rv life – Pamela Helberg

Home is where the heart is. Home is where you hang your hat. Home is that place where when you go there, they have to let you in. There’s no place like home.

You can never go home again.

I have been thinking about home a lot of late. What it means, where it is, where it has been.

The other night, I stayed in a campground less than five miles from one of my childhood homes, across the street from a church (now a furniture store) my family called home for about a year (until the business administrator—who had a prior conviction for embezzlement—ran off with the money and that was that). To get here, I had to drive through a small town where I spent the bulk of my elementary school years.

As a kid, I lived in at least five different houses by the time I was ten. And then, by the time I was 18, four more. Between the ages of 18 and 23, something like 20 (college, roommates, etc.). And then, five different places between a divorce and buying the place, the home, house I lived in from 1998 until last August.

Now, my home, my shelter, is a 21-foot RV. Home is where ever we (and by we, I mean my van and I) happen to be on any particular night.

But is it? What is home and how do we know when we are there? I recently left Texas after an extended stay and headed “home,” having purchased said RV as I had planned. But home is where exactly? The Pacific Northwest? Oregon where my brother (and now our mother) lives? Whatcom County where I’ve been, more or less, since 1981? Bellingham where I once lived or Ferndale where I often land to stay with one of my BFFs? I truly enjoyed Austin and environs. I met lovely people, got to hang out with my daughter and her friends on occasion, got to spend time with my sweetie.

But then I felt the pull, the tug of the familiar. I needed a haircut and to see the doctor. Somehow it seemed easier to go home and take care of those things than to start all over in a new city. It’s one thing to shop in an unfamiliar grocery store, not knowing where the dairy aisle is, quite another to choose a stylist out of the blue and risk a bad haircut. Easier to drive 2000 miles in the winter, over snowy mountain passes than to figure out how to get new insurance and a new doctor. Easier to just go home.

“You have moss in your veins,” my friend Laura announced upon my arrival. “You had to come back home.”

I’ll admit, I did feel a qualitative difference in my bones as I crossed that boundary between east and west, from dry and arid to damp and green. For a minute there, as my pores plumped and the cracks in my skin soaked the moisture from the air, I did feel the moss course through my veins. But does that feeling indicate home? Is home a state of mind or a peace of mind, or both?

Am I more like a turtle who always has her house on her back or am I one of the “unhoused” (by choice, yes, but technically without shelter according to the US Census). I count myself extremely lucky to have been able to choose this lifestyle rather than find myself forced into it by unfortunate circumstances. Still, the idea of it messes with my head a bit.

So, here I am, boondocking in my RV, on a small mountain top, in the middle of my home state, not far from one of my childhood homes, contemplating what it means to “be home.”

Maybe if I just click my heels together . . .

It took us two days of driving to finally make it out of Texas. The first leg took us from Austin to Cap Rock State Park, just south of Amarillo and amid “several small herds of small bison,” according to my traveling companion.

We split the driving equally. I took the first leg, she the second. I don’t remember who was driving when we careened into the Underwood’s parking lot for legendary BBQ and cherry cobbler. Ala Mode. We earned it. Winds gusted the entire first day of driving, buffeting the RV like grandma’s bloomers on the clothesline, and making for a very noisy, very taxing time behind the wheel. Never mind that Texas highways generally do not have medians or guardrails or really anything to prevent violent head-on collisions. Never mind that one minute we’re cruising along at 80 mph and suddenly there’s a stoplight or someone turning left. Texas roadways are bonkers. Truly.

Alas, our schedule did not allow for much dilly or dally, languishing or loitering, so we pressed on the next morning after a quick drive around the park to gaze upon the red rock canyons and meandering beasties before heading into downtown Quitaque (KIT tee-kway), TX, for breakfast at the local coffee shop. I bought a t-shirt that says “Quitaque, TX” on a bison. Sated and properly caffeinated, we pointed the RV in the wrong direction and went an hour out of our way. But, as my friend Laura says, “Win a win, few a few.”

The winds died down, and we could hear each other enough to talk as we headed toward Colorado Springs. Gas mileage improved significantly (when we left Austin, gas was $3.09/gal), as did our moods, with the decreased winds and easier driving. That first day, I was a tiny bit concerned I had a very rattle-ish RV. This day, with very little wind, my fears abated. I had an RV with a normal amount of rattle.

We camped that second night at the base of Cheyenne Mountain—the home of NORAD. The views from our campsite were stunning: sweeping vistas of the city below, the great gray and snowy mountains lunging skyward directly behind us. The bathrooms were quite a hike from the campsite, but given that we’d been sitting on our asses for two days just driving out of Texas, a little walking wasn’t going to hurt us. And even though the bathrooms were a hike, they were also fairly new and well-maintained. Cheyenne Mountain State Park had only been a park since the early 2000s. We read about NORAD and said a little prayer before bed that the world leaders could all just get along for the next little bit.

The next day my niece and her boyfriend, who live just outside of Denver, told me that conspiracy theorists believe subterranean tunnels connect NORAD with Denver International Airport. And that big blue horse at the entrance to DIA, Blucifer? Not only did he kill his creator (he did, google it), but he also has something to do with the tunnels. Apparently.

From there we had just a short hop to the Holiday Inn Express at the Denver International Airport where she went back to Austin and I continued on toward Jackson Hole and points North and West.

It’s a terrible time, gas-price-wise, to have just purchased an RV.