March 27th, 2025
It's time.
The temperature is rising. about a week ago, the temps suddenly rose to 100F, and the locals assure us we'll see sustained weeks of 110, The LTVA (long-term vehicle area) permit ends in about 2 weeks. We are getting itchy to move on! We'll be packing up, and moving down to Imperial Dam, at Senator Wash. It's another BLM LTVA, so our pass will work there, too.
Have we mentioned it's getting hot?
😅😓
We've learned a huge number of things, at Quartzsite: how to monitor and manage our limited water supply: how to poop other places (to further our limited water supply!); how to cook wonderfully delicious meals in cramped quarters: how we were correct.
Correct? How were we correct?
We had it correct, this way: we love the time we spend together, in our tiny home, we were correct in the assessment we had a strong-enough partnership to survive, surmount, and surpass any challenges (and there are a TON!), we were correct in dumping much of our worldly possessions, and pursue a nomad lifestyle.
Remember us saying, in past updates, that we wanted to collect experiences, and not things?
It's hard to convey the lightness of being this lifestyle presents: day to day, we awake with a sense of "what's next?", unlike the feeling of being rooted in a single place, which is more like, "Yea...what's next is go to work/repair things/go shopping/pay bills/plan on doing things."
Wait..what's that you say?
"How is anything different than when you were living in Colorado?"
It's different.
Out here, there's the road. Out here, there's a daily tingle, a sparkle that can sometimes be subsumed by the sameness of rooted-in-place living. Certainly, being retired makes a huge difference, but it goes even farther than that.
Out here, there's a type of intentionality that isn't always expressed or available, at a fixed location. we get...comfortable. We get used to the '9 to 5' patterns, to the set of things that, because you're in a set location, become...rote.
It's... not the same grind, day to day. It's a grind, but a far less-abrasive grind. it's a grind we have fully chosen, a grind that has, as its goal, for us to see things and places we have never seen before. The immediacy of the choices we must make are exhilarating,
Some of those places and things...
One of the vintage tanks, on display, at Yuma Proving Grounds
In a fixed location version of home, you have a far narrower 'path' to experiencing those things: weekend getaways, vacations that often are fewer than two weeks, or quick daytrips to nearby places.
On the road, we get to spend hours arranging those trips, we delight in reading maps and brochures, happily planning those trips. We are continually 'trip tikking' our journey; we aren't just taking two weeks and hurriedly grasping at an adventure: we are intentional in our quest.
The poem by Joe Henry looms large..
Eagle feathers bound in wax
Won't get us to the Sun.
The dream's the thing
Our holy wings
Our journey just begun.
Seeya soon!
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