Houseless, Not Homeless
Camping not Glamping
When we drove away from our house in Gardiner, we really did not have a plan. We were kind of in shock and totally exhausted. The weekend before the house closing, a massive storm knocked out our electricity. This house was all-electric. Then, the central air conditioning died, and there was a rare heat wave in the Hudson Valley. So, we had no electricity and no A/C. I felt cursed by Mother Nature. Fortunately, Central Hudson managed to address the electricity within 24 hours. The air conditioning was another story.
The first repairman who came and inspected the unit told us it was a “goner.” The cost to replace it would be $3000. The second repairman didn’t show up. Now, I am closing on the sale of my house in a matter of days, and this happens! I called my real estate broker in a panic. He sends “his guy” who shows up that afternoon. This repairman dug around the large unit which sat outside the back patio. I was beyond nervous.
“It’s just a mouse nest causing the problem. I can fix it easy. Your realtor is paying for it,” he told us. Crisis averted.
Because it was the height of the pandemic, I signed all the piles of closing documents outside under a socially distanced tent with my lawyer beside me. The buyer was not present. My wrist hurt from signing my name so many times, and it was still unseasonally hot. I felt my warm breath under my face mask and was so thirsty, a combination of the heat and nerves. After I signed my last document, I thanked my lawyer and told him to deposit the funds from the sale into my bank account. Yippee! Free at last!
David and I packed up the rest of our new (used) SUV and our little Maltese dog, Sazerac. We drove up the hill of our long driveway to the street without looking back. I learned not to look back a few times during this experience, mainly to avoid seeing regrets.
We spent our first few nights at a friend’s house in Saugerties, a charming village about forty-five minutes north of where we lived. We ate meals in town, treated ourselves to ice cream and sipped sundowners on the patio. That became our routine in Saugerties as we planned our next move. Our friend, Alison, was away during this time. We will always be grateful to her for lending us her house while we figured things out. Later that year in November, we’d return to Saugerties to vote in the U.S. elections since we were still registered in New York despite our not owning a home. Neither the outcome of that election nor the trip itself had a happy ending. More on that later.
We spent a few days hiking in the Catskills and lounging by the pool next to the house. Sazerac ran around the large lawn, sniffed bushes and was unaware of anything being different in his small life. It was late August, and we wanted to take in the last warm days of summer.
We decided to spend Fall in upstate New York and New England and made a list of places we wanted to visit. David wanted me to experience Buffalo since both sides of his family were from there and he also wanted visit Mount Washington in New Hampshire. I wanted to see Niagara Falls and spend time in the Finger Lakes visiting wineries. We both wanted to experience New England’s colorful fall foliage. We also planned a pilgrimage to Ransomville, a tiny town named for David’s family not far from Buffalo. I had heard many stories about Ransomville and looked forward to what I envisioned would be a village filled with New England charm and family history.
As news spread about our just-launched nomadic life, suggestions and offers started coming in from our friends and connections on social media. Despite it being the middle of a pandemic, people opened their country homes, guest cottages and even spare rooms in their homes to us. We agreed to get regular COVID tests before we took off for a new location.
David also wanted us to go camping. When I was younger and single, I had camped during a few organized group treks in Asia and South America. David and I glamped together in Africa on a luxury safari pre-honeymoon. Both were many years ago and without a small dog with a nervous personality.
While we were still traveling in New England, he booked two nights at a state park in southern Vermont. He had brought all his camping gear with us, probably from his boyhood based on the smell. The weather had a slight New England chill as it was September, and there were very few campers. I was glad I packed sensible sweatshirts and fleece. David spent what seemed like an eternity setting up his tent which to me was more of a small pup tent for one, not two adults and a dog. You couldn’t stand in it or barely sit up.
Since I am used to glamping, David did his best to make me feel like we were doing just that. I don’t know how he managed to pack china, silverware, wine glasses, linens and a decorative lamp in that SUV with all our other belongings, but he did. I just would have used disposable items. I wondered how it was all going to be washed after we finished eating.
David cooked a campfire dinner with provisions we picked up at the local grocery store. The meal was skillet salmon and vegetables cooked on the portable burner he brought with us. There was good wine because we packed plenty of bottles from our cellar to take with us. The meal was quite delicious. Afterward, I found my way to the campground’s communal bathroom in the dark, cleaned up and hoped there would be no bugs or other animal visitors sniffing around our dinner leftovers.
We crawled into the dark tent and burrowed in our sleeping bags with Sazerac’s tiny three-pound body between us. I was very protective of Sazerac and always worried that David could just roll over a smush him. One night in Saugerties, Sazerac slipped through the crack between our two beds that had been pushed together. I had to dig him back up.
It all sounded like romantic cozy campground night, but it ended up raining. Neither the tent nor the sleeping bags were waterproof. The next morning, we were wet and grumpy, including Sazerac. Maybe the rain rinsed off those dishes, I thought to myself. We packed up the car and took a walk down a muddy path to get some exercise before hitting the road. We forfeited our second night staying at that campground in Vermont. I found us a reservation is a hotel in New Hampshire.
We never camped again.
One night we were talking about what “home” means once you no longer have a physical home. For legal and health insurance reasons we still needed a domicile address. So we arranged for a post office box and asked our friend, Sandra, who lived near us in Wallkill to pick up our mail. That lasted nearly two years.
Now that we did not have home, just a post office address in New Paltz, where do we tell people we live? “We’re not homeless. We are houseless,” David said. "
“We’ll tell people we live in ‘roam,’” I said.
