The Land of Enchantment
I have published some sporadic scribblings on this here new-ish platform - Substack. I will try to publish something new here at least every couple of weeks. Substack is designed to make production of an email newsletter quick and easy for individual writers. I am all about quick and easy.
Some of you know us (Dawn, Echo and me) already, and I subscribed you to this newsletter without your knowledge. Dont worry, its free. Some of you have read a couple of my pieces and you went ahead and subscribed on your own - thank you very much for that! Writing is a solitary practice and without an audience it is meaningless. As reading my words may affect you, so your reading them affects me.
The title of this endeavor - Enchanted Vagabonds - reflects our meandering, broke-ass life in search of spirit and beauty. We survive on the pittance of my Social Security income - the residual royalty allowed me after thirty years confinement in corporate America. With this income, some travel hacks and Scrooge-like spending - we go a-travelling around this land in our trusty trailer during the winter and aboard our elegant sailboat in the summer.
How do we manage it? This crazy travel dream on a shoestring budget? We have some tricks. This winter we volunteered with your National Park Service to exchange our simple grunt labor for a free RV site - water, sewer, power and propane included. Yay, free housing. We get food from the local food banks. They overload us with groceries - mostly canned and boxed but some fresh. Last week we were gifted 10 6-in pumpkin pies still with the Walmart labels on them, two packages of chicken breasts and about 50 kiwis. We ended up dumping most of the kiwis in the forest for the bears and javelinas and gave away 8 of the pies, but you get the picture. Food bank donations have cut our grocery bill 75 percent. Free housing, utilities and almost free food. Life is good.
We search for spirit and beauty to nourish our souls. The human world is often cold and cruel while the more-than-human world is magnificent beauty and peace. We come to this search from various traditions - indigenous, Buddhist, Christian, pagan - but the core idea is that we - all of us and everything - are of the same ancient star stuff - interrelated, connected, animated by love and magic, sparkling into existence. Everything is the expression of a single great consciousness. Our deep ambition is not mere achievement in the human realm, but instead rich, extraordinary lives in the more-than-human realm.
So we ramble on - Orcas blow next to the boat, eagles chitter above the trailer, javelinas trot across the trail, steam rises from the hot springs, seals eye our passage, silence envelops ancient ruins, fog blows in off the straits, osprey shiver water off wet wings, deer bound away in deep forest. Enchanted, we travel and believe.
This morning it was cold at six thousand feet in New Mexico. The trailer is skirted, water supply heated and insulated. Attached to a free supply of propane, the furnace keeps us toasty warm inside. Oatmeal bubbled on the stove, coffee in the carafe, Echo-dog kept watch outside.
Later, Echo and I hiked up the Granny Mountain trail before bushwhacking a mile cross country to sit like Apaches on our haunches atop the cliffs on the South side of Cliff Dweller Canyon across from the dwellings. We sat on a rock in the shade of a juniper and spied unseen on the visitors. The sky was deep blue, with a blazing sun, far-off wispy clouds and a soft wind. Voices echoed up from the canyon, just as they did a thousand years ago. I did not hoot ghostly, first-nation, Apache spirit noises from far above to spook the fine folks below. The rangers would frown on such practical joking and treat me badly for adding excitement to the tourist experience. No sense of humor, rangers. Sighing, Echo the Wonder Dog and I turned from the gorge and grinned our way home.
So it was with Enchanted Vagabonds today.
