Future Musings of the Adventuresome Familial Variety
The sun does what it can to keep itself either in my eyes or gleaming through the mirror to my left in this highway home, this rolling caravan of family and freedom. We’re somewhere between state parks, someplace not quite Mississippi or Colorado, always in motion, anywhere in transition. The continent is our back yard, and anywhere we can find roughly 30′ of open and friendly ground to pull over we can call home, whether it be for a night or a week or a few months. Real life American gypsies just making the best of all the land between two oceans.
The day is early enough that I’m still yawning. The tea kettle whistles to the morning, spitting steam and scent and she, the mother-lover-wife, pulls it from the flame and pours a single cup, then another, then another, boiling water over bags of tea leaves that melt each other into a morning ritual. The boy is groggy and just opening his eyes from his lofty bed above the cab. He looks down at her from his high up nightly haven and takes his good time waking up.
About an hour later and they’re deep into their lesson for the day. She’s teaching him to write some letters and put them together to make a few simple words. “Cat,” “rat,” “rabbit”, “fire.” I’m still at the wheel, another hour and we’ll be wherever we’re going, or so I hope.
A few hours later again now and our home, this rolling RV stuffed with whatever necessities we need for life adrift, is pulled over into a cozy spot underneath a lone tree on the highway. Some park service or friendly neighborhood Quaker perhaps has placed a bench and a garbage can next to the tree, making it all too picturesquely inviting to not call this little patch of Kansas our home for the day. The boy and I make our way outside and gather up enough stones to complement the scene with a small fire pit. I explain to him and ponder for myself the amazement of fire, the vast devastation it’s capable of and the spark of technology that it is all the while. To keep us warm, cook our food, entertain us; watching and tending a fire can be more visually interesting than just about any show on television and certainly has a better plot than most.
After we eat I slip back into the RV for a few hours of work. Maybe we’ll sip wine on the roof tonight and see what new constellations we can discover, or maybe we’ll need to work late and so won’t wrap things up until just before we feel like going to sleep, but either way it’ll be our decision to make, every aspect of this life an extension of what our living and breathing requires, with the added bonus of a little non-stop pleasure in between.
Up Next: Tristan Davidism: Propheting Green