ALASKA: I'm quitting
And living in a junkyard ☹
First, I pulled the shower attachment out from under the table and screwed the hose onto the kitchen faucet. Next, I methodically checked the water temperature, flipped the diverter valve, and slid the showerhead out through the open window. Finally, I slipped into my birthday suit and flip flops; grabbed my orange towel, washcloth, and shampoo; scanned the hillside for hikers; and stepped out onto the riverbank, hanging my towel on the truck’s mirror and hoping the mosquitoes wouldn’t notice me or the open window.
Unfortunately, the air was cold, and the wind was blowing harder than I’d expected. Contrary to what I’d anticipated, my pleasant hot water shower in the wilds of a braided river beneath a glacier was less than ideal. I hurried through my standard procedure, all goosebumps and headlights:
Turn the water on to wet my hair.
Turn it off to work the shampoo in.
Turn it on to rinse the shampoo back out.
Turn it off to apply the conditioner.
Turn it on to wet my washcloth.
Turn it off to scrub a quarter of my body.
Repeat the cycle a few more times until all of my body is washed and the conditioner is rinsed out of my hair.
Then, wide awake and grateful I hadn’t become a peepshow for an unsuspecting group of hikers or a family on quad runners, I climbed back up inside the habitat box of Walter, our big yellow adventure truck and home for the past year. I felt alive and exhilarated, but also anxious to dry off and get dressed. Someday we might hook up the shower curtain indoors so we can shower in luxury. For now, we make do with the great outdoors. Usually, the air temperature is not this cold, but this is Alaska, and just like Forrest’s box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.
I wedged my little folding mirror—the silly one I bought at a Japanese dollar store in 2016—into the window shade casing and chuckled to myself as I coaxed some shape into my wet hair. Compared to the typical middle-class life we once lived, our current personal care routines are rather rustic. Inconveniences like this are just a part of my regular life now.
I’m certainly not complaining, though. In the past year, Walter has carried us nearly 22,000 miles throughout the United States, Mexico, and Canada. If you’ve been reading along, you know we’ve had some amazing experiences and met the most wonderful people. Our life is simple and strange, but we love it.
CH-CH-CH-changes
The lovely days of risky and cold—but truly lovely—au naturel showers in pretty places are behind us, at least for the foreseeable future. As of yesterday, we are literally living in a junkyard.
Walter has engine trouble. It might be serious. We don't know yet. It’s been going on—and off—and back on again, with increasing frequency, for nearly a week.
After a stressful day of driving and wondering and stopping and tinkering and driving some more—one eye on the dash warning lights—we pulled into a rural service station.
“We’re having some engine trouble,” Andy called down to the man closing up and locking doors. “Can we camp here in your lot tonight?”
He shrugged and pointed to what looked like some sort of Automotive Death Row. “Yeah, just park over there with all those wrecked RVs.”
We obeyed, limping into a space next to a big Class A with its entire front end, including the windshield, missing and/or bashed in so badly it was hardly recognizable.
We climbed down out of the cab and up into the Snuggery, then closed the window shades and quietly cooked a late dinner and went to bed. Sometimes nomadic life is less than glamorous.
We’re still seeking answers, but this problem (something I don't entirely understand about the diesel particulate filter) may end up disabling us for a while—perhaps at great expense. Hard to say at this point.
Walter needs some changes. We need some changes, too—especially me. In fact, I am quitting something I used to love.
No, we are not quitting our travels in Walter, at least if we can help it. We hope there is a favorable solution on the horizon, as we have high hopes of continuing the journey in our big yellow truck all the way to the southern tip of Argentina and beyond. Assuming our truck will be restored to health soon, we are not at all tired of Walter and our weird little nomadic lifestyle.
No, I’m not quitting my marriage. Heavens to Murgatroyd. No. It’s the best thing I have.
And no, I’m not quitting my storytelling gig here on Substack. I’ve posted here every single Tuesday for the past two years straight and I love doing it! It helps me process what I’m seeing and learning, and I certainly hope you find it valuable, too.
(Ahem . . . some of you silent readers could occasionally leave me a comment, you know—hint, hint—so I know how my words are landing with you. For those of you who DO comment sometimes, THANK YOU. Those words mean so much to me.)
Many weeks in these past two years—more than I can count—unexpected things have come up and I’ve found myself in a real bind to get my story out. Knowing it will require a college-style all-nighter to finish on schedule, my kindhearted husband has encouraged me to just postpone. No one will mind if you’re a day late, he tries to console. Or, he suggests, just skip this week and pick it up again next time.
But for 104 weeks straight, my stubbornness has always won out, just as it did in college when I had to pound instant coffee all night so I could turn in a paper for an 8:30 class.
So, no, I’m not quitting Substack, but I do need to make a change. I’ve decided to change the name—again. This publication started under the name Beauty and Truth Weekly. It was a tip-of-the-hat to my personal mission statement, which I wrote about in my very first Substack post:
I am a seeker of beauty and truth. Beauty is not always truthful, and sometimes the truth is not a thing of beauty, but I seek out the intersections whenever I see them meet.
If you want to read the whole inaugural post, I’ve linked it here, below:
I was happy to incorporate this concept into the title of my publication. It was me. But the title just wasn’t specific enough. People didn’t really know what they were getting into. Readerships don’t grow on ambiguity.1
So, on my one-year blogiversary, I changed the name from Beauty & Truth Weekly to Diesel & Dignity. The diesel part, of course, referred to fuel for Walter the truck; and the other half of the name was about acknowledging/promoting the inherent dignity of everyone we meet, all over the world. I thought it was specific enough, clever, and I liked the alliteration.
I wrote more about that name change in my one-year blogiversary post, here:
But everything else Andy and I do online related to our travels is called Nomadic MidLife, a name which describes us perfectly. Nomadic MidLife is our YouTube, our Instagram, our Facebook, and our website. As much as the purist in me wants to keep my personal writings set apart and sacred, people who want a more intimate look at our nomadic experience are struggling to find my writing. It’s time to bring this Substack onboard with the rest of the program. From here forward—or at least until I get some other crazy idea—this is my new identity here on Substack: Nomadic MidLife.
The content will remain largely the same—meager attempts to bring you, dear reader, along on my travel experiences in this big, beautiful world. So, if you, friend, want to share or recommend this Substack to others (hint, hint) you can know and trust what your friends and family will find here—stories of a middle-aged nomadic couple who’ve sold everything to explore the world (hopefully in a big yellow truck named Walter) and learn as much as they can from the people and places they encounter.
Oh, look! How convenient!
Oops! Did you forget to click something? What? You say you’ll come back to it after you finish reading this post? Oh, ok. That’s cool. I’ll remind you again later.
Two more changes
I’ll be adding one bonus feature to these posts on a regular basis. At the end of each week’s post, I’ll give you a sneak peek at the stories that got away, the stories I wanted to include but just couldn’t fit in, or the stories that happened just after I’d written that week’s post. Trust me; those stories are not being forgotten. I’m scribbling them into my journal as source material for my Nomadic MidLife book—or books.
As a show of support for our journey and creative efforts, you can now buy Walter a gallon (or a few gallons) of fuel anytime your little heart desires. No monthly or annual commitments, no accounts to sign up for, just a simple click over to a trusted site called “Buy Me a Coffee.” Andy and I don’t need any fancy-schmancy lattes, but Walter does like his daily diesel fuel—black, no sugar, always in a to-go cup. You can click below just to check out the donation site, if you’d like.
That’s all for now. Something smells funky in our tiny home on wheels, and I need to deal with it before it gets any worse. Small space living has its challenges; but mostly it’s full of joys.
Thanks for reading. I’m so glad to have you along as we journey throughout the world and learn from everything and everyone we meet. If you haven’t already, subscribe to follow us from Alaska to Argentina!
Until next week,
Sherry
P.S. Here are a few of this week’s stories I’ll have to save for the book:
The diplomatic ‘conversation’ Andy and I had when he was convinced the path in front of us was the road to the trailhead, but it sure looked exactly like a full-fledged turbulent creek to me.
Watching Andy hike further up a glacier than I was willing to go, then seeing a shelf of loose rock began to collapse and rain down on the area where I knew he was—and considering what exactly I would do if he didn’t return.
A conversation with an Israeli couple who are here for a two-week vacation to escape—if only momentarily—the intense stress currently present in their homeland.
Conversations with a man from Turkey and another from France who are riding their bicycles around the world for years at a time—and the joy of giving water to the thirsty.
I’ll need a solid readership if I’m ever going to publish all these books living rent-free in my brain and on my hard drive. This is your friendly reminder to recommend this Substack to your friends and family. Thanks, friend. 💜
Your shower description brought back memories of bathing in an ice cold stream in the Snowy Mountains of Wyoming while camping as a teenager. My parents and I were in our pickup truck camper, my brother and his wife on an inflatable mattress in the back of their pickup truck. We never used the shower in any of the RVs my dad owned over the years because my mom hated the thought of having to dry out a wet bath, hence my river bath. The trip was epic, the bath frigid! Best of luck getting Walter going again.
Reading along and cheering you on. 👏🏽