After The Man left the mountain, I stayed at the group campground down the road from the Mercantile where I worked. I was usually the only person in the campground during the week, but since I’d moved in, people had come in each Friday night, stayed over on Saturday, and left on Sunday while I was at work. Sandra the camp host told me this week would be no different.
I returned to the campground a little before six o’clock on Friday evening. All I wanted was to eat some dinner and go to bed.
The way into the campground was a dirt Forest Service road. It was rutted and dusty and bumpy and rocky, but if I drove on the wrong side of it as I headed to the campground, I could avoid the worst of it. The Forest Service road continued past the campground and disappeared into the woods.
The campground wasn’t very big and had no marked sites. People just figured out where to park and pitch their tents so they could be as close to or as far from the other people in their group as they wanted. Most groups congregated near the fire ring and the cluster of three picnic tables.
A narrow dirt road ran through the middle of the camping area. That road connected to the Forest Service road at two points, one on each end of the campground. Folks could enter and exit the camping area at either of those connection points. My camp was closest to the first connection point, but I almost never used that part of the road because it was steep and badly rutted. I drove a little bit farther to enter the second connection point, and when it was time to leave camp, I backed out of my parking space and drove through the campground so I could exit where the road was a little better.
When I arrived home that Friday evening, I drove over to the second entrance point to find a giant motor home trying to park on the far edge of the campground. An angry-looking woman stood outside the motor home, halfheartedly trying to direct the driver of the behemoth. The driving pulled the motor home forward two feet, backed it up two feet, pulled it forward again. I stayed on the Forest Service road with my blinker signaling a left turn until the woman motioned for me to make my move.
I drove slowly through the campground and saw several vehicles were parked off the road. I went to my campsite, cooked and ate my dinner, then crawled into bed. It was well after dark, but I was still awake when I heard a noise like an 18-wheeler nearby. The noise was close, and it lingered. I got out of bed and peeked out my front curtains. I could see what seemed to be vehicle lights, but I couldn’t tell what sort of vehicle I was looking at. I shrugged and closed my curtains. Whatever those campers were doing was not my problem.
In the morning as I was leaving for work, I saw that what the campers had done was indeed my problem. The sound I heard in the dark was a second giant motor home arriving. Both giant motor homes were blocking the Forest Service Road, and the second one was blocking the path out of the campground. I didn’t get out of my van and try to talk to anyone about the danger of blocking roads. Since I wasn’t the camp host, I was lacking in all authority, and no way was anybody going to be able to move that motor home out of my way in a hurry. I needed to get to work, so I slowly and carefully backed my van all the way to my campsite where I was able to turn around and exit from the steep and rutted part of the road closest to my site.
When I got to the campground where the Mercantile was located, I went directly to speak to the camp hosts, Sandra and Javier. I apologized for starting their morning with a problem, then went on to explain what was happening at the group campground. Javier said either he or Sandra would go down there later that morning to check in the campers and let them know they couldn’t block the road. I left things in their capable hands.
Javier reported back to me after he spoke to the campers at the group campground. The drivers of the motor homes told him they didn’t want to hit trees while trying to park in the dark, which did apply to the motor home that had arrived after the sun was down. However, in the case of the first motor home, darkness was a total bullshit excuse because when I’d seen people trying to park it, there was a good two hours of daylight left. But oh well. Javier said he’d told the motor home folks that there was plenty of room to park their rigs inside the campground, and the situation was all taken care of.
When I returned to the group campground that evening, I found that the motor home people had interpreted plenty of room to park the rigs in the campground to mean plenty of room to park the rigs in the middle of the road running through the campground. No fucking way! No one could drive through the campground because two giant motor home were completely blocking the road.
I stopped the van, turned the engine off, got out, and walked over to the people sitting around a campfire. I told them my name, said I worked for the company managing the campground, and pointed out where I was camped. I told them I was concerned about the motor homes blocking the road. If there were an emergency, I said, if there were a fire or someone if had a heart attack (I looked pointedly at the elderly man who’d come over to talk to me) having the road blocked might delay emergency responders. If a Forest Service employee saw the blocked road, I added, he or she wouldn’t be happy.
We talked to the Forest Service, the elderly man told me. A guy came out here! He said park there!
It turned out they had not discussed the parking situation with a Forest Service employee. They’d discussed the parking situation with Javier. The campers maintained Javier had told them the giant motor homes could not block the Forest Service road but could block the road through the campground.
I shrugged and said, If Javier told you to park there, that’s good enough for me. I turned around, got back in my van, turned it around, and drove slowly down the steep and rutted entrance near my campsite. If they weren’t concerned about most of their cars being blocked in by the motor home, why should I worry? In an emergency I could get my van out of the campground; if the campers weren’t concerned for themselves, I wasn’t going to spend my whole night worried about them.
I didn’t ask Javier if he’d told the campers to park their giant motor homes in the middle of the campground’s road. I didn’t see him until Sunday morning, and I knew the motor homes and the rest of the group would be gone before I returned from work. There was no sense making a big deal out of something that soon wouldn’t matter. Beside, Javier was the camp host, not me. If he’d told people to park in the middle of the road through the campground, that was his call.
A narrow dirt road ran through the middle of the camping area. That road connected to the Forest Service road at two points, one on each end of the campground. Folks could enter and exit the camping area at either of those connection points. My camp was closest to the first connection point, but I almost never used that part of the road because it was steep and badly rutted. I drove a little bi farther to enter the second connection point, and when it was time to leave camp, I backed out of my parking space and drove through the campground so I could exit where the road was a little better.
I drove slowly through the campground and saw several vehicles were parked off the road. I went to my campsite, cooked and ate my dinner, then crawled into bed. It was well after dark, but I was still awake when I heard a noise like an 18-wheeler nearby. The noise was close, and it lingered. I got out of bed and peeked out my front curtains. I could see what seemed to be vehicle lights, but I couldn’t tell what sort of vehicle I was looking at. I shrugged and closed my curtains. Whatever those campers were doing was not my problem.
In the morning as I was leaving for work, I saw that what the campers had done was indeed my problem. The sound I heard in the dark was a second giant motor home arriving. Both giant motor homes were blocking the Forest Service Road, and the second one was blocking the path out of the campground. I didn’t get out of my van and try to talk to anyone about the danger of blocking roads. Since I wasn’t the camp host, I was lacking in all authority, and no way was anybody going to be able to move that motor home out of my way in a hurry. I needed to get to work, so I slowly and carefully backed my van all the way to my campsite where I was able to turn around and exit from the steep and rutted part of the road closest to my site.
When I got to the campground where the Mercantile was located, I went directly to speak to the camp hosts, Sandra and Javier. I apologized for starting their morning with a problem, then went on to explain what was happening at the group campground. Javier said either he or Sandra would go down there later that morning to check in the campers and let them know they couldn’t block the road. I left things in their capable hands.
Javier reported back to me after he spoke to the campers at the group campground. The drivers of themotor homes told him they didn’t want to hit trees while trying to park in the dark, which did apply to the motor home that had arrived after the sun was down. However, in the case of the first motor home, darkness was a total bullshit excuse because when I’d seen people trying to park it, there was a good two hours of daylight left. But oh well. Javier said he’d told the motor home folks that there was plenty of room to park their rigs inside the campground, and the situation was all taken care of.
When I returned to the group campground that evening, I found that the motor home people had interpreted plenty of room to park the rigs in the campground to mean plenty of room to park the rigs in the middle of the road running through the campground. No fucking way! No one could drive through the campground because two giant motor home were completely blocking the road.
I stopped the van, turned the engine off, got out, and walked over to the people sitting around the campfire. I told 
them my name, said I worked for the company managing the campground, and pointed out where I was camped. I told them I was concerned about the motor homes blocking the road. If there were an emergency, I said, if there were a fire or someone if had a heart attack (I looked pointedly at the elderly man who’d come over to talk to me) having the road blocked might delay emergency responders. If a Forest Service employee saw the blocked road, I added, he or she wouldn’t be happy.
We talked to the Forest Service, the elderly man told me. A guy came out here! He said park there!
It turned out they had not discussed the parking situation with a Forest Service employee. They’d discussed the parking situation with Javier. The campers maintained Javier had told them the giant motor homes could not block the Forest Service road but could block the road through the campground.
I shrugged and said, If Javier told you to park there, that’s good enough for me. I turned around, got back in my van, turned it around, and drove slowly down the steep and rutted entrance near my campsite. If they weren’t concerned about most of their cars being blocked in by the motor home, why should I worry? In an emergency I could get my van out of the campground; if the campers weren’t concerned for themselves, I wasn’t going to spend my whole night worried about them.
I didn’t ask Javier if he’d told the campers to park their giant motor homes in the middle of the campground’s road. I didn’t see him until Sunday morning, and I knew the motor homes and the rest of the group would be gone before I returned from work. There was no sense making a big deal out of something that soon wouldn’t matter. Beside, Javier was the camp host, not me. If he had told people to park in the middle of the road through the campground, that was his call.