We have been dithering about when to leave the enchanted forest. Today, the day this is published, is the day.
There is no explanation for why we got stuck here. First we said one night and it was an easy choice as we were here last year and we knew what to expect. Then when I turned the engine off and silence smothered us like a blanket Layne announced spontaneously “We could stay here three days!” So now we’ve been here almost a week and I could easily snooze away another in my hammock.
There are hardly any views and there is no body of water nearby. We do have a few neighbors who come and go and whose vehicles we can spot on our walks, sides of sheet metal half seen through the shrubbery like predators lurking. On the face of it this place, within hearing of the light traffic going to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, is nothing special. But it has captured us.
It rained Thursday evening with gusts of cold air sweeping the trees. That reminded me of times caught on the water quickly rolling up the jib and dropping a reef in the main, heart in mouth hoping I had judged things correctly.
Facing a squall in a van, especially a parked van, cannot in any way be construed as heroic. I put the chairs under the Moonshade awning and watched the wind shiver the pines like an invisible hand. The rain drops came and went and came again slashing the tin sides of GANNET2. I sipped the Mezcal and lemon Layne had prepared and watched the rain drops sliding down the glass.
And then it was gone and night had fallen and so had the temperature to a glacial 58 degrees.
Friday morning was a late start, blame the Mezcal we bought from a small time farmer near Oaxaca in May. I got up at eight and stepped over a snoring dog to face the world. His excuse was the dropper of CBD oil he got to calm his thunder nerves. He has lots of Everglades PTSD from when he was dumped and a European vet in Mexico gave us some oil which worked a treat.
Once awake Rusty started growling out the open door. Was it a bear I wondered? I really ought to get some bear spray which will get me in hot water if found in Mexico…but it was a neighbor walking his dog. Rusty and she ran all over the place while her owner struggled with his manners and tried to answer my cheerful queries about his day. He lives full time alone with his sweet dog in a minivan and he prefers dogs to people. And off he strolled.
I found this elaborately built tent platform on my walk with Rusty, a place for a tent and a fireplace and some wilderness. In the National Park nearby you can pay lots of good money to do the same.
But you can’t let your dog wander and find his own spot, sometimes in the shade and sometimes in the sun, as he pleases.
Some days I do miss the mangrove trails near our home in the Keys. But mostly I don’t as I feel I took full advantage of that life. 
Years ago I used to drive my old VW van around California in a pale imitation of the life we live aboard GANNET2 and I never imagined a retirement on the road such as I live now. My van was a shell on wheels with a fold out bed and some storage lockers and a top speed of sixty downhill and a kid of 25 could afford it and deliver pizza with it.
The Internet, Google Maps, Kindle, iOverlander, Starlink, Lithium-Ion Batteries, Low Maintenance Vehicles…all of it make suburban living on the road viable. Is $92,000 a lot for a car? It is for me but that sum for a home seems entirely reasonable. Except it will wear out and it won’t appreciate.
If you drive around you’ll see people living in their cars because they have to and we label them homeless. Our transition out of a house was planned over five years and we saved money to do this and we live below our means. For those in sudden crisis cramming a life into a car can only be an act of despair, for us it was an act of liberation eagerly anticipated.
I am a restless soul. I have struggled to come to terms with that and half of me envies people who can pull up a photograph of themselves in the same place fifty years on with no desire to peer over the horizon. The other half recoils in shock.
That Layne enjoys this life surprises me, but she does and if she didn’t she’d say so.
I enjoy this photograph below off the Internet. I feel it applies to me now as I dawdle and look out the window and pull out to let them by and look forward to new places that will make me regret the places left behind. For some reason this stop over is one of those. It just is.
