Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Blog (via Mowser)

Roll over and go back to sleep.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

Rolf Potts' book, Vagabonding, really got me to thinking about backpacks and bumming.

"I'll soon be done with paying my student loans. I could do that," I thought.

But I'm already doing it, though not in the exotic locales that Potts described. No, instead, I vagabond locally.

I travel with a sleeping bag and pillow permanently ensconced in the back of my vehicle, sometimes sleeping in an empty office building, sometimes in a cabin, so that I can save on gas when I work temporary jobs. I have no set schedule. I'm more often than not away from my own bedroom, my own home. It's vagabonding of a different sort, a kind of refusal of steady "9-to-5 and home again."

Last night, as I was falling asleep in my sleeping bag on the floor, alone in a small cabin next to a lake, I had one of the many adrenaline rushes a person with an overactive imagination and loner existance gets when the two combine. Just a few feet away from me were glass patio doors out to the deck of the cabin. I'd pulled the blinds closed on the doors earlier in the evening, but I could hear something just on the other side of the glass and could see a of shadow moving, helped by the lights of the resort across the lake.

"That's creepy," I thought to myself, climbing out the sleeping bag and over to the wall where the light was. I flicked it on and the sound stopped. I wished I hadn't caught an episode of CSI earlier in the night.

Since I was up, I decided to brush my teeth again because I figured it wouldn't hurt. Minty fresh is always nice. Back in my sleeping bag, in the dark, I started to drift off to sleep yet another time.

I heard it again, the soft thudding sound of some kind of footsteps on the deck boards, the flickering shadow across the blinds. I'd locked the front doors but hadn't checked the deck doors. I just assumed they were locked. It'd been a long day at work, training in a new employee, so I lay quietly and contemplated whether or not I should freak out and think a murderer was just a few feet from my head, his shadow visible on the blinds, or just roll over and go back to sleep.

I rolled over and went back to sleep, dreaming of chainsaws and every scary movie I shouldn't have ever seen. Funny though. I had a good night's sleep anyway.

I don't know what it was that I heard and saw last night, but I assume it was a large dog or something like that. I checked this morning, and there were no threatening messages written in blood on the wall.

When I stay in the empty office building, there is no television. Although I've noticed that there's not much worth watching on television I do sometimes like to have it on in the background so there are other human sounds. In the office building, since this is not an option, I listen to the whir and click of the furnace while reading books and writing in the relative silence. The only human voices I hear are from across the street when the bar closes and the drunks stagger out to go home. When I flip the lights off and all is dark, my eyes adjust and I can see down the long, dark hall to the back of the building. If I stare long enough, I imagine the shape of a hulking figure coming towards me.

That's when I turn over in my sleeping bag and go back to sleep.

If you're going to vagabond locally or do any urban camping, or if you're going to live out of a suitcase and be on your own alone in the silence and dark most of the time, the best way to get control of an overactive imagination is to roll over and go back to sleep.

Just roll over and go back to sleep. Potts didn't include that advice in his book, but if I were to write a book on the subject, I'd be sure to include it. Otherwise, you'll just be tired in the morning.

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Labels: my life

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1 Comments:

This is a story I cannot relate to. Sleeping in old cabins, abandoned buildings. Maybe if I was a man packing a gun and wasn't afraid of my shadow. Your courage intrigues me.

By girlfriday, at 5/10/05 18:49