Marking Time
Marking time is different when you’re in motion most of the time. I mark time by place and season now more than I do by weeks or months or days, by where I was rather than by what the calendar says. But this here spinning rock has spun me round and round, and I just hit two years on the road.
Because many of you are newer to “Going Solo at the End of the World,” and because sometimes pictures tell a better story than words alone, the next two weeks’ posts will cover a whole lot of terrain with a photo essay of sorts. (Use it an index, if you like—I’ve added links to earlier essays that do a deeper dive into earlier parts of the journey and points on the map.). If you’re reading this in your email, you’ll see a message at the end that says “[Message clipped]”—you’ll want to click the link that says “View entire message.”
This week takes you all the way back to the life I left behind, gets me and my critters into the Tramp Scamp, and carries us through the end of the first season traveling full time. Next week, I’ll take you for a spin through through two years and over hundred thousand miles of American road.
I still don’t know where this journey ends. As ever, though, I’m honored and grateful to have you with me for the ride.
xM
Part 1: The Before Times
Once upon a time, I lived the way we mostly do—ordering my days and weeks according to the calendar, the clock, wedging myself into the slots of time that parsed my life out into pre-fab portions in approved amounts, trying to make only a good use of time
so everything I did felt rushed and breathless, my life crammed into ill-fitting boxes, lids kept popping off, sides kept busting open, everything spilled out, untidy, books and art were jammed into the back,
love and music stuffed into a couple sacks that set atop a heap, travel and freedom,
family and friends, the room to move and breathe, the preference for solitude and open space,
all of that shoved against the wall behind the things I thought I was supposed to do, the work I didn't like,
the stupid tasks, the curtains, the couches, the rugs and towels and cheap bathroom decor,
the cornices and mantlepieces and whatever one sets on a mantlepiece anyway,
and why, and what for, the bins of holiday decor, the ashes of a dozen cats, the stacks of books I wrote in languages I couldn't read, it all just seemed to pile up and never fit,
or rather I did not.
But for years and years, I tried.
And then I stopped.
“At no point—not for years—did it occur to me to question the premise. To question the objective value of that life, or the givenness of its virtue, or the meaning with which that kind of life had been inscribed by someone else's hand.
Beneath it all, under their watch, I have turned belly-down and, with all four paws, begun to dig.”
Click here to read "The Business of Love"
Part II: Setting Out
“Before it all started, before I bailed out of the bed of another bad idea, grabbed the pink flamingo suitcase, and was out the door and on my way to Lincoln at 3 a.m., before I hit 90 on the narrow country roads that wound through thick dark fields of corn, belting goodbye country songs to an audience of none, before I met up with James and the band and fled east
from Chicago to Indy and then Cincinnati, before we took a detour from I-80 specifically to visit the XXX Diner in bumblefuck nowhere, which was closed, and debated, shouting over the wind, the relative merits of "slammy" sex, which James said his latest lover liked and he did not, the kind of batshit unhinged conversation you can only have on the road, before the fall of Roe v. Wade in July of 2022, the afternoon I pulled in to Minneapolis and sat, car-filthy and road-blind, on my mom's back porch, watching her face as she absorbed the news, and, to distract her, told her I thought maybe I should buy a camper and hit the road, before something crossed over her eyes like a dark-winged bird, something dangerous and beautiful and harsh,
way back, before Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973, before the doctor told my mother she was pregnant that same year and it was too late to abort, because she's an idiot and not entirely attached to her body nor perhaps entirely of this world and she thought her boobs were getting big because she'd been playing too much tennis, before my father sat chain-smoking under the cherry tree in the yard, writing a book in his head called The Unwanted Child (I found the manuscript while nosing through his file drawers when I was 10; even then I thought it was pretty good) while my mother locked herself in the bedroom for three weeks, trying and failing to starve her body into miscarriage, before I kicked and punched her in the ribs, tucked under her sternum, for months, and then was born so fast you'd have thought we'd made a deal that if I would just get the fuck out of there, nobody would get hurt,
and decades before the picture—I'm sitting on a curb in the late-day sun, wearing short shorts, a tie-back bra top from Target, polka-dot sunglasses, legs splayed, grinning, looking alive—that I posted on the socials with the caption, ‘I am nowhere happier than when I am on the road, nowhere freer than when I am in motion, nowhere richer than when I have nothing to lose,’
before any of that, there was this.
This—whatever casts the shadow that crossed over my mother's face, whatever we call the animal impulse to flee, take flight, to run; whatever we call the creatures who lack the instinct to nurture or to nest—this existed long before I had the idea, before the idea became a notion, before the notion became a split-second plan that I realized I'd had all along.”
Click here to read the rest of “Setting Out”
Part III: The Tramp Scamp
“The plan came later. The plan emerged like the rest of the road does as you roll. The plan came after Tom the car salesman in Fargo lifted my 83-year-old father into the passenger seat of the giant silver truck so he could confirm it was, in fact, a good truck,
after Tom the car salesman handed my father his cane and me the keys, after I drove to Alexandria to pick up the Scamp from Dan the Man, after Dan the Man showed me how to level the camper in the blazing hot chaos of his farm's back 40, disappearing twice into the barn filled to bursting with god knows what all antique oily mechanical crap to dig around for a beer and a 1/2-inch pin for the two-inch hitch, after I hitched the Scamp to the truck and waved as I drove away, after I pressed the pedal down, gingerly at first, then gathered speed, to test the tow's tensile strength and the physics of forward motion at cross purposes with prairie wind, the plan came into view as I flew down the highway with my new home, now dubbed the Tramp Scamp, waggling her round little rump at truckers as she flew by.”
Click here to read the rest of “Bitches with Hitches”
“This is the Scamp's maiden voyage, and mine. I picked her up from Deb and Dan the Man in central Minnesota a couple weeks back. They transferred the title, I paid the tax, and the Tramp Scamp was mine.
And I'll tell you what, this bitch is a pain in the ass.
For a week she sat in the driveway of the rented farmhouse on the rundown farm while I got her outfitted, tried to figure out what to do with all my shit, and dodged Neighbor Bobby, with whom I'd had an ill-advised fling some months before, and whose incessant scowly lurk was made mildly threatening by the fact that I knew he was good at pool,
great in the sack, possessive as hell, and also possessed of a number of guns; the day we met, he taught me to shoot a 9mm Glock. I came and went at night, tripping the floodlights every time I walked into or out of the house, illuminating the smooth white curves of the camper in the driveway like a tiny earthbound moon as I trekked to and fro, lugging boxes back and forth, hauling trash bags hither and yon, rolling dollies stacked with gear out to the truck, and plainly preparing to bail on the lease, while weed smoke billowed out the unlit bathroom window of Neighbor Bobby's house next door.
“Then one morning, I hitched the camper to the truck and headed down the long dirt drive, faster than was strictly necessary, past the rusting Quonset hut, past the sagging roof of the rotting south barn, past the tractors and the abandoned tractors and the picked carcasses of old cars, past the pasture and the bellowing cows; I gave Bobby the lift-two-fingers-off-the-wheel wave that's customary in the country as I passed him at the mailbox, then whipped around the corner and roared off in a satisfying cloud of dust.”
Click here to read "Bitches with Hitches: Part 2"
“My first stop was Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, not even an hour south of the farm. My plan was to do a weeklong dry run in the Scamp. The last night I'd spent in a camper was 40 years before, when I was eight; I'd tagged along with Sandra Struthers, also eight, on her family's fall camping trip to Minnesota's North Shore, and unfortunately had paid very little attention to the workings of things like propane and water, hitch tongues and scissor jacks, being more concerned with trying not to be so obviously the appallingly awkward child I was, because Sandra's father was very old and cranky and her mother very frail and French, which somehow made my awkwardness seem particularly acute. But that was 1982; now there were more pressing concerns, like the fact that I did not know how this 4500-pound camper I was hauling south down Highway 10 even worked.”
Click here to read "The Tramp Scamp: Part 2"
“There were practical things to consider before I hitched up the camper and hit the road, of course. Not being a particularly practical person, I did not particularly consider those things, and so it came to pass that the better part of my day, many days, is spent figuring things out.
“Anything I didn't know about the mechanics and logistics of Scamp life and road life were things I could learn—I knew that before I left. I knew it would take time, it would be a long and constant climb up a steep learning curve, and I was bound to get pissed off by what my grandfather called "the innate perversity of inanimate objects," but that holds just as true in a sticks-and-bricks life. Anything that breaks in or on a camper can be fixed; it's just a matter of figuring out how. If aren't willing to fix it yourself, and you can't afford to have someone else fix it for you—if it bugs you to know that something's always breaking or broken, something's gotta be rigged up or torn down or jiggered together by sticking the whatsit to the hoozywazzle with ticky-tacky, post-its, and string—don't live on the road.”
“My life is an actual Scamp life, not #vanlife, a distinction as fundamental and great as the distinction between being sent home with a live baby and walking around with a doll. Living in a camper is harder than you might think, in some ways; so is living alone, and so is living on the road. The challenges are many and maddening; meeting them brings about an almost electrical surge of triumph and a growing sense of self-determination and internal power.”
Click here to read "The Tramp Scamp: Part 1"
“At some point that summer, I realized that the faint sense of disorientation I felt had become a constant, and it wasn't unpleasant. At first, it startled me—I'd suddenly think Where am I?, feel a split second of panic, and then remember it didn't matter. I didn't have to get anywhere in particular at any particular time; no one was expecting me, I could drive straight through till tomorrow if I felt like it or get off at the next exit and stay there as long as I pleased, it made no difference either way.
”That summer felt peaceful; it felt steady; and truth be told, it felt a little bit sneaky, like I was getting away with something. I was taking more than my allotted portion of freedom, maybe, just running around exercising my right to self-determination willy-nilly, not asking for permission, not waiting for approval, and that's just it—that was the whole thing. I didn't need permission, and I didn't care if anyone approved.
“That, honestly, was more disorienting than anything else. The vertiginous sense of freedom. The sense that there were no limits, or not the ones I’d thought there were; the sense that I’d done my time as someone or something and now that time was over and I knew I had to go; I just didn’t know yet which way.
People are always throwing that Bukowski quote around—’And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and nobody waits for you at night and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it? Freedom or loneliness?’
Every time I see that quote, I want to run.”
Click here to read "You Are Here"
“I did not anticipate—and could not have, never having felt anything like it before—the terror of freefall. The clear, piercing awareness of what it means to be truly alone. The clarity of thought, for good and ill; clarity comes at the cost of comfort, and the stripping away of stories, of indulgences, of faith, is a double-edged sword. The return of concentration that contemporary life deliberately disallows. The erosion and eventual collapse of a sense of time; hours and days and weeks and months mean less when you answer mostly to the weather and yourself. The clean taste of knowing—like running your tongue along the edge of one absolute, irrefutable truth—the pure, buoyant joy that comes when you feel your body catch the wind and begin to climb.”
The photograph of Zeke riding in the truck for the first time is absolutely perfect.
I love the illustrated version of your story. The photos add something - depth? Reality? Humanness? I'm not sure how to name what I feel when I read your words with pictures, but this was a great idea.