2. Intro to RV Lifestyle

But it hasn't worked that way. A messenger came in the form of a friend. Dale is one of those persons who has little regard for wealth. "Loser" he is called by some, since he tends to wander around. His last job was when he was 55 and now he's 74. Yet "Loser" is not the way I see him.

Dale is a friendly person, with a kind word for everyone. Over the last three years he has become my mentor. Mentor in the sense that he introduced me to the concept of fulltiming in one giant sweep, before I even knew much about RVing.

Dale had been gone for 8 or 9 months and suddenly reappeared at Patsy's Restaurant. That's my favorite haunt. Here I was sitting at the counter and in walks Dale as if he only left yesterday and sits next to me. During the ensuing hour he explained the whole concept to me.

And when the restaurant closed, we sat in his car and talked a couple hours more until my head was totally filled with new ideas. I left with these ideas and the name of a web site: escapees.com. That would change my life.

Intuition, this was like an end run, a "hail mary" out to left field. Was this your work? To what do I owe this event? There were no comets in the sky to signal an important event. Nor did you follow any of the procedures that I had learned earlier. Was this simply a cosmic accident and had no real importance? This was contrary to my plan for security.

So a decision was made: to play the game. To take the idea and toy with it. To consciously *not* take it seriously, but just make believe. And so I became a child again. There is a kind of joyous feeling that accompanies this childlike approach.

I agreed to pretend to become an adventurer and follow this imaginary path. The game began. And I read the escapee web site every day, as in a ritual. Little by little I could see myself in an imaginary vehicle, traveling the byways and crossing the country. I became strong as I climbed hills and hiked as the Wanderer (Lloyd) did.

I made friends and sat around the campfire telling stories. I saw the great sights of the National Parks and savored the essence of a creator who was kind enough to give us such beauty.

And then it happened. After many hours of collecting data and reading stories, I had an emotional crisis. The thought crossed my mind, ever so lightly, that some of these times I would be somewhere, totally alone. Not the same kind of alone when you curl up with a bowl of popcorn and watch a special TV program by yourself. No, Alone is the sense that you feel this profound loneliness. Where the darkness is so great that it devours the flashlight.

Where one comes to face the fact that not only do we come into the world alone, depart the world alone, but that we are surely alone in the dark of night as if there is no world at all. And I cursed this dastardly thought. Even as I knew it to be true, that I would have to face my fear to play the fantasy game.

Surely death is not so accursed. When we die, it is a return to the creator. We are back home again. We are no longer alone. But in life we have no such certainty. When the endless darkness surrounds us, we know only that we exist and there is a nagging doubt that perhaps there is nothing else. No other.

Alone is such a cold word, you can feel the frost emanating from the very letters. It is like cosmic space, filled with nothing and barely a degree above absolute zero. It is truly nothingness. And so that's it: I fear the vast nothingness of which alone is just a descriptor.

Had Dale come like some dark angel to cruelly help me discover my greatest fear? Was this a cosmic joke and I was the punchline? I wondered. Then, just as suddenly, the thought went away. The panic subsided.

But I knew then that the "alone" fear would one day return. It would have to be faced some dark day. More fearsome than death itself, I would have to pick up a lance, mount the steed, and face my challenger in a dual. But that would be another day.

I was thankful for the peace as this sense of terror left, granting me a few hours or days or weeks until it would return again. And like a man condemned to die, I breathed easily again, knowing my hour was not yet.