Home again

We’ve been back for about ten days now, and I have to say I enjoyed our three-month trip enormously. I don’t like to think of it as a vacation because for now it’s just what we do in the winter: we go south. Still, it was a vacation in many ways.

For me, I can’t recall when I felt more at ease and in the moment for an extended period of time. In the moment almost never describes me, but while on the road, I could read a book all afternoon, practice Spanish or not as my motivation determined, go for an easy walk around the campground or a more vigorous hike up into a desert wash.

With my new Kindle, I could download newspapers for less that a dollar, and since we spent most of our time in Arizona, I usually read the Arizona Republic. If we felt like it, we would go into a nearby town and find an internet café and have coffee and maybe a sandwich while we caught up on our email and paid bills online.

I never felt bored. Never anxious. Never depressed. I never felt like I should be doing something else.

Our biggest concern during the first half of the trip was money, as many national, state and local campgrounds have substantially raised their fees if they haven’t actually closed down. But during the second half of the trip, we began to find free or very low-cost campsites. Organ Pipe National Monument charges ten dollars a night, and since I’m now officially a senior (sixty-two), fees are half price. Five bucks a night to stay in our favorite park.

You can stay three weeks at Organ Pipe, then move a few miles north of the park and stay for free on BLM land for another two weeks: five weeks of camping for $105. We were paying that for three nights before we found out better.

We also scouted some of the BLM Long-Term Visitor Areas, which charge $80 per year for camping within a certain area, usually very expansive. The biggest of these is near Quartzite, Arizona where hundreds of thousands of snow birds come for the winter and spread out across the desert, either tightly packed for those who enjoy the company, or widely spaced for those who don’t. We didn’t stay in Quartzite and probably never will, but there are other areas run in the same way that are much more appealing, and we can easily see ourselves staying for a month or so in a few different locations.

We also found Wal-Mart parking lots to be commodious and convenient for overnight stays while traveling to new locations. Wal-Mart doesn't mind, and with our GPS, I’ve found you’re never more than ten miles from a Wal-Mart. I forgive Wal-Mart for killing Chinese babies for pet food. I even shopped in a few, call me what you will.

For me, this kind of life is so enjoyable and inviting I’d love to sell out up here in Klamath Falls and go full-time, which some millions of Americans do. As small as our trailer is, we were very comfortable in it for three months, and there are middle-sized trailers that come close to the feel of a small apartment. It would be a simple matter to retain a legal address in Klamath Falls through a mail-forwarding service.

I envision staying here between three to six months a year and traveling the rest of the time. I could see us doing that for another ten years or so. Although we’d take a beating if we sold the house now, I’ve been thinking a lot lately in terms of how many good years I have left, and good years have come to mean a lot more to me than money.

Especially since we have the money. It’s actually a lot cheaper to live on the road than in a house, and when the time comes, it’s easy enough to settle down again in a nice rental or old persons’ home. I’d like to find one that accepts only liberals. The Hubert Humphrey Cozy Home for Aging Leftists or some such.

Mary is less thrilled than I am with the idea, though she’s not completely opposed to it. She loved the mobile life as much as I did, but she also feels more connection to our home here than I do.

Whatever we decide, we’re both happy with the way things are for now or could be in the immediate future. The best of it is that with both of us retired, we have choices now that we never had before. We’re also cognizant of our great good fortune to have a modest but secure income in this time of such a serious and painful recession, but we more than earned what we have. I don’t spend a lot of time feeling guilty that things have gone our way in the last quarter or so of our lives. It’s not like I was a bank president or something.

The Spanish word for “retired” is “jubilado.”

So, back home to a cold and sometimes snowy spring, but it definitely is spring and I can wait it out until the weather improves. I’ve enrolled for this summer in an eight-week, intensive Spanish program at Southern Oregon University, across the mountains in Ashland. I’m both excited and intimidated by it. I’ve been studying Spanish, mostly on my own, for about three years now, and despite making progress, it can only be slow progress without good instruction and a chance to practice speaking every day.

Classes start mid-June, and I’m trying to cram on my own so I’ll be as ready to start as I can be. I’ll be staying somewhere near Ashland in the trailer four days a week, then back home on the weekends. The trailer is a good place to study since it’s about the size of a jail cell but nicer, and there aren’t any distractions built in.

Besides, I see myself spending a lot of time on campus. There’s even an Hispanic Students Union. If I study hard, maybe I can pass for a Mexican.

My only souvenir from the trip is a rattlesnake-skin belt, but that’s a story for another day. He was a big mother.