Travels With Miranda

The title of this post comes from a very good comment/question by Kathe in reply to my post about converting the truck for camping.

Before I try to articulate an answer, I think that the best house-bound analogy I could make is, if you own a home, why would you want a cottage? Or an RV, for that matter?

For me, using my RV as a homebase and exploring in the toad means cheaper excursions because of needing less gas, access to rougher roads, and not having to break camp when I’m coming back to the same location. A toad I can sleep in also means saving money on accommodation and that I don’t have to rely on others for a bed. Finally, I will be reducing wear and tear on my aging RV.

Some examples:

-When I hiked the Chilkoot Trail, I stayed with a cousin who has a tiny house with little privacy. There wasn’t really any good place to pitch a tent in the yard, but I could have slept more comfortably in my parking spot while having access to the bathroom. Moreover, why do the round trip in the rig ($500 in fuel) when I had free hookups in Dawson and cat sitters?

-If I had had a toad I could sleep in, I would have probably taken off for a few days and left the RV in Hinton instead of driving the Ice Fields Parkway

-There was no way I was taking Miranda on the Dempster Highway to Inuvik or the Pacific Rim Highway to Tofino.

I am also thinking ahead to the next few winters, when I plan to spend several months in the American Southwest. Having a toad I can sleep in means that I will be able to plot a fairly U-shaped journey in the RV that will be as fuel efficient as possible, leave the RV in a few set locations, and then take off exploring for three or four days at a time. I am also thinking of leaving the RV on my lot next summer and taking off for Yellowknife in the toad.

In summary, having a toad I can camp in will reduce the limited mobility that comes from having a big RV while still allowing me to have a nice mobile home. In short, I’m going to get a taste of the best of both worlds.

I was raised to believe that wealth is defined by your bank balance. Then, as I said at the RV show seminar, I discovered that material wealth is very fleeting and that we are wealthier in our memories than in how much money we have.

This past week, I have discovered yet another measure of wealth. This realisation has resulted in a profound paradigm shift, one that is rather overwhelming. Wealth can also be found in a community that bands together in hard times. The individual members might not have a lot, but together they can make things happen.

For the first time in my life, I truly understand what it is to truly live in a community of like-minded people with comparable stressors and life experiences, to be part of something bigger than myself, to not be alone. I have always felt so alone because even though I was surrounded by lovely acquaintances, there was no support in bad times, no one to turn to so I could unburden myself.

When the problem with the rig started, I moved from, “I can deal with this by myself” to “I can’t do this on my own.” When the issue with the brakes happened, I felt I was to blame and that it was my burden to carry. But this time I am a victim. I loathe that word, but it is accurate, and I need support to get through this.

I reached out to my community and the response has been touching. I feel supported, cared for, valued. People have responded in whatever way they could, from legal advice to financial help. Knowing that I can unload about what’s going on to people who actually understand what’s going on is doing me a world of good.

I’ll be fine, but I’m holding it together in the meantime thanks to all of you, my readers. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

It looks like I am on schedule to pull out sometime tomorrow morning. I have decided to meander through southern Saskatchewan rather than race to the border as I am leaving a couple of days earlier than planned. I’ll therefore be overnighting at the Walmart in Swift Current tomorrow.

I’ve been asked a number of times about how ready I feel about leaving, with the meaning being “How sick are you of Lethbridge?”

The answer is that I am not sick of Lethbridge, but I am ready to go. I know that what I needed to do here has been done and it’s time to move on to new challenges. My being here has not been unbearable and if I needed to stay a while longer, that would be fine. But I have come to a point where I feel that I would gain nothing more here.

As I wrote at the beginning of winter, I very much believe that we all have a life plan. I can always tell when I’m following that plan or not; the further I get from it, the more chaotic my life feels. When I am firmly on it, like I am today, I am awash with a feeling of serenity. When I ignore the niggle at the back of my brain, as I’ve done several times in the last three and a half years, I feel uneasy, worried, and out of control.

My time in Lethbridge has allowed me to gain professional growth that I truly believe I would never have had in my old life because I wouldn’t have believed myself capable of the challenges of management. When I last saw my boss, he confessed to me that it was only the office manager’s urging that allowed for me to take charge of the apartment complex starting in late June. He trusted her that I would grow into the position. I feel that it took me till well into November to really feel comfortable with the job. But he said that he knew by the end of July that I was going do great in the position! I appreciate so much that I was allowed to make mistakes and that my judgment was trusted. My feelings for this company are difficult to put into words. I am just so happy to have worked for it for the last nine months and am still in disbelief that I have such a wonderful tangible reminder of how I felt while working for them.

The personal growth that came from this job is also immeasurable. I was finally able to let go of my need to be liked and that enabled me to be respected. What an adventure and a half that was! I have finished a rough draft of the little ebook I’ve promised about my winter adventures and I hope to have it out shortly!

The idea of Travels with Miranda isn’t just of physical travels, but also of a journey of the soul, of a half-baked person seeking to find her true voice. So often we get lost in the minutia of daily life and others’ expectations for our life that we never learn to grow into our person. I am returning to Quebec very confident and ready to hold my head high against those folks who measure success in financial statements and who told me that I was throwing away my life. Oh, I did do that, and look at the life I am now living!

I have a ton more stuff to move back into the rig and an apartment to clean, so I’m off to do a final burst. Departure tomorrow is scheduled for 11ish, but no sooner than when an order of Jody’s muffins arrives. I’ll post before I take off, then it will depend on cell coverage in Saskatchewan, which is spotty at best.

In a few hours, my high speed internet connection will be terminated and I will have to go back to my very limited 5GB cellular connection. The new billing period starts on the ninth, so I can use that entire 5GB in a week, making the return to limited bandwidth not too drastic just yet. And I’ll be back on high speed when I get to Quebec, so this is just for six weeks. I opted to terminate the connection tomorrow because that was the last day of the billing cycle. The way internet is billed, I pay a month ahead of time, so I should not have to pay for anything else, but I will ask Jody to keep her eye out for a Telus envelope with my name on it just in case.

This winter, I haven’t had to think my use of water or electricity or internet or propane nor have I had to worry about sewage. It’s been very easy, and very mindless. I find that the days tend to run a little less into each other when you have to monitor your utilities. because it hasn’t been that long since you dumped or took on water or because your batteries have been rather low for a few days. It’s a combination of small things that help me feel more engaged in my life. There is so much I miss about living in my RV and mindfulness is at the top of the list. Cooking over a flame is also near the top of the list.

I am giving the apartment complex a few more hours early this week but I am hoping that by Wednesday I will be pretty much done. I ended up putting in a full eight-hour plus day on Saturday, which had not been on my schedule! So I wound up spending today doing transcription rather than working in the rig.

As for my rig preparations, I’m downscaling them as I always do since my mother reminded me that she has her full woodworking shop and some of her free time at my disposal. So I will finish up my work in the study and call it done, unless the time to do that materializes this week and I have time to take on the other projects.

April 11th is marked on my calendar as the day to take Miranda out for fuel, propane, and dewinterizing, and April 16th is down as the absolute last morning for pulling out. Having those dates firmly set in my calendar makes the idea of departure from Lethbridge much more real. I have now been in Lethbridge exactly one year and am 14 days away from leaving. While I have no regrets about the last twelve months, I am ready to go. Well, mentally at least. Physically, I’m hustling.

This weekend, I was finally able to read Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter, a travel memoir/behind the scenes account by Destination Truth host Josh Gates. I expected a fluff collection of memories from filming his show and was astounded to find myself laughing and crying in turn, amused by his uncanny ability to find the hilarious in the most mundane situation and touched by his insights on life, travel, and adventure.

It was his final thoughts on the concept of home that have prompted this post. He writes:

Travel does not exist without home. They are inseparably married. If we never return to the place we started, we would just be wandering, lost.

As a perpetual traveler I’m not sure I agree with that, but, then again, I’m like a hermit crab in that my home goes with me everywhere! I certainly do not feel like I am wandering aimlessly nor do I feel that I need to return to a certain place (other than my bed in Miranda!). While he and I travelers, we are of a different sort. As I wrote in a previous post, we wanders are of two types. I think he is the kind that travels the world looking for something (Bigfoot, mostly) while I am the kind for whom travel is an answer unto itself.

But we are kindred spirits, as evidenced by these words that convey my thoughts in a more eloquent way than I could ever formulate:

I read books by other career travelers and discern a sort of conflict that’s familiar to me now. It’s a melancholy felt by all professional pilgrims that simmers just beneath the joy of never having to conform. To live in motion is to always be caught between worlds, a liminal existence. I slow down just long enough to fall in love with a place, yet never long enough to feel like I belong.

Indeed. And as these winter days begin to grow longer and I continue to enjoy my unexpectedly long stay in southern Alberta, a mere three months from now will find me back on the road. This stop has been longer than expected, but no roots have grown, and soon Lethbridge will fade to being another place on the map where I hung my shingle for a time. I will leave behind wonderful friends who will surely draw me back, but by then the town I have grown to know will have changed and no longer be familiar.

What I have learned in three and a half years of travel is that once you really commit to the road, truly give it your heart and soul and turn your back on settled life, you really can’t ‘go home again.’ You have moved in a different direction than those you left behind and each day finds you further apart. This is the difference between travel being a vacation and travel being a lifestyle. With the former, you eventually return to your routine. With the latter, travel itself is the only constant.

Even if you have never watched Destination Truth, I still recommend Memoirs of a Monster Hunter to the armchair traveler who doesn’t take this world too seriously and also to anyone interested in cryptids like Bigfoot and the Jersey Devil.

Josh’s writing flows naturally from sentimental gushing at the wonders of this world to crude descriptions of circumstances that would break a lesser man. From the summit of Kilimanjaro to the radioactive ruins of Pripyat, the haunted forest of Romania to the dark waters of Vietnam, Memoirs of a Monster Hunter is a book well worth reading, and more than once. I look forward to the further adventures of Team Truth when the show comes back with new episodes in January.