Along with the initial inspiration to explore the RV life upon seeing a vintage Orange VW van back in 2017 – here’s my first post on this encounter: https://jhaley50.wixsite.com/cultivatingrvjourney/single-post/2017/10/27/The-spark-and-inspiration-toward-my-RV-life
I have revisited a few of the movies and books that stirred the desire to travel, the goal to camp in as many beautiful places as possible. It’s been fun to see how they affect me now as the decades and a century has changed since I first encountered them in my youth.
As a kid there was a local movie theater that had free weekly matinees during the summer for kids. One week the movie that played was “My Side of the Mountain”. The story centered around Teddy, a 12 year old boy who decides to leave his family in Montreal and hike in to the Adirondack mountains to live off the land. He traversed the forests in to the wilderness. Along the way he befriends a hawk who he trains to fly high and always come back to perch on his shoulder. Citing Thoreau’s concepts of living off the land, survival techniques, the benefits of algae as a protein and burning a living space in to an old tree trunk – just amazing feats to see a kid not much older than I was doing. Thankfully a kind librarian and a roaming poet befriend Teddy and lure him back to a kind society that includes friends and family.
When is was in high school I had an inspired English teacher who recommended a few books for me to read during the summer. Don Quixote, Catch 22, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and a new non-fiction novel entitled Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Each book introduced new worlds and peoples to me, but the journey across the Western states on a motorcycle by a man and his son really resonated with me. Funnily enough the author had some long reflections on thought, on reflection that I jumped over – because as a teenager all I wanted was the movement of going from town to town, camping out that enthralled me. I’ve now returned to the book in every decade of my life, now reading it completely from front to back. It has given so many insights in to both the physical demands of travel and also the way you are alone with your thoughts, able to reflect and gain perspective while moving across the states.
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