A friend treated me with generosity and care, and it changed my life.
During much of 2015 and 2016, I lived in my beloved pickup truck, Henry — a white 1992 Toyota 4x4 shortbed with a camper shell.
Some of that time, I drove around New Mexico looking for work; some, I spent at my mother’s house or with a friend in Santa Fe, waiting tables at a swanky French restaurant. Some of the time I spent on a piece of desolate desert land I’d bought in Apache County, Arizona, where I’d thought I would build a strawbale house, but never did.
The fall of 2015, I was going back and forth between camping on my land and hanging out in the tiny town of St. Johns, about 35 miles away. I went to my beautiful land for peace and quiet: no humans in sight, nothing but sand and wind and sun, gray-green fringed sage and a few juniper trees, where the larks streaked singing across the wide sky in the mornings, and antelope wandered by. I’d built a tiny shelter there, the size of a large tent, furnished with an armchair, a desk, and a cushion for my sleeping bag. I went to St. Johns once or twice a week to recharge my electronics and work inside the library.
The year before, I’d left the farm where I’d lived for six years, where I’d been in a relationship with the farmer. Since then, freelance copy editing was keeping me afloat…
