Sangre de Cristo Mountains

The sunset over the treetops from Bob & Catfish’s patio.

The Hummingbird on a frigid September morning in La Junta Canyon, NM

I’m wrapped up in blankets in my camper that, over the course of my trip so far, I’ve christened The Hummingbird. I’m looking out ice-etched windows at a meadow that leads down to a stream, and beyond that, the rise of a canyon face covered in pine trees. I’m waiting for the sun to make its way down to the canyon floor where I camped to melt the rime frost that’s grown up overnight. This is as cold as it’s been since I got going, and although it’s only September, I suppose this kind of thing is normal in New Mexico at five digit elevations this time of year.

It’s been a little while since I recorded my first dispatch, about two months. I left Austin and spent August in a yurt on my friends’ property outside Truchas, about a mile off the high road to Taos. This isn’t the first time they’ve sheltered me in transitionary periods, but it is the longest. They’re older than I am — old enough to be my parents, though I find that idea kind of creepy for some reason. 

Bob is a writer who was once my professor, and who knows more about all the categories of things I love than I ever will — literature, food, international politics — and yet somehow he manages to have the opposite taste in just about everything I hold dear. He snorts and sniffs whenever I mention certain authors, or add honey to a sauce, or try to make him listen to New York Times podcasts. “I don’t listen to podcasts,” he insists, as if there’s something aesthetically corrupt about the medium itself. I guess we can guarantee he isn’t listening now. 

From L to R: Bob, Dottie, Big Mike, Booger

But I love the cranky old fuck, riding around the mountains in his filthy pickup with three of the greatest dogs ever to walk on four legs. He likes to go exploring, and one afternoon we found ourselves on a remote forest road that, after awhile, ceased to be a road and became just forest. The dogs had to lead us out, though both of us insisted as men do that we knew which way we were going. 

The lightning-blasted Ponderosa

Another afternoon, he took me to see the remnants of what he suspected was an exploded Ponderosa scattered over a hundred square yards of hillside. He wagered the tree was hit by lightning somewhere over the ridge above us. “It’s as if someone put dynamite inside the tree,” he said. I hiked up the steep hill and found the stump, charred in the middle and blasted everywhere. He had to have been right about the lightning. “Never seen anything like it,” he said looking at the pictures I took, which is really saying something given all the crazy shit he’s seen in his life. 

His wife, Catfish, is an attorney who turned around after her retirement last year and immediately started a new career as a legal vigilante gunning for Florida fuckheads the likes of Matt Gaetz and Ron DeSantis. She might just get them, too. If any of them go to jail, you’ll probably have her to thank. Being married to Bob, you know Catfish takes zero shit. 

Lady surveying her territory from the yurt deck.

Mabel and Lady spent most of the month with me up there in dog Valhalla. I decided, though, to send them back to Austin last month after realizing that what came next, this part, would be too much for dogs to adjust to at their ages. Life on the road without dogs may be easier, but I sure do miss them. Since they went back, I’ve freaked out a few total strangers in public with my effusion over their friendly dogs. 

Last night, as I was setting up my camp here in La Junta, an old black lab mix with cataracts in her eyes called Bonnie came trotting over out of nowhere and let me love on her a little. Her pops, and older fellow named David with two walking sticks and a 9mm holstered on his belt, got a little unsteady when he told me she was thirteen. “I know the time is coming,” he said, “but I don’t know what I’ll do.” I told him I knew the feeling.

The time I spent in that yurt and with my friends was grounding, necessary. I read a lot. We ate really well. I explored the forests and peaks around the area, got to know the names of birds and flowers. I healed a little. Most of all, this project that I’ve been planning for six months that was, up until then, a fantasy, was suddenly real. I took the month to try and understand what I was after with it. I doubted myself. 

The yurt.

Doubt can be revealing. Despite all those months of preparation, nothing could teach me to live in this new way more than living in it. Bob and Catfish’s was a way-station for me, a gentling in. It was rustic, sure, but very comfortable. There was internet, though spotty, and running water and electricity, though both were rationed. There was a big comfy bed. There was good company. 

Shrimp about to go on the barbie.

But I needed to learn to do this without training wheels, so over Labor Day, I set off to find my hermitage. The plan was to camp for a couple of days here in La Junta Canyon, then move on to my next destination, wherever that was going to be. But when I got here, all the campsites were full with holiday RV’ers and their generators and ATVs. Not the vibe I was after, so I continued up the road about ten miles, asking the Universe to show me the way until I saw a forest road turn off that went — I had no idea where, which in retrospect was not the brightest move. All I could tell was that the road seemed to be in okay shape and it led up. I went for it and I got exceptionally lucky. I found myself for the next two-and-a-half weeks on the edge of a cliff at ten-thousand feet facing a mountain range to the east. So much for plans.

I could’ve stayed there forever, cooking over my campfire, sitting with my book at cliff’s edge watching the sun come up every morning over the peaks of the Sangre de Cristos. I even got some good internet up there, and was able to do my work exactly as I’d hoped, finishing a Zoom meeting in the camper, then walking outside to hike up into the hills and get lost for a few hours. But, just as the Universe led me to my first boondock site, it began to tell me when it was time to leave, as well.

The weather is turning up here, and during my last few nights on the mountaintop, the wind was so fierce that I couldn’t sleep through it, afraid that one of the giant pines around me would come crashing down onto the camper. This was a hard shift from the placid, star-drenched skies of only a few nights before, but I took it as a sign to move on. I’d done what I needed to do, going from new moon to almost full, proving to myself that I could live this way, alone, happily. 

The canyon this morning is a pitstop, and when I woke up to the frost and cold, I decided to edit my conversation with Callie from back in June. She was my first interview for this project, and listening back, I’m reminded of why I decided back then to keep going with this. We sat in a closed restaurant with her Boston terrier, Porkchop, and talked for more than an hour. I had no idea if my recorder was actually capturing sounds — it was my first time using it — but somehow it all worked like it was supposed to, and I get to inaugurate this podcast with one of my favorite interviews to date. 

⭑ Listen here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify ⭑

I got up before light this morning and stayed bundled in here. I watched the sun start to color the tops of the pine trees above me on the mountainside to the west, making them look like the tips of yellow paintbrushes. It’s finally stretching its way across the canyon floor toward my little camp, bringing with it the warmth and the will for me to get moving. I’m headed to Santa Fe today, and then on west to Arizona by the end of the week. Or at least that’s the plan, but we all know how that goes.