Rogue coyotes, firearms, and immigrants

Of whom, then, shall I be afraid?

It was the rangiest, mangiest, meanest looking coyote I’ve ever seen. Granted, I have not seen more than a dozen or so wild coyotes in my lifetime, but none were like this. Instead of skittish and smart, this one seemed crazed and reckless. The animal’s coat was the typical color, desert tan streaked with grey, but it looked neither sleek nor soft. It was patchy and rough, beyond coarse, and sections of it stuck out straight at odd angles like extreme bedhead. His stance was wide, aggressive, and oddly askew—all legs and not at all graceful. His demeanor reminded me more of a jackal than a coyote. As we approached, the creature snarled and lunged at us.  

We didn’t flinch, though. We were high up above him in Walter, our big yellow expedition truck, rolling down a two-lane ribbon of black pavement, just east of Arco on Idaho’s Hwy 26.

A skinny wild dog was poised to attack Walter, a beast of a truck moving at 60 MPH.  

The poor coyote was obviously not well. He wouldn’t be long for this world.

Later, after we’d parked Walter at the end of a lonely two-track trail in Craters of the Moon National Monument for the night, we talked about what we’d seen.

The sight of that coyote’s deranged face, in all his confusing chaos, was etched into our minds. It would have been a dangerous encounter, had we been on foot. What would have deterred him? How could we have fought him off? We can carry bells and bear spray when we hike in bear country, and we can wear heavy shoes and watch our step in prime rattlesnake habitats, but how could we be prepared for such an encounter as this one?

We will face dangerous things, as well as dangerous people, living this nomadic lifestyle—rarely tucked securely into a house in familiar surroundings. The reality of it is sobering.

When we were at the Teton Overland Show in Idaho Falls this past weekend, we met hundreds of people who wanted to see Walter up-close and hear about the build process, our decision to sell everything and wander the world, and the journey we’ve loosely planned. We tried to have a meaningful moment of conversation with each person or group of people we met.

One man about our age who was wandering the show, looking at all the different styles of overland vehicles, stopped to chat briefly. When I mentioned we plan to traverse the Pan-American Highway, from the top of North America to the bottom of South America, he yanked his head back as if he’d been struck, then he squinted at me.

“But if you go crossin’ international borders, you cain’t carry no firearms with you.”

I smiled. “That’s true.”

“Oh, I couldn’t ever do that.” He shook his head and frowned, then continued. “No, I wouldn’t never wanna travel unarmed, ‘specially not in places like . . .”

“You know,” I interrupted him before he could list the places mentioned negatively on the nightly news—places I firmly believe are solely inhabited by people created in the image of God. “It’s true; there are dangers out there, but I’ll tell you what. My husband and I have traveled extensively on several continents, and the few times we have truly felt afraid all happened here in the United States. Everywhere else we’ve been, we’ve managed to always find kind-hearted, helpful people who give us good advice for which places to go and which places to avoid.

He tipped his head from side to side like a slow-moving bobblehead. “Well, now I suppose that’s true. There’s dangers ever’where, but I guess there’s good folk to be found ever’where, too.”

I nodded.

“Still, I reckon I’d feel too afraid to go to them places without my guns.” With that, he bade me good-day and safe travels and wandered over to a booth that was selling custom holsters, back to his comfort zone.

He’s not the first American we’ve encountered with that mindset.

Fear is a powerful thing. Harnessed effectively, it can convince people to spend money they otherwise wouldn’t have spent, to pre-judge people’s character based solely on their appearance or ethnic background, or even to vote for a candidate they wouldn’t have otherwise chosen. Marketers, broadcasters, and campaign managers have long understood the power of instilling fear.

Yes, we will encounter dangers. Call me naïve, but I truly believe most of the dangers we will encounter along our journey will be akin to the coyote we saw Sunday afternoon. They will be rare and show up without warning. They will be things we couldn’t have prepared for, situations out of character for the typical people, animals, and forecasted weather patterns of that region. They will be the rare exceptions that the local people didn’t see coming, either.

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The graphics we put on Walter include two phrases:

• Exploring the world

• Making friends along the journey

We translated these into Spanish and put them alongside their English counterparts on the rig.

In Colorado’s Crested Butte Visitor Center parking lot, where we were parked for an hour or so a couple of weeks ago while we did some maintenance projects, we were approached by a couple from Spain. They didn’t speak much English at all. They approached after seeing our graphics.

“¿Hablan español ustedes?” they asked, pointing to the Spanish words on our rig.

I shrugged and nodded, then gestured a couple of inches between my thumb and forefinger. “Sí, hablamos un poquito. Pero necesitamos practicar mucho.”

They quickly recognized how much practice we truly did need, and they slowed down their speech for us. Still, we had trouble keeping up. But we did it. We had a five-minute conversation in Spanish, there in the parking lot, with a lovely couple who had already explored several of the US National Parks and wanted some advice on a few others. They trusted us to be good, kind-hearted people who would give good advice—even though our Spanish language ability is very poor. We worked together as fellow-humans and figured it out.

A week later, on the outskirts of Chubbuck, Idaho, we met another Spanish-speaking couple, this time from Mexico, so the accent was more familiar to us. We had both pulled up to a free RV dump station. Miguel and Dominga needed to empty the tank on their trailer. We needed to fill up with fresh water. He spoke more English than she did, so he and Andy chatted comfortably about Walter. Miguel hopes someday to build something similar, so the two men enthusiastically talked shop, drifting between the two languages without too much difficulty. Dominga and I had more of a linguistic challenge trying to understand one another, but still, by the time we were finished with our ten minutes on the side of the road, she had invited me to come stay at their ranch in Sonora, Mexico—one of three homes they own. She raved about the coconut palms on the nearby beach and invited me to inform them of when we might be in that region so they could fly down from their home in Idaho to meet us there and show us around.

We exchanged contact info and shook hands and blessed each other’s journeys. We hope to take them up on their offer.

A few days after that, we were parked on the lawn of the expo center in Idaho Falls for the Teton Overland Show I mentioned earlier. Glancing out the window, I saw a couple, again folks about our age, who were strolling through the camping area wearing classic Dutch wooden shoes on their feet.

“Andy,” I remarked, “there’s a couple walking past wearing wooden shoes.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Well, invite them to come over!”

I poked my head out the door of the Snuggery and called to them. It was already nearing evening, and an unseasonably cold wind was blowing hard, so I had no interest in sitting outside, but I invited them to join us inside. They left their wooden shoes on the deck—laughing that they only use them to start up conversations and meet people—and introduced themselves: Lex and Jolanda, originally from the Netherlands but living in Alberta, Canada. We sat and talked for an hour or so, getting to know one another and chatting about this and that.

Since the two of them were tent camping, Lex came by the next morning with some electronics that needed charging. When I invited him to plug them in near our bed and come back for them later in the day, he gratefully offered me a package of delicious and authentic stroopwafels as a gift. Later, after the show had closed for the day, they brought their camp chairs over to Walter and the four of us sat in the grass under the stars and chatted some more, this time admiring the constellations and comparing their names in English and Dutch. With their thick accent and our lack of Dutch, we didn’t understand every bit of what was said, but it was good enough. We had gained friends. By the end of the weekend event, we had exchanged contact information and big hugs, and had been invited to come visit them in Alberta.

This is the life we want. Yes, an occasional rogue coyote, ill and aggressive, might cross our path. But it will be a rarity. We reject the idea that our actions must be determined by fear—that it is better to stay home than to travel without weapons. We refuse to limit ourselves to befriending only people who look like us, speak like us, and live in similar settings.

And if our firearm-dependent neighbors were right—if these turn out to be our famous last words and we do indeed meet the untimely demise they were afraid of, then so be it.

I remember a chorus, straight out of Psalm 27, that was often sung at Camp Barakel back when I was a kid at summer camp. It has stuck with me all these years:

The Lord is my light

And my salvation

Whom shall I fear?

Whom shall I fear?

The Lord is my strength

The strength of my life

Of whom then

Shall I be afraid?

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A recent email informed me that a package I ordered has arrived at a friend’s house and is now waiting for me. It’s the collection of international flag stickers I ordered from a seller on Etsy. I’m excited to think that soon and very soon I can affix flags of the world to our handsome Walter’s exterior. May they invite many conversations and be the start of many, many wonderful friendships.

Until next week,

Sherry