Airstream office

The simplest thing for me to do now, day #2 out of a daily succession of blog posts, is to allow myself to start slow, though not too slow. I didn't post yesterday, so through that failure I've created a challenge: publish one entry in the morning, another in the afternoon, and be sure to inform people at some point today that I have a blog up and running. It's part of the experiment, but I will not excuse myself; every day I publish a piece, no matter what else happens.

I repeat a mantra to take small steps in daunting circumstances, like this open-ended commitment to write via regular blog authorship. Or to apply my own usual stride, but reduced to one foot in front of the other, methodical, intentional and fluid. A long journey begins with the first, then second paw print on the soil, mine was Coup de Grace and this.

I think some context will help you to know a little bit about the path I walk. Many of you reading this know me, or at least do so through the intricacies of connection, but I live so far away from most everywhere that details will make this dot to dot picture more cohesive, concrete and real. I want to reach the heart of everything I write about, and place and home are part of that.

I sit cross legged on the bench in my office, which also happens to be the entry, dining area, spare bedroom, and general storage. This space blends into the kitchen so seamless you'd be hard pressed to identify where one begins and the other fades. I estimate the entire square footage of these two spaces totals 84 ft. Still, the roof arches overhead, pale light filters through the yellow and fuchsia curtains I stitched on the sewing machine in this same space, and the rain on the aluminum shell makes music with the background thunder.

I bought this funky, mostly intact 1962 Tradewind Airstream seven years ago from a friend who was moving from northern New Mexico to California. The story of its meanderings and how it left Taos and returned years later will be told another day, but I bought it in the hope it would be a step toward my dream to buy land and build a home. Though this has yet to be, the purchase remains a blessing. 

I've lived in it in the boat yard of a raft company in Taos I worked for, in several friend's yards (thank you, Sora and Pete), and when I moved into #77 Calle Martinez it transformed into a writing and stitching studio, held parties and sheltered friends as they wandered through their own story.

After Brad became a part of my life, I helped him replace Airstream plumbing that had been transformed into a Frankenstein themed collection of garden hoses and random copper pipes. I knew Brad planned to stick around when he told me he was selling his turquoise Tacoma for a larger truck, and that one of the perks of the v8 was towing capacity. He proposed this winter with a ring, but the day we installed the tow package on his truck and test drove the trailer around the neighborhood said the same thing.

Repairs made on the Airstream sparked travel lust, and when my attempts to get accepted into a MFA writing program met dead ends, it seemed a good time to leave Taos. We wanted to explore a different landscape, seek opportunities, and grow in our relationship in a new environment. Four years ago, minus a few weeks, we held a yard sale, sent the furniture to storage when we didn't sell or find a babysitter for it, bought sleeping pills for the car phobic cat, and gave thanks again that the title had arrived just in time for our departure.

We left NM and headed north, spent a few nights in Kevin's driveway in SLC, and arrived to late June rain and snow in a part of Wyoming that had just recorded snowfall around 700 inches. We hooked up the travel trailer at the Kudar, a motel and rv park established in the 1940s, and settled in for our first summer of cohabitation in the Airstream. We already had work lined up, and the transition from a weak economy to one fueled by a steady parade of tourists proved easy.

For a writer/massage therapist/ski instructor/occasional landscaper & catering server and her fiancé, a raft guide/snow cat operator, we lead an atypical, pseudo posh life here in this small town east of the Grand Tetons. Our Jackson (Hole) summer home sits in the heart of town, half a minute walk to the recreation center, an easy bike ride to the library and Moo's ice cream, and most important, a quick ride to mountain bike trails. Our set up is serviceable and homey, and though we appear to be Hole hillbillies when our laundry dries on the line or look like petty thieves with our fleet of bikes, we remain content.

It's the start of the summer season, and that means some three million visitors will filter through Jackson over the next three months. When I'm not at one of my myriad jobs, or en route navigating traffic, I'll be under the EZ up typing the latest blog entry, or lounging in the thrift store lawn chair storming my brain for the next story. This is life, craft and work, in a vintage trailer, rooted down in this small town just across the river valley, east of the Tetons.

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