Aging Gratefully: Despite Myself

How I made the decision to go camping in the Southwest is a long-forgotten mystery, but needing to flee an increasingly unstable boyfriend and having just fixed up my trusty van contributed to furthering my escape plans…It was rigged with a platform in the back, had an eight-track sound system and could lock up. Chrome yellow with a large multicolored graphic filling most of the driver’s side, it would be conspicuous but in 1970, vans could be weird. Serendipitously, the Chinese logo meant Journey Through Life. I was ready. Mom urged me to take Cocina, her imposing white German Shepard. With savings turned into travel checks, and the van serviced, I eventually went over to the apartment to pack up while he was at work and commiserated with his sister. Told her I was leaving town. More like escaping. Wondered if she should too. She understood and helped me load my stuff. Afterwards I made a jittery trip to the army/navy store downtown to get 1970 style camping gear to live in my van for a few months––– green flannel quilted sleeping bag, lantern with batteries, single burner Coleman stove, and fluid, couple of thin aluminum pots and a frying pan, water jugs, matches, curtain material for the windows, flashlight and dogfood. Found a washing machine drum for a makeshift table. Used some tree limb protruding out the middle of it for hanging clothes and the lantern. Foam mattress pad for the platform in the back. Sheets and blankets. Material to make curtains. Taking 290 out of Houston, I headed west with a vague idea of where and when I would be stopping. It is usually twelve hours to get to New Mexico, so I headed toward an in-between place called Fort Clark in Brackettville Texas where we spent many summers. Searching for a site to park, tending a fire, cooking metal tasting food from thin pots, feeding and playing with Cocina helped with that rising sense of boundless unknowingness. One thing for sure, the wide-open spaces, the quiet, the seeming disconnection from all I had been used to, was far more comforting than the jumble-headed abyss I had left back in the city. A few weeks later, somewhere at a remote, vacantly bleak little gas station near the Gila Wilderness, with the wind whipping my hair around the payphone handset, I called Mom to check in. She had news. Some mutual friends begged for her help because J had made a leap into complete oblivion and had wound up on their doorstep. He was wildly and insensibly spouting incalculable phrases, fantastical imagery, and touting plans for his very own world domination. Mom hurried over to their house where they all gently ushered him from porch to car to hospital. Waiting a few hours at the ED, their task was to distract him from bolting before he was admitted to the psych ward. He had no idea that anything was wrong while speculating he was God thus creating imaginary worlds for others. Once again, he had landed for a lengthy stay at a psychiatric hospital. Although I wished both he and his sister well, I never saw them again. Back before computers, it was easy to lose touch with people. Sad to say. That phone call stirred up some old fearful shame while my 21-year-old self was still hungry for change no matter where else it could come from. I continued my wandering letting this wild unknown land paradoxically restore some semblance of outer calm. Daily anxiety-driven physicality became calming. Driving alone for great distances offered solace but stopping for gas and snacks, finding and setting up camps, deciding where to go next found me laughing in frustration and crying for joy. If nervousness could be tapped for energy, I had a ten-year supply for sale. Developing self-sufficiency, arriving everywhere alone, figuring out directions to the most intriguing parks, encountering strange people, taking care of Cocina and many times getting lost on back roads in the Apache National Forest outside of Silver City–––had me anxiously clenching inside out. But I wasn’t too worried about my psyche anymore. White knuckles on the steering wheel, constantly clenched butt muscles, and sore jaw teeth propelled me forward. Fear and anxiety paired me with a semblance of common sense and served to navigate the constant ever unraveling and unsettling space/time frame. Adventure had come to mean remarkable but frightening newness until I met some folks offering another unexpected and terrifying mental rabbit hole to dive into. Trucking through Forests into Permian Canyons, 8 track tape deck blaring Buffalo Springfield and a few panic attacks later, I pulled into Canyon de Chelly where I met C. and her brother, L, who were camping nearby.