The Aftermath

I wish I could tell you that my starting this blog and then promptly forgetting about it for several months is out of character for me, but it’s not. Lacking consistency in my personal projects is fairly standard. Whoops? At any rate, let’s pick up where we left off…

After the accident I stuck around La Grande for about 10 days while my insurance came to a determination about my trailer (they declared it a total loss) and I cleaned it out. Cleaning it out took several days. Some things had broken and a lot of stuff ended up covered in flour and borax that had escaped containment. After clearing everything out, I loaded everything into my truck and left.

I spent a few fruitless days looking at trailers before heading to Sacramento to stay with my best friend. He had very generously offered to let me stay in his spare bedroom. My first week there I did very little. Even though I lacked PTSD of any kind from the accident, I was still in shock at how things had turned out, so I spent my first few days in Sacramento staring off into space, watching Netflix, and aimlessly looking at trailers online.

Still, I was determined to get back on the road as quickly as possible. Every few days I’d email with my insurance company to argue with them over the settlement for my trailer. They tried to lowball me, but hell hath no fury like a lady nomad with ample wifi who just destroyed her house on wheels.

Ultimately it took providing market research about trailer appreciation due to material and manufacturing shortages, but I won. They gave me what I paid for my trailer which was about $10K.

My truck spent two weeks in a body shop getting his bed replaced. During this time I spent most of my energy looking at trailers online and trying not to completely lose my mind. I felt stuck, homeless, and mostly kind of pathetic.

My best friend is one of Earth’s kindest people. We’ve known each other for over 17 years and are very comfortable with each other. We have a lot of inside jokes. We know where all the bodies are buried (so to speak). I knew he didn’t mind having me around, but I constantly worry about being a burden to other people, so it was hard for me to relax.

It was nice to feel like I was around family again though. When you’re used to spending most of your time alone, having someone to chat about nothing with over breakfast feels very special. Sometimes it was even breakfast with my bestie and his partner, which was even more special.

My bestie and his gal had been dating a couple months and were falling deeply in love with one another. As someone who hasn’t had that in a long time, it was beautiful to see. Watching them together and witnessing the warmth of their mutual adoration, stirred something in my heart… Like the memory of what it feels like to find home in another person. It made me feel a little achey, but also very inspired.

Once my truck came back from the shop, I was finally able to start looking at trailers in person again. I looked at a few locally, but nothing I stepped into gave me that warm, excited feeling I get when I find a new place to live. Trailers had appreciated so much by this time due to a backlog in the production of new trailers that used trailers were going for far more than what they were usually worth (this was true when I bought my first trailer too, but prices had continued to escalate), so I increased my budget significantly in order have a greater variety to choose from.

Finally, I settled on a few contenders. They were all hundreds of miles away, in other states and cost nearly twice what I’d paid for my previous trailer. They were all much nicer than the trailer I had, but the expense still made me want to vomit.

Ultimately, I traveled to Arizona to purchase a 23-foot (from hitch to bumper) travel trailer with numerous bells, whistles, and superior construction (no slides though; I’m convinced they’re not worth it) and paid $19000 for it, which is the most I’ve ever paid for anything in cash. Trailers aren’t much of an investment (they generally just depreciate), so this still nauseates me a little if I think about it. Still, despite having to deal with a certain amount of imposter complex--my new trailer is nicer than some of the apartments I’ve lived in, and I do love it.

I towed the trailer from Arizona back to my friend’s place in Sacramento to load it with my belongings. Loading the trailer was infinitely less productive than I expected. I thought it would take a day, or maybe two, but every time I started moving things out of my friend’s duplex and into my trailer I’d break down crying.

My tears puzzled me. During the four weeks between when I arrived in Sacramento and when I bought my new trailer, all I wanted was to get off the grid again. My tolerance for city life has become extremely tenuous – cities make me feel colder, harder, overwhelmed, less present, and less open. I like who I am less when I’m in them. Nature is part of how I regulate myself now; when I’m not close to her (nature) I don’t feel as good and I start to fall back into old patterns.

So why the tears? The conclusion I came to was that some part of me was dreading the transition back to spending most of my time alone. Longing for human company is the hardest aspect of how I’ve chosen to live, and I wasn’t looking forward to re-engaging with it. I’d gotten used to having people -- my people around, and no matter how badly I wanted to go gallivanting off into the wilderness, it was still hard to give up. I think anytime we give up a sense of emotional safety, security, or tribe, we’re a little prone to feelings of abandonment, even if we instigate parting and do so willingly. Periodically freezing up and crying was my inner child’s way of acting out in protest; here I was uprooting her again and taking her away from her people.

It took a lot of self-talk and self-soothing, but eventually I got through it. After about five days I was done loading my trailer. A week later I had 400 watts of solar installed on my roof. The day the solar installation finished I bought six months of Mexican car and trailer insurance.

I had been debating for weeks whether or not it was a good idea to go to Baja. Every time my mind tried to shut down the idea (these thoughts you have are unrealistic… It’s all in your head... What you want is unavailable…), my heart insisted. It was like there was a magnet trying to pull me south. I decided to trust my heart. I left for Baja the next day.