No Room in the Forest: A Holiday Tale
Hello, dear friends! I’m filled with gratitude this week, for many reasons, among them the story I’m sharing today. I’d say it’s from the archives, as I did share this “same” story a year ago (back when only 250 of you were rolling with us). But today’s is quite a different version (even if the details are the same).
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No Room in the Forest
A writer pulls into the woods. Finds three fishermen, a man wearing a guitar and cradling a chubby accordion in his arms making camp alongside a woman with a knowing smile, and not a single spot to lay her weary head.
Was she at that time a writer? Well, she was scribbling notes in a log. And building a fire in her heart. And taking in the world with wild, hungry eyes. She was, we’ll see, a traveler. She has, as this story begins, been driving all day—up, up, and around—greasy-gray engine of her ruby-red van straining, air thinning, temperatures (blissfully, at long last) dropping, leaving (she feared) a trail of transmission fluid in her wake.
“Do you carry a gun?” This from the tallest of the trio of fisherman, who the traveler is only talking to because she mistook him for a ranger.
Behind him, a lake, its surface the soft amber of frankincense in the golden rays of a slowly setting sun, shimmers. His two friends stand at its edge, poles in hand, a cooler and tackle box resting between them on ruddy myrrh-colored pebbles.
The writer/traveler never knows how to answer this (not infrequent) question (often, as now, posed by a man, who often, as now, she just met). What she wants is for her response to let the asker know this query sounds too close to, Could you defend yourself right now?
After a beat, she goes with, “So far, no one’s had to find out.”
The tall fisherman steps back from the van window, locking his thumbs into either armpit of his tackle vest.
The writer relaxes. Sometimes, the asker follows up with questions about where she’ll be staying for the night or a “joke” that makes it clear he did already know how the question sounds and that was, in fact, the point of asking it.
The fisherman nods to his buddies. “We came all the way up here from the city. Saw that sun and just drove toward it. Felt drawn to come, you know.”
The traveler knows. She herself has come up to this high-elevation forest from the desert floor, where she was, for some time, tending a long-legged paper wasp called Jaxon; Bart, a fat, shy toad; and a flock of desert birds.
As for cities, she’s been avoiding them for days, weeks. Has it been months? She’s been squirreling in to this one or that one as she moves, masked and darty-eyed, to re-up her supply of food and water and fuel every ten days or so. The world’s gone mad. Once, in a hardware store, she heard a man screaming at a young woman about freedom and mandates. “It’s just store policy, sir” the woman said. But her words were a raindrop next to a waterfall. Another time, in a grocery store, a man with a gun on his belt looked the writer up and down and hissed, “Mentira.” Liar? she wondered, having said nothing, and looked behind her but saw only produce.
For a spell, she ignored the first sign it was time to move on from her desert spot. Instead, she pleaded with the rodents to leave her be, making threats she couldn’t keep, laughing till she cried or crying till she laughed, and feeling ridiculous about the whole thing.
The second sign was impossible not to heed. A sun high in the sky, its rays so fierce as to make the desert floor hot to the touch well after dusk, might as well have roared, Go!
And when she saw descriptions of this forest and the beauty it had to offer—and written by none other than a traveling duo whose advice to other travelers she’d learned to appreciate, a duo who went only by the name Make Like An Apeman—she knew where she was being pointed.
“It’s impressive what you’re doing,” the fisherman adds, “traveling alone like this.”
“Thanks,” the traveler says. “I’d better be moving on.” Then, nodding to the poles, she adds, “Good luck,” though she’s the one who needs it.
She’s come down to the lake only to see if there might be a small, quiet nook, perhaps among some sweet-smelling firs, to tuck Ruby the van in for the night—there having been not a single available spot along the long main road relegated for dispersed camping.1
She steers Ruby north. The van crawls up yet another forest road. This one has only a site here or there, and again, all are occupied. At last, she comes to a gate that bars further passage and turns back.
Once again at the entrance to the lake, the writer has a decision. Carry on down the road and try her luck in the next forest or the one after that? Return to the forest road lined with fire-ringed sites in hopes she missed a vacancy on her first pass?
Getting from the desert to this forest has been circuitous and fraught with troubles. There’d been a broken fridge, a delayed package, an off-road path so potholed she felt like a total badass for keeping her ruby-red rig upright to cross it—until she noticed transmission fluid spilling into the sand. There’d been not one but two raps at her door, men in uniform with a message: You don’t have to go home. But you can’t stay here.
She leans her head out the window. A mix of pine nuts and maple tickles her nose. The cool air whispers, Give it one more try.
The dirt road is lined on either side with juniper trees and Douglas firs and site after site with large, level ground, each site marked by a small stone fire ring—each already occupied.
When the path thins so it will no longer accommodate Ruby’s ample girth, the traveler sighs. She backs up, pulls forward, backs up, pulls forward, backs up, pulls forward. “Sorry,” she says each time branches scrape the van’s sides, “almost there.” At last facing back the way she came in, she slumps over the steering wheel and heads back along the road now twice traveled, barely looking left to right. This too, she reminds herself, is part of the traveling life, part of the writing life. Perhaps she misread the signs. Perhaps she’s meant to be elsewhere. Perhaps there are no signs.
The wind picks up, and she shivers. She’s about to roll up the window. Then she spots them.
Standing near a stone fire ring in the center of a particularly large site, a man with a guitar strapped over his shoulder cradles in his arms a chubby accordion. A woman with a Mona Lisa smile steps from a tall white van and floats over to join him. She places a hand gently on the small of his back. He lays his head on her shoulder.
Here, the breeze coos.
The writer pulls into a corner of their site, a perfectly level, perfectly Ruby-sized rectangle lined by a smattering of trees with sweet-smelling branches. “Hey,” she calls, stepping out, “mind if I share your spot, just for the night?”
“Absolutely,” one or both calls back.
The traveler pulls out a small silver pan that will no longer be part of her mess kit. She lies on the myrrh-colored earth, scoots on her back under the chassis of the ruby-red van, and places the pan below the transmission seal.
Emerging, she sighs.
“Need any help?” The woman with the knowing smile calls.
“Naw.” The writer smiles.
“Join us for sunset happy hour then?”
“Absolutely,” she says.
The clink of bottles rings out. The sun rolls across the horizon in a billow of tangerine, plunges into a thin line of scarlet that tops the tree line and sprays through boughs, then sinks out of sight.
The man tickles the accordion, and its delighted response fills the twilight. An exchange of stories and songs from the road and from the sea follows.
“I think I’ll tuck in for the night,” the traveler says when she feels another contented yawn filling her chest.
“Good night,” the man says.
“Stay as long as you want,” the woman says.
In the belly of the ruby-colored van, the writer lies her head on her pillow, pulls the curtain from her window, and peers out. Across the way sits the white van—is it … glowing?—and above it shines the night sky.
A handful of days later, the white van is poised to depart. The traveler has decided to stay on for a while longer.
Till we meet again, they all say, certain they will. (And they do.)
“Oh hey,” says the man. “What’s your handle on iOverlander?”2
“Road Quill,” the writer says. “And yours?”
“We’re Make Like An Apeman,” the woman says.
Thank you for reading, for liking, for commenting, for restacking! Your readership and engagement means the world to me and helps other people find this rolling desk. And thank you for the gift of your kindness. I know you all would offer a corner of your spot to a weary traveler, this one included, and I to you, of course.
For the comments: A reader called the Rolling Desk comments section engaging and enlightening. It’s the truth. You all are wonderful. Last week’s post on showers and solitude led to poetry in the comments. Like Lor’s description of the bits found in abandoned VW van, its “echo of old stories, but more likely the cold north wind howling through the empty cavern.” Oh, and the woman with the Mona Lisa smile () is often here too. Say hi to someone new to you. Or share: What’s a time you’ve experienced a little “ordinary” magic? Has a stranger ever, in some way, welcomed or aided you in a time of need? How and where are you spending these last days of December, whether you celebrate or not? How are you?
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Dispersed camping (aka wild camping, pirate camping, or roughing it) is the Shangri-la of full-time boondockers (those living in rigs that are self-contained, no-amenities-needed, no fees taken). Dispersed spots are designated by rock fire rings. But that’s it. No pit toilets or water. Only largely untamed land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, or the state and sometimes a county. Typically, one can stay 14 days per site.
iOverlander is a user-populated app with tons of info great for people living on the road. Along with GPS coordinates for sites, free and paid, with travelers keeping fellow travelers posted about the state of the sites, you can find places to dump your tanks, refill propane tanks, take showers, and get Wifi, to name a few.
Holly, I long for your chapters to be made into a series someday. It’s so easy to slip inside your experience, feel your interior and exterior landscapes. Your words, vessels delivering me here, then here, then here. And in this piece, the writer, discovering how her outer journey informs and mirrors her writing. And vice versa, I suspect? “This too, she reminds herself, is part of the traveling life, part of the writing life. Perhaps she misread the signs. Perhaps she’s meant to be elsewhere. Perhaps there are no signs.” Just beautiful.
You never disappoint, Holly. Another compelling story! Thank you for these.