Monthly Archives: October 2016

Leaving the Mountain

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Today’s the day.

After twenty-one weeks on the mountain, today is the day I leave.

What I will miss:

Deep silence

A steady paycheck

A safe place to sleep at night

Having giant sequoias for neighbors img_6344

Laughing with my coworker

The opportunity to see Steller’s jays and pileated woodpeckers

My creek sanctuary

Trees upon which I can hang my hammock

What I won’t miss:

The smell of pit toilets

Cleaning the smelly pit toilets

Idiots (although I know I can encounter dumb folks anywhere)

Being required to be friendly when I want to be left alone

The twenty-five mile round trip to the post office

Intensely curvy mountain roads

Answering the same questions repeatedly

The plague of flies I’ve lived with most of the summer

Sap on my windshield

What I will be glad for:

Frequent hot showers

Cell phone service

Internet access

Easy communication with people I love

Access to ice that doesn’t involve a twenty-five mile round trip

Activities I am eagerly anticipating:

Reuniting with friends

Attending my first opera

Collaborating on my first mural

Self-publishing my first book

Visiting new places

Nolagirl says the trick to fighting off depression is to keep moving forward. Today I’m taking one step, two steps, three steps, four into the future.

Goodbye mountain. I hope to see you next year.

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I took the photos in this post.

Boondoggle

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Some days I make hemp necklaces while sitting in the parking lot. On weekday afternoons, it’s usually slow enough to get some work done between collecting parking fees from the drivers of cars that pull in. By the number of comments I receive, my handicraft is at least as interesting as the trees.

One day, several people (including my boss) thought the bright blue and red hemp I was working with was wire, even though the hemp cord’s not nearly as stiff as wire.

One old woman must not have believed me when I said it wasn’t wire because she reached out to touch it. She didn’t ask permission, just reached out. I drew the cord closer and closer to my body, and she just kept reaching. I suspect if I had lain the cord across my bosom, she would have gone ahead and felt me up in the process of fingering my materials.

Oh! I exclaimed. You’re just going to touch it?!(My implication was not You only want to touch it? but You’re just going to touch it whether I want you to or not!)

Yes! she said, and she did!

I was in a state of disbelief, and my slow brain couldn’t even get it together to say, Back off! or Don’t touch me! or Excuse me? or simply No! This stranger thought it was ok to touch my things, things sitting in my lap. Not ok, lady! Not ok!

But she did it. She reached out and touched my hemp cord. I don’t think she even know her behavior was offensive.

The big question when people see me working on a craft project is, What are you making?

A flat answer of a necklace is meant to discourage conversation. I can’t sell the necklaces in the parking lot, so I don’t much want to talk about them.

Another old lady saw me working and said, Boondoggle!

What? I asked. I was really confused. I thought boondoggle was related to snafu. My hemp wasn’t in a knotted mess. Everything seemed ok.

That’s what it’s called, the old lady said to me.

It’s macramé, I told her.

Same thing, she said and wandered off. (At least she didn’t touch me.)

I looked up the definition of boondoggle. This is what I found, according to http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boondoggle:

Simple Definition of boondoggle

  • : an expensive and wasteful project usually paid for with public money

    Full Definition of boondoggle

    1. 1 :  a braided cord worn by Boy Scouts as a neckerchief slide, hatband, or ornament

    2. 2 :  a wasteful or impractical project or activity often involving graft

      Did You Know?

      When “boondoggle” popped up in the pages of the New York Times in 1935, lots of people tried to explain where the word came from. One theory traced it to an Ozarkian word for “gadget,” while another related it to the Tagalog word that gave us “boondocks.” Another hypothesis suggested that “boondoggle” came from the name of leather toys Daniel Boone supposedly made for his dog. But the only theory that is supported by evidence is much simpler. In the 1920s, Robert Link, a scoutmaster for the Boy Scouts of America, apparently coined the word to name the braided leather cords made and worn by scouts. The word came to prominence when such a scout boondoggle was presented to the Prince of Wales at the 1929 World Jamboree, and it’s been with us ever since.

The woman was a bit confused. I wasn’t braiding. I wasn’t working with leather. I wasn’t a Boy Scout. But I don’t think she was implying my project was wasteful or impractical, so I’ve decided not to be mad at her.

  • The 16 inch necklace on the left is made from black and green hemp and has a simple pendent I made. The stone is serpentine, which is believed to help one feel more in control of one's spiritual life and the aid meditation. It costs $16, including postage. The necklace in the middle is 20 inches long and made from black and purple hemp. The stone is amethyst, which is believed to support sobriety; guard against panic attacks; and dispels anger, rage, fear, and anxiety. It costs $18, including postage. The necklace on the right is 20 inches long and made from brown and black hemp. The pendant and the accent stones are carnelian which is believed to stimulate creativity, calm anger, promote positive life choices and remove fear of death. This necklace costs $16, including postage costs.

    I took this photo showing some of the “boondoggles” I’ve made. All are for sale. The 16 inch necklace on the left is made from black and green hemp and has a simple pendent I made. The stone is serpentine, which is believed to help one feel more in control of one’s spiritual life and to aid meditation. It costs $16, including postage. The necklace in the middle is 20 inches long and made from black and purple hemp. The stone is amethyst, which is believed to support sobriety; guard against panic attacks; and dispel anger, rage, fear, and anxiety. It costs $18, including postage. The necklace on the right is 20 inches long and made from brown and black hemp. The pendant and the accent stones are carnelian which is believed to stimulate creativity, calm anger, promote positive life choices, and remove fear of death. This necklace costs $16, including postage costs.

Booked for the Day

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I recently wrote about the public art on Main Street in Mesa, AZ and mentioned my favorite sculpture there, The Big Pink Chair.

Another piece in Mesa’s outdoor art collection that I like a lot is Booked for the Day by Dan Hill.

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The statue is made from bronze, and is 42″h x 16″w x 30″d. It has a copyright of 2000.

Of course, I like the fact that the girl is reading. I love reading and books, so I was tickled to see two of my passions depicted in art. I also like the fact that the sculpture is sitting on a bench, out in public, just like a real person. It’s fun to sit next to this depiction of a young reader or stand behind her and look at the pages of the book over her shoulder. Oh, the possibilities for photo opportunities for anyone visiting Mesa’s Main Street with friends! img_5783

Dan Hill’s website says,

        A good book is hard to put down and this girl won’t be putting her book down anytime soon. Ten-year old Erica, engrossed in Harry Potter, was the inspiration for this interactive sculpture. This sculpture is in the permanent public collections of the City of Mesa, Arizona; the Carnegie-Evans Public Library, Albia, Iowa; the Palos Heights Public Library, Palos Heights, Illinois; the Eccles Community Art Center, Ogden, Utah; City of Ankeny, Iowa; Cleary University, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Main Street Garden, Twin Falls, Idaho; the Prescott Public Library, Prescott, Arizona; and the Ligonier Public Library, Ligonier, Indiana. 

According to the aforementioned website,

[Dan Hill’s] talent for s[c]ulpting emerged accidentally in 1974 when he was lounging around at home recuperating from a work related foot injury.  While watching an old western on television, he began messing around img_5781with a toothpick and some playdough [sic]…By the time the movie had ended [Hill] had sculpted a small bust, capturing a remarkable likeness of actor Lee Marvin.  These humble beginnings as a sculptor were followed by the early success of two sports action sculpture commissions and a first place ribbon in the Professional Sculpture Division at the Utah State Fair.

Booked for the Day is located on the south side of Main Street, between Robson Street and MacDonald Street.

To learn more about public art in Mesa, view the brochure that goes along with the self-guided tour of the city’s sculpture collection.

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I took all of the photos in this post.

Trash Picking

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Trash picking is in my genes, passed down to me by my father.

One of my earliest memories is going behind the local dime store after closing time so my dad could poke around in the unlocked trash room. It thin it was mostly cardboard in there, but sometimes he’d find good things like the metal bank the size of a softball and printed brightly with the countries of the world. He gave the bank to me, and even though the rubber stopper to hold in the money was missing (hence the exile to the trash room), I liked it anyway and kept it for years.

My dad was never too proud or too wealthy to pass up a discarded pile of building materials without investigating it for useful items and hauling home anything he might be able to work into a home improvement project.

My dumpster diving has gone farther than my father’s ever did. I doubt he ever climbed into a supermarket dumpster to pull out enough discarded produce and snack food to supplement the grocery budgets of several households. I doubt he’s eaten discarded pizzas as a diet staple while traveling across the country or pulled fancy food dumped into garbage cans by rich people in tourist districts. I’ve done all those things. We’ve all got to eat, and when I’ve had no money, I did what I had to do to feed myself.

As a camp host, I sometimes find things in trash cans I can’t believe people have left behind.

My first camp host trash score came with items campers left next to the trash can. They’d brought several green propane bottles with labels missing, and they didn’t manage to use all the fuel during their camping trip. I guess they didn’t want to haul the bottles home, so they were left lined up outside the trash can. I took the bottles over to my campsite and used them during the cold days of late mountain spring. Those partially full bottles must have saved me at least six bucks.

Later in the summer, I opened a trash can and found nothing but an empty one gallon glass wine jug. It even had a cap. I pulled it out of the can, washed it, and still use it as a water container.

Young people driving shiny cars throw out the best stuff. After one group left, I opened a garbage can to find several tiny, almost new tubes of toothpaste, a nearly full bottle of propane, a box of individually wrapped herbal tea bags with only a few bags missing, and assorted other things I no longer remember. Another time, I found half a bag of marshmallows, half a Hershey bar, and several unopened packages  of fancy chocolates that had melted, then re-formed while in an ice chest. Let me be the first to say, fancy chocolate is still delicious, even when one has to eat it by biting chunks out of a blob.

Once a group of young professional types cut out the garbage can middle man and offered me approximately seven gallons of bottle water they didn’t want to carry home. Hell yes, I’ll take that, thank you. Even at the cheapest bottle refilling rate in Babylon ( 25 cents a gallon), I saved almost $2 and didn’t have to spend my time filling bottles.

One Sunday morning when I was emptying trash cans, I found beverages of an adult nature. When I tried to pull the bag out of the can, I realized it was too heavy for me to lift. I began pulling beer bottles out of the heavy bag and throwing them into an empty trash bag. When I pulled a bottle out and it seemed unnaturally heavy, I examined it more closely. Yep, there was liquid in there. Yep, the cap was still sealed. Who throws out unopened bottles of fancy beer? Well, underage kids do. Camp hosts don’t card, so I’m not sure how old anyone at the campground was, but the members of one group seemed young enough to be underage. That would explain why they didn’t take the beer home to mom and dad’s house, but I don’t understand why they didn’t drink the beer before they left. Didn’t they know there are sober children in China?

In any case, I ended up with six full bottles of beer, and I’m not talking PBR. This was good stuff, some California microbrew. However, since I’m not much of a drinker, I gave the beer to my coworker, who was quite pleased with my trash score.

On another Sunday afternoon, I found a two-pound plastic container nearly full of plump, ripe strawberries. I scooped them up and took them right back to my campsite. Upon further inspection, I found some of the berries were a big squashed, but I washed them and ate them anyway. They were super ripe and juicy. I ate them with some whipped vanilla yogurt I’d gotten on super sale at the bargain supermarket. The yogurt was quite like whipped cream and went well with the berries.

By far, my best food score came near the end of the fire when a crew of young people from the California Conservation Corps stopped by to see the sequoias. Each of the crew members was carrying a paper sack about 2/3 the size of paper bags groceries are packed in. After a couple of the folks dumped their paper bags in the garbage cans,I wondered what was in them. After the crew left, I started poking around in the trash cans. In addition to at least three meaty sandwiches (which I left behind), almost every bag contained an apple; an orange; a couple of small packages of raw carrots; a foil packet of tuna; a bag of banana chips; a bag of trail mix; a bag of M&M’s; a package of fig cookies; and a bag of either Oreos, Chips Ahoy cookies, Ritz bits crackers with cheese, or Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies. There was so much waste of prepackaged food! I have no idea why those people hadn’t saved the snack food for later. It wasn’t going to spoil any time soon.

Their waste was my gain. I filled up two of the paper bags with food, and I lived large for weeks. I saved easily $25 worth of food from going to the dump.

I try to be discreet with my trash picking because the normals sometimes do weird things like call the caps when they feel uncomfortable. However, I never feel ashamed for living off other people’s castoffs. If anyone should feel ashamed, I think it’s the people throwing away all the good stuff.

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Gifts for a Family

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I always thought I’d have a family, Lou said to me on more than once occasion as we passed through our late 20s, our 30s, our late 30s. She has her family now.

The husband came first. Lou and I had been out of touch for years when she met him. She and I had just rekindled our friendship when they got married. (By rekindled our friendship, I mean Lou was one of my old friends who worked to find me after I disappeared into the New Mexico night. I remember calling Lou on my new cell phone after I’d been found, and she asked if we could talk later. I’m driving in LA with my boyfriend and his parents, she said, but left out the part about on the way to my wedding.)

Lou’s husband is a nice man. He’s a computer guy and athletic. He’s a good cook too, especially of Korean food and smoked brisket. He generously shared the home he’s made with Lou when I needed a place to stay in late 2012.

After a couple of years of marriage, Lou and her man had a baby, a boy. He’s two, but I haven’t met him yet. I’ve had to be satisfied with viewing his adorableness via photos on Facebook.

And now Lou is pregnant again, this time with a girl. It’s a family for sure.

Some of the first hats I made were fro Lou and her family. The colors of the hats for the adults were weird, and I’d only taught myself the basic hat-making technique. Still, Lou sent me a photo of the three of them grinning

This is the infinity scarf I made for Lou.

This is the infinity scarf I made for Lou.

broadly while wearing the hats I’d made.

I’ve been on a yarn kick this summer. I decided to make an infinity scarf for Lou. I used a pink and brown color scheme.

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This is the tiny pink hat I made for the upcoming baby.

Then I cam across some soft pink yarn and decided to make a little hat for the upcoming baby. The hat turned out so tiny! I couldn’t believe how small it was. It seemed impossibly small. Then I thought of something that size coming out of my vagina, and the hat seemed impossibly large.

Since it’s not fair to send the baby a present and nothing for the older kid, and since the boy’s surely outgrown the tiny hat I made for him nearly two years ago, I made a colorful hat for him.

While Lou’s husband probably does not need another winter hat, I didn’t want to exclude him. Besides, he’ll probably like the colors and design of the new hat better.

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This is the hat I made for Lou’s husband.

If they don’t like the hats and scarf, I’m cool with that. They can take whatever they don’t like downtown and pass it along to people in unconventional living situations.

This is the colorful hat I made for Lou's little son.

This is the colorful hat I made for Lou’s little son.

I took all the photos in this post.

 

 

(Guest Post) Curing Nature-Deficit Disorder and Saving the Planet: Is there a connection?

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Today’s post is the first by a guest blogger. Thanks to Muriel Vasconcellos of Finding My Invincible Summer (http://www.findingmyinvinciblesummer.info/) for offering me the use of one of her blog posts to kick off the featuring of guest bloggers. The following post first appeared on Finding My Invincible Summer on September 4, 2015.

Curing Nature-Deficit Disorder and Saving the Planet: Is there a connection?

Tom - NDD 3Many pundits agree that if we don’t heed the warnings all around us, the barriers we put up to protect ourselves against nature may well turn out to be our self-inflicted weapons of mass destruction.

I have long believed that these bastions we erect will be our undoing. Like the hapless people inside a besieged fortress in the Dark Ages, we are gradually walling ourselves off from the sources that sustain us. Eventually our supplies will run out. Since we can’t see the walls that we build, we go on our merry way, inexorably depleting the the reserves that our descendants will need in order to survive. We don’t need plagues, nuclear bombs, or meteors from afar to end the world. We wage war against ourselves every day in millions and trillions of little ways. We are the creators of our own apocalypse.

We close our doors to the outside world and huddle inside our homes, burning energy to stay alive and “comfortable” –treating the air so we won’t be inconvenienced by minor rises or falls in temperature, turning our natural functions upside-down with artificial light, nuking our food, drawing entertainment from electronically fueled sources. Every time we venture out from our homes in sealed metal boxes with wheels or wings, we expand our carbon footprint. We wantonly strip the Earth of its trees, the lungs that make air breathable. We pollute our rain, our lakes and rivers, and our oceans. We reconstruct the food that nature gives us through processing and genetic modification to the point that it is already threatening our health. We kill every creature we don’t like or think is expendable, upsetting the preordained balance.

Many have turned a deaf ear to the warnings: if it works today, who cares about tomorrow? Some of us see parts of the picture; very few see all of it. It takes education. That’s where High Tech High stepped in.TomAndJay

High-Tech High is a charter high school in San Diego. It accepts students by lottery and 98% of them go on to college. My friend Tom Fehrenbacher (on the right in the photo), who taught humanities there until his recent retirement, teamed up with biology teacher Jay Vavra (on the left) in a six-year experiment that opened their students’ eyes to the importance and meaning of nature in their lives.

Their first project was to study the Boat Channel next to the school, but when they got outdoors “they didn’t feel at home in all the sunlight and air; they didn’t want to get their feet wet.” In short, they were suffering from symptoms of nature-deficit disorder, a term coined by author Tom issue13Robert Louv in 2005 in his best-selling book Last Child in the Woods that focuses on the problems that society inherits when children are deprived of contact with nature.

By the end of the first year, the students had moved beyond their comfort zone and produced a field guide, The Two Sides of the Boat Channel, with in-depth descriptions of its wildlife and reflections on nature. The interdisciplinary project grew over the next six years, producing a total of six ever-expanding field guides that reflected their growing understanding of the ecosystem in which they were living.

Tom has written an eye-opening report on the project’s history for the publication UnBoxed, a Journal of Adult Learning in Schools. It is one of the most interesting stories I have come across in a very long time. I urge you to read it and pass it on. http://www.hightechhigh.org/unboxed/issue13/logs_from_san_diego_bay/.

About the Author

In addition to her work as an author and blogger, Muriel Vasconcellos is a translator by profession. Her translation career spans more than four decades and she has clients throughout the world. She lives in San Diego with her twin Malt-Tzu pups.

Something Terrible

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Something terrible happened.

A young man died

and I found his body.

I woke up Thursday feeling kind of off. I still had enough sick-time hours to cover my workday, so I left the campground I was babysitting and drove the few miles to my campground. I spent the day working on my book and taking down my privacy tent and generally resting up for the weekend. After eating dinner around 4:30, I felt well enough to put on my uniform and check-in some campers who’d just arrived. As I prepared to drive back to the campground I had to babysit, it occurred to me that I hadn’t been to the group campground I was responsible for since the previous morning. So after emptying the iron ranger at the parking lot, I headed over to the group campground.

I didn’t see the pickup truck until I was on the road running through the middle of the group campground. It was parked as far to the left side of the road as possible. It was still partly in the road, but there was just enough room for a vehicle as large as my van to pass it.

I thought the pickup probably belonged to a hunter. It was deer season, and hunters in pickups were all over the place. I thought the hunter had left the truck there and had gone out past the meadow and into the trees to look for a buck.

I noticed a bag of charcoal in the back of the truck. It had been opened, some of the charcoal removed, then the top edge rolled closed, In addition to telling the hunter s/he was parked in a $126 per night campground, I wanted to make sure s/he knew charcoal fires were prohibited.

I didn’t think I would actually talk to the person who’d driven the truck into the campground. I thought I’d end up leaving a courtesy notice under a windshield wiper, but I decided to try to make personal contact before I wrote out a notice.

Hello! Hello! I called out when I left the van. I looked around the campground, but I didn’t see anyone walking about or sitting at a picnic table.

I approached the passenger side of the truck and peered through the dusty window. To my surprise, I saw someone sitting in the driver’s seat. Judging from the person’s short hair and flat chest, the person was male. His face was unlined, young. He seemed to be sleeping—eyes closed, mouth slightly open—although the position of his head and necked looked extremely uncomfortable.

I knocked on the glass of the passenger side window with a series of knuckle tingling thumps—no gentle taps for this camp host in a hurry. The young man’s eyelids did not flutter. His shoulders did not twitch.

Wow! I thought. That kid’s really sleeping hard!

I had a new idea.

I went back to my van and sounded the horn. Honk! Honk! Honk!

Then I laid on the horn for several long seconds—Hooooonnnnnkkkkkk!!!

I walked back over to the truck and peered through the dusty window again. The young man had not moved. At this point I started getting worried.

I rapped loudly on the passenger side window again but saw not a flicker of movement.

I began to focus on my attention on the young man’s chest.

Throughout my nervous life, I’ve concentrated on so many chests—those belonging to children and pets I was caring for, those belonging to the boyfriend I hoped would die in the night and the boyfriends I hoped would live. Always, if I stared at the chest long enough, always, the chest would eventually move. This time though, the breath had run out. I saw no rise, no fall, no movement, no nothing.

I beat on the window with the flat of my fist. Bam! Bam! Bam!

No response. No movement of the young man’s chest.

I thought I should try knocking on the driver’s side window. Maybe the young man was just a really deep sleeper. Maybe the young man was chemically altered. (But his chest wasn’t moving. I knew his chest wasn’t moving. I knew what it meant that his chest wasn’t moving.) I tried to get to the driver’s side window, but the truck was parked up against trees and brush and there was no clear space to easily slip through.

I went back to my van and honked the horn, then laid on it again. When I got back to the truck, the young man had not moved a muscle. Although I was beginning to have to believe he was dead, I pounded on the window a few more times; of course, I received no response.

I stood there and wondered what I should do.

I’ve seen enough cop shows on TV and read enough mystery novels to know I did not want to be the hapless individual who stumbles upon a murder scene and destroys evidence or gets accused of the crime. This didn’t look like a crime scene, but what did I know? I didn’t want my fingerprints all over everything.

Should I try to do CPR on this guy? I haven’t had CPR training in nearly twenty years. Would I remember what to do? Better question: Would CPR do this guy any good? I remember reading or hearing somewhere that CPR can sometimes keep a person alive until EMTs arrive on the scene, but CPR alone is probably not going to save anyone’s life. Even if I got past the brush and dragged the young man out of the truck and performed CPR on him…No professional medical person of any kind was likely to happen down a winding dirt road and into the group campground to take over from me and save this guy’s life.

I decided the best thing I could do was call 911.

Of course, I was nowhere near a telephone. So I jumped in my van and drove fifteen miles to the campground where my boss was stationed. There was a landline there. I drove as fast as I dared on those mountain curves. (Slow down. I’m in a hurry, I  heard a former co-worker quote her grandmother.)

When I arrived at the campground, my boss wasn’t there. The camp host didn’t know where he was or when he’d be back. I was on my own.

I called my boss’s cell phone first and left a message on his voice mail saying I’d found someone I thought was dead and was calling 911.

The 911 call was a farce. The dispatcher had me spell my name but still got it wrong when she read the letters back to me. She asked me the last time I’d been in the campground, and I said between 7am and 9am the day before. She said, So 10am yesterday? Was she even listening to me? Finally, she asked if I could go back to the campground to guide the first responders to the body.

Yes, I said. I can do that.

I sat at the end of the road to the campground for nearly an hour before a deputy arrived. He had me drive in first, while he followed behind. I parked in front of the truck and got out of the van. The interior of the truck was dark, and I couldn’t see the young man in the driver’s seat. I hoped he’d woken up, left the truck, walked out into the meadow to take a leak or shoot a deer, or anything at all, really. I was totally willing to look like a fool for calling 911 if only the young man could be alive.

The officer shined his flashlight into the cab of the truck. The young man was still there.

He hasn’t moved, I said softly.

The officer tried to open the passenger side door. Locked.

Then he squeezed between the truck and the trees and the brush and tried the driver side door. Unlocked. He opened the door and the overhead light came on. I saw the officer reach in and put his fingers on the young man’s neck to check for a pulse.

In a few moments, the officer stepped from the side of the truck and said to me, He is deceased.

Then the officer rummaged around in the back of the dead man’s truck. He told me there was a small charcoal grill behind the passenger seat. He said it had evidence of charcoal that had been lit, but whether the young man had been trying to kill himself or stay warm, he didn’t know.

Medical personnel arrived and the officer and the EMT both squeezed between the truck and the trees to look at the dead man. They managed to get the door open and the overhead light was on again. The officer pointed out the charcoal grill and said he thought the man had died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

If carbon monoxide had killed him, his face would be red, the EMT said. Carbon monoxide poisoning would make his face red like a tomato, the EMT said.

I can vouch for the fact that his face was not red at all.

The deputy and the EMT agreed the young man must have died from suffocation. The fire used up all the oxygen in the tightly closed truck, and the young man had nothing left to breathe.

The EMT left, and the deputy took my statement. I told him I had a group scheduled to arrive in the campground the next afternoon. He said the mobile morgue was on its way and the body and the truck would be going in the morning.

I went back to the campground where I was spending the night. I felt empty and old. I kept remembering how the young man’s face looked while I was trying to wake him. I know it’s a cliché to say I kept seeing his face, but it’s true.

I don’t know if I should write about what happened. It seems so personal, not so much for me as for him. Should I write about a stranger’s death? I was there, for part of it at least, so now this death is a part of my story too.

Please, if you’re going to leave a comment on this post, please be compassionate. I don’t want to read anything negative about how this young man died. I don’t want anyone telling me what I should have done. I did the best I could under the circumstances. I think the young man probably did the best he could too. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinions, but this time, please share the negative ones with someone else.

Knock in the Night

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I’ve been living and traveling alone in my van since the Fall of 2012. I’ve been through at least ten states and have stayed in cities and on public land. On only two occasions has anyone bothered me while I was sleeping. Once it was a cop harassing me and the other time–well, I’m still not entirely sure what that was all about.

I was staying at a free National Forest campground in Northern New Mexico. I’d stayed there before. It was basically primitive camping, but there were a couple of pit toilets there. I liked the place, mostly because there was no charge to stay, but also because it was next to a river, lots of tall trees grew there, and the temperature was cool.

I arrived late in the afternoon of the night in question. I’d been selling jewelry and shiny rocks all day. I was tired. I wanted to eat dinner, then crawl into my bed with a book, probably go to sleep early. I was scheduled to sell jewelry and shiny rocks the next day, so I planned to get moving early.

When I’d pulled into the campground, I’d found the most desirable spots close to the pit toilets had been claimed. I looked around until I found a spot to park the van farther out. There was a tent pitched in the general area, but I gave it plenty of space.

I went about my business of cooking and eating dinner. While I was outside, I saw at least one large dog and several young men around the other tent. A small pickup truck arrived, then left. I kept to myself, didn’t try to make conversation, but I noticed it wasn’t a family camping over there. I saw no children, no mother figure, just guys.

When the sky darkened, I got in the van, locked the doors, and closed the curtains. I read my book, then turned out my light. The night was going according to plan.

Suddenly I was jolted awake by knocking on the van’s exterior. It took me a moment to figure out where I was and what was happening. I’m in my van, I remembered. I’m parked next to the river.

The knocking came again.

Who is it? I yelled. Even to my own ears, my voice sounded grumpy and gruff.

The side windows were open to let in the cool night air, so apparently my voice was audible. I didn’t even move a curtain to peek outside, much less open the door.

A male voice outside the van identified itself as one of the neighbor campers. If their vehicle needed a jump start in the morning, would I help them out?

What the fuck? I was thinking. Who knocks on a stranger’s dark van in the middle of the night to ask for a jump start if the situation is not a full-blown emergency? Apparently this guy.

Sure, I told the guy, if you need a jump in the morning, I’ll help you out if I’m around.

I knew good and well that I planned to be out of there early. I’d likely be gone before the sun was up.

The guy seemed to wander away (I wasn’t trying to peep out the windows), but now I was wide awake. (If you’ve ever felt the burst of adrenaline that comes with waking from a deep sleep to the tune of someone knocking on your van, you know it’s not easy to drift off after.) I started wondering what was really going on. Why had the guy really knocked? He must have suspected I was asleep since it was the middle of the night (around 2am when I switched on my light to look at my watch), and there hadn’t been a single light on in the van.

As I lay there wondering if I were safe, wondering if the man would come back, I tried to remember the vehicle situation at the nearby camp. I didn’t remember seeing a vehicle parked near the tent when I arrived. I did remember the small pickup  pulling in, but I was mostly sure it had left. I hadn’t heard another vehicle arrive after dark, but I could have conceivably slept through a car or small truck’s arrival. Could I have slept through the noise of someone discovering a dead battery, discussing the situation with others? Maybe. But I was almost certain the man had asked for my help if the battery were dead. Did he not even know the status of the battery when he asked for my help?

I finally slept again for a few hours more. I woke early, but didn’t get out of the van. When I looked out of the windows, no one seemed to be moving on the other campsite. As I maneuvered my van out of my spot, the van’s engine noise awakened the large dog who barked and barked and barked. I felt satisfaction that perhaps the dogs’ barking would awaken the guy who’d disturbed my slumber.

As I left the camping area, I looked around for a vehicle that belonged to the nearby campsite. I didn’t see any vehicles–not a car, not a truck, not a motorcycle or even a bike. Did a vehicle start and leave sometime after the man knocked on my van? Maybe. But I doubt I would have slept through any noise after the knocking interrupted my sleep and shot adrenaline through my body.

I’ve often wondered what was really going on that night. I don’t think those guys had a vehicle at all, much less one that maybe had a dead battery. As I said before, barring a complete emergency, good manners and common sense dictate that one does not knock on a stranger’s dark van in the middle of the night.

I think the man just wanted to know what I would do if he knocked on my van in the wee hours. Maybe he’d acted alone. Maybe the other man had dared him to knock. Maybe they were drunk. Maybe he was hoping I’d open the door or step of the van so he could what? Rob me? Rape me? Did he just want to know if I’d agree to help? Did the men not want a camping neighbor and were hoping to scare me off?

I suppose I’ll never know what the intentions were that night, but I’m glad there was nothing scarier that night than a knock in the dark.

I took this photo. It is not the river I slept next to the night of this incident, but you get the idea.

I took this photo. It is not the river I slept next to the night of this incident, but you get the idea.

September 2016 Spending Report

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Look at me getting the spending report posted early this month!

(If you are new to this blog, you can read about how this spending report project started here: http://www.rubbertrampartist.com/2015/12/31/spending/. You can also find the spending reports from previous months by typing “spending report” in the search bar.)

9-1-16 I thought my phone auto payment went through today, but when I got to civilization, my service had been turned off because I hadn’t linked my account on my my new debit card. Luckily, I was able to reinstate my account, and I didn’t lose my phone number. Nothing spent

9-2 through 9-5-16 I stayed on the mountain and didn’t buy anything. Nothing Spent

9-6-16 I had an appointment with a dentist today for a routine exam and cleaning, so I traveled to civilization. Total spent: $366.72

$2.17 to Taco Bell for breakfast

$8.75 for laundry

$275 for dental services

$34.99 phone payment

$21 for gasoline

$6 to thrift store for yarn. (I successfully avoided purchasing postcards and a notebook I didn’t need.)

$1.90 to Wal-Mart for food

$1 to Dollar Tree for envelopes

$7.92 for groceries

$7.99 to Panera for lunch and internet use.

9-7-16 I spent another day in civilization. Total spent: $106.33

$1.89 to Panera for coffee and internet use

$36.76 for gasoline

$14 as I once again I succumbed to the siren song of the Asian buffet. The food wasn’t as good this time, and I won’t be back. Lesson learned.

$34.93 for a water flosser recommended by three dental professionals.

9-8 through 9-10-16 Nothing spent

9-11-16 I had lunch today with coworkers. I ordered the delicious fish and chips, which were worth every penny. I also bought ice. Total spent: $16.61

9-12-16 Nothing spent

9-13-16 Today I mailed off some infinity scarves and a hat. Total spent: $22.05

9-14 through 9-18-16 Nothing spent

9-19-16 Today I made my last trip to civilization for the month. Total spent: $205.86

$2.17 to Taco Bell for breakfast.

$10 for laundry

$100 for debt repayment

70 cents for money order

$5.16 to Wal-Mart for paper towel holder (the one from the free box broke) and a can opener (the one I had for over two years quit opening cans)

$47.54 for gas

$9.75 to Panera for lunch and internet access

$30.45 for groceries

9-20-16 Total spent: $1.89 to Panera for coffee and internet accesss

9-21 through 9-23-16 Nothing Spent

9-24-16 Total spent $2.69 for ice

9-25 through 9-26-16 Nothing spent

9-27-16 Total spent: $10.64 to post office for postage

9-28 through 9-30-16 Nothing spent

Total spent for the month: $732.82

 

 

In Which I Decide to Write a Book

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My friend the Poet visited me at my campground over the summer. During the visit, the topic of self-publishing books came up. The Poet planned to self-publish a book. I hadn’t given self-publishing an actual book much thought. Sure, I’ve published zines before, but a whole book? That seemed beyond my capabilities, but the more I thought about the project, the more I thought, I could do this!

A couple weeks after The Poet’s visit, I decided on a Tuesday afternoon that I would self-publish a book (called Confessions of a Work Camper: Tales from the Woods) collecting my stories of work camping. Before a week had passed, I made decisions about chapters. I wrote intros for each chapter, as well as an intro to the whole collection. I decided in addition to stories that had already been posted on my blog, the book would include brand new, never before published stories. I wrote several of these new stories.

I want the book to be ready for purchase for the winter holidays, which means I have to work pretty fast. When I got to civilization, I asked the Poet for all the information she had about self-publishing. She graciously sent me an informative email within a couple of hours. I choose a company to work with and did some of the preliminary work of setting up an account.

I also did a quick Google search on “confessions of a work camper” and “confessions of a camp host,” and with the exception of a couple of poorly written blog posts, I found nothing. Could I possibly have come up with an idea for a book that’s never been written? (Part of me thinks I should not go public with this idea, lest someone else scoops it up before I can complete my project. Oh well. I’ve never been much good at keeping my big mouth shut. Also, I feel like if I go public with my intentions, I will have to follow through if I don’t want to look like a fool.)

I wrote to another friend who is a published (as in by a publishing company) writer. She offered to help me with the book and told me to think about goals for the book. Goals? Ok.

My Goals for My Book

#1 Generate income

#2 Generate interest in me as a writer

#3 Bring more readers to my blog

#4 Amuse readers

#5 Educate people about the possibility of work camping.

Because I am worried my blog will suffer while I am working on the book, I have been recruiting guest bloggers. I’ve invited several friends to write for the blog while I am busy with the book. In less than an hour, three people said yes and one said maybe. If other folks want to share stories, please contact me. I am looking for nonfiction pieces of a personal nature, 300 to 2,000 words. I’m most interested in travel and van dwelling stories; pieces about class issues; recommendations for books, articles, zines, websites, music. I don’t want to put a lot of work into guest posts, so please edit carefully before you send me anything for consideration.

This entire book project is exciting and overwhelming, but mostly exciting. I think I will feel less overwhelmed when I am no longer isolated on a mountain with no internet access. It won’t be long now.