Staying Still
We've decided to stay mostly still for the winter. We're in the final steps of negotiating a lease for a house here in Northern New Mexico. It's a mostly energy self-sufficient home: all water comes from a collection system on the roof that saves rain and melted snow in two cisterns under the ground, and the electricity comes from solar panels on the building's roof. The home is made of adobe and it's heated with passive solar and two wood stoves (backed up with propane heat). One very cool feature: there's an Airstream trailer built right into the home.
It's a fascinating thing to me that such a landscape that appears so barren can be managed in such a way that it produces sufficient natural resources to provide some of the essentials for human life: water and heat. I know that people in the area also have gardens and are able to produce at least part of their food, which is impressive given that the elevation is between 7,000 and 8,000 feet.
The home is an a slight hill and surrounded by wide-open mesa. The sky is ginormous. There are stunning views in every direction: The Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a southern section of the Rockies, forms a long, high line along the horizon in one direction, and another line of mountains, also part of the Southern Rockies, though with a much lower elevation), forms another large section of the horizon.
So why will we be staying still? I should say that I'm ambivalent about the choice. I think both of us would have been content to do what we did last year: head for the warmer sections of the Southwest for the winter. But I think we'll be more content staying in place for awhile. I've been craving certain things: hanging out by the wood stove, sitting outside reading and drinking coffee with no other people or houses or rvs close by, being able to let the dog run free, having space to display oddities that engage my imagination, and cooking in a full kitchen. Other things appeal, too: there's an excellent gym in town and I've been going there almost daily for yoga classes and the reclining bicycle. This has been excellent for my well-being. I'm also feeling a desire to connect to a place and to find some people to develop in-person friendships with. I enjoy the feeling of going to yoga and seeing the same people day after day and engaging in chit chat with them about local happenings.
And, as I've mentioned in previous posts, some of the basic conditions of our lives have changed since we hit the road: M. is now working full-time and absolutely must have very good cell service and internet during working hours and most weekends. One reason I wanted to hit the road was the appeal of living in the wilderness, of boondocking on public land. I know some rvers are able to boondock and travel while working full-time, but that wasn't working for us. It's stressful to find new places to boondock that have good voice and data service. It's especially stressful for M. After working all week, he understandably doesn't want to spend a full day of his weekend to pack up the rv, drive somewhere to empty and refill the tanks, drive to a new location with the hopes that it will have strong voice and data service, worry about whether there'll be enough sun in the coming week to power our computers and internet, re-set up the rv after driving, and connect and manage our photovoltaic system. So we've spent all but three days in rv parks with electric and sewer hookups, with other rvs and vehicles within ten to twenty feet of us. We have no view of the landscape or the horizon. My daily walks with the dog have been on the roads of the parks, up and down lines of rvs. We're paying monthly rent to the parks, rather than living for free on public land.
I don't say these things to complain and other than my periods of mood swings, I've been generally content to live this way. We avoided the harsh and isolating Maine winter, we've been able to see some new-to-us areas of the country, and we spent extended periods at three different hot springs. I wouldn't mind doing it again, even if we went back to the same places we visited last winter and spring.
But I think I'd feel like I had more opportunities to be engaged with the world if we stayed here, and did so in a house.
When I think back about my blog entries, so many of them are future-oriented, directed toward making changes in the way I live and always seeking but never achieving some elusive happiness. So I ask myself, is this true? This isn't an accurate picture of my life. I'm most compelled to write here when I'm at a decision point and a big change is in the works. Here is where I describe the change and what my thoughts are about the decision. What I don't often describe are the uncountable moments of my being in the world, those passing times--times that are not sharply marked off from one another by decisions--these are the times where I'm taking in and responding to the world.
For example, yesterday I had to drive an hour to a nearby town do some blood tests. I don't want to try to describe my experience, there's too much richness in it and most of it was sensory and emotional. A few concrete components I can share: it's the time of year when sunflowers bloom in profusion along the sides of the roads. The road wound through mountains alongside the Rio Grande and eventually broke out onto the flat of the mesa with more mountains off in the distance. There were clouds and blue sky, and shadows of the clouds and mountains moved across complicated surfaces. It was stupendous. And transitory. And impossible to convey in the fullness it deserves. I'd rather let the experience be than pick away at it and cut it down to bits and pieces in order to describe it in words.
It's a fascinating thing to me that such a landscape that appears so barren can be managed in such a way that it produces sufficient natural resources to provide some of the essentials for human life: water and heat. I know that people in the area also have gardens and are able to produce at least part of their food, which is impressive given that the elevation is between 7,000 and 8,000 feet.
The home is an a slight hill and surrounded by wide-open mesa. The sky is ginormous. There are stunning views in every direction: The Sangre de Cristo Mountains, a southern section of the Rockies, forms a long, high line along the horizon in one direction, and another line of mountains, also part of the Southern Rockies, though with a much lower elevation), forms another large section of the horizon.
So why will we be staying still? I should say that I'm ambivalent about the choice. I think both of us would have been content to do what we did last year: head for the warmer sections of the Southwest for the winter. But I think we'll be more content staying in place for awhile. I've been craving certain things: hanging out by the wood stove, sitting outside reading and drinking coffee with no other people or houses or rvs close by, being able to let the dog run free, having space to display oddities that engage my imagination, and cooking in a full kitchen. Other things appeal, too: there's an excellent gym in town and I've been going there almost daily for yoga classes and the reclining bicycle. This has been excellent for my well-being. I'm also feeling a desire to connect to a place and to find some people to develop in-person friendships with. I enjoy the feeling of going to yoga and seeing the same people day after day and engaging in chit chat with them about local happenings.
And, as I've mentioned in previous posts, some of the basic conditions of our lives have changed since we hit the road: M. is now working full-time and absolutely must have very good cell service and internet during working hours and most weekends. One reason I wanted to hit the road was the appeal of living in the wilderness, of boondocking on public land. I know some rvers are able to boondock and travel while working full-time, but that wasn't working for us. It's stressful to find new places to boondock that have good voice and data service. It's especially stressful for M. After working all week, he understandably doesn't want to spend a full day of his weekend to pack up the rv, drive somewhere to empty and refill the tanks, drive to a new location with the hopes that it will have strong voice and data service, worry about whether there'll be enough sun in the coming week to power our computers and internet, re-set up the rv after driving, and connect and manage our photovoltaic system. So we've spent all but three days in rv parks with electric and sewer hookups, with other rvs and vehicles within ten to twenty feet of us. We have no view of the landscape or the horizon. My daily walks with the dog have been on the roads of the parks, up and down lines of rvs. We're paying monthly rent to the parks, rather than living for free on public land.
I don't say these things to complain and other than my periods of mood swings, I've been generally content to live this way. We avoided the harsh and isolating Maine winter, we've been able to see some new-to-us areas of the country, and we spent extended periods at three different hot springs. I wouldn't mind doing it again, even if we went back to the same places we visited last winter and spring.
But I think I'd feel like I had more opportunities to be engaged with the world if we stayed here, and did so in a house.
When I think back about my blog entries, so many of them are future-oriented, directed toward making changes in the way I live and always seeking but never achieving some elusive happiness. So I ask myself, is this true? This isn't an accurate picture of my life. I'm most compelled to write here when I'm at a decision point and a big change is in the works. Here is where I describe the change and what my thoughts are about the decision. What I don't often describe are the uncountable moments of my being in the world, those passing times--times that are not sharply marked off from one another by decisions--these are the times where I'm taking in and responding to the world.
For example, yesterday I had to drive an hour to a nearby town do some blood tests. I don't want to try to describe my experience, there's too much richness in it and most of it was sensory and emotional. A few concrete components I can share: it's the time of year when sunflowers bloom in profusion along the sides of the roads. The road wound through mountains alongside the Rio Grande and eventually broke out onto the flat of the mesa with more mountains off in the distance. There were clouds and blue sky, and shadows of the clouds and mountains moved across complicated surfaces. It was stupendous. And transitory. And impossible to convey in the fullness it deserves. I'd rather let the experience be than pick away at it and cut it down to bits and pieces in order to describe it in words.
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