I’m Still Not in Arizona Today

Riding out the Santa Ana Winds

The van shook in the dark, wind squealing through spaces along the edges of windows, blowing cold air and dust through the air conditioner vent. I curled my body in a ball under my two unzipped sleeping bags. My two dogs sprawled on either side of me, but I couldn’t detect the usual rhythm of their breaths above the roar of the Santa Ana winds. Dirt and debris sandblasted the back of the van inches from my ears. I didn’t sleep much, and when I did, it was the sleep that brings dreams that feel like you’re awake. Finally I opened my eyes to a warm glow, and when I pushed up the curtain, a round sun perched above the desert.

It’s midday now and the van is still rocking back and forth as clouds of dust drift by outside. I’m parked on a piece of BLM land outside the southern entrance to Joshua Tree National Park. There’s a panoramic view of Interstate 10 through my windshield, and ever since I woke, immobilized semi trucks have lined the on- and off-ramps of the exit a mile away.

The wind flung the door open when I let the dogs out this morning, their sixteen-foot retractable leashes bowing in a southerly arc between us. Several gusts nearly knocked me off my feet. According to the weather app on my phone, it’s blowing 35 miles per hour sustained winds, with gusts approaching 60 mph. Los Angeles is on fire a hundred miles west of here, with wind-fueled flames consuming six football fields of land a minute in neighborhoods near Calabasas, where the Kardashians live.

I was supposed to be arriving at the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous in Quartzsite, Arizona right about now to attend a session about camping on federal lands. But when I looked at the wind forecast and the semi trucks grounded on the highway and noticed that none of the dozen RVs parked nearby had budged, I realized it might not be worth leaving the safety of my federal-lands campsite to attend that session 100 miles east of here. I googled “Should I drive my van in 50 mph winds?”and the Reddit consensus was that if the semis have stopped, you probably should have already stopped. Even if I could manage the squirrely steering on my 1999 Dodge Ram 3500 van, I couldn’t prevent an empty box truck on its way out of LA from blowing over on me, which apparently is a thing.

So I’m waiting out the biggest windstorm Southern California has seen in a decade. My water tank is full, my black tank (that’s RV lingo for sewage) is empty, and my fridge is stocked from an Albertson’s haul in Yuma last week. Laney is foxed up in the middle of my kind-sized bed, and Baxter is sprawled across the driver’s seat, her face and paws on the center console next to me. She likes to be close to Momma. Her black fur feels warm from the windshield sun.

It’s the first time I’ve written in months, because it’s the first time I’ve sat in months, with nowhere to be and nothing to do. It’s not worth backtracking into Joshua Tree National Park to go for a hike through clouds of desert dirt, and it’s not worth getting blown off the Interstate on my way to a how-to-live-on-the-road event. There is only waiting, and writing, and watching the creosote branches wave in the wind as the Santa Rosa Mountains fade into the haze.

I actually have written, twice, in the four months since I last published on Substack. I spent September through November in a purgatory of grief and uncertainty punctuated by daily trips to doctors and vets. But the two pieces I started sat unfinished, and the many pieces I didn’t start sat in bullet-point notes on my phone. There was too much to do, too much to process, and life moved on before I could finish a thought.

Those two unpublished pieces offer a bit of the backstory of why I ended up packing my 1999 Roadtrek camper van and waving goodbye to Seth and my parents the day before Thanksgiving, en route to Baja for the winter. I struggled with whether to stay or go. That struggle has been the theme of most of my published writing these past two years, starting with one of my first essays on Liz Explores two years ago: I’m Not in Arizona Today. Back then, a roadblock in my fertility treatment spawned a plan to drive to Baja for the winter in a Honda Element camper conversion, with a stop at the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous (or RTR) along the way. At the last minute, I found a cancerous lump on Laney’s leg, and my period returned following a series of uterine surgeries, so I was back to the vet and the fertility clinic instead.

I sold the Element this fall before I left, since I now have a full-sized camper van with a kitchen and shower and toilet. To be 100 miles from Quartzsite holed up in that van is certainly closer than I was two years ago with the Element sitting under snow in my driveway, but as long as these winds keep up, the RTR eludes me.

The Santa Ana winds originate in the Great Basin of Nevada and Utah, where high-pressure systems hang out in that huge desert bowl and push air through narrow mountain passes into lower-pressure parts of Southern California. The squeeze between the peaks makes wind patterns unpredictable, gusty, and powerful. Driving west through New Mexico I’d seen warning signs to pull off the highway during dust storms, but that sunny, windless day made it hard to imagine an Interstate obscured by blowing sand. Now I can picture it.

Just yesterday I had been wondering what Act of God might waylay me this week. In six weeks on the road, I’ve endured some kind of crisis each week that’s derailed my plans. Leaving New Hampshire in late November, the freezing temperatures chased me south, and I spent the first few days without running water before I could dewinterize the van in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The following week, a squealing serpentine belt held me over for a couple days outside Big Bend National Park in Texas, waiting for parts to get delivered to the local mechanic. The week after that, my black tank clogged and I had to make a trip to the RV dealership in Carlsbad, New Mexico for a $50 hose and spend two extra nights at a full-hookup campsite to rinse it out. Then in my haste to fill my freshwater tank outside Tucson, Arizona on Christmas Eve, I accidentally used an unmarked hose that turned out to be non-potable water, so I spent Christmas Day brushing my teeth from a jug and figuring out how to empty and sanitize my tank. Over New Year’s, Baxter went a full 24 hours without peeing, and I had to detour to Yuma, Arizona and wait for a vet appointment. So I was due for some kind of crisis this week; I just didn’t know what or when. Hopefully this wind is the worst of it.

There is so much more to share, but the van has stopped shaking and the breeze is now pleasant enough for me to open a window. It might be time to think about hitting the road so I can make it to Quartzsite before dark. The line of parked semis has dwindled, and some of my camper-dwelling neighbors have headed for the highway. Once I make it to Quartzsite, I’ll spend a week at the RTR before heading back to Yuma to stock up before crossing into Baja!

[This piece feels unfinished, but I’d better hit publish before another two months go by.]

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