Part-way through our grand tour of this vast country, our property manager informed us that one of our tenants had abandoned their rental and left all of their belongings behind. The state of the property was such that it was proving difficult to even find anyone willing to enter the house to empty it. Among the gifts the tenants left behind for us to deal with: fleas, bedbugs, mice, roaches, a yard full of literal garbage and disintegrating diapers, and most disturbing of all, two bedrooms coated wall-to-wall in their children’s poop. How do we know it was child poop, you ask? Their five children were all under the age of five and smeared feces circled the rooms at knee-height, tiny handprints tracing the walls, windows, doorknobs, and closets, the doors of which were also coated on the inside, testifying to the children being locked inside them at one time or another. The smell, in the middle of July, was so intolerable we had to buy ozone bombs before anyone could stand being inside for any length of time.
My ever ressourceful sister helped us reach an agreement with a couple who does haul-outs and they gradually worked their way through the house, getting it ready for the exterminator. By the time we got back into town to start the rehab, the house was free of belongings and pests, if not free of stink. We set to work cleaning, picking up the yard, washing down walls/windows/trim, treating the urine soaked floors (Urine Off works wonders), and clearing out evidence of mice from every corner. The poop rooms required an unreasonable amount of time to deal with. My first day washing the rooms, I cried. The smell was bad, but imagining those five kids locked inside covered in their own excrement was infinitely worse. As I washed the poop from the surfaces, I discovered more poop under the paint. This was clearly not an isolated occurrence. When we met the neighbors, they said they “used to hear the children screaming for hours” (emphasis mine). If that’s not enough to prompt a call to social services, what is?
In the middle room, we had to sand the walls down past their original color. Everything was so encrusted with feces I had to leave wet rags plastered over different sections to soak in while I scrubbed elsewhere. Even after days of cleaning and sanding and scouring every square inch of those rooms, we kept finding more poop, and the smell stayed just as potent. Once we’d done all we could, we primed with Kilz (another amazing product) and put up a fresh coat of paint. At this point, I left for Florida, to watch my nephews for a couple of weeks while my sister went on a trip. That’s how I got stuck there for Hurricane Ian. In the meantime, Honey finished cleaning sanding and painting the windows, doors, trim and most of the living room.
When I finally made it home, we put the rehab on pause for a short trip to Northwest Arkansas (NWA), which was the last place on our list of potential places to move. We timed our trip for some of the best camping weather we’ve had since we started this whole Casita traveling thing, with cool nights and beautiful shorts weather kind of days. NWA may seem like a surprising choice for two ocean lovers, but when we decided to change our life, we meant it in very literal terms.
From where we are in Indiana it’s an 11 hour drive, which we broke into two days, with a stopover in a casino parking lot in St Louis. We spend our first three nights in AR near Fayetteville, with a Boondocker couple who graciously shared the bounty from their garden (is there anything better than freshly picked greens and asian pears?!) and gave us many tips for things to do in the area. We also decided to look at some properties while we were there, hoping to connect with a real estate agent who could get a sense of what we were looking for and help us find something at a later date.
A sense of serene enjoyment pervaded our time there and I’m struggling to remember in detail the things we did, such was our level of contentment. I know we hiked in Devil’s Den State Park as well as the Natural Falls State Park across the border in Oklahoma. We also hit the Fayetteville farmer’s market and picked up some of the best lamb chops we’ve ever had. The few meals we ate out left us with no regrets and the towns themselves are charming and lively, each with its own personality. Our real estate agent shared many useful things during our visits, from activities to events happening over the weekend, to her insights into local ressources for homeschooling families, other towns worth visiting, etc. Our discussions with her served to confirm our growing sense that we’ve found a place we want to live and that this area has everything we were hoping to find (well, except good surfing, but we have to make some concessions!).
A couple of big events happened during our visit including the War Eagle Fair and Bikes Blues & BBQ (BBB), an annual biker festival that raises proceeds for women, children and underserved communities in NWA. The festival organizes a series of scenic rides (for bikers) and free concerts over a long weekend in the very cute town of Rogers, AR. We grabbed some truly excellent BBQ before the closing concert on the last night and then joined the crowd to watch the 80’s cover band, a group of middle-aged men decked out in sexy rock clothing and long wigs. They had the crowd going wild with everything from Guns N’ Roses to Metallica to Led Zeppelin and everything in between. It was a great show.
For the second part of our trip, we moved to the Prairie Creek State campground on Beaver Lake. When we arrived, the guard informed us that our booking was for the next night (I’ve made this mistake several times on our trip), but worked with us to secure a spot in the otherwise full campground. Our neighbors were all BBB attendees and in the mornings a chorus of rumbling bikes marked their departure for the scenic rides. This part of the Ozarks features rolling hills and steep valleys—fabulous driving country—but there’s none of the grandeur of the snow-capped mountains in the Cascades, or the stark majesty of the Chihuahua Desert. Instead the forests and farmlands go on about their business without needing to catch your eye, confident that you’ll be grounded enough to notice the things worth noticing, perhaps pausing for a breath to reflect on them, but not making too much fuss. We liked that. It feels like a place where we can make our home.
On our return trip, we swung through Richmond, IN, for my 15 year college reunion. I had some reservations about attending this alumni weekend, but decided to go in the end and we had a lovely weekend. There was a time when college stretched before me with no seeming end in sight. In retrospect, I blinked and it was over. One of the things I most enjoy in talking to old friends is how we all carry memories of each other, but we don’t all remember the same things, so you can hear stories that involved you without yourself having any recollection of the event. It’s fascinating what experiences with hang onto and polish with our repeated attention, and what we let fade into the general background of our consciousness.
On the first night, we met up with a small group of close friends for dinner before joining the larger group of our classmates for a bonfire at a resident faculty/classmate’s house. A couple of classmates own a cidery in Bloomington and generously gifted two casks of their delicious cider to the festivities (truly some of the best I’ve had). I got to catch up with some and get to know others a little better. The highlight of the weekend was reconnecting with a dear friend who marked the latter half of my college experience with his wistfulness and boundless sense of humor. We got to know each other as housemates one semester when all of my close friends were studying abroad and our friendship was always one of lightheartedness and radical honesty. We hadn’t seen each other in at least a decade and he and Honey hit it off with the same ease that characterizes our friendship, which gave me great joy.
Returning to the campus with my husband whose experience of being a young adult in the world was drastically different from mine shone a new light on my American college experience. Seeing things through his eyes made me realize just how special this place was, and just how impactful it was for me. As we walked around campus I explained which buildings where what during my time there, overlaying my memories with the current state of things. We joined the alumni in reviving our old sports cheers in support of the women’s soccer game. I played in the ultimate frisbee alumni game with the two team captains from my freshman year, and Honey watched from the sidelines as I tried to keep up with a bunch of men in the prime of their athletic abilities. I had some nice cuts and scored a couple of goals, which felt very satisfying, but my body shared many complaints with me a couple of days later!
More than any other thing, ultimate marked my time in college profoundly, in large part setting the rhythm of those years and sparking many of my most formative relationships. In somes ways, it was the only constant as I and my peers shifted and stretched and grew into our future selves. Looking back, I see how my world at the time revolved around ultimate, my team, and my teammates. In all of the chaos raging within me at the time, it was something that grounded me and pulled me out of my internal experience. It’s been years since I lived in a place where I could play and I’ve missed it dearly, as much for the game itself as for how it reminds me of who I used to be. I’m looking forward to finding a team and playing again, hopefully in the not-too-distant future!
In The Meantime
by Tom Hirons
Meanwhile, flowers still bloom.
The moon rises, and the sun.
Babies smile and somewhere,
Against all the odds,
Two people are falling in love.
Strangers share cigarettes and jokes.
Light plays on the surface of water.
Grace occurs on unlikely streets
And we hold each other fast
Against entropy, the fires and the flood.
Life leans towards living
And, while death claims all things at the end
There were such precious times between,
In which everything was radiant
And we loved, again, this world.