Living in a western Colorado
mountain town that panders to tourists, vacationers and
white-knuckled early retirees driving Greyhound buses converted to
homes nicer than I live in, I, too, have suffered. I have been
damned, dammed behind these tin-can condos as they’ve labored
up passes like mastodons running a marathon.
I’ve
watched with a perverse mix of dread and lurid anticipation as they
wobble uncertainly down switchbacks like poodles trying to run with
the wolves. And I’ve displayed stunning restraint, dodging
their weaving ways, as they negotiate our city’s streets like
whales schooling with mackerel. I’ve seen them at the gas
pump guzzling vats of gasoline. Especially now.
Yet here
we be. We be RV.
We became RV because this past summer my
wife and I decided to explore the spine of our beloved Rocky
Mountains, as far as we could get (and back) over the summer, with
our two kids, ages 10 and 12. Something of a last chance to spend
two months in close quarters before puberty becomes the elephant in
the proverbial room. Or in the proverbial 24-foot camper trailer.
You have to understand: My wife and I have long been
outdoor purists. For the past few decades, we’ve been
strictly backpackers, car campers and river runners. On those
ventures we’ve always slept — and, for several summers,
lived — either under the stars. The biggest “motor coach”
we’ve employed has been a 1981 Jeep Wagoneer. We have raised
our two children the same proudly primitive way.
But this
summer, for the first time, an RV made sense. It would be four of
us out on the road for eight weeks, covering a lot of miles and
moving our camp a lot. We would be frequently and for long periods
of time in grizzly habitat, so a hard shell around us was
comforting.
It worked. Over two months and thousands of
miles, we were always able to pull up to a spot — a state
park, a side road, a pull out in the woods or along a river or on a
grand overlook with a sweeping view of the Rockies — and
immediately be there. Rain or shine, cold or hot, mosquitoes or
blackflies, all we had to do was park, turn on the hot water and
water pump, and we were home. Or at least at the cabin — same
cabin, new cabin site each night.
The lodging was
comfortable, but the driving was a revelation. It gave me a
surprisingly elevated appreciation for the abilities of my fellow
RV jockeys. Obviously, you don’t have to be a Ph.D. to pilot
an RV, but it ain’t for sissies, either. For generating sheer
fear, whitewater has nothing on hauling a small house on wheels
over a mountain road. And even walking through grizzly country is
less intimidating than sharing a winding and narrow northcountry
road with careening tandem tanker semis and ancient overloaded
logging trucks.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I also
have to admit that I came to understand the allure and generosity
of The Box Store That Must Not Be Named — let’s call it
Valdemart — as that huge pavement harbor for throwing out
anchor and resupplying in the midst of the chaos of an urban ocean.
I also have to say that I liked most of the fellow RVers
we met on the road and in campgrounds up and down the Rocky
Mountains. I found a deeper connection with these folks than I, in
my mountain-man machismo, had been willing to admit before. Even
though these were not people we would normally run into while
camping the way we usually camp, they were still fun and friendly.
They were interesting. They were … well, travelers, just like
us.
Still, there are some places that my Thoreauvian
conscience (and, lest we forget, Thoreau passed his Walden
wilderness adventure in a cabin about the size of our RV)
won’t let me go in my RV: No generator. No TV. No letting
more than three vehicles stack up behind me on mountain passes.
And, no matter how much sympathy and understanding I may now have
for my RVing brothers and sisters, never, ever camping overnight in
a Valdemart parking lot.
Hey, we haven’t changed
that much.
Ken Wright is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News (hcn.org). He lives and writes in Durango,
Colorado.
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