The guy camping next to me has an old, beat up work truck—the kind with tool boxes all along each side of the bed. In the middle he’s built up a small space to sleep with a tarp pulled tight over it. He pulls a small, windowless storage trailer that has the rest of his things, which include a tiny fridge that he sets on the ground, and a large tarp he pyramids over the picnic table where he spends most of his day.
I was walking by as he was hunched over near the water spigot, washing some pans. He looked like an old-timey gold prospector, a wide brimmed hat pulled low, suspenders over a long–sleeved shirt that had seen better days, all of him looking like he’d just been through a dust storm. His hair and beard were white, wild, and long, and he hadn’t taken advantage of the shower facilities, here or possibly anywhere, in a great while. His license plate said South Dakota, my homeland of origin, so I stopped.
He said he has been camping for 15 years, ever since he retired from his job working on B-1 bombers and hellfire missiles for a U.S. defense company. He’s 76 now. He had a small pension that ran out after 11 years and lives primarily on social security now.
He laughed at my surprise at camping for 15 years. “I’ve never taken a wrong turn. You go left, it’s fine, you go right—it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to know where I’m going and I don’t answer to no one.” His father was born in 1900, he said, and he has a son himself in Georgia. “I told my son, ‘these kinds of places won’t exist by the time you retire.’ Not like this,” he said.
We talked some more and he lamented that forest lands, here included, have begun enforcing a 14-day limit on camping. It used to be 30 days, he said, but now he has to pack up more, which is hard because he’s 76 and has a hernia. He looked to be in pretty good shape, thin and wiry. I told him I’m from South Dakota, and he said that he isn’t, just his license plates. It was the cheapest place to register and license a vehicle. He’s one of at least two people who appear to be essentially living here, but the other one has a confederate flag so I fear he is far less interesting.
Of all the places he’s camped, he says his favorite is the Land Between the Lakes, a national recreation area between two lakes in Kentucky and Tennessee.
He’s driving an old Ford 350 “with a big 454 diesel” that he is really proud of. “It’s worth a big chunk of change,” he said. It’s over 20 years old and beat to hell, but he says he’s only put 150,000 miles on it in his 15 years of traveling. I guess if you’re not going back and forth to work, and you’ve got all the time in the world, there’s no hurry to move from place to place every week.
Later I walked down to the dock to talk with a few old-timers I saw fishing. One guy didn’t say a word, another was chatty. I told him I loved fishing and he said someday I’d be like them and have all the time in the world to fish every day. His wife volunteered that “He’s been a lot easier to live with ever since he retired, I’ll tell you that.”
He said his job had been stressful, sure, but he retired in 2005. Today, he says, it’s a different world. “I was a lieutenant, a state trooper,” he said. “But I don’t think I could do it today. The way the world is now…”
That was the second old-timer today who made some mention of the present or the future as being less-than the past. I often wonder if that’s true. Is the world getting worse and worse, or does change become more difficult, and even seem more radical than it might have otherwise, once you slow down a bit in retirement? Is that a bad thing? I didn’t ask him what he was referring to specifically, but it couldn’t have been violent crime, because that’s been (almost consistently) falling since 1992. And I also didn’t ask because I was afraid of the answer I might get, and I try to avoid conflict.
Today was almost perfect. I fished, I worked some, I went on a hike and fished some more and caught a bass right after sunset, so maybe the fishing is picking up.
While on my hike a bee started buzzing around my head, even diving and colliding with my skull. I ducked down and quickened my pace, swatted at him and made contact no fewer than 4-5 times, but the beast just kept coming. I ran a block, and still he was with me. I ran another block, and having reached the end of my running capabilities, I decided to stand my ground.
He was still with me, buzzing and bumping into my head again, so I whipped off my shirt and started twirling it around my head like I was celebrating a significant sports victory, which I have never done. I jogged in circles and kept twirling my shirt and I heard his tone go high-pitched and stop. He had either taken off or I’d finally clipped him. I decided I must smell like something he’s interested in—perhaps a corpse flower—and resolved to take a shower this evening.
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