Monthly Archives: June 2021

June 19, 2021

This day five write begins on the heels of last night’s write. I haven’t gone anywhere. It’s the least traveling I’ve done since I began this travel journal. I did rearrange my body at some point in the night to get under a sheet. Hard to believe my little battery operated fan cooled me down enough to want to do that. 

Last night’s write proved to me again that mornings work best for writing. My eyes were giving out by the end. The brain was no longer leading but being lead—pulled like an old horse that doesn’t want to go anywhere. It was all I could do to drag and drop those pictures to finish the write—and I’d had such high hopes. While still in the restaurant parking lot I’d brushed my teeth and prepared the camper shell. (Another boondocking tip to prepare yourself before arriving at your parking spot.) I threw a novel and my new road atlas in back for perusing. I even put a hand-written list back here that I thought I’d transfer to my computer. High hopes indeed. 

I’m not sure if this waking in the wee hours is a nervous habit I will have boondocking. When I was parked below the cave, I slept through both nights waking at a reasonable time. Maybe knowing I had permission and a friend within screaming distance gave me a different level of security. 

But I don’t feel insecure here. Five hours ago, when I settled in I had my worries about it being a Friday night in Tucumcari. Those worries were unfounded. This town is shut up tight. The most partying going on right now are a few birds that seem to think 3:30 am is a good time to start celebrating the coming sun. Their pitch is sort of a low, bicycle-wheel-squeak—not as high as hummingbirds that make the sound of rubbing on a balloon with a wet finger—and not so fast. It still sounds like a DJ scratching a record except this DJ has been sipping mojitos all night and there is only one drunk guy left on the dance floor and the scratch isn’t about starting something but shutting it down. 

About an hour ago I heard someone park near me. I listened. The person got out and shut their car door quietly—something I didn’t know you could do with a car door. No footsteps though the next thing I heard came from a more distant place—the barely perceptible rubbing of keys, the turn of a lock, a small squeak of the apartment’s front door and then the door closing—again quietly.

Now if I don’t go back to sleep tonight—which I probably won’t—I’ll definitely need a nap after hitting the road. I plan to fill up my gas tank before I leave and also the red MSR container that goes with the used Whisperlite International that I bought at a camping supply store back in Moab. Did I mention that? It was a good find. Apparently used ones are hard to come by. I knew my friend Marlow would have a good recommendation. 

I woke thinking about the number of places I lived in Denton, Texas: six. A new thought came to me that in today’s world, especially for a single person or a young couple, that really isn’t much. But my parents did have us kids. My sister is almost three years older than me. I was a new eight when we arrived in Texas. Leslie would have been ten, soon-to-be eleven. 

One theory I have about why my folks moved so much was that my parents were trying to escape each other and didn’t fully realize that to do that you have to move without the other person. Another notion is just that they were sort of adventurous and liked new things. It was probably a little of both. 

My parental units did eventually escape each other after my sister and I had left the nest. Were they appreciably more happy without each other? Not sure. I think so. 

There is a rooster crowing now in this town of empty lots, broad streets and small houses. It’s a sign. I think I’ll see if I can go back to sleep. 

June 18, 2021

I’m in Tucumcari, parked two blocks off of old Route 66.  This town has learned the art of dilapidation. The wind is blowing with that whipping sound you hear in Westerns. Tucumcari has all the elements of being abandoned and occupied at the same time. Feels like I’m in kind of a rough neighborhood, but I’m not hearing any screaming. It’s Friday night which worries me more than if it was Tuesday. I’ve parked outside of some single story apartments. Parking outside apartments was one of the recommendations I got from boondocking friends. The temperature isn’t too bad—I’d guess low 80s down from the 100s. 

It was a long drive from Moab. I stopped three times for short cat naps, once for gas and once for a soda, but no long stays anywhere. The snack bag on the seat next to me was lunch. The scenery was amazing. I wasn’t ever in what is officially called Monument Valley, but that was one of the types of landscapes I passed through. It felt like I was in the rumpus room of the gods where they had left their marbles laying around and stacks of rocks.   

I thought about getting a motel here in Tucumcari, but decided I’d rather spend money on a good meal. Got it! Del’s Restaurant—Catfish dinner with cole slaw, pinto beans and a Modelo beer. I stayed in this town about 20 years ago in the Blue Swallow motel. Still there. Looks a little spiffier now like some hipsters got a hold of it. Each room comes with a garage to park your car. At the time, I imagined it was a place well known by gangsters trying to stay hidden from the law. Speaking of gangsters, I tried to go see the car Bonnie and Clyde were in when they got turned into Swiss cheese. That was when I was coming through Primm, NV a few days back. It is held at Whisky Pete’s casino. I went in and all I found was two, big, empty, locked cages. I talked to a bartender. Apparently the owner takes the cars on tour around the country every so often. 

Okay, enough of the chit chat. Tomorrow I arrive in Denton, Tx—my 4th childhood hometown, but number one in number of places I lived. We started out in an apartment. I can’t remember the complex’s name. I don’t think I’ll find the apartment and knock on the door and say, “Hey, I used to live here?” That would be weird…and depressing. But I will find the complex. The apartments were the standard four to a unit. They were brick and all looked the same except for the number of bedrooms.   I think our apartment had two bedrooms and that my sister and I slept in one. Why else would I have been on a top bunk? From that apartment we moved to the “Ramshackle Farm House”. From there we moved to “the Mansion”. From there we moved to the Shady Oaks Ranch (not in quotes because that was its real name). My sister and I lived in a tent at Shady Oaks for six months and then we moved to the local KOA where we continued living in the tent for another six months. From there we moved to another complex called Londonderry Lane Apartments. 

So that’s the kind of excitement I’m going to be exploring in the next few days. Why? I really don’t know. I wish I could be more like eyewitness news—You’ve got questions. We have answers. But my brain is a mystery to myself full of half-baked notions. 

No pictures from the road today except this morning before I left the cave. Here are some from there: 

June 17, 2021

I’m staying in Moab visiting a friend who lives in a cave. I’m going to stay another night. I mean, how often do you get to stay in a cave? 

Actually, I stayed in my pickup. Marlow has a driveway that leads to his cave but you have to have a four-wheel drive to get to the top of it. 

“What kind of vehicle do you have?” asked Marlow when I arrived in town.

“A Ford Ranger,” I said.

“Four-wheel drive?” he asked. 

“No. Two-wheel,” said I. 

“A Subaru has made it up there,” he said. 

“I’ll give it a try,” I said. 

I did. It didn’t work.

Marlow bikes into town each day with his dog Flix—a decrepit, 14-year old greyhound that is mostly skeleton and hide and walks with wobbly straight legs reminiscent of a damaged Transport Walker in Return of the Jedi. The dog gets in a pulled cart once she is too tired to trot. This is happening sooner and sooner. 

Marlow spends his days in town.  His office is in a businesses’ basement room set off of a larger room filled with the things that get stored in business basements—old air conditioners and such. The price is right—free. 

He works there in the basement on his latest novel, Geyser Rush. His other books, Island Despair and the three-part novel, Wet Exit, are for sale in town at the bookstore. The cave is plenty cool inside for working in this heat, but there is no cell phone or internet. The cave is plenty cavernous. A new friend—a young art teacher who works on the Pineridge Reservation—has his tent set up at the front of the cave for the next few days. Marlow’s permanent tent is way in the back.

Someone owns Marlow’s cave—94-year-old man whose ancestors were early white settlers. He owns a lot of the caves and property here on the Colorado River. Marlow pays $100 a month and has a $1,000,000 view. It’s strange to think anyone can own something that is such a beautiful part of nature. Other cave dwellers, ones not on this road, live further away, completely off the grid, and for free on BLM land. They come into town on motorcycles, resupply and then are gone. Some are outlaws. Some are mental cases. 

“Putting down roots on BLM land isn’t allowed but they are so far out there and hidden they’ll never be found,” Marlow said.  

Abrupt subject change—shit. 

Have you ever noticed that sometimes you find yourself doing something you haven’t done in years or even decades and then all the sudden you are doing it in close succession? For me, that would be shitting in the woods. I have now done that three times. Twice when I was backpacking in the Trinity Alps last week and then again this morning. And here is what I have found—shitting in nature is not an easy thing. 

Balance alone is difficult. My theory now is that it is best done completely naked although my most successful shit so far was my first one in the Trinity Alps where I leaned against a rock on a hillside. It’s gone downhill since then; not the shit—my abilities. 

I won’t go into detail about the failures of this morning, but let’s just say I was ready for the first bath of my trip. I can say that most of it went into a gallon size ziplock bag (not having a shovel to bury it). It’s the small amount that didn’t go in, but ran down the edge that caused a mess. 

Shit is the kind of thing that you don’t want to touch and it seems that because of that—because of your trembling hesitation and awkward movements to avoid it at all costs—it ends up getting all over you. Conveniently, the Colorado River was flowing right past me. Unconveniently, the embankment was steep and rocky without a shelf or beach near the land where my unsuccessful shitting took place. But Marlow had told me about a place where the road first hits the river that has a beach, so after almost killing myself to wash my hands I went back to my truck and drove there. 

Marlow’s “beach” was actually just a few flat rocks the size of cafe table tops, with a few more submerged in the water close to shore. The climb down there was twice as high and steeper than the previous spot, but the fact that there was a landing pad made me willing to make the effort. While I was at it I grabbed some shorts that needed washing (an unsuccessful peeing effort while driving 80 mph on I-15, but that’s another story not worth telling). 

After making it to the mini-beach, I sat down on one of the two rocks submerged in about two feet of the silty water. I soaped myself up with some Dr. Bronners (biodegradable and harmless I’ve been told) and had a satisfying bath, washed the pee shorts and threw them back on shore and my toiletry bag which I had somehow managed to get some of the leaky poop on. 

As I sat there I started to notice little nibblings on my legs. I looked in the water and saw dozens of minnows. Soon the dozens turned into hundreds and, by the end, the hundreds may have become a thousand. I sank lower in the water and minnows starting taking their little pinching mouthfuls of dead skin—or whatever it was that they found satisfying—from all over my body. 

I ducked my face in the water leaving my ears out. The minnows nibbled my cheeks, the corners of my lips and even ventured into the vestibules of my nostrils. The water churned around my head making the sound of a simmering pot. I opened my eyes and it was like looking through a microscope into a petri dish of swarming animals with whipping tails. I focused on the feeling. It was much like turning you face up to a winter rain that includes tiny pellets of ice. Where my skin was most sensitive—on the eyelids and under the arms—it was almost too intense, bordering on painful. 

I thought about putting my mom’s ashes, ten years ago, in a different river across the country where I’m going—a sunny day on a dock in Tennessee. Mom’s ashes poured in the water dispersed in grey clouds and as the clouds dissipated suddenly sparkles appeared—white flecks of bone reflecting the light like tiny suns in a galactic cloud. Then minnows appeared, pecking at the white flecks, sparkling themselves. 

So this leads to another question related to place. Where does the spirit go when we die. Does it pass to a bird or a whole genus of minnows? Is memory spirit? Is feeling spirit? Where is this home we are all searching for? 

Maybe spirit is our home. 

June 16, 2021

It may end up being better that I make these journal entries in the morning before a long day of driving. Last night I didn’t have many brain cells left. Still, this morning is a little early. I am parked about 10 miles east of Barstow, CA just off Interstate 15 near where Highway 58 splits into I-15 going North and I-40 going south. I’m parked on a service road in an area that serves as an unofficial truck stop across from a Travelodge and an all-night diner. The Mojave National Preserve was just too unknown. On the phone last night, driving through the dark, Jillian gave me permission not to venture there when she said she’d gotten a flat tire from thorns in the desert. That’s all I needed.

There must be between 20 and 30 big rigs parked here and they’ve been coming and going all night. I have earplugs which I just now put in. I didn’t think to use them when I pulled in last night at 11:30. My sleep was fairly solid despite the hammering of idling engines, the hum of generators and the nearby whine of highway tires providing the frictional median between concrete and encapsulated humans surrounded by tons of plastic and steel being propelled through space. That we do this: move about the earth in an incessant fashion within various states of frenzy—all in a seated position—is a great feat of science. And just to think, soon we will no longer need to be seated but might lay on our backs and look up at the sky just as we might relax beneath a tree on a warm day in the park. 

Speaking of warm, it is about 80 degrees right now. I’ve been asleep on top of the sheets. This exact time one week ago I had multiple layers of clothes on and was stuffed in a sleeping bag inside a tent and I still couldn’t get warm six hundred miles north of here in the Trinity Alps. 

Ill-equiped, I will take the heat over the cold any day. This warmth would be much more doable if the battery operated fan I bought four days ago would work. That was the greatest disappointment when I finally crawled my way into this little shell and locked myself in with chains attached between the tailgate and truck body and vice grips on the lever of each handle latch. At least I feel safe. 

I have a canister of bear spray and a knife I keep within reach—neither precaution taken during my recent backpacking trip. However, I do have a large bag of food inside the cab on the front seat. No need to hang it in a tree which would be hard to do, anyway, in this treeless landscape. I guess I could attach a rope and throw it onto the roof of the diner if truckers were prone to breaking windows to get hold of apples and Pirate’s Booty. 

I have black out curtains on the front and back windows of the camper shell and doubled curtains on the sides that let in a little light. It was no easy thing rigging the inside with the proper hardware and I have Jillian and her sewing machine skills to thank for the tailored look. I was just going to throw up a couple of boards at each end but this is much better. 

Now that I’m just about done with this day’s journal entry, I’m energized and ready to go, but it’s still dark outside. I’d much rather see the landscape in daylight as opposed to not seeing it at all. Apparently there are mountains to cross to get to Las Vegas. I’ve never been to this part of the world before, but I could be driving upside down on the moon for all the information that headlights on a dark road give. 

Now that I’ve got my wits about me, I realize it was just wishful thinking about the diner across the street being 24 hours. A peak through the curtains reveals its unlighted, sad, emptiness. Nothing is stopping these truckers though. Air brakes are snorting like bulls all around me. Engines are revving. It might be time to put on my pants and hit the road.

June 15, 2021

I’m in my office on the tailgate of my pickup truck in a parking lot at a Del Taco in Tehachapi, CA. It’s 6:39 pm. The evening is pleasant and cool. I had hoped to be at the Mohave National Reserve by this point but a slow start and numerous road construction points on the highway has kept me from getting there. 

This trip is an exploration of place—specifically all the places I lived with my nuclear family—two parents and a sister—before finally leaving for good to go off to college. I won’t be visiting the towns in the order in which I lived in them. By age that would be Winchester, TN (0 to 6 months), Sewanee, TN (6 months to 4 years), Tallahassee, FL (4 years to 7 years), Denton, TX (7 years to 13 years), Hattiesburg, MS (13 to 19 years). Instead I will be visiting in order from west to east—Texas, Mississippi, Tallahassee and then north to Tennessee. 

I’m a little unsure what my intention is for this trip. It is not mere reminiscence. Is it a search for my true home? Is it an attempt to really find my place in this world? Do we all have such a place? How much of place is a physical location and how much of it is where we are mentally?

My plans were to stay in the Mohave National Reserve tonight, but it will be dark by the time I get there. Will I feel safe not knowing what is beyond a small circle of vision? 

If I have the energy to keep pushing, I may try to make it to a Walmart parking lot in Las Vegas that, according to the RV Parky app, allows people to park overnight. Will I feel safer there under the lights with big rigs running noisy generators?

It’s getting late. I don’t have any place to be, yet I will have to find a place.