An Opening in Time
Our Holtville Hot Spring BLM Camp Site
Holtville Hot Springs BLM Land
For the last month Dwayne and I have been boondocking at Holtville Hot Springs, BLM Land in California a few miles from the Mexican border. The term “boondocking,” RVing with no fresh water, electricity or sewer utilities, comes from the word boondocks. You probably know boondocks means a remote area, but I recently learned that the word originated from a Tagalog (Filipino) word bundók ("mountain”). Very cool, but at 17 feet below sea level, we are definitely not in the mountains. This month we’ve been learning about our trailer, Arroyo, and how long we can camp before driving to a dump station. Turns out we are pretty self-sufficient.
Not the best photo, but this is the hot spring near our camp
Boondocking here has been a welcome refuge. Our neighbors are far enough away for us to experience the solitude of a remote place. Yet when we soak in the hot springs or walk around the camp, people greet us and engage us in conversation.
Here, I feel a freedom here I haven’t felt since 1993. That was the year I left the Peace Corps. I backpacked around Asia with my friend Sheila for over a month before heading to my parents’ new home in Wilmington, NC. I had a few months until my master’s program started, so I found some easy work and walked the beach for hours almost every day. In that gentle time, I had experienced a serenity of spirit I have been trying to reclaim ever since.
Moonrise from our campsite
During that period of my life I read Lila, a book Robert Pirsig published many years after writing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Instead of a motorcycle trip, in Lila he takes to the ocean on a sailboat, weaving philosophy and exploration, a style similar to his more famous first book. In once scene of Lila, Pirsig describes how all the sailboats are stranded for weeks at a port. At first people are frustrated but then they begin to talk with one another, their conversations deepening, and a festive air spreads though the boats and into the town. “The thing that was making them so happy,” Pirsig writes, “was the space.” Pirsig realizes during this time that the impetus for his buying a sailboat sailing was to find “space. . . nothingness, emptiness .. . huge sweeps of open water . . . and sweeps of time with nothing to do.” In the book he ultimately calls space an “opening in time.” From this he creates the axiom that “the most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around.” Reading this book in those months that I ambled along the Wilmington beaches I connected deeply to his words.
Dusk from our camp
As I reflect on my 30 plus years in US public and overseas education. I can frame it as an endless effort to reclaim space. I attempted to keep my Saturday’s open for possibility, but as most know the obligations of family overtook that time. And then there was my original perception that a teacher’s summer was a prolonged expanse of time. But I was wound tight by over ten months of an endless string of obligations, so that when summer finally arrived, I was like a top released, spinning through summer. I tried to make up for all the experience I didn’t have time for when I was teaching. Summer became a frenzied dash of needed classes or workshops, doctor’s appointments, kid’s activities, visits with friends and family, vacations, and home repairs. . I would begin to put into place badly needed self-care: daily meditation, healthy eating, exercise. But by the end of September I was already exhausted from a schedule packed from morning to night. There was no light between the dark blocks of scheduled time on my calendar. Pirsig’s space had become a rare commodity.
We’ve been savoring this gift of space.
By washing dishes outside, we save precious space in our grey water tanks.
That is not to say that we have nothing to do this month. We plan each day around my coaching and mentoring calls and my less frequent group sessions and classes. My two-year Mindfulness Meditation program ended this earlier month with a weekend of events and celebrations. Boondocking itself also requires a myriad of small tasks, like collecting hot water from the hot spring to wash dishes and clothes. There’s no takeout in the desert, so we cook every meal.
Dwayne has perfected the art of skipping rocks along the canal
What is different about this life is the voluminous space between tasks. I’m learning how to live in time stretched out like a hammock. Neo’s walks have grown longer, hot spring soaks more frequent. My mind turns more easily to writing. We stare at the stars, sit in the sun, and tell meandering stories. For the first time since my summer after Peace Corps I am blessed with an abundance of space.
This morning as I took Neo for our morning loop along the canal and out on the land beyond our camp, I heard my heart speak words the same tempo as my foot steps. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Noticing and appreciating everything
