Sometimes Enough is Enough, or Diving Deep and Coming Up with Resilience

For approximately 36 years, I've been known to all as a weenie of the highest order. And, mind you, I'm only 37.

I don't exactly come by it honestly. As the third generation to grow up "enjoying" my family's very remote private campground in Michigan, while everyone else was hiking, hunting, or roasting marshmallows around a fire straight out of a 1950s Scouting handbook, I'd be the one dodging and flailing at every passing grasshopper or bee.  On vacations in the Caribbean, I'd inevitably find myself both genuinely surprised and melodramatically depressed, in my very soul, to find my precious black winged eyeliner hitching a ride across my face on beads of sweat. I once rented a hotel room at midnight after catching just a glimpse of a single terrified mouse in my apartment. And riding in the car with almost anyone, any time of year, finds me desperately trying and failing to keep a hint of hysteria out of my rising voice as I ask, "Do you mind if we turn on the air?!"

Yes, although I'd been given ample opportunities, growing up, to be at home in nature, I have always been firmly indoorsy. Take your bug spray, your compass, and your tent that folds down to the size of a makeup palette: I'll take scented candles, a stack of books, and an actual makeup palette, thank you very much! The only exception to this has ever been when it comes to water: swimming in a lake, waterfall, ocean, or pool is second-nature to me. I'm at home boating or fishing - why, yes, I certainly can bait my own hook! Even just sitting on the patio of a restaurant overlooking a river has always been a balm to me.

Looking back, perhaps that's part of why everyone in my life was so surprised to hear that I was moving from my house in a comfortable, historic Indianapolis suburb to an RV on 25 remote acres of California's Mojave Desert.

It's dry here! And it's hot.

Not to mention all this nature there is out here! In our five months here, we've had close encounters - some a bit too close for comfort - with huge sphinx moths, kangaroo rats, a rattlesnake, two other snakes, fire ants, lizards, bees, flies, beetles, and, most recently, bats. For someone who couldn't help but occasionally look at her three dogs and think, "There are a bunch of animals on my couch!" this has felt like an awful lot of wildlife encounters. But somehow - maybe it's the utterly dazzling beauty of the desert; maybe it's my growing confidence - I'm getting used to it. In fact, I'm enjoying it (mostly)!

What's been harder to adjust to is the heat.

Living in an RV - glamping, essentially - while the house we move into is being renovated, we're without certain cooling technologies that I've previously taken for granted. But I knew what I was in for. I was warned by countless locals that temps approaching a healthy woman's body weight were par for the course, and I took those warnings to heart. As temps reached the mid-80s, considered plenty hot in Indiana, I packed away all my three-quarter-sleeved tops and full-length leggings. In the low 90s, rough heat for a Hoosier, I nervously chuckled to mask my panic as I began to suggest we buy every fan we came across. And over the 100-degree threshold, we bought a standalone ice maker to make sure we could stay hydrated all day. We also rigged up an old cast-iron soaker tub out back - but since our well only dispensed hot water, it offered only limited relief.

Dave and I agreed that if the temperature exceeded 110° we could decamp to a hotel to enjoy air conditioning and a proper pool. 

But as we made it through day after day at 105°, 107°, and 109°, standing up to the heat became a point of pride. Sure, we were desert greenhorns, but the least we could do would be to try to adapt, not to give up at the very first sign of heat rash (or exhaustion). And, anyway, Dave always looked dewy and sunkissed - it was only me who was red as a lobster and just as pleasant! For the first time in my life, I cared about saving face. I wanted to be tough - as tough as my fiancé. This is the kind of experience that builds character, I reasoned.

My plan was essentially to stalk the shade, drink plenty of ice water, and pray. After all, our God is a God of the desert, right? 

But yesterday, as I found myself slathered in cooling body powder, a Yeti freezer pack under each breast, and eating all our ice before the machine could make more, it occurred to me that, somewhere along the line, enough is enough. On the way back from running errands in Joshua Tree, I'd heard in the radio that the temperature was 116°.

I wanted to go to a hotel. I didn't want to try to adapt anymore. I wanted to wave a giant white flag, if only for the breeze it would generate, and shout, "I give up! I admit it glady: I tried - I can't hack it!" I could picture it perfectly: I'd pitifully ooze into the cool, modern hotel room, slowly regaining a solid consistency, and then I'd dive into a pool of shimmering larimar, utterly transported.

But it wasn't quite that easy, for a bunch of reasons too tedious to enumerate here. So I decided to step back from the situation, from my frustration; my desperation. There must be another solution! All I wanted was to cool down. I decided to go for a drive in my trusty Hyundai Accent - God bless it, it was a cheapie, but it has wonderful, robust air conditioning. And as I drove, cooling off, I got an idea. 

I knew there must be one.

Twenty-five minutes later, I returned to the ranch with a blue-raspberry slushie and a 16-lb bag of ice. I emptied the ice into the soaker tub, still full of fresh, very warm water. (The slushie I emptied into myself.) After a minute and a half, the ice dissolved, and I climbed into the tub fully dressed, lying on my stomach, and stayed there for half an hour. And the extra hour or so that it took for my leggings and tank top to cool off kept me cool, in fact, all evening.

There's almost always another idea. There's almost always a reserve of grit and resilience inside us that we don't fully realize we have, and it's just waiting to be tapped into. Yesterday evening, I found mine. And it's nice to know I have some grit, some resilience, in me when it comes to the great outdoors!

Tomorrow, we'll finally have cold water for the soaker tub, so I can use it to cool down anytime I want, without a 15-minute drive to the nearest gas station or convenience store. That, along with the cooling towels that just arrived from Amazon, should be solutions that last until we can move into the renovated house.

But today, another 110°+ desert scorcher, finds my little family checked into a hotel after all, and me blissfully bobbing, diving, and treading water in a sparkling turquoise heaven - my true outdoors happy place.

Because - character-building or not - sometimes enough is enough!

Be gentle with yourselves,

Sally

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Sally Shideler

God of the Desert Books, President, Managing Editor, Marketing Director