Author: Steve

What an amazing thing, what birds do.

They match their behavior to the ebb and flow of the seasons.  They winter where it’s safe and warm and there is adequate food.  Something triggers when it’s time to head north to breeding grounds with adequate habitat and abundant food for raising families.  Every different kind of bird has its own set of needs, so the perfect places to be, at the perfect times of year, are a little different for each one.  Plenty of overlap, but nature provides a little differently for each, and that has all been worked out by repetition over time, hardwired into their DNA, and it all fits together.

That got me to thinking about people.  We know something of the original native North Americans on this continent.  Not all of the many tribes migrated with the seasons, but some certainly did, following that ebb and flow of the seasons and food sources.  A learned migration passed down from generation to generation, but the result is the same, a seasonal migration.

And on a grander scale, human history is a history of migration.  The source of all of us likely originated in Africa, living in nomadic bands, following seasonal food and water.  Once these early modern humans started migrating out of Africa, there were multiple waves, over thousands of years, a most profound migration, resulting in human habitation in every ecological niche on the planet.  For essentially the entirety of our human existence, people moved freely, a natural flow in response to the availability of food, shelter, comfort, and their own space.  Specific migration routes are not hardwired in, but the lust to wander might be.  But today, in the last 200 years, the blink of an eye in evolutionary time, now things are different.  We have Nations.  Boundaries.  Borders.  National interests to protect.

Two opposing imperatives.  Protect our borders and our national interests in resistance to the natural human flow toward more opportunity.  One is conceptual.  One is instinctual.  Borders are recent.  Migration is ancient.  An unavoidable clash.

The van looked like this.

Monday.

The van looks like this.

Progress?

Their bills really are very curved.

Gone by eight…..thirty.  Close enough.  Coffee at home in to-go cups.  By 9:00 we’ve stopped at Tex Best for breakfast tacos and we’re driving north, me in the lead in the Mazda, Judy on the digital hook right behind me.  If she sets the adaptive cruise control for a little faster than I’m going, she stays perfectly distanced right behind me however I go.  A two-car virtual highway train.

It’s 225 miles from home to the center of San Antonio.  We blow past that and drive through heavy Friday traffic up Interstate 35 to Austin, another 100 miles.  We make Sportsmobile by a little after two.  That’s our target for the day, drop off the van at Sportsmobile for some work.  In keeping with our minimalist approach to camping in the van, we’re not doing much, but to start with, we’re going to improve the couch/bed.  The one we got in Colorado in 2024 wasn’t exactly the right couch/bed, but it was the one we could get on our schedule to do what we wanted to do, so it served its purpose.  Now we’re going to pull that one out and get the right one put in.  The old couch/bed is an off-the-shelf model that will fit many different vehicles.  It’s cluttered underneath with support structure that should be open storage.  The comfort isn’t quite right either.  The new one should be more comfortable and easier to work.  We won’t need the McKee 2×4 lever to manage it anymore.  It will be custom built to fit our space.

The second thing we’re doing is improving the floor.  The original floor had railings to attach all the passenger seats to.  When all the seats and railings came out, that left the floor a little spongy.  With all the room we have to walk around in there, balance could be a little tricky.  The original floor will come out, additional sound insulation and a solid floor will go in.

The third thing.  Air conditioning.  When we got the van, we knew we didn’t need air conditioning, because we were going to wander with the seasons; go where the weather suits our clothes.  What that logic missed was the fact that to get to where we mean to be, it takes three days to drive out of Texas, and Texas is almost always hot.  We found ourselves looking for pet-friendly hotel rooms in cities instead of the state parks and forests where we would rather be, because it was too hot to sleep outside.  An air conditioner for when we’re plugged into shore power at night will greatly expand our weather window for camping.

We had to wait months for our turn to get the work we want from Sportsmobile.  But now the van is there for them to start on it first thing on Monday.  With that taken care of, we drove the hundred miles back to San Antonio and spent the night at the San Antonio/Alamo KOA in a camping cabin.

After a long day driving we didn’t set an alarm, we just closed up the cabin and were asleep by ten.  When we woke up, it was still ten o’clock, but on the next day.  We slept 12 Hours!  Guess we needed some catch-up.  We had the camping coffee box with us, so a leisurely 2-hour coffee in our camping chairs, in the front yard and we were out of there by noon checkout.

After a 450 mile drive the day before, the 225 mile drive home from San Antonio today was cake.  The time flew by and we were home by five and floating in the pool by dark.

And that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, otherwise known as Way South Texas.

Still blooming!