It has been a new experience for us traveling since mid June when we returned to the United States from a winter on the road in Mexico. We were, for the first time since retirement started in October, traveling in high season.
School was out, families were traveling right alongside us, campgrounds were always crowded and popular wild camps frequently occupied. We were surprised to see so many vans crossing mountain passes in southwest Colorado. After a winter spent traveling almost alone our two wheel drive bicycle-free, ladder-free, all terrain tire-free, home on wheels seemed dowdy and the antithesis of an adventure vehicle among the squadrons of four wheel drive Sprinter Winnebagos bustling around mountaineering shops and high octane coffee emporia.
It was difficult for us to come home to a country that has thrown away its masks in contrast to Mexico where families live together and protect the fragile amongst them, with expensive injections when possible but always with basic hygiene and pandemic precautions. We explored cities and museums and cultural attractions with ease and in viral safety but suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by oblivious gatherings of unprotected people.
We have taken notes as we have driven and once we get back there are destinations that will merit a second visit, with time to take in the history, the culture and the attractions we have had to skip across these many states. But because we are retired and have no time constraints, broadly speaking, we have allowed ourselves time to enjoy solitude, to enjoy that which has been forced upon us by the lingering Covid.
Without jobs or offices to attend, with no children to hustle off to school, with no youthful impulses to drive us to night clubs and with friends ready and willing to take Covid tests for us, we have managed to travel so far, in a bubble. Might as well make the bubble work for us we figured and so we have enjoyed rural America.
Layne cooks most days, squash casserole last night, pasta tonight, grilled cheese and soup tomorrow and we buy food to go. In summer food trucks, outdoor events and roadside stands make it easy to pick up a cook’s night off.
It’s been almost a year since we left the Keys and the usual anxieties of van life have fallen away. How to manage daily functions of living, filling and emptying trash cans, water tanks, toilet tanks and so forth occasionally provoke some head scratching but we fumble on through confident the answer will present itself which it always has. “Can you see a trash can?” She asks me at the shopping center…
Where to sleep is the other big question people ask about living on the road (dealing with the toilet is the first curiosity most outsiders have). We have learned not to worry; some solution will come up. Usually we seek out spots away from facilities, sometimes we pay for campsites, usually without hookups as we don’t need them, in state parks and even national parks (where Rusty isn’t welcome for the most part). Mostly we look for free spots and they can be delightful.
There is a sense of the awesome origins of this country when you wild camp. We choose spots by no means unique to us, except that we are uniquely using them, by ourselves, but our presence makes our clearing in the forest ours if only for a night or three. We sleep under the stars, sometimes with rain pattering on the tin roof, we wake up to a world of silence that is all ours before the working world rises to the sounds of bedside alarms and then we can hear the rushing of cars in the distance.
One of the reasons we cling to Michigan is that from here on the wilderness is much reduced. On Thursday GANNET2 will be in the mechanic’s shop in Barberton Ohio where civilization begins. The density of population in the east, the patchwork of public lands will be a big change from the endless national forests of the West and the sparse towns dotting miles of empty highway.
Several decades ago I read the entire Natty Bumpo series of novels, the best and most coherent of them The Last Of The Mohicans made into movies from time to time. I was surprised to learn that Cooperstown in New York, repository of baseball fame, was named for Cooper’s family and he wrote the frontiersman novels at a time when Ohio and Kentucky were the furthest edge of America.
I can’t make up my mind if the chance to live back then was a chance worth grabbing. As I read about Lewis and Clark actually doing what Natty Bumpo did in fiction I read about yellow fever and malaria, endemic and not understood. The chance of death so prevalent the term “I trust you are well” in correspondence had actual meaning such that today we see people resisting vaccination so little do they fear diseases we assume to have vanquished…polio is back I see to my chagrin.
I feel myself privileged to look out on these woods and rivers from the comfort, unimaginable in 1790, of my home on wheels.
The price we pay for the good health, the comfort and safety of these woods is to be paid shortly when we return to the order and chaos of roads, power plants, rules, customs and expectations of the 21st century.
But for a little while longer we sleep in the deep silence of night, and wake to the cold autumnal mornings grateful for our modern warm bedding with the expectation we shall get through the day in continued good health and peace. No muskets needed, no tinctures at the ready, and alas a little less of the wonder that filled human minds when the hows and whys of the natural world were less clearly understood.
The Adirondacks, the White Mountains, Appalachia and our old friend the Ocala National Forest are all yet to come to delight us. But after Michigan the romance of the wild frontier will be behind us for a few months and I shall miss it. Natty Bumpo I’m not, far from it, but privately I wish I were.
