Tonight marks one year since I last watched television. That was also the last night spent in my bay home. I’m glad I made that decision, and happy that I stuck with it. It is a very unconventional way to live, and was not always easy the first few weeks, but the absence of TV in my life has made room for much better things. Of which I plan to write more soon….

If you ask me what I did today, and I answer that I spent it mowing, we may not have the same thing in mind…

…but Saturday my mother turned 85. Now recovered from cancer, she is back to living like a woman many years younger. Almost 65 years ago she became my first and greatest blessing. As I often tell her, whatever is good in me I learned from her; all that is not good in me, I learned on my own.

As a boy growing up in a small Texas town, I rode for countless miles on an old single-gear bicycle. My friends and brothers and I spent the long summer days pedaling around town and far down country roads. No cell phones; we were untrackable. Our only directive: be home by dinner time or go hungry.

We pointed our tires toward any place we wished to go, and we stopped there until some other destination came to mind. We carried BB guns or fishing poles. On occasion, we brought home to our bemused mothers a jar of tadpoles or crawdads, dead water moccasins, baby birds, kittens.

Never since have I known such freedom and lack of care, nor am I ever likely to again.

But in what is surely an impulse partlty driven by the memory of those days, I bought a bicycle three days ago, a basic Schwinn with tough knobby tires, and have started exploring the rough country roads that begin only two blocks from my house. The same joy and freedom returns as if it has only been waiting for the roads and wind and the music of bike tires on dirt.

Not everything is the same. Reading the bike’s user manual – the first fozen pages of which warn me of the dangers and perils of misusing this terrible machine – I came to this picture instructing me of the proper way to armor a child before they venture forth:

They left out snake-proof shin guards and kitten-proof gloves. My friends and I, through hundreds of miles of boyhood wanderings, wore exactly none of those things. We would have ditched them as soon as out of sight. Nor will I wear them now.

I quit reading the manual and threw it away. Freedom is best enjoyed unburdened. Even a child knows that….

…so much time. Since I was a young man I have traveled many thousands of miles to reach wild places, in which I hiked & slept in a small tent with lightweight backpacking gear. Days were few on each trip, and I always had to hurry home to work.

Time opens before me now like a road that rolls past the horizon. It waits only for me to go and follow. A tent and camp stove just won’t be sufficient. So I got a wild idea to buy this:

The crazy thing contains a queen bed, kitchen, full bath, table & sofa, solar panel and batteries, generator, heater and AC, water tanks, and more gadgets than I have yet learned. All sitting on the truck like turtle shell.

For the first time in my 65 years, I can leave for anywhere, at any time I wish, and come home only when I am ready. (A freedom I am still having to learn.)

First decision: where to point myself and go first….

To my aurophile friends, I introduce the newest member of my family, Lizzy.

Boisterous, affectionate, daring & adventurous, she is a joy to have around. After a few weeks in her new home, she is fitting in well with her many adopted brothers & sisters. Her youthful playfulness & insouciance ease the sorrow I feel over losing Charlie & Gummie last month (more about that later, when I can write about it without pain).

Now retired for a year, I feel a need to write here more often. Lizzy is a fine way to begin…