JOURNAL ENTRY
Simms, Kay Lemen
JOURNAL ENTRY Kay Lemen Simms Among the Grand and the Gross When my husband retired this year, we patched up an ancient camper that had been resting in the backyard since the children were young,...
...It's warm, but not too hot...
...We were eager to accept, because the commercial parks are expensive and we suspected that the beautiful state and national parks of Florida probably harbored a third of Earth's 5.3 billion people...
...The ocotillo plant is in bloom here with its red darting blossoms...
...This beauty comes as sensuously to my soul as fresh red raspberries would to my palate...
...My husband is at the flea market, looking for antiques, and I'm looking for virgin beauty...
...How did they get those monsters down the quaternary roads...
...The quail, dove, and other living creatures have not yet finished their early-morning hymns...
...We both, of course, are looking for the past in this first year of our retirement—not only the grace and charm of the objects he finds or the unmarred scene of my sketch, but also for an America free of the greed and hyperbole of these times...
...Shortly, I will take my sketch pad and folding stool down a path, adjust my position to view the lacy green spring desert without the intrusion of telephone poles, the white and silver RVs flashing in the morning sun, or the fast-growing retirement city that thrusts its cement over the tops of the tallest saguaros on the edge of this lovely park...
...We are looking for an America that cares about its children and grandchildren, not one that boasts, We Are Spending Our Kids' Inheritance...
...We, who have had the best of economic times since World War II and have enjoyed our relatively unpopulated parks and wilderness areas, are now lapping up the remainder of the cream...
...Should that dubious Social Security be there for them in thirty years, should they be willing and able to buy a big rig, where would they park it...
...JOURNAL ENTRY Kay Lemen Simms Among the Grand and the Gross When my husband retired this year, we patched up an ancient camper that had been resting in the backyard since the children were young, packed it with groceries, and hit the RV trail, leaving Boulder, Colorado, on a cold, snowy February day...
...My biologist husband has a prosaic explanation for this after-dawn bird talk, but I prefer to consider it their morning worship hour—a thank you for what little of nature we've left them...
...These campers carried every possible convenience of our modern technological life, and all of the waste that goes with it...
...Now, I sit at another picnic table in a park outside Tucson, experiencing a glorious desert morning...
...phones to call the kids, and gassing up, these modern migrants returned periodically to the full-service park villages, which we observed expanding in size and grandeur...
...Most national parks cost $3.00 with a "Golden Age" senior's discount, and many state parks are free...
...This is still new to me, though we have been the length of Florida now...
...Our first detour off Highway 10, in search of remembered wilderness, was to drop down to Big Bend in Texas...
...They will make their presence known soon enough, drowning out the quail and dove with their loud comparison of gas mileage, road problems, size and cost of rigs, where they are from, how far they've come, and the dozen or so songs in their repertoire...
...And, if we were to clear more land for bigger RV areas, what would they have to look at...
...No flush toilets, no wash basins, certainly no showers, probably no drinking water—such primitive conditions, we were sure, would make it rugged enough for the tough souls we were to find our beloved quiet and beauty...
...Our offspring, now under stress few of us suffered to make far less in real spending terms, are already paying for society's past debts...
...We sought out miles of secondary, tertiary, and even quaternary roads that our map said led to undeveloped campsites...
...Late one day, after miles of dust (our rig doesn't have air conditioning), gravel, and bumps, dragging our little Alaskan on its adapted trailer bed, we rumbled down a rutted road into the expected wilderness area...
...Sitting at an old wooden picnic table in Big Bend, I heard one couple explain they were moving on because "last night we couldn't get any TV reception down here at all...
...This was my sixties generation—and seventies and eighties too, for that matter—dwelling in their "energy capsules," not needing potable or nonpotable water, toilets of any kind, the old wooden picnic tables, or anything the park provided, except for the garbage cans...
...What we encountered, instead, was an encampment of great rolling Winne-bagos, glinting Airstreams, packed Pace Arrows, bearing licenses from such scattered places as New York, Canada, and Germany...
...But now, on this beautiful Tucson morning, I will quiet my disturbing inner voices and, like the birds, exult in what's left of our diminishing planet...
...This was not the "sixties generation" of the days when we had gone camping with the children—the group with thumbs out, packs on their backs, and sleeping bags on the ground...
...We wandered and zig-zagged down and back—the Everglades, the beaches, beautiful Tallahassee, the barrier reefs with their condos on the dunes, the fast-developing north Florida beaches, the Cajun country—and back again to Texas...
...We were headed for Key West, where old friends had offered us free harbor...
...After squeezing into a little spot, we pumped up the camper top, put our "gray water" bucket under the sink outlet, and tried to look ecologically proud among the grand and the gross...
...With the population expected to double in thirty-seven years, I am happy that the young of two decades ago had their "Earth Time...
...It's too early yet for the "leather-tongued trail yakkers" or "macrognathus decibels," as the biologist designates them in pseudo-Latin...
...They live in their rig year-round in public parks because of the cheap rent...
...Here was space...
...For fresh water, sewage disposal, groceries, Kay Lemen Simms's submission bore a Tucson postmark...
...I enjoy the long early shadows from the Palo Verde trees...
...There is little hope they will have the equal of today's retirees...
...The low purple-gray hill-mountains around Tucson take shape with the morning light...
Vol. 54 • November 1990 • No. 11
