It is hard to divorce the ugly realities of my life at that time from the joy of living in my truck. In some ways, I was happier in the back of that truck than I have ever been in any bedroom. I would open a sliding window and feel the breeze, or huddle under every piece of clothing I could find, depending on the season.
I listened to the wind. Most nights, I found myself smiling before I fell asleep.
Feeling the weather in this way is something that everyone should experience. The first time I experienced this was when I was 20 and I had dropped out of college. I was sleeping in the desert in west Texas. I slept in the same spot outside for several weeks, and got used to the landscape. Something was different, one night. After lying there for an hour, I realized that I could not sleep. I got up out of my bag, stepped out of my tent, and looked around. What I saw felt like a smack in the face - it was a full moon. I could see the desert for miles; it felt supernatural. I had been there for so long without even thinking about the idea that the phases of the moon could have any influence, however small, on my life.
Another night, a dust storm blew through, and I woke up in the middle of the night because the tent was being flattened so hard by the wind that its ceiling touched my face. Over the course of the next few hours, three poles snapped. I had a few pieces of duct tape, and some twist ties from tortilla bags. Wind and sand ripped at my face for the hours that I spent keeping the tent together. I wrapped the twist ties around the overlapped poles, and duct taped around that. One by one the poles snapped, but the pegs never came out of the ground, and the thing was still standing in the morning. The wind died down by dawn, and I was even able to get a little sleep in it.
These things filled me with an energy that I had never experienced. For the first time, I had a sense that I was part of a world that changed, that was indifferent to me. That, if I put myself in the right places, I would be forced to adapt to it. It was a taste of a world that was much bigger than me, that I could not control. The touch of the natural world was thrilling.
Living in the truck often gave me the same feelings. I have spent five or ten stretches in the truck, usually traveling, on climbing trips, or between schools, so that I rarely spent more than one night in the same place. There was one time, however, when I was in the same place for quite a while, and it forever changed the way that I looked at living in the truck.
I was at North Hennepin Community College, taking Organic Chemistry, Chem 2, and Genetics, trying to get As in some prereqs. It was the only place in the cities that I could find openings in these classes. I started attending classes during the day, and sleeping in the truck at night.
My power steering started leaking one day, and after some investigation in the truck and online, I found that I had to replace a part. I drove over to a gas station, and pulled out my tool box and the part ($60 at Napa). I started working on it, when someone walked over to me and said that If I made a mess she would personally make my life a living hell. Before I could say anything, she was walking away. I still do not fully understand this. Maybe it was about status, and my obvious lack of it. I looked down at myself. I had on a dirty shirt, a rag in one greasy hand, and a wrench in the other. It could have been more than my appearance. My position in society was in full view when I pulled my truck up to do some repairs: I did not have a driveway, and did not know anyone with a driveway that I could use.
In the second week of the term, I realized that taking three lab classes, and two chemistry courses concurrently (especially since Chem 2 was a prereq for Organic), was not going to work. All of my teachers that term were challenging people to work with, but the Chem 2 guy was the worst. He had set up a profoundly inefficient and ineffective class, and I was spending hours each day struggling with required assignments on an online program that constantly failed. I was learning nothing, and spending a hell of a lot of time doing it. I realized, after a couple of conversations, that battling with that asshole was not going to work, and I decided to cut my losses, and just do the best I could in the other two classes. It gave me pause to choose Organic, not having had Chem 2, yet, but I decided to just go ahead and give it a shot. To my surprise, I was good at it, and it ended up being an intellectual love affair for years. I finished my Organic in central Oregon about a year later, and was a classroom assistant and tutor in it the next.
I got in my paperwork to drop Chem 2 the Monday after the Friday when I could get out without a W showing up on my transcript. I was devastated. They told me there was no chance of an exception being made, which I understood and accepted. I would have a W on my transcript from a community college, and I was trying to get into med school. I felt that that was it: I would never get in. I was a 24 year old sleeping in parking lots. The delusions had finally come to an end; I realized that I had no chance of achieving this dream, and the realization washed over me like a cold shower. I wondered how I possibly could have been so stupid as to think that it would work all the time before. It started raining, and did not stop for a week.
I found out that my grandfather was in the hospital, two thousand miles away. The last time I talked to him, it was raining outside the community college, and I was standing under a concrete eave, my truck parked a hundred feet away. It was a Saturday, and I was the only one in the lot. He was extremely tired, and barely spoke, but he recognized me, and sounded happy to talk to me. When I asked him how he was, he told me that he was good, but thirsty. It meant everything to me to speak with him.
He told me that I needed to stay where I was; that what I was doing was important. It was cold, and I shuffled my wet sneakers back and forth, leaving little half shoe-shaped wet spots on the concrete. I was ashamed that I had achieved so little, and that someone who had given me so much respected me and loved me still. He died soon after. I was standing under the same eave when I heard.
I walked back to the truck. I was having trouble keeping the truck sealed, and when I got back, I found that this blanket that I had used since boarding school in seventh grade was completely soaked. I pulled it out of the back of the truck, and I guess because it was so worn and heavy with water, it ripped almost in half. Now I would not call this a security blanket, but even as an adult, you get attached to your bedding. When you live in your truck, things like this have even more value. I sunk my head down a little further, and carried the two pieces of blanket over to a trash can at the corner of the parking lot, and stuffed this meaningful possession through the anonymous little slot.
At the time, I could not afford to have a membership at the gym, so I was not climbing. I was, unfortunately, eating the same amount of food that I had been when I was working out all the time, and if anything, I started eating more. Before the term was over, I had gained thirty pounds. It would take me almost two years to lose that weight.
Going back to the truck on those nights, after being put down in my classes by instructors, was difficult. When I lived in it and traveled, it symbolized freedom, a connection to weather and nature. It was different now. I was not climbing, I was gaining weight, and I would not achieve my dreams. I was surrounded by concrete, and it was getting colder by the day.
Still, at night, when I was falling asleep, I would listen to the wind, and sometimes, I would find myself smiling.
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