OFF GRID

I recently spent time dry camping (no amenities) in the high desert with a group of people who make it their life style. It should be no surprise. For whatever reason people find themselves waking up in their cars or in the back of a truck camper, it changes the way they see the world and their place in it. For a weekend or a couple of weeks in the summer, we call it vacation. But the folks I met, sat around campfires with, it is their normal. Oddly, everybody’s normal is unique to themselves but the common denominator is, walking away from rent or house payments, away from traditional jobs, away from utility bills and property tax. They live much the same as pre-Columbian Americans, going where the weather favors them, living off the land or whatever the 21st Century equivalent might be. They need a vehicle and a source of income although I met people who are getting by on $100 a week; food, fuel, laundry, personal - all the things that require money. Staying in campgrounds or RV parks it too expensive so there has to be another route. 

Going off grid used to mean survivalist-wilderness homesteading. Electricity, shelter, water, food, sanitation, security; how do you do all of that in isolation? Homesteaders build a solid shelter and put down roots. The last thing they want is to be transient, to carry their shelter with them as they wander. But van-dwellers or RV hobos, whatever you want to call them, that’s exactly what they do. They are hobos but times have changed. Smart phones, computers and solar panels allow them to organize, to communicate and collaborate. Our rendezvous was an organized event with classes and meetings for special needs and interest groups. Networking the crowd was critical. You must, you absolutely must meet new people. It was normal for strangers to walk up on a camp fire and introduce themselves. It’s like a strange fraternity without the secret hand shake. But the conversation and your knowledge base will reveal if you are one of them. Exchange contact information and who knows when or where you may be able to use each other for mutual benefit. 

I met Bruce & Selena, early 40’s. He is a flight instructor from Davenport, Iowa; did contract work for the government, taking the winter off to travel and get away from the cold. They had a pick up and a tiny 5th wheel camper. They have a house to go back to but they aren’t thinking about that. I met Jason, a 50-something nurse from Santa Barbara. He bought his motorhome four years ago for $65,000. He is a traveling nurse, working short term contracts from hospital to hospital on the west coast. He sleeps in parking lots wherever he is working. When he gets tired of work he goes to the desert or hooks up with other van-dwellers on one adventure or another. He and three others left early for Baja. It’s common for folks to camp together in National Forests or on BLM land or on the beach down in Mexico. They stay close enough and far enough apart, in pairs or small, tribe like groups. Trish & Peg are sisters, one from Toledo and the other from Erie, PA. Both in their 60’s, both with small, mini vans. Peg had her own, one woman construction company but health issues left her homeless. Trish was alone, her kids moved on and she felt life had left her behind. Together in two different vehicles they are exploring, both the geography and the life style. Ron Walker is a retired, hospital administrator from Oregon. He lives town to town in his GMC Yukon. With tinted windows and a sun screen in the windshield you can’t see in and nobody bothers him. When I mentioned a Jimmy Buffett song he knew it, went straight into the chorus; “I’m going where the sun keeps shining, through the pouring rain: going where the weather suits my clothes.” 

I don’t think I’ll ever do that full time but the information and the contacts only broaden my base. What I do like is a sense of urgency for the moment, how important it is to be right then and there. If I were younger, if I didn’t love the trees in my yard, my work shop and my kitchen I might want to jump off and not look back. When I look over my shoulder, nobody’s after me. I can afford to live with one foot in the mainstream and the other in rarefied air. I get a feeling the hard-timer-hard-liners would like to have a burrow to go back to now and then. Part of the mystique is beating the system, loving the inconvenience of being different. So they scorn dependence and consumerism, preaching the virtue of perceived freedom. Perceived freedom; that's a lot to chew on. Kristofferson chewed on it with Me & Bobby McGee. “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose. Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free.”