The site sat at the back of the campground, past the loop where the other rigs clustered, and rswfire pulled in knowing the drive had been difficult and expecting the arrival to be difficult too. That was part of why he had chosen it. He walked the ground once he was in — two fire pits, which he could not explain and turned over briefly as a question about the site's history, and one picnic table, which was his. Trees overhead, mature and full. He had been in this campground before, at a different site; now he was further back, deeper in, with only one other person occupying the rear section. Staked at the sites were the small reservation markers that showed when each occupant was due, and he pointed at his own: that's me.
Somewhere on the drive in, the reasoning had assembled itself. He said it out loud to the camera while walking the site, and lost the thread once and came back to it: the only way he was going to get good at this was to keep pushing himself, and he had already done exactly that once, at the largest possible scale. He had pushed himself out of his house. Not sold it as a transaction, not left it as a departure — removed it, deliberately, so that no alternative would exist. He named the mechanism plainly. He knew this would be challenging, and if there had been an alternative, he might have taken it. So he made sure there wasn't one.
Against that architecture, the day's work was ordinary and specific. Getting level, today. Learning fuel and propane, which he had not yet done and was making a priority. Running the slide in and out until he understood how much weight that side put on the leveling blocks — my little bounce things, whatever those are called — and turning the camera to show them, then apologizing for the pause the flip always introduced. He noticed the pole light above the site late, mid-sentence, and registered it as a problem for the night: bright, and he did not remember lights here before. He would spend this stop downsizing and getting better at this.
Then the Nevada thought, which was the same thought as the house. Lake Cumberland was the one he wanted — he thought he would love it there. Nevada was the one that would force the issue. The distance itself was the instruction. He framed it as a return to the method that had already worked: push, remove the option, acquire the skill. It's not that bad, he said, and left it there.
The first big mistake came at departure. He had forgotten to take the satellite cable in, and it went with the rig, and it was cut in half. Dead. No satellite. He said oh my God so sad, said that was dumb, said lesson learned, and moved on to what was still working: the Jeep ready, a few things to finish, the parking brake he was in the middle of when he stopped, stood still for a second, and realized what he had done. Above the slide, once it came in, were the ladybugs — dead ones everywhere, and with them the answer to how they had been getting inside all along.
He crossed into Kentucky and said it again: this is getting easier. Not that everything was easy. He heard something fall behind him while driving and guessed it was the solar unit he had stowed and then forgotten about, and guessed further that it might have landed on his laptop, and had no way to know until he arrived. He named the shape of the whole thing while still in motion — getting easier, but he needed to stay focused, and he needed so much more practice.
At the next site he checked. He had been right that the solar fell, and right that it came close, and wrong only about the impact: it hadn't landed on the laptop, it had bounced off it. There was a dent. He said oh my poor laptop, I'm so sad now, looked again, and revised the assessment out loud — a little worse than what he thought he was dealing with, concerning actually. The solar had also crushed his chocolate. He had started walking without realizing any of it. A little bit of work to do, he said, and that was the entry: the cable severed, the ladybugs, the dent, the chocolate, the light he hoped would stay off, the level ground still to find, and Nevada out ahead as the next thing he would make unavoidable.