Home, and Home

I'm already there, and I'm headed there. Allow me to explain.

In the kitchen of my 2025 Ember 24RLD, my home on wheels. I’m perfectly at peace and comfortable in its roughly 230 square feet. But sometimes a guy has to go on home, at least for a while. (Also, I told you I was going to redo that backsplash.)

In just three days, my Texas adventure—the launching pad for this idea that I’d like to live mostly on the road—will come to an end. I’ll be headed back to Billings, Montana, another three days hence, for a short rest and recharge before the next stage of my travels.

I came out here hoping to experience a slowed-down lifestyle. I got it, mostly. I wanted to meet new people, and I’ve done that, in ways expected and unexpected. (I did not foresee an invitation to join a couple of widowed ladies at dinner in Point, Texas, nor did I foresee striking up a friendship, but here we are, and it’s all right.) I’ve under-indexed on going to museums—haven’t been to a single one—and over-indexed on buying campers (eight weeks of travel, two rigs). I expect both of those metrics to moderate.

I’ve ridden dozens and dozens of miles on my bike, pulling Fretless the dog and his little trailer behind me. I’ve walked campground loops, several times a day. I’ve eaten regional fare and mostly been happy with it. Can’t say the advertised “best chicken fried steak in Texas” would be the best in even, say, Michigan. But I ate chicken fried steak that day. Can’t call that a bad time.

Fried catfish, fried green tomatoes, fried okra. That, my friends, is how you become a deep-fried fatboy.

In short, I’m home here in my camper. Which is what I wanted it to be.

And yet, I’m going home to Montana. Which is what it will always be.

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“Home” can be an elusive concept. Some people are born to it, never having to wonder for a single minute where it is. Some people look their whole lives and never find it. Still others are so burdened by it that they run away, never daring to look back for fear that the home they don’t want might be gaining on them (to steal a phrase from Satchel Paige).

I used to think that last bit described Texas and me. I wasn’t born in Texas, but my formative years were spent planted in its soil, and when I want to see the people I love most in this world, Texas is where I’ll find them.

And yet, for the longest time, Texas felt not like home but rather a place I’d managed to escape. I pitied my friends who stayed behind. Convinced there were broader horizons, I spent large chunks of my early adulthood stretching out toward them, moving to Alaska (twice), Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, California (twice), Texas (it didn’t take), and Washington. I found many places to live, but I never found home.

Then I moved to Montana.

It’s the land I dreamed of as a child. As a teen, I was audacious enough to aspire to writing novels, and my imagination of that life was cast against Montana’s big sky. Then the dream flickered and died, or so I thought, and I pursued other dreams, and Montana came back around, pulling on me like a magnet when I was in my mid-30s. The books came, too. I’ll be damned.

It’s home. It’s the place I miss when I’m gone awhile. It’s where I retreat to when I need to re-center myself.

I’ve come to feel about it the way I might have felt about Texas if I’d attached myself to the Lone Star State at a later stage of life. I’m older now, and Texas no longer feels like an escaped jail cell, just a place I’m privileged to call part of my story. And Montana is no longer the stuff of my dreams, just the place where I am most comfortable. The truth is, I’m a little sick of Montana’s modern politics, its history of being strip-mined by robber barons and people who don’t come to it with an appreciation for its history, its abuse of people its leaders consider less than, the way the town I call home lurches forward only after it stumbles backward and side to side. It annoys me sometimes. It saddens me sometimes. It angers me more often than I’d care to acknowledge.

It also has my heart. Always.

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I haven’t seen Montana since April 10, the first of four days spent on the road to Texas. A lot has changed, and not just the camper.

My plans for five days in Montana? Pretty basic. I’m going to give my camper a short break from my daily presence. I’m going to gather up my mail. Go to the bank. See my Dad. See my friends. Register my new rig.

That’s on the surface. Deeper, below the skin, I’m going to be grateful for the life I have and the place(s) where I get to live it.

I’m going to dream of the road and where it goes next.

I’m going to be in the moment, for however many moments I have left.

We have a fascinating choice when we cannot know the precise number and thus must make the most of each day the sun hits our face. You can be forever frustrated, or you can treat the whole thing as a delicious mystery.

I’ll take the second door.