April, 1998

The most frustrating part of life on the road, thus far, is the maddening inability to retrieve email at will. At first, it seemed a miracle that I could plug my cellular phone into my computer and log on, but at 25 cents a minute, most of which are spent on failed attempts to connect, the novelty of the effort has quickly worn thin.

Some campgrounds have offices, rumor has it, where one can make use of the spare fax line for a quick download of email, but I have yet to stay at such a place. I tend to prefer the national park and BLM lands, where campers self-register by dropping their money into hollow metal poles and the nearest payphone is a couple miles down a bumpy dirt road.

I've thought about checking into a motel, and staying up all night cruising around in cyberspace, but the "nester" in me is reluctant to leave my cozy trailer even for one night. A more sensible option, whenever I'm near a big city, would be to locate one of those glitzy, over-developed RV "resorts" that offers what my guidebooks call "overnight phone hookups." I imagine this to mean that there are phone jacks at each campsite, which work pretty much the way motel phones work: you can make unlimited local and 800 number calls, and must charge long distance calls to a credit card. As most RVers seem to do without phone access altogether, I'm curious about the intended market for this feature. High-powered executives taking the $300k London Aire motorhome out for a little drive? Busy-body grandmothers in Chanel jogging suits who can't rest until they find out whether or not Dorothy will make her debut? Clearly the service is of interest to a whole new breed of RVer: the recovering computer addict. I aim to stay in one outside of Phoenix next week, and surf to my heart's content, hoping all the while that my little Nash trailer doesn't develop an inferiority complex, surrounded by all those 43' triple-slideout monster glamour-mobiles.

A rare bit of luck came to me today in the form of The Trading Post, a dusty old shack in Congress, Arizona, which makes its way in the world by offering up used car parts, metal scrap, blocks of wood, and tables and cabinets full of garage-sale rejects, all available for "trade in like kind." The floor boards creak as I enter, tossing up dust into the sunlit air. Smoke swirls up from behind the counter, where a cowboy dressed entirely in black sits reading a paper that doesn't look to be of this century. "The folks at North Ranch told me I might be able to check my email here," I say, patting the laptop case hanging by my side. "Oh sure," the cowboy, replies, "come this way." As he walks a wrinkled, black duster billows out behind him, and his solid silver spurs clank with every step. He directs me to the Trading Post's one concession to the modern world: a fax machine, which has an extra phone jack available for me to plug into and dial out. For the next fifteen minutes, I'm hardly aware of the dust and cigarette smoke settling into my clothes, or the neighborhood gossip happening at the table behind me, led by an ancient woman with the deep, commanding, gravely voice of a matriarch. I drop $5 in the "donations" jar on the way out, and the cowboy tips his hat in thanks.

Another hazard of the RVing lifestyle is the proximity to other people that inevitably comes with the campground territory. Noisy people, sometimes nosy, and sometimes helpful, like the old man who came over as I was backing the trailer into the space I'm in now. I am much better at doing this myself, working on instinct, rather than trying to follow someone else's idea of "helpful directives," but how can I tell him this and not seem rude? I let him guide me into the site, I thank him, and he walks away. I get out of the truck and survey the situation, only to discover that the trailer is on the wrong side of the hookups. So much for helpfulness. So I pull forward and try again, and the man magically reappears with new directions, and this time I get the trailer more or less correctly positioned. I thank him again, but this time he lingers, wanting to know if I need help unhitching. How can I tell him that I've done this dozens of times already, with no assistance; that, in fact, I can do all sorts of amazing and complicated things without the assistance of a man. But he looks at me, young, female, not particularly muscular, with no husband in sight, and how can he help but think gallant, chivalrous thoughts? Giving in to my southerner's aversion to rudeness, I smile as sweetly as I can while declining his offer.

I am moving so rapidly through the procedure -- jack the trailer up, disconnect the sway bars, jack the trailer down, unlock the ball coupler, jack the trailer up, dislodge the ball, jack the trailer down, remove the ball hitch and secure the hitch receiver under the truck -- that I am halfway finished by the time he registers my "no thanks." "Guess you've got it all under control there, eh sweetie?" he says, and I force myself to smile. "Just holler if you need help with anything else, OK?"

I've watched men unhitching their trailers and the procedure is always accompanied by much puffing out of the chest, manly groans at the effort of it all, melodramatic grunts and sighs with the lifting of each heavy metal chain or bar. The wives stand by in awe, thankful not to be burdened by such difficult, complicated work. Man's work, their husbands assure them, blocking their view of the lone woman hitching up her trailer with relative ease. The same scenario repeats at the dump station, where trailers and motorhomes come to empty their full bellies into the local sewer system. Done properly, it is a simple, relatively clean job, a matter of attaching a hose and opening some valves, certainly not the heroic deed the men make it out to be, with their stomping and cursing and grunting. But perhaps these men, most of them retirees, just want to feel needed, appreciated. And the women play their role flawlessly, completely unaware of the freedoms that could've been theirs, with just a simple crank of the jack, and a pair of Rubber Maid heavy-duty gloves.

I love the freedom of this lifestyle, especially when I'm driving down the open road, through breath-taking scenery, with the whole of my life completely and totally under my control. I can go anywhere, do anything -- as long as I remember to take my medicine, and feed the dogs. This country is so beautiful, it sometimes brings tears to my eyes that I can't take it all in forever. But I'm also afflicted with obsessive thoughts about my future, how long I should live in the trailer, whether or not I should rent an apartment for the winter and if so, where, what to do about my precious belongings molding away in storage, whether or not I should apply to graduate school, when I will next get to spend time with my sweetie? In the golden glow of afternoon, I find myself missing the look of my old bedroom in just such a light, with its huge comfortable bed, covered in beautiful shades of gold, black and crimson. I miss the funky metal candle-holder by my bed, the streaky brown bedside table and chest of drawers I stained myself, the little bookshelf overflowing with books borrowed from my lover. But I don't miss making frequent use of the Pulmo-Aide nebulizer, so often the only way to dispense much-needed medication into my swollen lungs. And I don't miss having a roommate who comes home every afternoon eager to chat and watch movies, which I enjoy, though I take greater pleasure in extended periods of silence. The voices in my head, the ones that tell me stories, are shy, emerging only after days and days of solitude, when they are guaranteed my full and unwavering attention.

The sun is setting, and the time has come to take the dogs on their evening stroll, into the beautiful desert country of north central Arizona. This is a good life, for now.