Oh, the Places You'll Shower
Hello! And happy Sunday. And welcome to new subscribers. I’m delighted you’re all here! Today, a handful of mini stories on getting clean and going feral. Which I highly recommend. The feral bit I mean. But where, I’ve been asked, do you shower? Oh, let me tell you.
1. At a pull-off alongside Old Highway 101 among giant Douglas firs and a static swarm of cobalt wings
You’ll slip into sunlight. You’ll gaze through slender reeds at a silver lagoon. You’ll laugh, recalling how you nearly spent your first night “wild camping” hiding behind a gas station. You’ll gasp when, just steps from your new ruby-red van, you find a small pile of berry-dotted scat.
You’ll peer up the road and down, see neither bear nor human. Do it! you’ll prod. Better use the doors facing the water, you decide (this is a road), and reconfigure the PVC pipe shower frame to fit the side doors instead of the back before hanging the white plastic curtain for the first time.
As you spill cold water over yourself, sudsing and hopping and crying out with delight, a blue dragonfly, and later two more, will pop inside, zoom around, and then zip back to the milkweed the swarm is feasting on. You’ll chuckle at the thought they’ve come to check out the large, squeaky creature behind the strange white veil.
You’ll think of how trapped you’ve felt for too long and how this is the opposite of that. You can do this, you’ll whisper.
(You’ll never again use this particular setup—clunky and a waste of space. Plus, you’ll discover yoga studios with showers!)
2. Bent over an orange bowl with a candy-red tea kettle while snow falls
You’ll end a call. A light snow will dust everything. Your window. The abandoned school bus turned traveling circus outside your window. The hillside beyond smattered with red and orange rooftops. Maybe we’re in a snow globe, you’ll think, setting the phone down. You’ll mean you, the bus, the hills; the fence just a handful of miles south constructed from an arbitrary line on a map to divide land that’s the same on either side, as if people aren’t the same on either side; the caller, miles and miles north; and the lines arbitrarily constructed from fear or greed to divide self from contentment. You’ll mean it’s all gorgeous and terribly shaky. You’ll mean you feel shaken.
You’ve found this quirky old mining town abundant. Alleyways drenched in art. A coffee shop with clawfoot tubs for a seat. Taverns with food and music and men who draw your caricature or play pool with you or kiss you softly under starlight. Except when it comes to public showers. Of which there seem to be none. So you’ll set the kettle on the stovetop.
The call will have tenderized you. But it’s too cold to stay in alone with the mallet of impotence. So you’ll text, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” along with the suicide hotline number.
You’ll pour not-quite-scalding water into the bowl. You’ll start with your shoulders, soaping, rinsing, drying part by part. You’ll slip into your robe, empty the bowl. You’ll kneel before it and pour from the kettle, water and steam spilling and rising from the back of your neck through your mess of hair into the bowl and onto the floor. You’ll lather and rinse and rinse and rinse.
Later, you’ll watch the drummer, her muscular arms and violet hair in endless flight. Between sets, the two of you will lean in and talk like you’ve always known each other, the closeness a balm. You’ll slip out midway through the final song.
If you’d known it would be the last live music you’d see for more than two years, you might have stayed. Or you might have looked up past swirling flakes in a halo of lamplight before hurrying to zip yourself into your down sleeping bag to say, “Maybe give us another shake, eh?”
3. In an avocado-green pop-up tent with a solar-heated tank and foot-pump spray
The tent will be a gift you’ll get yourself when the world stops. When everything changes. When there’ll be no more studios or rec centers or new friends’ homes. When the three-gallon tank left in the sun all day won’t be just a when-you-don’t-care-to-go-into-a-town affair. Plus, there’s a naval base near the desert spot where you’ve decided to wait this virus out, and you’ve noticed helicopters like to fly over, low. The tent will be delivered by a tall man with a Tom Waits voice who you’ll pine for. “Nah, no need for general delivery,” he’ll growl. “I gotta come see this spot of yours anyway.” Partly, it’s that he’s kind. Partly, he’s saying, sorry you’ll not be joining my bubble.
He’ll also accept delivery of a care package from your mom, so he’ll come bearing homemade bread and apricot jam from trees of your youth too. You’ll play guitar and sing under your outdoor twinkle lights, six feet apart, you not not remembering the tickle of his stubble on your stomach.
You’ll love the luxury of the tent the first time you set it up. You’ll tuck a towel and soap into its pocket. You’ll hang the shower nozzle on a wall hook. You’ll watch rolling hills dotted with saguaro out the little window. You’ll pump and then spray warm water. You’ll look up at the “sky light” and laugh, So much for staying out of helicopters’ view, but feel sheltered anyway and watch a hawk soar into view and then back out.
Your plans to leave the tent up—a permanent structure—will be mocked by wind. And you’ll chase the damn thing across the desert more than once and try larger stakes and cuss and learn to hold the tent still with your hip and non-pumping foot during gusts.
You’ll find your own bubble. Bart, a horny toad, will roam among flat rocks you’ve gathered, and you’ll stop using them as tables or to shore up stakes because of the jut of his stillness when you lift one he’s lying under. Jaxon, a long-legged red paper wasp who you think in human form would pick a mandolin and keep a dip in his jaw, visits every mid-morning. You’ll learn not to flinch when he dive-bombs your yoga mat; he’s just coming in for a look. Occasionally, he’ll bring Mabel, a paper wasp the color of mustard. (There may be interchangeable Mabels.) You’ll never tire of coffee with the cacophony of birds—mourning doves and rock wrens and finches and thrashers.
The caller will say one day, “I’m feeling better. I promise.” You’ll realize how often you were holding your breath and that you might again, might still. But you’ll be trying to learn that now is all there is.
By the time soaring temperatures force you from this spot, you’ll have passed two months seeing other humans only when you scurry into town to resupply. This solitude will, for the most part, continue.
(You’ll eventually chuck the tank and its one-too-many-times backed-up foot pump, muttering madly, “Fucking sand? You can’t handle a little bit of sand?” your eyes darting wildly to make sure you’re not caught using the strip mall dumpster. “And you took up too much fucking space!” will be your parting shot.)
4. Sitting on a fold-up chair, sipping beer after a day so scorching even the ubiquitous Pepto-Bismal-pink adventure-for-hire jeeps have disappeared
You gorgeous shapeshifting devil! (You’ll talk to sky now. And it’s turned milky tender after hours upon end of white-gold, cerulean rage.) Stubborn and not ready to be chased out of yet another desert spot, you’ll have spent the day tucked into a small human-size crook of juniper branches getting in last-minute edits on a manuscript due to the publisher and wiping away sweat.
You’ll still have the solar-heated tank. And because you moved it into the shade under the van a few hours ago, the water will be perfect. You’ve no need for the tent. It’s just you and the marbled cliffs in the distance.
How about this? (Sky talks back.) Lavender and peach slow-dance through milk, tracing the cliff’s long ridge line. You’ll sip from the bottle. Lather. Rinse. Watch sky.
As a final line of fire orange clings to the cliffs, the first yaps of distant coyotes will sound. You’ll slip into boots and gallop naked across the land, yipping in short, high bursts and then howling, long and low as stars fill the night.
5. At a crowded beach park while waves crash and a lion bellows
Two years will have passed, and you’ll have begun, slowly, reluctantly, excitedly, to make cities part of your routine again. You’ll open your back doors toward busy beach volleyball courts and the sea beyond them. You’ll hang a tapestry between the doors with magnets. As you poor warm water from the tea kettle over your head, a lion from the zoo across the street will huff-bark over and over and over. You’ll think of savannas.
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 desk. Jules Torti of Jules Is Out of Office recently called the Rolling Desk comments section engaging and enlightening. And I couldn’t agree more. You all are amazing.
This post is part of a “series” (aka pieces I randomly drop) answering the questions I get asked all the time about living on the road / in a van. This one clearly answers, Where do you shower? (Oh and, yes, my soap is biodegradable.) Not surprisingly, Where do you, um, go to the bathroom? comes up too. Curious? Check out “The Tao of Poo.”
For the comments: Have any questions? Memorable shower stories? Times when you went a little feral? And as always, how are you really?
Up next
More answers. More interviews with people from the road I can’t wait to share. More stories on the kindness of strangers. More escapes to gorgeous landscapes. More collaborations with other writers you’ll love or already do. More updates on living with a chronic illness and how that shapes my nomadic life. More connections between all of us and the roads and paths we roll and trek across. More invitations to reflect together on what that overlap, seen and unseen, means. More tributes to Ruby the van, whose lack of indoor shower has afforded me these and soooo many more memorable shower moments. More updates on her replacement if I can bear to part with her. PS. Her replacement will have an indoor shower. Which will no doubt come with its own challenges.
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From running naked while howling at coyotes to naming the local insects, this post is a delight--poignant, poetic and radiant with love for the world as it reels in a time of uncertainty.
Holly, I adored this! So much so I am going to write a whole post in reply... I have shower stories galore...
I have set up the draft already and will attempt it over the next month or so... I will tag you when its ready - thank you gorgeous lady for your wonderful and inspiring writing. Actually make that voice because I always listen to that beautiful soft lilt with pleasure! ♥️x