I have recently discovered that if you tell someone you live in your truck, and said truck happens to be nearby, the next thing that person will say is, “Let me see your set up.” I’m sure for many vehicle-livers this is a great chance to show off their organization, their DIY skills, or their ability to somehow put an actual kitchen sink in their car; this is not the case for me. Up until very recently this conversation went something like this, “Oh, sure, come take a look”, long pause, “See that pile over there? That’s my stuff, and I usually sleep in this pile over here.” People usually say something very nice like, “Oh, minimalist, I like it.” But their disappointment has not escaped me and so, for them, I resolved to make a thing for the truck.

The problem with making things are many:

1. I have no tools.
2. I have no knowledge of how to use any tools.
3. I know at least two people who are missing parts of themselves due to woodworking tools.
4. I now have a fear of wood and all methods with which one can bend wood to their will.
5. All of the websites I could find that try to teach you how to build things in your truck presuppose that you don’t have a crippling fear of wood.

To try and solve this problem I turned to a material I consider more docile and unassuming, the PVC pipe. I also leaned heavily on a braver and more knowledgeable friend.

Together we learned that you should measure many many times, that even if you do it will never be right, and that that’s okay. I learned that even if you consider yourself a proficient counter, as I did, you are wrong and you need to buy twice the number of connector pieces that you think you need.

Here is the finished product

And here is all of my stuff out of the truck, pre-organizing

Hopefully sometime soon I’ll add the kitchen sink.

My off-shift was coming to a close and I had done little else besides find different places to sit on my butt and do nothing. Although I generally felt pretty good about this, the inevitable, “What did you do this off-shift?” questions were looming, and so I resolved to actually go and do at least one thing.

The thing I chose was a short hike near where I had been camping (read: lounging).

It started at Oowah Lake and continued up the hill for a couple of miles to another lake. I made it to the second lake without seeing a single other person or animal. I was tempted to see this as ominous, but I resolved not to, under the presumption that if I was going to be frightened of seeing things as well as seeing literally nothing then I was in some serious trouble.

On the way back to Oowah Lake I was singing aloud. I do this sometimes when hiking alone, I feel it gives the impression to any lingering serial killers or other predators that I am crazy and therefore not to be messed with, also its kinda fun.

I had just finished off “There’s a Hole in My Bucket” and was trying to think of another one when I heard it. Something was crashing through the brush off the trail to my right. I couldn’t yet see it but from the noise it was making I knew it was too big to be a bird or a squirrel. It came careening through a bush maybe 30ft away and for a second we both stopped dead, surprised, to look at each other. A bear cub.

“OH SHIT!”, I screamed in its tiny, adorable face. And then I ran.

Now, you are not supposed to run from bears. I know this, I teach this to my students. You are supposed to stand still, look as big as possible, make lots of noise, and take out your bear spray (which you totally have with you).

But I did not feel big, I did not have bear spray, and I certainly did not feel like standing still. And really, there were no thoughts in my head at all, just a primal desire to be somewhere different, very quickly.

I looked over my shoulder as I ran and saw a second cub slightly farther off the trail, and farther back still I glimpsed the immense shape of a mama bear looking casually over her shoulder. I ran like I have never run before. If there happens to be a very specific record for that small patch of trail I wholeheartedly believe I own it.

I was mostly lucky in that I was running over flat or downhill terrain and I wasn’t all that far from the trail head at this point. However there was one obstacle in my path; it was a cattle fence, designed in a zigzag pattern to allow hikers through but bamboozle the cows. As I approached it at high speed I mentally calculated my ability to leap over it, and found myself wanting; so I was forced to dash madly back and forth feeling like a person forced into a square dance while trying to get the last life boat off of the Titanic.

Moments later I burst triumphantly onto the trail head, managed to gasp to a passing family that there were bears up there, and returned to the safety of my truck.

Later I had some time to think to myself, what would have happened if I had been killed by a bear? Presumably some people would say, “What an idiot” while others might be kinder and say, “Well at least she was out doing something, I’d rather die like that then sit inside for the rest of my life”, funnily enough, I think I agree with both.

Found a topper, found a topper, found a topper just now, just now I found a topper, found a topper just now.

It was rotten…

Just kidding, it’s not rotten. It is old and dirty and slightly broken, but it only cost me $200, which next to a $1500 new one sounds very reasonable to me.

The guy I bought it from is an very strange human I found on KSL (for some reason Utah has spurned Craigslist and uses this extremely similar site instead). He seemed very nice and friendly when I texted him about the topper, but when I arrived I discovered I must have been talking to a friend, or some sort of alter ego.

When I arrived to the farm in Spanish Fork I began to think perhaps I should have told someone where I was and what I was doing. The farm was decrepit, and in the early evening light, very creepy. It looked like the sort of place where neighbors might one day be interviewed on the news, “He was such a nice guy… bit of a loner”.

But the guy was there, along with a woman, and male/female serial killer pairs are pretty rare, right?

I attempted to make small talk while I followed him to the barn where the topper was being held (presumably against it’s will). Most remarks or questions were answered with a single word or not at all, “Is this your farm?” I asked, “… No”, he replied. Why use 10 or 20 words when one will do?

The topper was in a shed, suspended from the rafters with string, like a large and ominous mobile. Probably to keep things from nesting underneath, I reasoned to myself, this is fine. I was more interested in what was going on underneath. On the floor of the shed were piles, or more accurately mountains, of crushed Natural Light cans. This was the first truly alarming sight in my opinion. What does this taste in beer say about a 30-40 year old man? Nothing good.

But I was in it now, might as well see it through. I was wondering how we were going to get the thing off the ceiling and onto my truck when the guy, kicking aside his cans, walked underneath, hunched backed and arms spread and said to the woman, “cut it down”. The roof of the topper was probably two feet above his back and I suddenly understood, I wasn’t here to be murdered I was here to witness his suicide by the peculiar method of topper crushing.

“Can I help?” I asked. No answer, naturally.

So I stood back and let the woman drop the topper onto his back. To my surprise he did not crumble like a piece of paper but remained on his feet and walked the topper over to my truck like an overly well endowed tortoise.

And it fit! Which was very good, because at this point I might have been tempted to say, “Oh no, I actually like them a bit on the small side, makes life exciting, you know?”

And so I left, with both my life and my topper, what more can you ask for?

One of the many interesting and irrational things about the people I work with is their disdain for Salt Lake City. Now, granted, these are people who choose to spend at least at least 8 days out of every 14 wandering around in the desert, pooping in holes, and spicing their mac and cheese with a few tablespoons of sand. However, I still find it confusing when they say things like, “Ugh, I have to go up to Salt Lake for a couple of days, I hate it up there”, or “I could never live in Salt Lake, it’s so congested and dirty, I would go insane”.

When these things are said to my face I simply nod sadly along with the rest and say things like, “Yeah, what a cesspool”. However, in my private moments I find myself wondering if these people have ever been to Salt Lake, and if they have, if they have ever been to any other American city, because the truth is this; Salt Lake is fucking gorgeous.

People like to call Phoenix, the city I grew up in, “The Valley of the Sun”, but as far as I can tell its not so much as valley as a flat place interspersed between randomly placed lumpy bits. Salt Lake City is a true valley, with stunning snow capped, green mountains that come right up to the city’s edge. It is objectively beautiful.

Other virtues of Salt Lake City:

1. The speed limit on the freeways is 70 MPH. 70!
2. Contrary to popular belief there are many coffee shops and bars.
3. Lots of people are Mormon.
4. Lots of Mormon people are very friendly.
5. Most of the Mormons there assume that you are either (a) already Mormon or (b) are a lost cause for conversion, and so generally leave you alone.
6. The streets are laid out in a foolproof numbered grid.
7. So many discount outdoor gear stores!
8. Ridiculously easy access to climbing, backpacking, mountain biking, skiing, canyoneering, fishing, etc.

Now, the Salt Lake itself is pretty disgusting; it’s an enormous, shallow puddle filled with biting black bugs. The citizens of SLC have wisely not built anything of interest within 20 miles of that actual cesspool.

However, perhaps even more wisely, the only BLM land in the area is right on the edge of the lake. The effect of this is forcing everyone wanting to camp for free (me) around the city to have a very bad time swatting bugs and smelling brine all night. And yet somehow this seems, at least outwardly, to oppositely effect the very specific type of person I described above. We all sit around a small fire, hoping the smoke will blow in our face and relieve us momentarily from the bugs and say, “Isn’t this nice? Thank god we’re not in that disgusting city over there”.

I know that the title might end me up on a list somewhere, but let me explain. Someone once told me that a propane tank is essentially a bomb. I’m sure this person was well meaning, or maybe even trying to be funny, but this is not the type of information I can simply brush off.

I bought a propane tank and camping stove right around the same time I bought the truck, reasoning that I really needed to get over myself if I was going to live outside all the time. However, from that day until yesterday I had used the stove exactly zero times, always managing to find a reason that I didn’t have to, a box of Triscuits is a balanced meal right?

On my last trip to the grocery store I decided to play a trump card on my weird and irrational fears and bought six eggs. Six eggs are a lot of eggs to eat over the 4 days remaining until my shift starts up again, and they definitely need to be cooked, I’m not Rocky.

I decided to boil them, not because I particularly like boiled eggs but because that seemed like the fastest way to cook them all at once and get the whole thing over with.

After a very thorough reading of the instructions (I even tried to parse the Spanish a bit, just to see if they were being told something I wasn’t) I managed to get the stove together and lit with zero massive explosions.

If I ever put together a book of strange and unusable advice for my grandchildren I must remember to include; if life gives you anxiety, make boiled eggs.

My truck happens to be missing what is maybe the most important thing any truck-liver should get before they start living in it, a truck shell. To the uninitiated this is a (usually) fiberglass cover with windows that covers the top of a pickup truck bed. These can also be called caps and toppers, just to make it more difficult to search for them on Craigslist.

The irritating thing about trying to find one of these used online is that every truck ever made seems to have slightly different bed dimensions, and no one is selling one made for my truck. The measurements don’t necessarily have to be spot on though, usually you can make something work even if it’s an inch or two different. At least this is what people on the internet say, and people on the internet never lie, right?

I decided it was about time to get serious about this shell thing, and I spent a couple of days driving all over Utah looking at shells and trying them on the truck, only to discover that none of them would work any better than an umbrella with a largish hole in it.

Oh, well. Right back where I started.

However, there was one little hiccup. My truck came with a cover already on it, a flat one called a Tonneau (a word I have never had the courage to attempt aloud, but I feel pretty comfortable writing it down). In order to try different covers on I had to take it off. This involved much swearing, buying and returning several wrenches, and the help of a concerned citizen in the ACE Hardware parking lot, but I got it off.

Now, faced with the prospect of putting it back on, I decided just to give up entirely and do this:

Good enough, right? Wrong. As soon as I started to drive up the mountains to get out of Salt Lake it began to absolutely bucket down rain. Although my cover-up job did keep out rain falling directly on to my stuff, it did nothing to keep the pickup from filling with water. Not a ton of water, more like Ken and Barbie’s First Wading Pool, but enough to get all of my clothes and bedding thoroughly wet.

It turned out alright, it gave me an excuse to spend my Sunday lying about in the sun with all of my stuff, before trying to put the thing back on.

In the end I did manage it, the tailgate doesn’t close quite right anymore, but if you slam it it usually stays. The one thing I do find a bit worrisome is this:

It seems pretty big and important, but I can’t find any place for it.

Oh well, if I’ve garnered any wisdom from working with adolescent boys its that if you can’t find a hole to put it in, the best thing to do it just put it away and tell everyone you did.

I work an 8 day on 6 day off schedule, and this is my first full off-shift in the truck. It has mostly been very fine an uneventful, with a couple of exceptions. On my second night in the truck I got into Moab late, around 10 p.m. I’ve never camped out around here because this is where I used to sleep in a house, but I do know that there is plenty of BLM land about, which you can (generally) camp on for free. I started looking for a spot down by the river, but every time I got out of the truck I was engulfed in an avalanche of mosquitoes and other bugs. So, eventually I found myself a few miles out of town, randomly turning down dirt roads looking for a reasonably flat spot to pull the truck off the road.

This is where I started to freak myself out. Suddenly, quite far from any other sign of civilization, a group of trucks and trailers came looming out of the darkness. In the picture below you can see it is just a construction site, but that is with the benefit of daylight, and to my mind at the time it was some sort of abandoned ghost truck stop.

The worst part about the ghost truck stop was the weird and extremely bright flashing X. See below. I have no idea what real purpose this thing could serve, but if it is for freaking people right the fuck out, then success.

I continued to turn randomly down roads, and although I got no closer to any viable campsite, I did get very thoroughly lost and outside of cell reception. Eventually I came upon a spot in the road that clearly a lot of people had used to turn around; I took this as a sign of the shittyness of the road ahead and decided to stop. I pulled over in the turn-about and got in the bed of the truck to sleep.

“This is fine”, I said to myself, while the horizon off to my right was periodically lit by the creepy X. It was just as I was inwardly praising myself on my bravery that I saw it. Headlights, I thought at first, very far away off to the left. But no, it was not moving fast enough to be a car, so it must be a headlamp. A person. A random person, facing directly towards me was wandering about in the dead of night, probably headed towards the ghost truck stop.

I got out my knife, and my keys, because apparently even my fight or flight response is indecisive. For maybe 5 entire minutes, I sat in the bed of my truck fixated by this light. Then, some small rational voice managed to fight its way to the forefront in my brain. “Um”, it said, “sorry to interrupt, but don’t you think that guy with the headlamp is standing awfully close to Orion?”

Why would you want to live in a truck?

That’s weird.

Gosh, how horrible.

These are all things I wish people would say or ask me about the whole truck situation, but everyone I know is annoyingly accepting of it. If anyone did happen to say any of these things they would find themselves at the mercy of my slow and shower cultivated wit.

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like it’s an odd thing to do, especially around Moab, UT which is where I lived before the truck thing and where I still spend a lot of time. People are so frustratingly blasé about the whole thing. “Oh, that’s nice”, they say. Or, “Uh huh, yeah, my brother is doing that”. It’s infuriating really. All I want is a little resistance, a little cause to give my rebel, but no, quick and free acceptance is all I can find.

I think I need a different audience. Maybe instead of flying to visit my friend in New York City I will waste 6 days vacation driving there and back just so I can stand around saying, “Yes, that’s right, I live in it. I’m finding myself, thank you very much.” Then, I would be able to imagine them in their tiny, expensive apartments thinking to themselves, “Wow, what an interesting and wonderful person, I wish I could be as free and lovely as her.”