Home sweet truck. I roll in with the sunset and stare briefly into the truck bed wondering if the tent is even necessary. I've lined the bed with dense foam padding, after all. It's plenty warm out and I'm soaked in bug spray. I smell like childhood.
Some vague instinct spurs me to pitch the tent, rising in a high dome over the truck and clipping to its sides. I even attach the rain fly to one side but I don't pull it fully over the top, preferring the breeze through the mesh and the view of the rising full moon.
At 3:18 am I awaken spontaneously. Recalling the mention of "rain later tonight" on my new favorite radio station, I step out gingerly, tug the rain fly into place, and curl up back inside. Not seven minutes later the heavens absolutely open up. I could fall asleep to the sound of the rain but I wouldn't want to miss a minute of it. My tent, so far untested, holds up - even the bottom of it is thoroughly waterproof, I note with relief as I feel water sluicing beneath it and soaking the foam. It pours and it pours, and I remain dry and joyous in my perfect little habitat. This is all I need. This is all I ever needed.
Day two in Massachusetts is an errands day. I wait out rush hour in a cafe, listening to the benign chatter of the regulars. "Hear the rain last night?" These outer Boston accents are everything I ever dreamed they could be.
The commute into the city is longer than I anticipated and confirms that my initial plan to camp up here every night would never have worked. For one thing, I sleep too damn well outside. It was 7:45am before I even wiggled my toes; with next month's classes starting at 9am I'd just never make it.
All I have to go on is the address in the signature line of an email I received from school. Plugging that into the GPS dumps me out on Commonwealth avenue, where I leave my truck in a one hour space because what the hell else am I going to do with it, stumble onto campus with no orientation whatsoever, and follow one quaint white stone walkway after another until I find first the bathroom and then the library. It seems vivid now, because for once I took the time to tell myself, "Remember this; this is what the beginning felt like."
The library is called O'Neill, which I find comforting. I knew an O'Neill once.
I could tell you, but you wouldn't hear me, of two and a half more hours of reconning buildings and parking permits and locating the summer residential welcome center to confirm that they will have a key for me when I fly in from Rome on the Saturday of a three day weekend. "But you're in a one hour parking space," the observant among you will protest. That's right, I am, and after procuring a map I move my truck, and after reading the map more carefully I go back and move it again.
I could tell you of the buildings whose names I mispronounce when asking directions, and of wishing someone were with me to hear me joke, "They forgot to put the 'you are here' sticker," on the portable paper map. I could tell you of the five flights of parking garage stairs I walk down before realizing the elevator is ten yards to my right, or that I triumphantly enter it and press "L", which turns out to be a short trip down one last floor.
I could tell you, but you wouldn't be there with me. It would be better if you just think back and remember the last time you were a freshman.
Answers in hand, I hightail it back to the campsite just before rush hour kicks in and take long walk to the pond. The next day I return to campus to leave the truck and repeat my newbie navigation, this time of the T to the airport.
I suppose these logistics are no more challenging than making the land border crossing into Cambodia, but at least there even when I was buying toothpaste I got to be all, "What up world, I'M IN ASIA."
It has been a season of goodbyes. My apartment is shuttered and dark. My pet bunny rabbit is seeking out new floors to pee all over at my parents' house. I stayed two days to acclimate him there and maybe I imagined that he was more clingy than usual, as if he knew I was leaving. Surely it was me who couldn't let go. I said goodbye twice, and then a third time, reaching back behind the couch to make sure those furry ears were right where I left them.
And my truck - my baby; my home; my most expensive, most beloved possession ever; that my nephew named "The Blue Shark,"; that I spent all last summer shopping for from an app on my phone while still in Asia; sits in an open lot on an unfamiliar campus. Hopefully I will find it unmoved ten days from now, with permit safely tacked to the windshield and inflatable shark guarding the rear of the cab.
Everything has changed in a year. When I made landfall on country number 54 (China, technically, by way of Hong Kong), it was almost like I didn't live anywhere on earth. My world was in my backpack.
My balcony apartment was newly rented and devoid of furniture. The truck was a fantasy that was just taking shape ("A ranger, for sure. Extended cab. 4WD.") I bought the tent in August once I was pretty sure I'd find the right truck. The bunny wasn't even born yet. It was so easy, once, to believe that I wouldn't be missed.
In only one year I've somehow landed, parachute unfolding like a Chinese takeout container to reveal me perched in the center of...well, things. I have accessories. I have a pet.
I'm needed. I live in the world.
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