After describing the plan to the sales guy, we hopped into a golf cart and dashed out into a sea of recreational vehicles parked parallel in rows that taper off in the distance. The price point had to be low, say south of three grand, but it had to be clean and serviceable.
As it turned out the low end trailer he had in mind could not be found, yet there was a better model next to the empty space that he was certain would be the one. We walked around it while a number of fine features were identified by my guide. “The price?” I asked. He replied, “I think I can get it for you for about $5,000”. “What else do you have”, I asked. We hopped back on to the golf cart and sped across the lot. On the way over he asked. “Do you care if it’s an RV”, I thought a trailer was an RV.
The cart pulled up to a fifty foot behemoth with faded paint and a massive windshield, a steering wheel and big velvet like captains chairs with threadbare retractable arm rests. He opened the door as a musty smell signifying better days and many miles filled my head as I entered this time capsule of early seventies motel upholstery and fake wood cabinetry hung over matted shag carpeting. Must have been the real deal in its day, I thought. At his point, my guy, sensing this was his last best chance to reel me in, became rather animated as he began describing the real benefits of this beauty. He jumped into the driver’s seat then turned the ignition key as the engine rumbled to a start. At least it ran. Must admit, for a split second the image of driving this beast onto the Ranch and parking it under the big Cottonwood tree did cross my mind, only to brush it aside as I imagined Her innate sense of cleanliness as it may relate to the condition of this most interesting specimen. She would never go for it and therefore the plan was doomed.
We shook hands and a promise to give it some thought was uttered as I drove off toward the Ranch thinking things over. Somehow, the old girl may have met the intent of providing shelter and a reasonable level of comfort, but it didn’t seen right. I’d spent a number of pristine days and nights sleeping in a one man tent, eating out of the bottom of a cooler and bathing in the river. This was a solitary, fairly natural way to live. A way that suited me in a somewhat primitive way. I felt a part of the scheme of things, in harmony with the elements, a part of a total system where most all of its part fit together. Driving this lumbering belching behemoth on to a place that had grown a part of me seemed an intrusion onto the landscape. I would wake in the morning to the sounds of rushing water, birds greeting the day, sun rising over the "Grand" and the occasional farmer beginning the day’s work as he fires up the John Deere to plow his fields or irrigate his crops. During the darkness of night all that separated me from this was a thin sheet of nylon and some mesh. I could feel the cool air. Smell the sandy soil and the dusty leaves rustling in the arid breeze, and it could hear me breathe its clean clear atmosphere as I lay on a thin mat inside a tent beneath the old Cottonwood tree.
How could one separate one’s self from the elements by stepping into a barrier of glass and metal? A capsule insulating one from the sensory inputs that heightened the senses and brought simple pleasures to the soul. A turn of a key, the rumble of the generator, all seemed out of synch with the vibe of the place. The RV was not the solution. The riddle needed to be resolved. What was learned by stopping in Rigby that day was that a fifty foot RV was not the answer.
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