flops?) There were 70,000 people in the same weather conditions I was in, and The Times reported that “the president was made aware and monitoring the situation.” WTF? Joe never called me about my muddy flip-flops. There was a quote from one woman (Yes Charlie, she was from Colorado) who said she already cried twice because she was told she might not be able to leave until Tuesday. (Burning Man officially ended on Monday). I just shook my head. I also laughed. Here were people forking over money equal to my monthly Social Security check, to pretend to live like I do, and then when they actually did live like I do, they cried. I laughed. Tourons.