The following is a draft of chapter one of our book, Home is Where Lorelle Is about what started as a one year life on the road experience that turned into almost 16 years living on the road traveling across the planet.
“What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do — especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.”
William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways
Journal: Friday the 13th
Junction City, Oregon
December 18, 1996
He thought we were coming back. From the tightening in his eyes, his face growing pale in the truck’s side view mirror, I could tell he now knew the truth. We weren’t coming back. We were gone.
After 18 months of hard work and preparation, we were not coming back. Not for a long time. As I crept further down the street, feeling the weight of the trailer pulling backwards on the truck towards the lone man standing in the road, I tried to resist a last glance behind.
I couldn’t.
I could see the realization hit him hard. He was starting to shake, his hand still out stretched where I had grasped it through the open window as the the truck has rolled past him. Not only was he growing small in perspective, he seemed to shrink even smaller, tears running down his face. I wanted to stop and run back to assure him. Really, you’ll be okay without me. The stronger side of me screamed, “Get the fuck out of here!” So, I kept moving, leaning forward with the effort to drag the trailer forward, down the road before me, leaving my father behind me.
I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t feel. Every moment leading up to this one had been a struggle. Nothing came easy. Even today, everything was just too complicated, too many obstacles thrown in the path of our life on the road. Vowing to leave well before noon, here I was, crawling through the heavy late afternoon rush hour traffic of Snohomish County towards Seattle along Interstate 5, caught up with everyone moving in and out of Everett, to and from Seattle, and the bedroom communities in between. One giant truck and trailer heading out of town among commuters heading home.
December 13, 1996. Friday the thirteenth.
Was this an omen? If I were a superstitious person, what impact would leaving everything I’d ever known behind on such a traditionally ominous day mean? A sign from the gods that we must be crazy? Or a prophecy predicting that if we could survive hitting the road on a Friday the thirteenth, the rest of the trip would be a breeze? Little did I realize that the former was our destiny.
The winter evening’s freezing temperatures turned to ice as I suffered the honks of cars trying to move around the lumbering trailer through my childhood city home of Everett towards Bothell and waiting husband and friends. Eagles and hawks sat on the tops of many of the fence posts along I-5 as it crossed the Slough, the strange mix of salt and mountain fresh water where the Snohomish river system and Port Gardner Bay and the Puget Sound mixed together. Normally, the beautiful twists and turns and mudflats of the slough along and under the interstate would relax me, but the tension was so great, I let the physical and mental strain of driving such a big rig fill my head. Don’t think about anything but what you’re doing. Concentrate on the traffic. Think ahead down the road. Be prepared for the lane to end up ahead. Find a wide break in the lane next to you. Watch out for the idiot cutting in front. Doesn’t he know that the weight of the trailer behind this truck increases the time to come to a stop by – Brent’s not here to do the numbers for me so I just comfort myself with curses under my breath and ease off the gas to let the driver think he’s safe from me. For the moment.
Brent and I said our goodbyes over the past year to friends and family. We were ready to leave. Well, at least I was. Brent was still mentally chained to his 8-5 job with Boeing. For four years we’d planned this down to the finest detail, revised the plan, changed details, then changed them some more as we realized we needed more flexibility in our schedule to give us a chance to enjoy the process and not race from place to place across North America for the next year. Our goal was to be in the perfect nature place at the perfect time to photograph the perfect nature, and seasons and nature do not pay attention to maps nor convenience to two 30-somethings traveling around in a 30 foot fifth wheel trailer. Continue reading
The dew-filled morning burned away under the bright sun. Our job for the morning was done. Rising in the dark to be on the Mt. Rainier mountainside for dawn, our goal was to photograph the heavy dewdrops on the spring wildflowers. We were worn out after four hours on our knees and stomachs along twisting paths, staring through our viewfinders at red, purple, yellow, pink and eternal green. We paused to giggle at a group of baby Hoary Marmots rolling around and chasing each other.
Ever patient and honestly enjoying the experience of sharing with others their discovery in the wonders of nature, I answered, “Baby marmots.”
“Well, not really. They are actually rocket scientists.”
I’m sorry, but marmots just hang around. That is their job. And it’s an important part of the chain of life. Under Marmot in the dictionary see Job Description: Just hanging around as part of the food chain.
Climbing in the trailer one last time before we moved it, I smoothed my hand over the long scratched up and torn screen door, patched with silver duct tape. His passion for exploring outside was one of the things we loved about him and had in common. It was also his undoing, but then again, it could be ours. You are not safe indoors where more people are injured than anywhere else, but you are also not safe when you walk out the door. Everyday is a risk in some way, and we all take chances. I took a chance deciding to let Toshi stay outside that morning instead of putting him back in the trailer, as I did every time. We both took a risk and we both lost. This is life.
We spent three hours by the side of the highway changing the tire. It would have been fast and easy to just replace the popped one with the spare, but when the front most tire exploded, it holed the second tire. Our second spare was on the roof without a rim, so we plugged three holes in the second tire before we gave up. We filled it, drove for an hour, pulled over and filled it again, drove for another hour or less, pulled over and filled it again, and again and again until we found a place to park the trailer near a truck stop late that night.
A sign along the highway told us this particular truck stop featured a tire repair facility declaring “we can handle anything”. Late that evening, I drove up in the Toyota to see if they had the special RV tires we need. The two guys sitting on the floor in the “hanger door” smoking and drinking told me they don’t do small tires. I went back to tell Brent, who insisted that their sign said they could handle our trailer, and he went over and got the same answer: “We don’t do small tires.” Fine. Okay. Got it now. We just never thought of our trailer tires as “small” since they are bigger than normal car tires, but truthfully not as big as our own truck tires.
Ten miles along the highway, the truck overheated. We still had twenty miles to go. We fought through rush hour traffic to get off the highway, steam pouring out from under the hood. After so long of fighting problems like this, we rarely stress out, but more just sigh and suffer. We find a place to pull off and low and behold, the radiator is empty of water. Surprise! Long story short, it’s a Friday night, and we want to go somewhere important, like the first concert we’ve been to in three years, and we are stuck outside a non-service station somewhere in Greensboro with a hole in the radiator hose. The engine is too hot and the reach up to the water hose is too far to get to and fix, so we kept refilling the radiator and limped home two hours later.
I finally arrived at the Firestone and told them to take the radiator out and check it. We battled and danced ("It’s not our fault, ma’am." "But the hole is where you repaired the water hose!" "We would never do anything like that!" "Everyone makes mistakes!"). When the radiator came out, there was the screwdriver hole, evidence as plain as it could be. I could even tell it was a standard screw driver which cut into the radiator. They said they would either repair it or fix it, no charge. Whew!
We had a blast staying with our friends, Maresa, Chuck and Patrick in Sarasota, Florida. We wedged in their long narrow driveway wedged between their house and the neighbors, which blocked most of the storm winds. It was fun and relaxing as Brent and Maresa took turns fixing awesome meals, and I swear I gained more weight. Maresa and her family rehabilitate squirrels and I was honored with a chance to hold one. “Bob” is just too cute and fun. Injured as a baby, Bob had his tail amputated, restricting his return to the wild. He’s a part of the family now, and quite a character. Chuck brought him in the house and he ran all over the place including UP our legs at the speed of light, his little pinching claws pin-pricking our skin as he crawled up. He thinks we’re trees. Chuck gave him nuts which would send Bob into a flurry to race all over the house to find a place to hide them. Patrick’s bed, down under the covers, is a favorite spot, causing the 14 year old to scream at his parents at bed time, “Mom! Bob’s been in my bed again!” Other favorite spots include under the couch, the fireplace, garbage cans, anywhere he feels would make a good permanent spot. After he is put back out in his large cage on the back deck, a search of the house rounds up the nuts for use on his next excursion. It was a riot. Maresa takes Bob camping with her from time to time, even though he’s still in the dog house from trying to eat out the fabric covering the speakers in the RV last time.
Okay, now, we return from the station break to vent our frustration about a certain wildlife.
We have a mouse. And not just any mouse. We call it the MOUSE from HELL! Upon arrival in Ft. Myers, I unrolled the plastic bath mats we use to cover the hoses and electrical power cords so people won’t trip, only to find that in the space of a couple of hours between Sarasota and Ft. Myers, they were now well ventilated with huge holes chewed in them. Furious, I started pulling everything out of the small “basement” in the trailer. When I pulled out a plastic milk container filled with bird seed, a huge hole in the side of it spilled seed husks were spread all over the place. Emptying the basement, we found the booger had eaten a huge hole in our heater vent going into the bedroom, which gave the stinker access from the basement into our generator compartment.
The thing has a fetish for plastic. Ate miles of covering off wires, hoses, even consumed 3/4s of the bristles off Brent’s favorite paint brush. The damage was extensive. We found mouse poop everywhere. So we cleared everything out of the basement and the generator. Oh, you wouldn’t believe what was eaten and bit on.
We tossed that out along with tons of other things. We washed all the pots and pans and dishes and canned food and everything that was down there with hot soapy water and rinsed everything with a bleach bath and then rinsed it again. I found my little portable telephone with a headphone/mic for talking while making interview phone calls, since it leaves my hands free to take notes by hand or on the computer, chewed up all along the microphone wire, cutting it up into little pieces.
I’m almost ready to seal up the two access holes and hope the thing just dies in the floor boards, but I have this vision of this monster mouse with a huge bloated plastic-filled belly using a huge splinter from our floor supports to pick its teeth while lying back on a couch made from our floor insulation, staring out the “doors” chewed in our heating system. He’ll keep eating away until I step down the hall stairs into the living room one morning and hit ground as the floor gives way. Oh, GAWD!
Being small and quick, they’re hard to spot and harder to photograph. You have to look for quite a while as they blend in with the grey and brown rocks quite well. By watching them over the years, we’ve learned that they follow the same 5 or 6 paths over and over again, pausing at a high viewpoint to scout out the area for predators, then diving back down into the rocks. If you watch long enough, you can predict their path and have your camera ready to catch great shots of them dragging shrub branches and grasses through the rocks.
While photographing these aggressive pikas along the highway, Brent was on one side of the rock field and I was on the other side along an old abandoned road working my own set of wild and vicious pikas. A couple of willow trees and the rocks kept the two of us out of sight of each other.
A car drove by on the highway only a few yards away. It slowed down as it passed. This is not unusual. It happens all the time. A car slowing or stopped usually means “oh-oh, animal sighted” so everyone stops to see what others are stopping to see. When we stopped a week ago to photograph some beautiful fall colored trees on the hillside above, cars stopped to see what we were seeing. After the millionth car and millionth answer to the tourists, “See the lovely colored trees” and watching them drive off disappointed, my dear, patient husband answered back, “Yeah, it was a bear! You should have seen it! It was THIS BIG! Big and drooling and had HUGE teeth and claws!” “Really?” “Nah, we’re just photographing these trees. See how pretty they are?” “TREES? You’re taking pictures of TREES? Come on, Martha, keep driving. What’s so great about trees?! Crazy people!”
Then the mantra chant started in. I call this the motivational self discussion. “Oh, my god, what am I going to do, it’s a real moose, oh, my god, oh, my god, oh, my god, what am I gonna to do, what am I gonna to do, oh my god, oh, my god, oh, my god….” and so on. When my head finally cleared from the shock, I had the wherewithal to ask Brent if moose charge.
As the moose, drooling, trotted towards me, his little – whatever you call it thingy dangling from his neck swinging back and forth – I realized that my slow scoot-and-butt-drag-with-the-tripod towards the rocks wasn’t going to work. I finally voted for the duck-and-pray-that-he-thinks-I’m-a-bush idea. Curling myself up behind the tripod, I heard the monster break into a run, his hoofs crunching into the gravel, right at me.
“Oh, sh#t, it’s a real freakin’ moose!” he screamed into my ear. As the monster trotted off into the woods, I laid back on the gravel panting, now warmer than I had been in days, and pushed back my hood and pulled off my hat, tugging off my scarf from my face so I could suck in safe, clean air. I shook my hair out of my hat and lay there on the old road just glad to be alive. A voice from the road interrupted my relief.
Traveling on the road full-time, asking directions becomes part and parcel of everyday life. While living in Spain, I found the word “there” had a lot of different meanings. This added to the general confusion associated with asking for directions. The word “there” translates into Spanish as alla and va par alla and the list goes on. All are offered up by the locals when handing out directions. I ask where the post office is and get “Well, let me see, it’s down there, and then over there, and then you go way over there, and then just a little bit to there, and then you turn there and you’ll see it.” Very helpful. My favorite is ” va por alla ” which basically means “go for WAY over there”. I get confused with all these “theres”, and it must show on my face because next thing I know my arm is in a vise grip and I’m being dragged to exactly where “there” is by a very determined, but helpful, elderly lady in black.
In the city, I find I get very specific directions. “Go to the end of the block and turn right on Smith. Go three blocks to a street light. That’s Anderson Road. Turn left and it’s the third house on the right. House number 80.” Direct. No time wasting. Easy to remember, with a couple of landmarks thrown in. I call this kind of direction giving The Dragnet Method : Just the facts, ma’am. The instructions are brief, to the point and clear, just like Jack Web in the old television show.
One of my favorite direction methods is The Landmark Method. It is offered up in two variations. I punched a hole in my bike tire in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada, and needed to get it fixed. Brent and I walked half the length of the town to only find one bike shop which was closed on Mondays. Of course, it was Monday. I finally stopped and went in for directions at an auto repair shop. For a while, I thought I was having problems with the language, but then I remembered: I speak English, too.
This method is based upon landmarks of where people live and their mailboxes if you can’t see the house or another landmark from the road. This harkens back to the good old days when a mailbox was the major source of communication in the world. Another variation on this uses stop lights. Read through the above and replace most of the mail boxes with stop lights and you’ll see what we mean.
We turned around to see the woman as stunned as we were. I thought quickly, trying to grasp what was said and what was really heard. Since the man had clearly made his pronouncement and that was that, I stepped forward to help out the poor woman. “Yes,” I said softly. “It’s against the law to FEED them, but there are a lot of animals to SEE here in the park.” I emphasized the SEE and the Ranger realized his error and laughed and then proceeded to talk about the animals in the park.
Brent and I froze. We looked at each other and then at the trees, no different from other oak trees that cover much of the southwest, waited. We were terrified to answer her as we weren’t sure how we should answer.
A change is happening. We feel it all around us. In some ways, it makes us happy, in other ways, it terrifies us. Without a doubt, it changes our perspective.
While I was working, two hummingbirds, bright green, started hanging around the window by the computer. They are so small, fast moving, and just darling to watch. Suddenly one lunged for the window and I drew back, startled. I heard it hit the window with a bang. What was going on?
During the overcast day, from my window out on the park, I watched dozens of butterflies of all shapes and colors flit all over the place. The most delightful chipmunks dash all about, finding food after the long winter. Blue jays fly about kamikaze style, resting momentarily in the trees around the trailer and then darting off again. Some kind of yellow and black bird adds color to the many other birds flying around. We’re not sure what it is and we’re still hunting through the books and CD. Birds like this send Brent on an obsessive mission. He must know what everything is called.
We survived a horrible wind storm and thunderstorm through the night, the pounding rain keeping me awake for much of it. Brent is my main source of information on tornados. Having come too close to too many on this trip so far, my fear hormones rage easily. Dark clouds now mean different things to me than just rain. It could mean death or destruction. Brent kindly reminds it’s just a dark cloud and probably means rain, but I watch it carefully, analyzing its darkness and questioning its intent. He carefully explained that tornados come with a loud train noise, like one is barreling down upon you. In the night, the wind boiled up and over the ridge, seeking the exposed top where we sleep, battering trees as it tore through the forest. I could hear it coming, rattling branches against each other, and rustling the new leaves of spring. Train sounding? Sorta. My heart pounded.
The motorcycle group starts prowling the woods behind USA, their black leather jackets dark against the new green growth. They are gathering up broken branches and hauling them back to burn in the fire pit. I know National Parks have laws against this, but state parks make their own rules and I never know from one moment to the next what the rules are, right or wrong.
take lots of pictures, my heart pounds and my anger increases. I heard a commentary on a radio show recently where someone said that doing some thing or another wouldn’t bother his conscious much, but if the aliens came down and picked up a human and put them in a caged zoo, well, that would bother him….I thought about how we would feel if we were the bear. We’re wandering around, seeking food as is our lot in life, just doing what bears do, and suddenly we are seized and hauled away. Not only from our food source, but from our family, our familiar places, and all that we know. We humans think nothing of it when we do it to animals, but I wonder what our 
perspective would be if it were done to us? So, it’s better I wasn’t there. Besides, the action got better outside the trailer.
A man a stall away is putting up the tent camper with a huge brown, phallic cigar hanging out of his mouth and the smell is overwhelming. The disgusting stench drifts through my trailer’s open door, so I close it and open the windows on the other side, overlooking the television watchers.
One of the TV watchers is out of the van starting a fire in the pit. So is the family of the screaming baby and nature killer young boy next to us. Smoke swirls around the cigar smoker and the chattering couple next to them as well as the chattering couple next to them. The baton twirler’s father and the group of motorcyclists beyond – well, they have big blazing fires going.
The hummingbirds are absent. In fact, in the past few hours, I’ve seen only one blue jay. One big yellow butterfly flitted around, but it got too close to the nature killing child. After blasting it out of existence with a rock, he ran over and stomped on it, grinning from ear to ear with the success of his hunt and destroy. The adults look on and smile at him, weariness in their faces.
So summer has arrived. That means making reservations months in advance, planning out our course and traveling on weekends and sitting still during the week. It means finding out when school vacations are in the different places we travel so we can work around the mass exodus of families heading for nature for longer than a weekend. It means increased security. Increased worries, increased fears. Violence doesn’t just happen to people in nature. People bring violence with them to nature. They bring their booze, boom boxes and messes. Instead of debating how we will approach an elk for a closer photograph, we have to decide how to approach the twit laying on a picnic table 50 feet from his car with the music blasting out the open doors and ask him to turn it off. Gone are the bird songs, the soft rustling of the wind through the trees and grasses, and time spent watching the squirrels and chipmunks chase each other.