Summer Night

Tonight, after our staff meeting, I came home to our empty RV. Well, not empty of course...the dogs were inside wiggling with delight at my homecoming. John is gone: a business trip in Orlando followed by a family visit to his mom, dad, and Grandma Libby near Tampa.

Except for the dogs, I am home alone. We are having blissfully coolish temperatures. Sometimes, in Texas, it's still too hot at midnight to go for a walk. But tonight the dogs pour out of the coach and I let them have a rare leashless romp through the campground in the dark. They move like a pack of coyotes through the campsites, scavenging a hot dog bun and a stray marshmallow that missed its mark.

I let them run down by the lake, striking by moonlight, where the herons still wade in shallow water. I never knew they hunted this late.

We are celebrating one year as full-timers this week. That's what we call RVers who have given up their permanent moorings of house and home and driveway and mailbox for the looser tethers of a diesel powered house on wheels. We five, the dogs and John and I, have lived in less than 500 square feet for over 365 days. It's something to celebrate, I guess, if only for the fact that nobody has killed anyone else over a patch of carpet to lie on or 5 minutes of privacy in a bathroom that feels crowded even when you are alone in it. We even managed to grow tomatoes here, an accomplishment that eluded us when we had a real house and a real yard.

So here we are running through wet grass, panting from the exertion, scofflaws (of the leash law at least) until we whistle ourselves back home.