When you have the ability to create a new, temporary home somewhere, why not dive into a book about the area? Learning a little about your location will always reveal surprising, colorful stories, even in the most seemingly boring places. You’ll end up with a stronger connection to your surroundings than a two second Kodak moment.

Required Reading: Utah

Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, by Edward Abbey

Whoever left this at the Slabs Library had no idea how much it would rock my world. Thank you!

Amazon.com Review: Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, the noted author’s most enduring nonfiction work, is an account of Abbey’s seasons as a ranger at Arches National Park outside Moab, Utah.

Abbey reflects on the nature of the Colorado Plateau desert, on the condition of our remaining wilderness, and on the future of a civilization that cannot reconcile itself to living in the natural world. He also recounts adventures with scorpions and snakes, obstinate tourists and entrenched bureaucrats, and, most powerful of all, with his own mortality. Abbey’s account of getting stranded in a rock pool down a side branch of the Grand Canyon is at once hilarious and terrifying.

Road trippers, wanderers and hobos have much in common with Abbey, one of the America’s first radical environmentalists. Anyone who breaks from convention and searches for a different path in life will find validation in their “odd” life choices when reading his work.

“My God! I’m thinking, what incredible shit we put up with most of our lives — the domestic routine (same old wife every night), the stupid and useless and degrading jobs. . . the foul, diseased and hideious cities and towns we live in, the constant petty tyranny of automatic washers and automobiles and TV machines and telephones –! ah Christ! I’m thinking, at the same time that I’m waving goodby to that hollering idiot on the shore, what intolerable garbage and what utterly useless crap we bury ourselves in day by day, while patiently enduring at the same time the creeping strangulation of the clean white collar and the rich but modest four-in-hand garrote!).

. . . That‘s what the first taste of the wild does to a man, after having been too long penned up in the city. No wonder the Authorities are so anxious to smother the wilderness under asphalt and reservoirs.“

This week Jim and I are in Moab, camped around dozens of off-roader jeepers, bikers and dune buggiers who tear up the landscape while leaving swirling contrails of testosterone behind.

As I watch them whiz by on wheels, I can’t help but think of one of my favorite passages:

“What can I tell them? Sealed in their metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free? The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener. Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those goddamned idiotic cameras! For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? eh?

. . . Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs, get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk — walk — WALK upon our sweet and blessed land!”

Under the Banner of Heaven, a Story of Violent Faith, by Jon Krakauer

Jim and I love Utah’s landscapes, but we’ve always been slightly freaked out by the Mormon culture that dominates every town we’ve been through. Ever since we rode here on our motorcycles a million years ago and a grocery store clerk snidely called long-haired Jim “Ma’am”, we’ve been more than a little critical of the creepy, stepford-like attitudes we’ve encountered among a lot (but not all) people.

Krakauer’s book sheds loads of light on Mormonism’s growth, their dominance of Utah’s politics and people and how many tiny sects have spun off and created even freakier fundamentalist movements.

From Publishers Weekly: Using as a focal point the chilling story of offshoot Mormon fundamentalist brothers Dan and Ron Lafferty, who in 1984 brutally butchered their sister-in-law and 15-month-old niece in the name of a divine revelation, Krakauer explores what he sees as the nature of radical Mormon sects with Svengali-like leaders.

Using mostly secondary historical texts and some contemporary primary sources, Krakauer compellingly details the history of the Mormon church from its early 19th-century creation by Joseph Smith (whom Krakauer describes as a convicted con man) to its violent journey from upstate New York to the Midwest and finally Utah, where, after the 1890 renunciation of the church’s holy doctrine sanctioning multiple marriages, it transformed itself into one of the world’s fastest-growing religions.

My take is that essentially, there’s no difference between a charismatic religious zealot like Mormon founder Joseph Smith, and other self-proclaimed prophets who mass media portrays as unstable nutbags with criminal tendencies (remember David Koresh?). The only thing separating them was timing. Mormonism grew as fast as it did because there wasn’t much to compete with it back in the 1800s. However, I’m still not sure how that explains the numbers of modern followers it continues to attract.

Perhaps Edward Abbey knows:

“Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.”

-Edward Abbey

Overheard at the Slab City Library: Champagne Living on a Beer Budget? … Hey, can I have that? … Serendipity in action.

Funny how I kicked off the new year that way – remembering the old adage momma would often cite. And funny that this 1969 guide by Mike and Marilyn Ferguson for How to Buy the Best for Less came to my attention while boondocking for free among both shiny monster RVs and deep rooted old buses.

As mother would also often question though, “Funny ha ha or funny peculiar”?

Either way, funnier yet are various applicable quotes I turned to throughout Champagne Tastes on a Beer Budget:

Happiness is being rich enough to ask the man to show you something cheaper.
~ Johnny Carson

We choose to live like vagrants here for a while because it is much cheaper than the alternative of paying for comfortable amenities, and richness is measured in many more ways than wealth. Others live on the slabs out of need, all rich in their own ways.

Necessity never made a good bargain.
~ Poor Richard’s Almanac

It’s all about give and take, I say. What are you willing to give up to get what you want? And if you want freedom, for free, you might need to go without quite a bit. As most do here in Slab City, USA.

Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam,
And I’ll show you a filthy house.
~Author Unknown

There seem to be many more people here this year. But you don’t see much of them, being rounded up in their safe little RV caravans as they are. Safety in numbers I suppose, among the regular miscreant vagrants, loving hippies, wandering loners and hobos.

Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

What’s that make me then? Well, I’m not quite smelling like roses these days. And I gave up a lot to enjoy the beauty within. Yes you must look past certain filth, but I’m not spending a dime (out of pocket), and am rich in personal freedom and fixed in perfect reality.

Jim likes to tell people “Stop shoulding all over yourself!” Shouldding is unproductive and creates misery. Shouldding keeps you from doing what you really want to do.

It’s not easy to eliminate it from your vocabulary. We’re conditioned to take on obligations that “should” lead to happiness (I should go to school. . . should make lots of money. . . should start a family. . . should buy a house). Meanwhile, all this shouldding all over ourselves creates huge demands on our time, and brings our youthful dreams to a screeching halt. Then one day we wake up and realize we are trapped in the “Someday Syndrome.”

We can all use some help finding our way back to our dreams, and Alex Fayle’s new book, “Someday I’ll Get Around To It” is the perfect place to start.

Alex is a “Someday-busting Coach.” He helps people dust off their dreams, sort them out, and create a plan for obtaining the life they really want. His new e-book, “Someday I’ll Get Around To It” shares his strategies for someday-busting.

In this 100-page workbook style format, we learn how to make conscious choices to create happier lives that more closely reflect our dreams. Alex walks us through ways to overcome inertia and understand our limitations and obstacles. We learn how letting go of control will free up time and enable us to achieve our goals. And finally, his useful worksheets in the back of the book will help us draft simple, doable plans to help achieve our dreams in step-by-step increments.

Life is short. Live your dreams. And remember, you can’t justify putting your dreams on hold, by listing all of your obligations.

Because like Alex says, “In not pursuing your dreams, recognize that you are choosing not to pursue your dreams.”

If you are at all doubtful that Alex can help, just read about his life here. You can also read his interview with Jim and I.

Don’t wait for Someday.

Sell your crap. Pay off your debt. Do what you love.

For the last two weeks, we’ve been boondocking at Slab City near the stinky Salton Sea. With the free rent, warm weather and good peeps of Slab City, it’s tempting to ride out the rest of winter here.

But, we’re sticking to the plan, and will start moving to Texas, New Mexico and Colorado to keep looking for Jerry’s land.

Our new year is starting out with a low cost of living. Some highlights:

• Freeloading off relatives and friends in January helped us save on rent. Thanks, everyone!
• I want to reduce the $403 we spend on insurance every month, while still covering our butts. Any ideas on how to do this?
• Last November, we stopped contributing to a mutual fund, when I got tired of watching the value drop. But then I read Suze Orman’s latest book, her 2009 Action Plan, and she slapped me around, reminding me about dollar cost averaging, even during bad times. We are now contributing $100 a month and keeping the faith in the system.
• Each year I try to read at least a couple of finance books. I just started The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, and it’s far more interesting than I expected, expanding my financial literacy by leaps and bounds. I highly recommend this book, along with the Suze Orman book, to help survive and thrive in this awful economy.
• When Jim and I are landowners again, we can live even more cheaply, once we nix the cost of rent, fuel, storage fees and California’s ridiculous insurance costs and income taxes from our expenditures.

Now, onto the business of the day. Here’s a PDF of our January 2009 Expense Report, as part of our continuing efforts to inform and help full-time RVers everywhere!