If you follow me on social media, you may have seen the photo above, cryptically captioned, “I did a thing.”
The thing I did: move, full-time, into a 17-foot travel trailer, as I’ve been threatening to do for years. (Yes, even after I waxed poetic about the life I’d made in Santa Fe.)
I hadn’t been public about this decision because, in part, it felt a little bit like failure — if that makes any sense to say about full-time travel, a thing that so many people can only dream of doing. But I’d tried pretty hard to set down roots in Santa Fe, and it just wasn’t happening. I had a couple of relationships fizzle, one spectacularly, and though I made some good friends, I only made a few. (Probably half of the Sante Fe population is over the age of 60, which didn’t help.)
I tried hard to become a winter person, but I hurt myself snowboarding, and when I was honest with myself, the cold left me frustrated and… well, cold. Plus, I am who I am, so I never stopped wondering: where else could I be right now?
I was on the point of signing a new lease — a smaller apartment on the far end of town, which I thought would help me save money. It was lovely and owned by an older couple who were both visual artists, and there was this sweet little shared patio where they promised they’d soon be growing rosemary; as Santa Fe as possible. I imagined languishing there on warm afternoons (however brief their season), playing my ukulele and swapping stories.
It was pretty much perfect. But with my pen poised above the paper to sign, I found I simply couldn’t do it. The road was still calling… and since I could outrun winter, why wouldn’t I? I laid awake for a night, trying to chart my course.
RVing was an obvious choice; I’d done a lot of it growing up with my folks and had lived in their (stationary) motorhome as a basecamp while jetting off to Greece and Barcelona. And it was the perfect way to marry what have always been two very deep, but very conflicting, personality traits of mine: an insatiable wanderlust, and also a need for a fair amount of stability. Someplace my own. Someplace to nest.
So I did a *very* not-personal-finance-writer thing and I bought a Casita travel trailer, brand new. I’d driven all the way to Las Cruces to see a 1998 model, and the guy wanted fully half of what I’d spend to get one customized to my exact specifications. Well-built and with a cult following, they hold their value, and I could afford it… so why not? I called the manufacturer, based in east Texas, and put in my order.
That was late May. I was told she’d be ready for pickup in July.
No matter how you slice it, July was a big month. I spent the Fourth, weirdly one of my favorite holidays, alone in my Santa Fe apartment, solidifying my feeling that I simply couldn’t stay there. Then I abruptly up and left Santa Fe a week ahead of schedule, crying my face off while my kind-of-sort-of-ex-boyfriend drove up from Albuquerque to limply hold me at my request before helping me donate my now-tear-soaked mattress to the Salvation Army. I went to Colorado and climbed my first — and possibly only, because fuck altitude sickness is REAL ya’ll — 14er. I hung out with an old friend and got way too high in Denver. I climbed the Manitou Incline twice. Then I drove to east Texas to pick up the trailer by way of Amarillo and Fort Worth; I didn’t eat a five-pound steak but I did watch the hokey cattle drive tradition. The trailer came stocked with a Bible tucked in one of the cabinets, plastic-wrapped and everything, which I ended up putting to good use as a charcuterie board during my first night of camp at Huntington State Park, where a nice man named Karl told me God had big plans for me. Then I made my way to Florida as quickly as I could, and spent $2,500 (seriously) at the DMV to re-establish myself as a Floridian, which is a pretty iffy prize for that kind of dough, if you ask me.
And here I am a month before 30 and honestly? I really have no fucking idea what I’m doing. Well, I know what I’m doing right now: proceeding at a breakneck pace across the country, past gas stations with in-house restaurants called the Corn Stalk Café and donut shops that actually, really open at 4 a.m. and many, many billboards spattered with pro-life propaganda. And by breakneck I mean, like, the longest travel day I’m willing to put up with is seven hours and I’d really rather do five. Keep in mind I’m also working on the road because, as I am now acutely aware, GAS IS NOT EVEN KIND OF FREE.
They revoke your Trailer Trash license if you don’t have a pair of jorts. THOSE ARE THE RULES
The idea is to get to the Pacific Northwest before the fall rain comes. I left Saint Augustine on Sunday, and am writing this on Thursday night from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It’s been a pretty intense few days, and honestly, I’m getting sick of run-run-running… but it’s also an interesting chance to reflect, given I followed this exact same route when I left home a little over a year ago on the trip that landed me in Santa in the first place. I keep thinking about how different I am today from the girl I was on that trip, how my values and perceptions and body have changed. It’s not insignificant. After giving up disordered eating and my single-minded obsession with taking up as little space as possible (to the exclusion of actually living my life), I find myself on the brink of what’s supposed to be a more confident, settled-in decade not even sure who the fuck I am.
What I do know: I want to see and experience. I want to taste — now literally as well as figuratively — every last drop of what life has to offer.
Here’s to figuring it out. Here’s to the next adventure.