So Far So Good Part II

“Caminante, no hay camino…” wrote the Spanish poet.  “Traveler there is no road…” 

Traveler, your footprints

are the only road, nothing else.

Traveler, there is no road;

you make your own path as you walk.

As you walk, you make your own road,

and when you look back

you see the path

you will never travel again.

One step at a time, one day at a time, we are each the author of our own lives. With every choice you ever make you compose the story of your life. It belongs to you and to no one else. Always be mindful that your life is a journey you will never travel again. This is not a small thing.

Chapter 6 ~ Seven Years in Taos

In the Spring of 1989 I took a break from my busy life in Los Angeles to spend a few days in Northern New Mexico. It was my first visit to Santa Fe and Taos. What I experienced during that long weekend changed me. The Land of Enchantment captured my imagination. From that time forward I knew I would someday live there. I also knew I wasn’t done with LA. It would be another eighteen years before I finally made the move and thus began a great adventure that continues to this day.

Chapter 7 ~ Remembering Taos

People who are born and raised along the Pacific Coast of Southern California experience a world largely absent of bitter cold winters and hot, muggy summers. In my youth I recall winter days when I walked around in T-shirts and sometimes surfed at the local beaches. Conversely, sometimes on summer evenings I’d put on a sweater. When I moved to Taos the cold, snowy winters were something unexpected. After seven cold and colorless winters I wanted out. So I pulled up stakes and spent a year living in the San Francisco Bay area. It was a time well spent, getting reacquainted with my daughter Hannah and her family. Yet the world I came to know in the Land of Enchantment kept tugging at my sensibilities.

Chapter 8 ~ The Build

The life I had led in northern New Mexico kept calling me back. In Taos there’s an inside joke about how the Land of Enchantment can become the Land of Entrapment. Y’know, “You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.” I returned to New Mexico with the idea of developing a winter strategy. I would want to have the option of leaving during the winter months from December until March. I realized I would have to adopt a lifestyle of mobility. For this I would need an RV. With my trusted Ford Ranger 4×4 a travel trailer was the obvious choice. I settled on the idea of designing and building my own custom coach. Thus began the era of The Gypsywagen.

Chapter 9 ~ Gypsywagen 2020

With The Gypsywagen I began a period of roaming. For nearly five years I lived a nomad lifestyle, traveling far and wide through the western United States and Canada. It was a wonderful time with the discovery of people and places I’ll never forget. 

Chapter 10 ~ Movin On

Also known as “My Travels With Muggins”, this is a remembrance of a road trip I took in the Autumn of 2007. It was a grand tour that included many of the celebrated locations from the settling of the American West. My lone companion was Muggins, a stuffed monkey doll my daughter had grown up with and then graciously ceded custody to me. 

Thank you for sharing these remembrances. The next Far Horizons post will return to the telling of more stories.