RTR Nomad Community

A "street" at RTR 2018

A young woman needs an 11/16 inch impact bit to finish fixing the suspension on her truck. It is important because her truck pulls her cargo trailer home. The word passes through the campsites until a bit is found.  A couple have a mishap with their scooter and need transportation.  A new nomad, alone and wondering about the future finds friendship, guidance, assistance and encouragement.  Two young women talk about what they see as the reality of their lives.  People sharing directions to dispersed camping they have discovered in unbelievably beautiful places that most Americans only see on Facebook or National Geographic.

A little over a week ago a great number of people – mostly nomads who generally live relatively secluded lives, traveling the country, seeking out places of great natural beauty – came together to form an instant city.  A sea of campers, vans, trailers, school buses, cargo trailers, truck campers and RVs of every sort, we come together for the purpose of sharing a short-term community. We come together to share, to learn, to grow and to celebrate life. 

The event which created this nomad city and brought this community to life is the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous (RTR) which gathers annually in the desert outside the town of Quartzsite, Arizona.  Despite our tremendous diversity we are drawn together by a sense of commonality which quickly jump starts community.  

There are several sub-groups in the RTR; e.g. the music group, the art group, etc.; just as you would find in any community.  However, there are three things which unite us all – being minimalists, which is a natural part of the nomadic life and creating comfortable living facilities that are very mobile and capable of staying off-the-grid for extended periods.  “Off-the-grid” means living in places like the desert or a forest where there are no utilities or services.  We must be able to be totally self-contained and self-sufficient.

Our living units must be quite mobile and enable this self-contained and self-sufficient life. This draws us together.  Nothing brings nomads together in friendship like talking about meeting these challenges. Nothing binds us together like supporting, encouraging and helping each other. We study each other’s rigs and pick each other’s brains for ideas.  When we discover or learn something we share it with the community. You never watch your neighbor struggle.

An RTR group activity 

During the day we have activities at RTR.  There are morning meditation and yoga groups.  There’s an art center and music group. There is plenty to do but the majority do what most of us came to do; viz. make new friends, greet old friends, and sit and talk. 

I think Americans have forgotten about talking and visiting.  Some of us are old enough to remember how people would sit on porches and talk and visit on a warm summer’s evening. It was something that happened in large cities as well as small towns. Now people sit inside and watch television.  It is sad how the very design of new homes on large lots isolates people from a community.  Each evening the desert here is dotted with campfires surrounded by people – friends - talking about the day, sharing stories about their adventures since last year, admiring the magnificent night sky, swapping information about and directions to new and exciting places to visit, and learning more about their new friends.

Free stuff. 

As a group we don’t have a lot of money and we are, by nature, extremely frugal.  Because we don’t have a lot of money we may be more inclined to share.  At the center of our RTR camp there are four large tarps with everything from clothing to books to tools and food. It is all free, and it is all put there by members of the community.  I saw a man putting a very nice pair of auto jacks in the tool pile. He could have posted them on Craig’s List or other sale forum but he elected to put them out to share with someone who needed them and might not have the money to buy a pair.  We have learned, through our very life-style, that you don’t waste anything and you don’t buy what you don’t need.  I guess you’d call us frugal minimalists.

Thanksgiving 2017 near Cottonwood, AZ

I can’t help but digress here and share an example from Thanksgiving 2017.  This community - this sharing - isn’t limited to our time at RTR. It takes place wherever nomads come together.  At Thanksgiving we were on a beautiful ridge just north of Cottonwood, Arizona.  There were a number of us camped there, and about half were looking for work and experiencing hard times. As a community we decided to have a Thanksgiving dinner.  There were two or three who just didn’t have anything to share but we were able to convince them to come because we were confident there would be plenty of food. (Have you ever seen a carry-in where there was a shortage of food?)  One of our nomad friends had a forty foot Class-A.  We met at his place because he had an outside television.  He had never used it, but he figured it out.  Twenty of us had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner in the desert and watched football on Robert’s television.  That is sharing. That is community.

There is also a great deal of sharing of information at RTR. It is meant to be a time and place for new nomads to come and gather information, knowledge, experience and encouragement from those of us who have some experience under our belts.  There are classes in everything from solar energy to solar baking, sharing new gadgets to outfitting a Prius for full-timing. Even outside the classes experienced nomads help and encourage the new comers. A friend of ours who spent years in a Prius came to RTR this year in a pop-up truck camper.  He is an engineer and has tremendous outside-the-box ideas, and he really enjoys sharing his ideas.

Nomads tend to be loners or stay in small groups.  RTR is our exception for the sole purpose of coming together to share, to learn, to grow and to celebrate our way of life.  I believe that it is a great success.