Teetering at the Edge of Nowhere
Notes From a Swamp
I’m not going to sugar coat it.
This time of year is f***ing hard.
Thanksgiving.
Christmas.
January 8th, the day in 2023 that Kiki had the allergic reaction that sent her into a coma.
January 13th, the day our world ended.
Some people say the second year is the hardest. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a different kind of hard. Right now I’m doing less, resting more. Forgiving myself for not keeping up with the rest of the world. Reminding myself that the rest of the world doesn’t require me to keep up.
I think of this life on the road as a big experiment. That idea allows me to cope with the fact that there are no rules and no structure and we’re making up a new life as we go. I don’t know how it’s all going to play out, or when and where it will end, but that’s what keeps things interesting.
The following story is from the very first Letter From Turkey Town. I wrote it last January, when we were traveling in North Florida. It went out to 12 subscribers, and I was pretty excited about that.
It is still one of my favorite Turkey Town stories, and since most current readers didn’t see it, I decided to run it again this week.
Current newsy stuff follows at the bottom of this letter.
Oh, and just so you know – the holiday season also held some beautiful moments of peace and happiness for Eric and me. We’re ok.
Notes From a Swamp
(January 2024)
What is this?
It’s a newsletter about traveling aimlessly around the US and learning to live with grief.
You can read it, or listen to me read it with the audio player above.
It is not about turkeys, but birds will show up.
What is Turkey Town?
Turkey Town is maybe a place on Highway 27 near Chiefland, Florida aka total middle-of-nowhere. There’s a sign, but no sign of a town. So, you are free to imagine. It could be anywhere. I like to picture a pioneer town run by turkeys. It’s also a low-stakes name for a newsletter, just so no one’s expectations are too high.
What’s going on?
Eric and I have been at Otter Springs Campground, near Chiefland, for the last six weeks. There are a lot of rules here.
Selections from the two-page list of Campground Rules:
No profanity
No barking dogs
No minibikes
Children may not operate motorized vehicles
All camping units must be in working condition
No trash, broken furniture or bins stored outside on campsites
No tarps, no guns
All the rules are broken here.
A small child frequently rides a minibike by our site. He comes skidding around the curve towing a barking dog on a leash, the dog frantic to keep up while the passenger, an even younger child, tilts precariously on the back.
Our neighbor’s motorhome has obviously not run in years.
There’s a mysterious dwelling at the far edge of the campground that’s shrouded in tarps.
Certainly everyone has guns.
Many of the campers live here full time but Otter Springs is not an end-of-the-line campground, the kind that’s a last stop before prison or death. We’ve been to a few of those – once, in Blythe, California where Eric and I, and three-year-old Kiki, shared a greasy pool with some aggressively tan women smoking and sharing a handle of vodka under the No Glass No Smoking sign. Otter Springs is not like that. The pool here is pristine. It’s just rural Florida. Rural Florida has its own rules but they’re not printed on any list.
We’re into the fifth month
of this trip which does not feel like a trip anymore, We don’t have a house to return to, our stuff is in storage and our rig – 22-foot trailer and truck – is home. We’re not sightseeing. This is now our regular life.
What are we doing? Is it a grief pilgrimage? An escape? A journey to find our new selves? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. So little matters now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about living. Just that all of my big worries have evaporated. Did I do enough with my life? Have I been successful? Found my purpose? I’m no longer interested in those questions. It’s enough to live a day, take a walk, notice something beautiful. Watch a bird or eat a good apple.
This past weekend Eric and I had a big day out, starting with the Flea Market in Chiefland. It was even better than we’d hoped. Booths loaded with broken toys and hideous art. All kinds of knives and swords. Every size lawnmower blade you could possibly want. Tables laden with shotguns and pistols. A Nazi helmet casually displayed with other hats. Scary amateur taxidermy. Live animals: hens, dozens of quail, a bunch of crowing roosters. Puppies!
After leaving the Flea Market
we decided to try BBQ Bill’s because the parking lot was mobbed. Inside, I started to worry because there was zero barbecue smell, but we were hungry so we ordered the sandwiches, one turkey and one pork, and were served sliced meat and nothing else on flabby white bread. We split the sandwiches and I ended up giving Eric his pork half back. He said “why, just because it’s like eating human flesh?” And that was exactly what I’d been thinking, the meat pink and meltingly soft, so tender and slippery.
After Bill’s we went to Walmart, to top off our outing. It’s easy to boycott Walmart in places where there are other choices, but here it’s either Walmart or the dollar store. You can pine for a nice co-op all you want, but flexibility is the key to happiness in the traveling life. I got a pop-up laundry hamper for $1.87 so I’m excited about that.
North Florida is cold right now. I’m taking the weather personally and it makes me irritated. Gray and rainy. You could say there’s nothing to do here, yet we keep postponing our departure. We’re addicted to the quiet. We quit drinking and now we sleep instead, under an electric blanket, blackout shades pulled, in total silence except for the haunting nighttime calls of owls.
At dawn I briefly wake, fumble for the blanket controller, turn it on high. The silence presses us down, returning us to our dreams. Side by side we’re comatose. After six weeks in Nowheresville we still can’t make ourselves leave.
Eric and I are doing okay.
“Okay” – the all-purpose word that doesn’t mean anything. He still makes me laugh every day. We find little things to be happy about.
I am never not aware
that Kiki is gone. Missing my daughter is my last feeling before falling asleep, it’s the ache that descends before I even open my eyes every morning. There is no healing from this loss. We just get used to carrying our grief.
Our campsite is at the edge of 600 acres of forest and swamp surrounding the Suwannee River, mysterious and gloomy like something out of a fairy tale, thick with twisted live oaks, towering slash pines, magnolias with glossy dark leaves. Take a picture and it comes out almost monochrome; even on a sunny day it’s all grays and silvery browns, muted shades of olive. You’ll hear bird songs, hoots and twitters, squirrels rustling on dry leaves, white-tailed deer crashing through brush, but not a sound of human activity except maybe an airplane.
Why do I love North Florida
despite what lies outside the woods – the ammo shops and last-chance trailer parks and Confederate flags, this culture as foreign to me as another country? Is it all because of The Yearling? The story of Jody and the fawn named Flag, set near this area, was possibly my introduction to death and grief. The Yearling, and many of the books my mother read to me as a child, still reverberate in my body, those stories now directing my heart to find enchantment in landscapes like this one, tied to wisps of memory.
Much of this trip so far is about memory, a return to places where the past – mine, Eric’s, Keek’s – still echos, where we can be in the present and past at the same time.
Here at Otter Springs, cold keeps the bugs away and a person can walk for miles on trails without seeing another human. I talk to Kiki while I walk, ask her for advice, ask her to send me a message. She always answers.
Sometimes the message is simply a sudden feeling of peace that washes over and calms my aching heart for a while. Long enough to remember what hope feels like. Other times the message is visible, unmistakable.
One evening on the swamp trail,
I said out loud, “Keek, if you can hear me, send me a sign. Send me an owl.” A few minutes later, the woods opened up to a clearing. Twenty feet in front of me, two big owls stood on the path. They turned their heads in my direction, and with four flapping wings in great commotion, they lifted up and away over the trees.
Two owls. Of course she would send two, just for emphasis. Like the way she did the two-thumbs-up thing in pictures, just to emphasize, hey, this is good.
On my walks, Kiki reminds me to watch for animals and I do – wood storks and barred owls, great blue herons, and graceful white egrets. Red shouldered hawks, a snorting team of wild pigs, baby snapping turtles crossing a sandy trail and bats skimming the water’s surface for bugs at dusk.
This is their territory; I get to look, listen for their calls and release my burden of grief for now, into the quiet hazy depths of swamp and woods. I can’t stay long, I don’t want to leave.⁜
Update From the Road:
We’re currently in Fredericksburg, Texas. If you’re following along chronologically, you probably know Eric and I spent the last four months at the beach in South Carolina. Last week we crossed the Deep South on back roads, driving through tiny towns and piney woods and then the sky opened up and we were in Texas.
Our first day here in Fredericksburg, there was a bit of freezing rain. Civilization immediately broke down and everything closed. When I tried to go to the library the following day it was still closed due to “inclement weather” even though it was 40 degrees and sunny. OK, Texas.
Our RV park is empty of campers but full of hundreds of bare oaks with dark twisted limbs, like scary Wizard of Oz trees. At dusk they’re black against an orange and pink sky. I love them. The adjoining empty lot has goats and deer so there’s plenty of action over there.
We’re here for a week before heading off to Big Bend National Park. We’ve been promised no cell service or internet. I CAN’T WAIT.
I’ll be working on a new letter as we travel through Texas. A couple of really great things happened last month, and I’ll tell you all about them, and finally show you pics of my beautiful big tattoo.
Was the holiday season hard for you?
Is there something you’re looking forward to in the new year? (It can be something very small!)
Let me know in the comments. Until next time,
Love, Tina
Oh yes, those damn dates. As they roll
around year after year and we add a new number to that thought “it’s been …. years now since… for me that day is December 25. So hard now, so hard forever. Hugs and a scrap of healing love to you. I get it
Retreat, quiet, nature are like a salve. I have no doubt the two owls were an amazing answer. Thank you for taking the time to keep us updated and for the beautiful photos. The swamp filled with life, thick and mucky, is like stepping into days sometimes. Grief is a path no one can walk with us. But you manage to touch us with your writing and photography. Thank you.