Category: Travel

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The Love of a Motorhome

This afternoon we drove the motorhome around for a little while. It had been sitting all winter at the next door neighbors (they were gone for the winter and let us store it in their driveway). It was time to move it to its new spot and make sure it still had some life in it. It has been empty for months, alone, bare but not forgotten. It could be seen from our yard and every time I left the house I looked over at it and said hello. I wanted to make sure it knew we were coming back for it.

We drove it only 30 minutes or so, sitting in the passenger seat, as I usually did, brought many feelings with it. I could barely get myself to look over my shoulder, not wanting to acknowledge its emptiness. I miss this home. That is what it was, a home for over a year. Our first home we bought together. But it was much more than just that. It provided more than shelter, more than a way of getting around. It even smelled of emptiness. It smelled cold, damp, and musty. It smelled like a camper, like when we first bought it. Its walls were stripped of magnets, no cork boards pinned with pictures and notes. No keys dangling from hooks. No pots banging around in cabinets. No colorful pillows on the couch. A naked mattress on the bed. Our clothes were not in the closets and drawers. It was hollow. And it felt hollow. I started to feel as though I could cry. I missed it so much.

It is hard for me describe what living in that tiny space did for me. It gave me so much, I feel grateful to it. There is a connection like I have with no other space I’ve known. Initially, I admit I was a little afraid of it. I had rarely ever been in one except for checking out my father-in-law’s when he would come to visit. So owning one and living in one was somewhat scary. It was unfamiliar. There was a lot to learn and we didn’t exactly give ourselves a ton of time to do that. So, at first there were many holy shit moments. Like, holy shit I just bought an RV and holy shit this thing is huge.

The first weekend we ever spent in it was a test run. We spent two nights at an RV park on the Cape. We had no clue how anything worked, what anything should look like/sound like/smell like. And in just a month or so we would be living in it full time. It was also a way of testing the water as far as space went. Meaning, the lack of it. What would it be like physically living in this tiny rectangle for an extended period of time. Would I hate it? Feel claustrophobic? Keep bumping into things? Would it literally feel like I was living in a shoe box? After we hooked up the water hose, sewer hose and power cord we had some time to just chill out, have a beer and eat some snacks.

There is one moment that stands out to me. I remember as if it happened yesterday. There I was, sitting on the toilet (whose pedal flushing system I was leery of) going pee in the bathroom which was also the bedroom (unless you closed the accordian-like partition door). I was looking around, at the cabinet door which would serve as our closet, the little sink across from me, the bed which was bigger than the one we slept in at our condo, the fridge which could be seen through the doorway to the left. I was so happy I could have cried. I believe I said to myself out loud, this is your new home, you’re gonna live in this. I could not wait to have all our stuff in there and live in it for good. I absolutely, without a doubt, loved it.

I continued to love it. And it continued to kind of scare the shit out of me, because we were learning as we went. Every time we set off to a new destination I was nervous. Checking the side mirrors to make sure nothing was flapping around or little doors were swinging open. Turning the rear camera on to double check the Jeep was still attached and the tires were rolling. Trying to decipher between a tire about to blow or a bumpy road (harder than you would imagine). Hoping a pebble wouldn’t hit the propane tank and cause an explosion. Every little thing was nerve racking, because we were driving around a friggin house! With a Jeep towed behind it! We were in charge of 50 feet of moving vehicles. It might as well have been a tractor trailer truck. It was insane and amazing.

We could go wherever we wanted to and be home when we got there. We had our own bed to sleep in whether we were in a campground, RV park, truck stop, rest stop or Walmart parking lot. I felt so safe inside that shoebox. It sheltered me through my fears and nerves, rain and lightening.  It was my cocoon. It was there when I stared in awe at the Teton mountain range, when I cleaned up bloody legs from a day of mountain biking. It was there when I could barely move after a full day of hiking and then missing the shuttle bus in Zion National Park; we had to walk an additional 8 miles in pitch dark back to the visitor center. It was my house and my car all in one. It kept me in place and on the move. It was like magic. Like a best friend that you have no matter what, a pet that’s always happy to see you. It was everything for me and it did it all so well. Never complained, never rebelled. The peace I felt sitting at the kitchen table (which was also in the living room) drinking a cup of tea after dinner or having coffee in the morning was unbeatable. I wanted for nothing.

We left behind so much and found that we still brought too much with us. Most of the clothing we brought we didn’t even touch, the extra “just in case” stuff sat unused in bins. What was unexpected to me and what felt so incredible was realizing how much I didn’t need. Things that I held on to for years. Things I thought I cared about and loved. Things I thought I would miss. I needed none of it, wanted none of it, I didn’t even think about any of it. Clothes, shoes, knickknacks, coffee mugs, makeup, hair products, fancy kitchen gadgets. None of it fit, none of it had a place and none of it mattered. I was the happiest I had ever been. In that small shoebox of a house on wheels, I was the happiest I had ever been.

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Finding What Was Not Lost

I am going home. I never thought I would say it much less be happy about it. I am happy. I am even excited. I left Massachusetts thinking I would never come back. People were always saying, “Worst case scenario, you come back.” To which I replied, “Worst case scenario the motor home blows up.” I knew I wasn’t coming back. I left believing I needed to find a place where I belonged, a place I fit in and a place where I was surrounded by my kind of people. I left thinking I would find myself. In this new found place of belonging I would be more confident, more carefree, more open and more honest. It would be the kind of place I had been imagining. First, I would travel around until I stumbled upon it like accidentally bumping into your soulmate, the way it happens in the movies. In my travels I would conquer my fears, relinquish my struggle with change and squash my reliance on consistency.  I would strengthen my marriage because, who could fight in the presence of such natural wonders? Without the weight of everyday responsibilities and stressors, what marriage wouldn’t thrive? I was convinced that the journey would bring us so close that when we settled in this unfamiliar, match made in heaven home, we would be new and improved versions of our former selves. That was the goal. That was the plan. It wasn’t too high of an expectation, was it?

I left on an adventure with my wife in a 31ft motorhome pointed west. I spent an obscene amount of money on hiking clothes and gear that I never once would have considered buying or wearing. The first hike in my new clothes made me feel like a foreigner in a new country. Actually, it was like walking around in a super woman costume yet everyone knew it wasn’t Halloween and I wasn’t a superhero. I thought for sure it was obvious that I was a first time Merrill boot trotting, North Face pants wearing, Camelback carrying kind of girl. I felt ridiculous and giddy.

My fear of heights made me hesitant and nervous, which was in full effect when I approached signs reading, NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THOSE WITH A FEAR OF HIEGHTS.  I was the person they were referring too. That was me! My immediate reaction was to stop and say to myself, ‘see I shouldn’t do this!’  There was literally a sign telling me so. I thought for sure that would be my out. Nevertheless my legs kept pushing forward.

My first taste of exposure left me shaky and slightly light headed. Each hike after that got steeper, scarier and more challenging. Each time, I couldn’t believe what I was about to do. Each time, I was sure it was a terrible idea. Each time, I thought, ‘this hike I am not prepared for.’ Each time, I asked, just how steep is steep? How strenuous is strenuous? How difficult is difficult? Each time, I did it anyway. I stayed close to inside walls, held tight to support chains, looked straight ahead of me, and never looked down or up. I talked to myself constantly. I reminded myself that I was in control of my body (despite the fact that my hands were shaking and my legs were trembling). I was not going to fall unless I let go, walked off, or did something really, really stupid.

I felt comfort in my wife’s fearlessness and in the people around me doing the same thing with confidence.  I didn’t let myself say ‘no,’ or think about it too long before I started moving forward. I just did it. I went for it. I even found myself encouraging other hikers who looked terrified. If I could do it, anyone could. I laughed when someone commented on how calm I seemed. I was scared shitless but I transfered my anxiety into determination. When I made it to the top, the reward for the treturous and tremor producing climb was absolute elation. It was the most powerful, most deserved and most fulfilling deep breath my lungs have ever experienced. And the view wasn’t bad either.

The beautiful scenery of the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park and even the peaks of the Canadian Rockies, could not change the fact that I was unhappy, and struggling from a damaged childhood, to which my marriage was reaping the consequences. That’s the tricky thing about problems, they are still there even with a change of scenery. You can drive two thousand miles and the only thing that changes is where you are on the map. You bring all your shit with you. And if you are in my situation you also happen to be cramming it into a 200 square foot box on wheels.  A shitty attitude, hyper sensitivity, and lack of communication and understanding can fill a small space till it is bursting at the seems. It creates a thickness in the air even the mountain air can’t clear. I didn’t necessarily think a road trip would cure the issues in my marriage. I thought they would dwindle down a bit and mellow out because we were mellowed out. Not so much. What we really needed was more along the lines of intense couples therapy, somewhere in the realm of ten thousand dollars, by a bestselling world renowned author and psychologist.  Seriously, we took a detour to Colorado and it seriously cost a shitload. We spent a grueling several days with a guy I both hated and admired for his no bullshit cut throat approach to figuring out what the hell is wrong with you. And he makes it very clear that there is something very wrong with YOU. And YOU are the problem. And your marriage WILL fail if YOU don’t fess up to just how fucked up you really are.

The benefits of those visits took a little while to present themselves. But, ultimately what was made very clear was that there was nothing wrong with our marriage, there was something wrong with each of us. Overtime I realized that I was becoming more considerate, selfless and caring. These are attributes I would have argued I already demonstrated when in reality I was selfish, always wanting, grabbing, taking, deflecting, pullling and pushing. I was in this incredibly well made disguise. A disguise unknown even to myself. It was time to take off the mask. I believe being in the motor home away from everyone we knew helped too. In the moment it felt like an impossible situation, but it forced us to confront our problems head on in present time. We had no out. In such a small space there is no place to hide, no rugs to shove our problems under and no closet to stuff the skeletons into.

The ironic thing about leaving in search of something better is that you never find it, and that is because you are looking in the wrong spot. You think you are going to suddenly stumble upon this “thing,” like a tree root lifted up from the ground you don’t notice until you are almost head over heals. Everything you “find” from your self discovery adventure has been inside of you all along. You realize that the things you thought you were looking for are not things at all. They are revelations. These revelations reveal themselves as a better understanding of what it means to give things up, to start over, to be afraid and go for it anyway, and to not only get out of your comfort zone, but to shatter it until it is unrecognizable. It’s realizing that YOU are the reason your marriage is shit and YOU can change it. It’s finding out that you can not only get by with less, but also get a lot further, faster. It’s letting go of the should haves and supposed to’s. It’s discovering you are stronger, both physicallly and mentally, than you ever realized. It’s learning that you don’t need to react all the damn time. It’s accepting and being just as excited about your path leading you home as you were about it leading you away. All of these revelations were there all along, they were just tucked away deep inside a corner of my universe collecting dust, waiting to be cleaned off and let out into the world breathing in fresh mountain air and running wild.

 

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Journey

Who are you

Are you lost

Were you left up there in the mountains somewhere 

Or did you fade away in a river drowning with the current

Did the forest close in on you, giants surrounding you until you were hidden

A leaf amongst a sea of green. A blanket

Is it keeping you warm

 

The earth, is it protecting you

Is it showing you things, things that you have been looking for

Or do you find yourself searching in a moonless night

 

Are you turning soft like moss

Or hard like stone

And is it cold up there balancing on those peaks

 

Have you made peace with what you could no longer withstand

Does the battle fade with the distance

 

The longer you are away, the further you get

The steeper the grade, the slower the gain

 

And every time you ask yourself, am I there yet

You will know less and less about where you are headed

 

 

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My Inland has no Empire

 

I hate California. Who the hell are these people?  Maybe I shouldn’t be so broad. I hate Southern California. SoCal.  I hate the palm trees, the barren highways, the littered sidewalks. I hate the term SoCal. The people who live here think it is THE place to be. They think so highly of this bottom portion of one of the biggest states in our country that it is almost its own state. The other half, the top section, the greener, prettier, and more scenic (better half if you ask me), is the middle of nowhere. It is the ugly little sister that your parents make you take everywhere no matter how much you contest.

I have to give it some credit. It has the ocean and the mountains. However, in between the gorgeous blue pacific and the glistening ridges of the San Gabriels, past the glamorous L.A city skyline and Bentley strewn streets of Beverly Hills is a pocket of sweltering heat called the Inland Empire. It is inland but it is no empire. What is funny to me is that despite the vast differences and the fact that on a good day it can take two and a half hours to get to and from L.A, the people here consider themselves to be under the LA umbrella. I hate to break it to you but this is NOT L.A. It is NOT fashion forward, NOT progressive, NOT the best weather you can find, NOT the most laid back. It. Just. Is. Not.

Here is my view, my opinion really, except that I believe it to be fact. You enter the I.E. and you are literally HIT with heat. It is dry, heavy and fierce. You would never know you were an hour from the beach.  It is like being teased with the ocean breeze dangling by a string over your head. The highways are lined with brown mounds of rock and dirt interrupted randomly by enormous warehouses the size of three city blocks. They are massive, white, concrete squares with few windows. The streets are lined with palm trees, which makes for great pictures especially with snow-capped mountains off in the background. But that’s only if you are looking up. At ground level there are piles of litter everywhere, I didn’t even know littering was still a thing. I thought it disappeared with pay phones. The concept that people actually have trash that they throw out of their car windows or, by the looks of it, a barrel of trash that they empty directly on the side of the street is baffling to me.  Everything is brown. Brown, dry and hot. Really, really hot.

I also find it quite interesting the lack of interest there is in any other part of this country. Here in the I.E, Southern Californians think nothing else in the country matters because they think everything that is happening, is happening in Southern California. They have the narrowest view of this country and most other countries as well because all they know is Southern California. They do not travel much outside of the state, they do not think they need to.  But for an area that is considered so forward thinking and ahead of the curve, they do not get out much. Don’t you need to though? In order to be the one in the front of the pack, don’t you need to know who you are competing against?

It feels like one big contradiction. You get this idea that everyone is open minded, accepting, free spirited. Almost everyone is covered in tattoos. They have hair every color of the rainbow.  And yet, I have heard open discussions at my work about the bible and seen people reading the bible at Panera.  I hear young millennials talking about what church they go to. There are small tattoos of crosses on the insides of wrists and that fish symbol with JESUS written inside the body stuck to the backs of cars. I am not saying you can’t have tattoos and be religious and I am not saying there is anything wrong with being religious. But in my whole life I have never heard so much God talk. Quite frankly, it makes me pretty uncomfortable. I thought it was an unwritten rule (actually I am pretty sure it is written down somewhere) that there are two things you do not discuss at work/in public. Politics and religion. It has to be said, I live in the bible belt of California.

Don’t even get me started on food. I have never seen so many fast food restaurants in my life and what’s worse, I’ve never seen so many people go to fast food restaurants in my life. I was embarrassed when I would go to McDonalds for an ice coffee in the town I worked in back in Massachusetts. I practically ducked in my car hoping no one would see me and think I was ordering a Big Mac and fries. I wished they had a separate drive thru lane for coffee only so noone would mistake me for a fast food junkie. The other day I heard excitement over a new Wendys coming in across the street from a co-workers and everyone walks around with those enormous slurpee size cups full of soda. The organic food movement, small plates and farm to table are mysterious concepts here. There are no butchers or bakeries. Good meat is the deli counter at Stater Bros. This is hell for a foodie, unless you are a foodie trying to save money. In which case you are in the right spot, it’s slim pickins.

All everyone says to me about living here is how wonderful it is. In one hour you can get to the beach, the mountains, L.A, San Diego.  It is central to everything and you can’t beat the weather. Well that is all true if you can manage to make it through five different highways that are seven lanes across, with millions of people driving on them daily and not hit traffic. If you can handle the motorcycles whizzing past you in between lanes and manage not to rear end the multiple cars that cut right in front of you without using a blinker, you will be golden. The weather is great when it isn’t June, July, August or September and the smog doesn’t cover up the view of the mountains.  I want to love it because it appears that so many people do. I feel as though I am doing something wrong, am I missing something? I can’t help but think everyone loves it here so much because they have nothing else to compare it to.

When I tell people that I am from Massachusetts I get hit with a plethora of questions. Does it snow there?  Does it ever not snow? Does it ever get hot there? That’s up near Canada right? Is it near the beach? Can you actually go to the beach though? That’s a red state isn’t it? It’s somewhere above Georgia? They are shocked to learn about the houses built in the 1700 ‘s that are still standing, or the abundance of eclectic restaurants or the liberal pride or the beautiful beaches. They think any town with only one high school must have dirt roads and no electricity.  They also think if it isn’t L.A or N.Y.C it isn’t relevant.  I have plenty I could say about L.A but I do not live in L.A, I live in the I.E  and neither is anything like N.Y.C. As for the population here, they should venture out into the great U.S and perhaps they should start in MA.

*I wrote this during the eight months I lived in California.