All kinds of people are drawn to the woods. There’s something for everyone there:
- The simple beauty and serenity
- A brisk thirty mile hike to some peak starting at 5am while training for the decathlon (super achievers)
- To get stoned and totally enjoy nature (screw the decathlon)
- A place to forage for wild mushrooms to sell at the city market
- To ditch and burn a stolen vehicle (I’ve seen that)
- A place to get naked and go swimming or soak in a hot spring
- To hide a body (Gary Ridgeway or Ted Bundy)
- A place to live when you’re homeless
- A place for target practice with your antique musket and your rifle
- To take the dogs out for a nice romp
- A simple camping trip or picnic
- For gold prospecting or to hunt for gems
- A teenage barf fest wherein someone’s soiled tent or sleeping bag is inevitably left behind.
For us it was a mixture of some of the above (minus the body dumping, car burning and decathlon training), and it was a place to live for the summer between homes. Wherever we parked the rig was our home for the months ahead.
We had the trailer parked at the Taylor River campground along the Snoqualmie River for our first few weeks on the road and were just settling in to our new routine when one day, I saw a limousine driving down the seriously pot-holed road. There was a particular spot going over a bridge near us where you had to maneuver through carefully at an angle in order to avoid bottoming out on the edge of an especially deep pothole.
I cringed as the long black vehicle approached the “hole” and to my surprise it glided through unscathed. It was the end of the navigable road however and it slowly pulled to a stop.
A stretch limousine fifteen miles down a narrow dirt road, forty five miles from the nearest city. Weird. I tried to look busy and watched out of the corners of my eyes.
It pulled over and a man got out, then another. The second man was dressed in what looked to me like yachting attire. The first man appeared to be his help of some sort. The man in the boat clothes just walked around for a few minutes and had a look around then they got back into the limo, turned around, and drove off, back up the road the way they came.
What?
Then one day the motor home pulled in.
It was kind of junky looking but nothing unusual for out there in the woods. Every kind of people came out here from the city folk with their Subarus to the teenagers from the burbs out for a wild night of partying. Some people lived out here (like us) but I don’t think they had any choice. We saw people out there who were clearly living there. It felt sad to me.
The people in the motor home turned out to be colorful folk. It was an older gentleman, probably in his sixties, his wife, and their daughter and her boyfriend and kids. One dog too. I didn’t get the impression they were out for a weekend camping trip. The motor home had a definite lived-in look.
One or more of them liked the bottle. Colorful became vivid when they drank. I don’t remember what it was about but the first time they had at it, they had at it. Yelling, throwing things, slamming things, and at some point, the younger couple got the boot. They sped off down the road leaving a plume of dust, rocks spitting out from under their tires.
That was the first time. It became a pattern. We began to dread the now expected daily skirmish. We moved to the other side of the road then across the bridge to get away from them. Then one day they were gone. Thank God.
Back to the usual city dwellers with their pooches, Birkenstocks, and ergonomically designed hiking poles mixed in with the pickup truck-driving, gun-toting types and their mystery mixed breed dogs.
All was well again as the ear-shattering sounds of gunfire rang through the air.
Stories From Off The Grid. 