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"Pacin' the Cage"

Every now and then I listen to some Jimmy Buffett songs while taking a snooze. The song with the refrain about "pacin' the cage" made quite an impact. RVs started pulling out of this park early on Labor Day, headed back to the torrid, ghastly conurbation of lower Arizona. They did no harm and I really feel kind of bad about being so glad to see them go. Maybe they are just reminding me of missing the autumn migration, which usually started in September.

The autumn migration always seemed twice as dramatic as the spring. Maybe that's an ancestral grudge against winter. I used to study DeLorme and Benchmark atlases for weeks while anticipating it and feeling nervous about it.

I did my share of constant travel in an RV, but it never really seemed necessary or even desirable. It's probably lazy to fall back on the old buzzword, natural, but it does seem like snowbirding -- seasonal migration -- is more natural than the endless running around that some RVers do. Animal species and primitive human tribes have always been seasonal migrators. But constant travel is a rather new invention (and perversion) of 'carbon-based cavemen', as Jimmy Buffett's song called them.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Seasonal Migration. It is a natural process. I could draw a map of our usual haunts at the usual time of year... It just happened that way. -scamp
I'm glad you think so, Scamp. In fact, migration seems so natural you have to wonder how people live without it.
And don't forget to use it (seasonal migration), or you might LOSE it.
Still, everyone needs to see a few places sometime in their lives... New England in the fall, Coastal Washington, and Oregon and... hell the whole western coast from San Fran north, all the Rocky Mountain states... preferably in fall, and throw in a handful of National Parks... in the off season, of course.
Now you've got my neanderthal genes all stirred up... I'd like to go hunt some sunshine and gather a winter tan in Southern Arizona.
Box Canyon, you are incorrigible at your geographical promiscuity. I've already psychoanalyzed guys like you on a previous post.