Happy Christmas. Merry Hannukah.
This cold Christmas night, I’m having a little brandy in Milton, our class B campervan, at a campground in Western Oregon. The wind has been fierce all day, and tonight in the canyon the Ford Transit is rocking a bit. My reading light swings, suspended from a whistle’s lanyard looped over a transverse rod near the ceiling. 38 percent of the organized chaos inside the van is jury rigging. Or is it jerry rigging. This might be looked up and debated in order to honor the gods and goddesses of exactitude, but what fun is that?
My gap year nears it’s end. It has been a resounding success. Therefore, we have extended it for a month or two. Because we can!! A bit more than a week ago we stocked the shelves in the now veteran campervan, known to some as an RV and to others as certainly not an RV, the infamous Milton, and drove north from San Antonio, boondocking at one of the Cracker Barrels in Amarillo, visiting relatives in Denver, braving a blizzard in Rabbit Ears Pass on the way to Steamboat Springs and it’s recent harvest of 4 inches of powdery snow, skiing there for 5 days and taking Milton for his first serious winter challenge. Our campground was on the Yampa River, idyllic except for the fact that cold air settles in the lowest geographical locations, such as riverbeds, such as where we were for a week, such as 7 degrees below zero, such as an entertainment for bemused campervaners who did not know exactly how to use their heater. We do now. The Espar heater is fantastic, when used with a modicum of skill, including the understanding that the vehicle’s gas tank needs to be more than ¼ full, a window needs to be cracked and the exhaust fan on low, and timer set to infinity. Wouldn’t it be nice for each of us to set our timers to infinity? We might so try, surprised to see that yes, indeed, this is our factory default. Infinity is our fate, whether we realize it or not.
The plan is to drive west in search of adventure, then north to Canada, back to the mountain west in the US, and eventually home in the South. The place deserves it’s capitalization. By summer I will return to the northeast to begin my MFA in Connecticut. I am gathering energy and hope and excitement for that journey. Anything could happen. And I hope it does.
Scott D. McLean, MD 