Community

The party is beginning. The community is gathering.

For those of you who do not know Pamela and me, we are full-timers who live in our twenty foot camper trailer we call Nitsitapiisinni – Blackfeet for “our way of life”. Our home is in Montana where we volunteer as camp hosts for Glacier National Park from the first of May until the end of September. After that we visit family in the Midwest and south and wander southwestern US.  We have fallen in love with the desert and are currently staying in the desert east of Cottonwood, Arizona. We are in an area where dispersed camping is allowed on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land, perched on a ridge, 4.5 miles from Cottonwood, with a magnificent view of the mountains, and as peaceful as anywhere can be.

As we walked home from the party this evening the sky was so clear that we could see the Milky Way and the various constellations almost jumped out at us.  It was the perfect ending to a great evening.  

Earlier in the afternoon Pamela decided that she wanted to meet more of our neighbors.  Our dispersed camping area was quite full and we only had room for one or two rigs of any size. Pamela’s efforts at meeting neighbors resulted in a party with food, a grill going, and a campfire that started just after 4pm and went until 8:30pm. What fun we had. Of the eleven units in the dispersed camping area, which is clustered like a small community, only one family were not full-timers. That happened to be a firefighter and his family from Peoria, AZ a couple of hours away.  The rest of us are from all over representing California, New York, Finland, Arizona, Louisiana and Montana. (Two of the couples established Texas residence because Texas is one of the states that is good for full-timers.)   I was probably the oldest.  We are again and again amazed at the number of younger people who are full-timers and work from their RV. The youngest was a couple who were probably in their early 30s.  They had moved to San Francisco for work, decided ‘hell with it’, bought a Class A and now run their businesses from their motor-home as they travel the country.  As they said, they don’t make nearly as much as they did working in the city, but it doesn’t cost nearly as much to live comfortably, and it is a lot more fun.  One of the couples just bought a Springdale, so they had to come look through Nitsitapiisinni to see what modifications we’ve made.  The fellow next to us, who has an old diesel pusher school bus, gave me a tour.  He is a PhD candidate and the back third of his bus is his study where he works on his research and teaches on-line class for the university where he’s doing his degree.  We are a small temporary community drawn together by the desire to escape the confines of cities, towns and sticks-n-bricks as well as a love for the magnificent country in which we are camped. 

As the party was beginning to break up an old Class-A pulled in.  Our party was occupying the only open site.  I approached the driver and suggested that they come and join us for some food and socialization then we’d make sure they got a good place to stay. It was dark and getting late, so the community came together to help them back into a good spot next to the party fire.  The couple who had brought the grill saw the newcomers getting out a grill. They insisted that the newcomers use their grill which was still hot and only needed a some more briquettes. There was lots of food left from our party, which we all insisted that the new family take so they didn’t have to fix a meal so late in the evening.  I think I’m the only one who knows that the newcomers are not full-timers by choice. The sharing by our cluster of one-time strangers made a significant impact upon the lives of people who weren’t as fortunate as the rest of us.  Our little community, drawn together by a beautiful place to stay, had come together, celebrated life and started creating friendships.  The community can only exist for the 14 days stay limit, then we must all move on, but friendship have been forged that may last for many years.  The community acted charitably and in a very harmonious way.  We did not pay attention to the fact that their motor-home was old.  We didn’t check their pedigree, their passport, their politics or their religion before we decided to help them and welcome them into the community. 

 

Did you notice how this friendly and helpful community came to life?  It came about because one person, Pamela, knocked on the door of an RV and said “Hi, I’m Pamela.”   And I’m proud of her for doing that.