First off, I’d like to apologize to my mom and sister for being a slacker. A few weeks ago, I set up The Tiny on this lovely rural property in order to work on my mom’s house and yard to prepare it for sale. While it’s filled with amazing amenities, like a gorgeous tiled bathroom with walk-in shower and rain showerhead, and a luminous sunroom overlooking a covered patio and onto the horse stables, the house has been neglected a bit lately, and needs some TLC.
It’s a big rural property and it should have made me happy. But after a year on the road, the tiny life is the life for me.
Alas, I have not gotten much done. It started with a flurry with my sister and I taking a trip to Lowe’s Home Improvement for stucco paint, trim paint, brushes, sandpaper, edge guard, cleaning cloths, dust masks, and for the garden some marigolds and bougainvillea, and a hand trowel and rake and a hose. That was the fun part. And then it was all downhill. I did get some painting done: 4 porch posts, one leg of a garage door frame, a patch of stucco, the frame around the garden window, some scraping on the porch rafters. And I’ve been pulling hoses around and watering and sprinkling spices on the gopher holes to dissuade them. The spices are not working.
With all the clutter removed, this sunroom overlooking a pepper tree and the horse stables is genius! Once the house is put on the market, someone will fall in love with it. At this point in life, that someone is not me. (Plus, I could never afford it.)
But then it got blazing hot (117 degrees!), and the power went out for half a night. And the grass grew and the gophers procreated and paint kept peeling. And mostly I realized: I freaking hate working on a large property!
This would come as a surprise to my younger self. In my 40s and into my early 50s I lived on 7 acres of land on the Central Coast of California that I was supposed to be inheriting, and I poured my soul into it for a decade. I gardened and decorated and improved and mowed and fought those coastal gophers and kept horses. I planned to stay there until I died. In the end, the inheritance didn’t transpire, and I moved to New Orleans and lived blissfully in a leased home where the landlady took care of everything. Again, I planned to stay there until I died. Then, the urge to travel took over.
Fast forward to the past year in The Tiny, where my life has been so blessedly simple. I pull my little home into a Thousand Trails campground, find a site to my liking, unhitch, set up, and just live my life. I don’t worry about gophers or mowing the grasses or fixing the fences or even paying the utilities. I run my trailer AC without worry about the bill. The water is included. I have no rent or mortgage payments.
I like campgrounds. I guess I’ve changed. I now feel lonely on a big property like this. I sit on the front porch and look out over the lawn to the fence and the street. I do see the neighbors moving about and sometimes we nod. Folks ride by on their horses. No complains there.
At the campground, we’re in much tighter quarters, sometimes just a few feet from the neighbor’s RV. That is not ideal, but it happens. Before I took off on my adventure, I worried about feeling lonely on the road, but I have never felt lonely in a campground or RV park. There’s not enough space around me for that. It’s hard to believe that I no longer crave seclusion.
And I don’t like weeds! At one time, weeding was a meditative act, where I could think about things and get stuff sorted out. Now, I do that walking my dog around the campground and through the neighboring wild lands.
And how about these neighbors? Because nearly everyone at a Thousand Trails campground has to move every 3 weeks (that’s how the memberships are set up), there is a constant reboot. One day it’s a young Russian couple in a travel trailer expecting their first baby, and the next day it’s retirees in a Class A on their way back to Florida. I often think: “Don’t like your neighbors? Wait a few days.”
Here and in my previous large property, there were and are some troubling neighbors. Back then when a neighboring 12-acre property changed hands, a family moved in that had dozens or hundreds of fighting roosters. Oh my. In this place, one neighbor is an off-balance yet jovial man with long white hair who sits most of the day in his rusting Dodge Ram truck and yells out at passersby. I think: “Don’t like your neighbor? Wait 30 years.”
In a campground like Thousand Trails, people with disruptive behaviors are disinvited. You need a password at the gate to get in the joint. Thousand Trails campgrounds are not fancy at all, but they are well run to provide safety for the campers and their families. I guess I’m more of a snob than I thought. And there are lots of kids in campgrounds, both those who are home schooled with their traveling families, and the weekend family campers. I don’t think I’ve seen even one kid on this block.
Mostly what I notice with this huge house and its belongings is how overwhelming it all feels to me. There is room after room filled with stuff. Of course, the owners have been hoarding a bit, but not that much more than most folks. The cabinets and closets are packed. I never realized how much excess possessions affected me and sapped my energy until I got rid of 95% of everything I owned. I now have just The Tiny and its contents, and what I can carry in the Durango. I’ll do the math for you: that’s not much stuff. It’s so liberating! I think that’s why my creativity has spiked since I got out here. It’s sheer freedom from excess stuff.
So while a one-month stay on this property was designed to function as a respite from the road for me, it’s been much less stellar than I thought it would. Being settled in one place, I feel my newly found “electricity” draining out of my body. I’m feeling heavy and wooden. My creativity is starting to flatten.
Initially, I was a bit worried that having access to a house would generate craving in me for a stationary home and garden, and that would be the end of full time travel.
However, just the opposite happened. Being on this property with this large home has made me love my simple, cozy life in The Tiny even more. I was made for this little cave. I work in here, and rest in here, and make coffee, and dress and do my makeup, and meditate and journal, and just in general have my being.
I will admit that access to a very high quality washer and dryer set has been lovely! And my dog has enjoyed the coolness of the lawn, especially during the stifling heat during the power outage.
My time here is coming to a close. Others will fix up the house and it will sell for a lot of money.
After I get my latest article done, I have plans to move in a week to my favorite high-mountain camp and to some cooler temperatures and the numerous hiking trails and the friends I have made there. I’m excited. I have none of the dread of breaking camp that I once had, or fear of hooking up and traveling southland freeways. I’m all like: Let’s go!
Sorry my lovely sister that I did not make more progress on this property. But I’m a wild woman now. I can’t be fenced in.