Leaving New Mexico, Adopted by Rednecks
Adventure Part III
Damn guys. After nearly a week in just New Mexico I started off towards Colorado, intending on visiting an internet friend I always thought would be an irl friend if we ever got together.
Making my way north-east, I stopped at one nudist hot spring I happened to be passing close enough to. In the rankings of publicly nude experiences I’ve had it ranked at the bottom.
Tantra Festival Big Island Hawaii 2020
Tie - Blacks Beach San Diego / Korean spa experiences (Korean spas have separate areas for men and women, truly transformative)
Nudist hot spring in Colorado
It wasn’t awful it just wasn’t amazing. I imagine it reflects a more common nude experience than any of the other ones.
I was starting to get highly suspicious of the van’s capacity to make it cross-country. My lack of geography skills caught up with me in a rush as I realized just how far west I still was, trying to get to the Eastern Shore of Maryland to my new (old) home with my father, with whom I’ve had a somewhat on-again off-again tumultuous relationship with for many years. We’ve often butted heads, trying to control one another and drifting farther apart whenever I expressed anger about anything. We hadn’t even talked on the phone for over a year at this point, yet he was completely non-resistant to the idea of me moving back. I abandoned any extra visiting ideas and decided to head more directly east.
I was so nervous. Yet solid, in my intent to move home without trying to change dad once I got there. We had reached a point in our relationship (from my perspective) where I heard loud and clear that if I wanted to be around him I needed to accept him as he was. I was in choice to maintain rather than cut ties, something I would have chosen differently in virtually any other relationship by now. My dad is not a bad or evil person. I was the best equipped I’ve ever been at knowing how to handle communicating, how to love. I wanted to go home.
People teach you how to treat them.
Communication is what the other person hears.
I might write longer about this later, and certainly more in-progress, tender things go behind the paywall, but I will say that Kasia Urbaniak’s book Unbound has been the most practical communication resource guide I have yet in my brain. Just the addition of “locate and approve” sentences starting with, “It seems…” have been revolutionary for me in personally tight communication spots since I’ve been home.
For now, I still had another 2,000 or so miles to go.
And I was about to break down in my beloved van for good.
I had one more self-fix-it scenario before the end, where I changed out a temperature control sensor in record time (for me). It still took hours in an Auto Zone parking lot, with more help from Alan, more help from strangers, and gifting me with a free plate of pulled pork bbq from a lady I impressed. She chased me inside after she saw me zip around underneath my vehicle.
On Route 50 through Missouri I was going 60 down a hill when my 2005 Chevy Astro van that had been housing me and my dog Maggie throughout this cross-country trip suddenly started coasting. I made it halfway up the hill on the other side before I ran out of momentum and had to accept the fact that my transmission would not engage in Drive any more.
Fine. I have AAA.
A trooper stopped and talked to me, promising to check back when he came back around that way.
AAA wasn’t contracted with anybody within hours of me. I didn’t yet know that the best transmission place in the area was backed up for weeks. I planned to wait for a tow. Even my friend Alan said this might be too big for me to fix myself this time, with or without Auto Zone.
I suspisciously eyed a drone whirring overhead and gave it a face.
I sat and meditated. I decided to pray. While I was praying a vehicle pulled up behind the van. I met Jorge and Rafael.
Just on the other side of the trees off of the highway lay Jorge’s place. They could see that someone was in trouble on the road and sent up the drone to check it out, then said they just had to see if they could help. Together they attached my van to their truck and towed me to Jorge’s garage, less than 3 miles away and with lots of starts and stops on a long winding dirt driveway. There is an art to towing, I observed. By this time it was nearing 10 o’clock at night and they called in Jacob Murphy to see if he was available to help look at my van. Naturally, he popped over on his motorcycle to help the woman out they all just met. They all worked on it til about 1 am, at which time I was offered a choice of sleep arrangements. After pausing to feel into things, I picked going over to Jake’s, where Maggie and I had a bedroom to ourselves and the run of his bachelor pad 3-bedroom home for almost a week and no pressure to ever leave (also no pressure to stay). I met a smattering of Jake’s friends along the way, most of whom wanted his help with something and none of whom he turned down. One was determined to find me a new vehicle to go home in. Jake also tried to help fix my van, chasing a few hypotheses until their bitter end. I got one last ride with him in the van to test it out, but it didn’t get into 3rd gear or above without slipping some more. As going over 40 mph seemed important for the rest of the trip, I had hit a stopping place.
Lots of meditation later, I decided to gift the van to Jacob to do with what he pleased. He planned to replace the transmission last I heard. Possibly to donate the van to a veteran’s group.
I was solidly running out of money by this point. A combination of widespread community got me on the road, this time in a rented 2025 Toyota Forerunner I somewhat magically managed to pack all my stuff into and on top of (left a little at Jake’s for him or his friends to have if they wanted any of it).
A friend’s mom bought me lunch and gifted me some gas money on my way out of the area. I had never met her before. It seems like all of the kindness I received along this trip was a testament to how things rearrange in pursuit of a goal, the kindness I see in the world as a whole, and to the rightness of the path I was moving toward.
God bless the rednecks of California, Missouri. Every one of them pretty much told me I “was so lucky” to have run into them, because there are “so many bad people” out there. I think there is something greater at work. Also, none of them would accept anything for their help, preferring to tell me stories about how someone helped them along the way, and how I should pay it forward. I can feel that in my jaw as I type this.
I’m not sure the rest of it is worth writing about, unless you’re interested in the backcountry recommendations of driving from Missouri to the Atlantic Ocean, some spiritual moments, or have any questions. Please drop them below! I’m happy to share and it gives me life when there is interaction on my posts. I picked up buying pho broth as a cheap nutritive travel drink. I made it home. I’ve kept my commitment to myself so far to avoid disagreeing with dad for at least three months. Part of the reason I embrace unexpected things so much is they tend to be so much more valuable and rich in adventure and stories. It is a regular struggle to reconcile how I may not have had the wondrous experiences with strangers if I had more money.
