Looking for solitude in tight spaces

What I will manage to forget when I am no longer in the camper

A quick note: If you find yourself reading these essays every week and saying to yourself “Gosh I love reading these posts, more people should know about them!” then might I recommend forwarding your favorite to a friend or sharing one on social media? Newsletter subscribers can really help writers move their careers forward and I’d love your help! Okay, hopping off my soapbox now. Onto this week’s essay.

Photo by Antonio Fadel

It’s colder than it’s supposed to be in Arizona. The wind has been whipping against the camper shaking her little metal legs, rocking us around like a ship on choppy water. My soap and shampoo which I store in the Jeep are frozen most mornings but usually thaw by mid-afternoon when I’m craving a shower. Sometimes my fancy face oil is still congealed into a little yellow lump, which I roll between my palms until it’s a cold liquid once again.

On Monday, we unexpectedly wake to several inches of heavy, wet snow covering the entire landscape, hunks of ice splattered to the plastic windows. Actually, I wake much earlier when the pop-top on the camper slams down in the middle of the night from the weight of the precipitation. All the bolts drip into the living space and when enough snow melts that we can finally lift the top back up, a puddle of frigid snowmelt splashes out, soaking laundry and wallets and car keys and warm, dry shoes. 

When the weather is this chilly, the space shrinks. Right now, every part of me is cramped. I’ve spent a lot of time sitting hunched over on the bed, working, eating breakfast, reading, writing, eating lunch, writing letters to friends, eating dinner and then doing it all again the next day. All of life happens from this little corner. 

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While I am doing yoga in the tiny RV park workout room, Kimberly and her husband Randy come in for movement out of the wind and cold. Normally they go for a hike or walk laps around the RV park but the weather is sending them indoors. She moves immediately to the treadmill, he moves to the recumbent bike, and I feel once again confined as I stretch out my stiff body on a yoga mat between them. I can barely extend both my arms without bumping one of their machines.

When I roll up the mat just a few minutes later in frustration, Kimberly says, “Your yoga poses were very nice. I used to do a lot of yoga before I hurt my back.” She is trim and blond, of retirement age as nearly everyone in this park is, and dressed in black sweatpants and a black hoodie which she tells me she borrowed from her daughter. 

“We didn’t bring enough warm clothing,” she says gesturing to her outfit. “Last year I was in a t-shirt and shorts in January. It’s crazy.”

We get to talking and I tell her I am in the small camper with the orange pop-top “We’ve been worried about you!” She says. “Are you staying warm enough?”

Everyone in the park seems to be somewhere on the spectrum between concerned and fascinated with our setup. Our camper is a tiny little thing compared to the fifth wheels and bus-size motor homes with square footage greater than my first studio apartment. We stand out like a sore thumb in that we can barely be spotted at all between the enormous mobile homes that sandwich us. To the retired snowbirds, we are barely one step above camping. Except for one other person at the end of our row, we have the smallest camper in the entire RV park. 

We are managing to stay warm enough though. It’s not terribly efficient when we have the roof raised, but we have a propane heater and an electric heater and most nights I fill up my old lady style rubber water bottle for a little extra heat. When the midmorning sun fills the sky, the camper can quickly turn into a sauna. Which is to say, it could be better, but it could also be much worse.

I tell Kimberly this and she tells me where I can get the best croissant in town and it feels like a fair trade even though I would have preferred an hour or more of solitude and silence in the little clubhouse. 

Still, I know that my mind is impossible. When we land in a house someday, I will manage to perfectly forget my aching, cramped limbs and frustration with the lack of privacy. I will instead only remember the rousing call of coyotes and great horned owls in the valley stirring up the cold nights like silt in a river, swirling and settling over and over again.