MartianTom
Guest
Hi folks,
Here are a couple of books I'd highly recommend to motorhomers in general, and wildcampers in particular. They both inspired me to part with a wedge of savings and hit the road in my own house-on-wheels.
Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck. In the early '60s, when he was already wealthy and famous and heading towards 60 himself, Steinbeck had specially made a 'tough, fast, comfortable vehicle, mounting a camper top - a little house with double bed, a four-burner stove, a heater, refrigerator and lights operating on butane, a chemical toilet, closet space, storage space, windows screened against insects...' He named it 'Rocinante', after Don Quixote's horse, and set off across America from Maine to California's Monterey peninsula. His only travel companion was his aged dog, Charley. His quest was 'to hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the lights...' - which is what he did, and what he records in the book. Driving both interstates and country routes, he dines with truckers, encounters bears in Yellowstone, meets old friends in San Francisco, reflects on the American character, on racial hostility, on American 'loneliness', and on the unexpected kindness of strangers. Despite the subject areas, it's a relatively easy and very entertaining read.
Deeper and longer, but perhaps more satisfying, is Blue Highways, by William Least Heat-Moon. Sub-titled 'A Journey into America', it begins in a familiar place - I suspect - for many of us (for me, anyway): job loss, marriage failure, the need to put the past behind and move on into something different. At this turning point in his life, Heat-Moon (a university teacher born of English-Irish-Native American ancestry) packs up a van and escapes along the 'blue highways' (the back roads, marked in blue on his map) for a round trip of 13,000 miles. The van - named 'Ghost Dancing' - is a basic 1975 half-ton Econoline, in dubious mechanical order, fitted with a wooden bunk. In it he carries, among other things, the basic equipment for survival on the road: a sleeping bag, a plastic basin and gallon jug, a Sears Roebuck portable toilet, a small camping stove ('hardly bigger than a can of beans'), a US Navy seabag of clothing and a road atlas. 'Everything simple and lightweight - no crushed velvet upholstery, no wine racks, no built-in television. It came equipped with power nothing and drove like what it was: a truck. Your basic plumber's model.' It's the early '80s, he's approaching 40, he has precisely $454 - the remnants of his savings account - and he has little else to lose. As he says in the opening pages: 'A man who couldn't make things go right could at least go. He could quit trying to get out of the way of life. Chuck routine. Live the real jeopardy of circumstance... I took to the open road in search of places where change did not mean ruin and where time and men and deeds connected.' His quest was not so much away from something as toward something. 'Maybe the road could provide a therapy through observation of the ordinary and obvious, a means whereby the outer eye opens an inner one: STOP, LOOK, LISTEN...' The places he goes, the people he meets, the thoughts he has along the way - all leave a lasting impression on the mind. Here's a man making the crossing from youth to early middle-age and maturity... and finding along the way a wisdom and a view of life that are both particular and universal.
I'm reading them both again now...
Here are a couple of books I'd highly recommend to motorhomers in general, and wildcampers in particular. They both inspired me to part with a wedge of savings and hit the road in my own house-on-wheels.
Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck. In the early '60s, when he was already wealthy and famous and heading towards 60 himself, Steinbeck had specially made a 'tough, fast, comfortable vehicle, mounting a camper top - a little house with double bed, a four-burner stove, a heater, refrigerator and lights operating on butane, a chemical toilet, closet space, storage space, windows screened against insects...' He named it 'Rocinante', after Don Quixote's horse, and set off across America from Maine to California's Monterey peninsula. His only travel companion was his aged dog, Charley. His quest was 'to hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the lights...' - which is what he did, and what he records in the book. Driving both interstates and country routes, he dines with truckers, encounters bears in Yellowstone, meets old friends in San Francisco, reflects on the American character, on racial hostility, on American 'loneliness', and on the unexpected kindness of strangers. Despite the subject areas, it's a relatively easy and very entertaining read.
Deeper and longer, but perhaps more satisfying, is Blue Highways, by William Least Heat-Moon. Sub-titled 'A Journey into America', it begins in a familiar place - I suspect - for many of us (for me, anyway): job loss, marriage failure, the need to put the past behind and move on into something different. At this turning point in his life, Heat-Moon (a university teacher born of English-Irish-Native American ancestry) packs up a van and escapes along the 'blue highways' (the back roads, marked in blue on his map) for a round trip of 13,000 miles. The van - named 'Ghost Dancing' - is a basic 1975 half-ton Econoline, in dubious mechanical order, fitted with a wooden bunk. In it he carries, among other things, the basic equipment for survival on the road: a sleeping bag, a plastic basin and gallon jug, a Sears Roebuck portable toilet, a small camping stove ('hardly bigger than a can of beans'), a US Navy seabag of clothing and a road atlas. 'Everything simple and lightweight - no crushed velvet upholstery, no wine racks, no built-in television. It came equipped with power nothing and drove like what it was: a truck. Your basic plumber's model.' It's the early '80s, he's approaching 40, he has precisely $454 - the remnants of his savings account - and he has little else to lose. As he says in the opening pages: 'A man who couldn't make things go right could at least go. He could quit trying to get out of the way of life. Chuck routine. Live the real jeopardy of circumstance... I took to the open road in search of places where change did not mean ruin and where time and men and deeds connected.' His quest was not so much away from something as toward something. 'Maybe the road could provide a therapy through observation of the ordinary and obvious, a means whereby the outer eye opens an inner one: STOP, LOOK, LISTEN...' The places he goes, the people he meets, the thoughts he has along the way - all leave a lasting impression on the mind. Here's a man making the crossing from youth to early middle-age and maturity... and finding along the way a wisdom and a view of life that are both particular and universal.
I'm reading them both again now...
