It's Not All Smooth Sailing

Life on the road has been pretty sweet all in all, and I’m proud of us that we have savored the beauty and embraced opportunities as they have arisen, even if ‘off-plan’.

We’ve spent about five days taking in the grandeur and jaw dropping vistas of Colorado. We indulged in two hot springs resorts and I’ll write more about those experiences later, but suffice to say that we are pretty damn good at hanging out in hot water for extended periods of time. Our first experience was outside of Ouray at the clothing optional Orvis Hot Springs. While I kept my bathing suit on, plenty of folks didn’t and it’s easier than I would have imagined to get into a deep conversation with a naked person without any drugs or alcohol! Whether I was sitting in the sauna, the ice cold plunge pool or the lobster pot, the conversations swirling around me were so esoteric, I imagined myself to be in a New Age documentary. Communicating with animals, energetic healing, spiritual awakening and spiritual coaching, and the intentional community of Findhorn in Scotland are just a smattering of the topics in which I either participated or eavesdropped.

At the drop of a hat, we boondocked right on the continental divide and watched the 14000 foot tall mountains surrounding us appear and disappear into the clouds. My sweetheart and I have been dumbfounded at the geography so majestically different from our own short Vermont mountain range. We find ourselves saying to each other, over and over, "Look at this!" I even saw a bald eagle swooping down to catch a rabbit alongside our RV as I tooled along.

And then, last night we realized we had no power in the ‘house’ of our RV. That means no water, hot or cold and no charging computers. No meetings on the road. No reading in bed. It’s kind of funny in one way - realizing that I may be relegated to searching for and using public toilets, I feel like I’ve lost a superpower.

So for the last 24 hours, we’ve been preoccupied with what’s wrong and what the remedy might be. It’s looking like a remedy is unlikely as most RV mechanics are booked a minimum of three weeks out. That leaves us with determining how to compromise. Should we just bolt back home, showering at the occasional truck stop, subsisting on a steady diet of ramen and instant oatmeal?

When my sweetheart said to me today that we need to be really nice to each other while we figure this out, I realized that we’ve both been carrying a little bit of a ‘blame’ mentality. Of course this power outage isn’t anyone’s fault, but that doesn’t stop a good human from trying to lay blame. I’m reminded of the time a long time ago when I called a friend and when she answered the phone, she knocked over and broke a treasured vase. Obviously, it was my fault, somehow.

All that is to say that we have not been our best selves in this crisis. We barely noticed the puffy clouds and blue skies reflected in the reservoir next to our camp, nor the beauty of the snowcapped ancients surrounding us. We were to busy being cranky about our circumstances.

In actuality, nothing has changed at all, except our personal experience and how we choose to deal with it. We have not been present to that choice. I have not been present to that choice.

So my sweetheart’s admonishment has been a course correction of sorts for me. When I set my site on solutions, they come cascading in. We can just head home as quick as possible. We can love the candlelit evenings ahead. We could even ditch the RV and rent a car and drive home. We could relocate in Frisco, Colorado!

But whatever we do, we are not going to forget to be awestruck at the beauty we are so fortunate to be passing through.