SUMMER OF ’21

For nearly four months now I’ve been camped on the banks of a broad Arroyo along the Rio Grande in Northern New Mexico. It’s been a quiet time, uneventful and hot. With a frosty A/C unit in the Casita, I’ve mostly been hunkered down inside, reading, writing, making pictures, phoning friends and rewatching the likes of Downton Abbey and other quality programs. It’s been fun. 

Parked behind the Casita is the storied Gypsywagen. It sits there in the growing weeds, gathering dust like some monument to a dream. It’s an odd feeling. This coach represents an epoch that I’ve lived through during the past decade.

In 2011 the rolling “great recession” caught up to my way of life. My art gallery in Taos, New Mexico became insolvent and I closed it down. Then I moved out of the rental I was living in, put my furniture in storage and traveled west to Carmel, California. Still in possession of the skills and the tools from my years as a builder, I undertook a three months project, remodeling a couple of cabins on a friend’s mountain property. And at the age of 67, I was homeless. 

Being in advanced years and without reserves, I knew it would take imagination and some luck as to how I’d go on in life. But I did have a vision about how to secure reliable shelter. It became something that grew in my hopes and I called this vision “The Gypsywagen”.

Years went by during which I found temporary shelters doing house-sits, work trades, couch surfing, tent camping, stays in empty RVs, and sometimes outright squatting. At times things went well for months and months. Sometimes things got ugly. In one Dickensian episode, in sub-freezing weather, a host evicted me a week before Christmas. At times like that I took comfort in the writings of Jack London:

“Perhaps the greatest charm of tramp-life is the absence of monotony. In Hobo Land the face of life is protean—an ever changing phantasmagoria, where the impossible happens and the unexpected jumps out of the bushes at every turn of the road. The hobo never knows what is going to happen the next moment; hence, he lives only in the present moment. He has learned the futility of firm endeavor, and knows the delight of drifting along with the whimsicalities of Chance”

After seven homeless years I managed to put together the resources to build the envisioned Gypsywagen. Out on a high mesa in the Rocky Mountains I spent 67 days investing all my energies building this coach. In inclement weather, as autumn turned to winter it materialized from raw materials into a sturdy, weatherproof teardrop trailer… The Gypsywagen.

On December 23, 2018, I launched the craft and took up residence on the open road. For the next two and a half years The Gypsywagen was my rolling shelter as I moved from place to place. Camping in fields and forests I lived in many places, through many seasons in the vast, American Southwest. Every morning, upon awakening, I would look around the interior of my modest shelter and feel something akin to contentment. No matter where I was or what surrounded me, I was home. 

More than thirty articles in this blog have chronicled the unfolding adventure of the Gypsywagen. But as everything has a beginning, so too does everything come to an end. It’s hard to accept but the acquisition last spring of the Casita trailer effectively brought an end to my journey in the Gypsywagen. So the time has come to pass it on to another traveler. There are some people who’ve expressed interest in having it. Rather than selling to the highest bidder, I’ll try to find someone who will be equal to the magic and mystery of this worthy coach. And so it goes.

Somehow, without the Gypsywagen, my journey will continue. The amenities of the Casita trailer have won me over as I’m now at an age where a little extra comfort is quite acceptable. Many years ago I read a dictionary definition of the word ADVENTURE: “A bold undertaking the results of which hang upon unforeseen events.”