He chose a spot a little apart from the camper and sat down in it — far enough back to see the whole arrangement at once, the Jeep, the rig, the lake past the tree line, site 77 laid out as a thing that existed because he had made it exist. That was the frame he gave it out loud: this is what I created. One month of new choices, and this was where they landed him. He said it was remarkable. He said it was not a bad thing. He also said the withdrawal was real tough and that the night before had been awful — a small space with nowhere in it to get away from itself, two cats and one man not sleeping through it together. Both cats were inside now, asleep, out of the April heat, or out of what he registered as heat and allowed might just be him. He was, he stated plainly, not clearheaded. He named it and kept going.
The lake was there and the coastline was good and the site was booked by someone else as of Thursday, which put a wall four days out and made the question of what he actually wanted to do next a live one. He declined to answer it. Today was not a day for decisions — he said so directly and then held the line: today was a day of embracing every moment and letting the body and the mind process whatever arrived. He mentioned a tree with a nice spot under it. He mentioned that he had been talking with his mother earlier and had gotten sad, that she had spent a lot of time with him at his house, that he was going to miss her. Then he stood up and proposed a walk, discovered he had no pockets, resolved that the camera would simply stay in his hand, and reset it.
The campground had emptied. Every site had been taken over the weekend and now most were bare, the way a place looks on a Monday when the weekend has drained out of it. He walked toward what he thought was the shower house and cut through, narrating as he went and noting that it had been years since he did this — that once he had walked Raven Run in Lexington daily, four miles, six if he took the harder trail, two hours of it, every day. From there the memory moved: a trip to New Jersey for clients, a pop-up camper he had bought to explore the country and blog the state and national parks before anyone else was doing that, a domain he held for a while called wanderlust.com. And then the trail up the mountain, and how out of breath he was halfway up it, and the old man coming the other way with a dog, walking that grade like it was nothing. He said he had thought he was in shape. He said the man seemed cool, that he must have been doing it forever, and that it made him think we can do a lot more than we think we can.
Boat ramps kept appearing and there were no boats on any of them. He laughed about towing one behind the Jeep, about then needing a lake wherever he went, about learning to use it. He greeted somebody's dogs. He stopped at the information board and read it — SALT LAKE CAMPGROUND — and worked out the geography by hand: restroom here, showers up there, one across from him, and there, that mark, that was site 77, which meant he had barely traveled at all, which was fine. The dumping station resolved into place, the route he'd take the Jeep. A dumpster. The lay of the ground stopped being abstract and became a thing he could drive.
He noted a site over on the water near the ramps and said it looked like his kind of spot. He noted that he was smoking more than he used to and that it was hurting, that he had to do something about that, that he was going to get out and start hiking again — the greatest activity on earth, he said, don't ask him why. He said he was not a people person. The woman camped next to him had a truck and a whole separate setup she used only as a restroom, and he said she had her life worked out, that he was curious about her, that he suspected she had a very interesting story. He had put his windows down on that side the night before to give her privacy. He also suspected she wanted to be alone, so he left her alone. Passing the tree lines he said he used to look at them all the time when he was younger, that it was a wonderful thing, that he was trying to find that part of himself again — trying so hard, because that always made him happy. He named the two loads he was carrying it under, the grieving and the medication withdrawal, and said it was a little hard to drum up positivity, and that he was doing his best.
Coming back around, his own site opened up in front of him and he said it out loud — pretty freaking awesome, the Jeep, the camper, what a life — and then, in the same breath, the thing he would not decide: the cats, the small space, whether they would be happier with his mother, that they seemed okay over there, that he just didn't know, that he wished the answer would come. A park management vehicle turned toward him and he greeted it. He looked at his leveling job and concluded he should have trusted his eyes instead of the bubble; he wasn't as unlevel as he'd thought. Then he looked over and the woman's site was empty. She had gone while he was walking. He said he guessed he wasn't going to hear that story, that he hoped she was living a blessed life, that he suspected she was — and that it was just them now.
He went to look at the shower situation. There was a blue duffel bag he had found at Walmart with his mother, bought because it was beautiful, carried around without a purpose until that morning, when he decided it was his shower bag. Public showers were a little intimidating, he said, and named where that came from: Boy Scouts, and the drive from Michigan to Arizona in fourth grade, KOAs along the way, the public restrooms the part he didn't like. Through a camera he could talk, and one-on-one he could talk; groups were where it got hard. He noted a very big tree. He said no one could tell him this wasn't peaceful. Then he was inside the shower house, alone with a giant mosquito, remembering this kind of room, remembering there were no locks, noting the grime and deciding that was exactly why he'd shower there. It's got to get easier, he said, and named it as the withdrawal talking, and then said the other thing three times, the way it gets said when the saying is the point: it will pass, it will pass, it will pass. And from there, still standing in the shower house, he turned to smaller open questions and kept them open too — a channel name, The World According to Sam, or fire, something Carl had said about another channel, hello Carl if you're watching, though RSW fire was fixed and had been his handle since the dawn of the internet and would never change. Then the rhythm: campground Sunday through Thursday, solar topped up, tanks drained and filled fresh, and boondocking Friday and Saturday. Nothing settled. He said he was trying to embrace it, trying to feel better, and that this had been a fun walk.