The Moral Equivalent of Quartzsite

A recent commenter was profoundly correct when he praised camaraderie as the best reason for going to that gawd-awful mess at Quartzsite in January. Recently I had a chance to go for a short, pleasant walk in the desert with three bloggers and their dogs, "somewhere in the Ajo" area. The Bayfield Bunch, Ed Frey, and I weren't doing anything difficult; it could be done almost any day. But that's just the thing. I can't remember doing anything like this before with other RVers!

But why? Let's avoid my standard whine about RV culture and stick to the subject of what gets in the way of boondockers socializing with each other more. One possibility is the stereotypical image of RV boondockers as solitude-seekers: latter day Henry David Thoreaus or St. Simeon Stylites. I remember reading Walden, carefully, and was a bit scandalized to learn that Thoreau had to put up with a railroad track nearby. He also had neighbors and visited with them occasionally. There is a popular misconception that Thoreau was a dedicated hermit. But he didn't go to Walden for the sake of solitude per se; he went, as he said, to "live deliberately," which is quite a different thing.

The other part of the boondocker stereotype is that they are impoverished, socially maladjusted, and sour. They hate other people and want to be left alone. Granted, there are half-cracked old guys boondocking in the winter desert and summer forests that you should avoid. They usually habitate in a rusted-out van, wear camouflage clothing, listen to talk radio all day, and have a vicious cur that snarls at anyone who gets within a quarter mile of their hovel. But when another boondocker looks lucid and un-cracked, it is a shame to be estranged from them. It's not as if every unit of human conversation comes at the expense of a unit of holy communing with "nature." Human beings are part of nature too.

Perhaps if boondockers were more sociable, a pent-up demand for human contact wouldn't slowly develop over the course of a year until it finally gets so bad they must do something desperate to overcome it, like go to Quartzsite.