The travels begin

Life in the wilderness, where will the road turn next?

Honestly I could not be more happy with my RV selection at 5:30 am January 8th 2012.  Today I am sitting on comfortable cushions in the kitchen table area.  The table height is good, the computer sits on it well, I have it plugged in, and it is charging. I have a light that is running off of efficient LED lights.  The cabin is WARM, in fact the heater just kicked on.  That is right a heater.   The bed in which I slept in was able to fit my full 6 foot 4 inch body with room to spare, my dog slept at my feet. As I was just about to fall asleep last night, Bella barked and growled a couple times looking at the window from my bunk.  I turned to look right at a skunk slowly walking through the camp site.  To top this all off let’s just say that when I woke up there was no need to find a tree, a toilet in a heated room was waiting for me; amazing. I could get soft.

This is how it has all started, at least this new phase of my life and writing.  It was not a quick process by any means.  I spent about two years contemplating purchasing an RV, to be more exact a travel trailer. All the parts of making the decision I deliberated, purchase price, insurance, registrations, storage, on going costs, maintenance, and of course what type to purchase and if necessary how and what to tow it with. I have great lessons that I think I will be able to pass on to others some day.  However none of those pre-purchasing decisions where as big as getting through the stigma of being an RV’er.

This point is right up faithandsurvival’s readers alley’s,  A stigma associated with doing or owning something that makes you more self reliant.  It baffles me, as I imagine you. This 18 foot trailer has more features and modern ingenuity than I ever thought be placed into 18 feet, and only weigh 2,550 pounds. The stigma of not living the “normal American dream”, something is wrong with you, the trailer park trash stigma.  Today you are supposed to live in either a “house”, forced to be a slave to a bank, and the county through property tax for the remainder of your life, or an apartment, where you have little choice as to who your single mother neighbor is with her four kids, that usually are supervised by her 10 minutes a day as they scream in front of your apartment 10 hours a day. I would argue the global elite determined to make apartment living so bad that you actually feel good when you enslave yourself to them to purchase a home.

So what happens to the group of people that decide for whatever reason living in a home or apartment is not for them? As I think back over the recorded 6000 years of human history these people WERE THE NORM.  How about some examples. During the Egyptian golden days around 1500 BC, when the Pyramids where being constructed, how did they live?  Without getting into the details of if you were a slave or not, basically you had some mud brick palaces for the ruling class, and the rest of the people lived in tents or in the open outdoor.  In fact I am sure we have all read the book of Exodus, and the “40 years wondering in the wilderness” lead by Moses and all of God’s chosen people.  If living in the wilderness was great for God’s people then, why is it not now?

Maybe another example, how about the Roman Empire.  Now we are at about 100 AD. Once again you have the ruling Ceasar’s and those that are part of the upper class that live in stone palaces and homes.  Those homes where not encumbered with a mortgage, I am sure to “own them” other favors were part of the joys of ownership.  The VAST majority of the citizens lived in small towns and hamlets usually in wood and straw huts, (think back to all the roman movies, where the marauding raiders would light the straw roofs on fire as the plundered and raped). No where during those times were there apartment complexes, or homes in which monthly you paid 50% of your income to a banker. Sure you were taxed as a privilege of having the roman protection, and taxed when you sold your goods that your grew in your garden, but never were you “qualified” for your house, given a credit score, and had to put 30% down to own your hut.

So I could give plenty of more examples, but I think you are getting my point, in 6000 years of man’s recorded history, about 5600 of those years man lived in the wilderness, farming the land, harvesting the wood, and was rarely ever known by the address he lived at, but by the character, and reputation of the person he was. People did not get up ever day, drive one hour to sit in a cubicle stare at a computer for 8 hours a day, drive one hour back home, to be able to pay a bank to live in a house that the bank owns but gives the illusion that an individual owns.  People did not get a paycheck where their net pay was 30% less then their gross pay before they are even able to say NO, it’s my money.  People did not have to write a check to a “lender” in the amounts of several thousand dollars every month, and if something happens to stop them from being able to do that, soon find themselves booted out of the home they spent 10 years writing those checks for.

Pssssst....Lake's should not look like this.

How have we let ourselves fall into this trap.  No other word sums it up better then indentured servitude, AKA enslavement. Every person whom has a mortgage today is a slave to the bank, typically to the day you die but very few will admit it and will yell at me for saying it. Yet somehow we place these slaves on pedestals and are envious of those big homes with all that furniture in it. We all want to date someone who lives in Blackhawk, or Danville, or some-other fancy named city that we all know is peppered with big houses and fancy landscaped yards. Yet I would doubt that one owner of these houses could plant their own garden, filter water, or defend themselves or others when the time comes.  However the typical RV’er I imagine has ever skill you could imagine to be able to survive tough times, (more research to come).

Today I am waking up with others whom like me have decided to purchase an RV and camp in it.  Over the next year or two, or as long as God decides, I will be writing stories on my travels.  I have many ideas on how I want to format and outline the stories as well as maps and information to include. I find it hard to imagine how waking up in the middle of a city with garbage trucks driving by, police sirens, and screaming babies, could compare to the serenity I have looking at the sun rising with the sounds of peace and quiet.  But heck it is my experience that our media and society has been set up to sell you lies on a daily basis, and they are  good at it.

I have peppered in a few photos of the first visit to Lake Del Valle in Northern California.  I will do a full report on it as a survival location in future articles, however enjoy the beauty now.

God Bless….To be continued….