Why live in a camper? Why not?

Throughout my growing seasons, I have lived in fairly unusual places.

It all started simply enough, in a house at the end of a dead-end road, in the sandy soil and scrubby pines of Edgartown. I was 18, and Terry was my first landlord. I am not a strict constructionist when it comes to character, but Terry was unwaveringly stingy, grumpy, and belligerent, the nightmare next door. I relied heavily on my older and wiser housemate Abigail, who had dropped out of college and travelled alone through Scotland and Cuba and clearly knew what’s what when it came to handling a wack landlord. And it wasn’t all that bad.  In that house I had my own room, with two twin beds, and a splintery deck where I could lay down on the warm boards after a long day and relax into the heat.

The following summer, I moved into the loft of a barn in Chilmark, where I was greeted by raccoons raiding the pantry and nests of fledgling barn swallows who pooped ceaselessly and mercilessly on the floor.  But I learned to live with this and more, grew to enjoy the sounds of the goats milling about downstairs and the feeling of high season heat trapped in by the sloping metal roof.  One of my best friends came to visit and painted a goddess mural over my bed, and I felt safe sleeping in her shadow.  It was a magical place to live, there in the very center of the farm’s life, and it was a place that captured my imagination.

Most recently, I lived in a shack in Riverhead, overlooking Long Island Sound, hemmed in by mansions on either side.  It was a dumpy, rotting sort of place, with a rusting stove sitting in the weedy front yard, but it had private stairs down to the beach, and a wrap-around porch, and the house was filled with light.  Sitting on the couch, you felt as if you were on a wooden houseboat, floating across the water towards the mainland.  It had a sort of run-down romance to it, and was the farm crew’s favorite hang-out, for birthday parties to haircuts and anything in between.

But I did not love that house on the Sound.  In fact, I hated it.  I hated the brown stains in the bathtub, the sand in the floorboards, the kitchen covered in extension cords.  Impassively, I nodded when a guest’s eyes grew wide at the view, mumbled agreement when I was told how lucky we were.  I drove a lot in those months, past sod farms and strip malls, to farmers markets or CSA delivery points, and was perhaps happiest behind the wheel of a truck, radio blaring, on my way to somewhere else.

I missed my friends and family. I wasn’t happy in my work on the farm.  I realized, and not for the first time, that where I lay my head at night was peanuts compared to what I did with my waking hours.  I try never to make the same mistake twice, and early on I decided that I would stay on Long Island until the leaves had fallen and winter came on, but I would never return, and the next farm had to be first and foremost a place I could love.

So when Caitlyn and Allen said that they could take me at their farm in Chilmark, but we needed to figure out how to put a roof over my head, I said yes, intuitively, impulsively, truly, yes.  I knew I wanted to come back to the island.  I was interested in learning about small-scale dairy.  And I was god-awful tired of being an apprentice.  I wanted to be something more.  

Thus, the search for a camper began.

How hard could it be?  Seriously.  I had months, and I had craigslist.

Then, a few weeks later, I met Catalina. She was the first camper I looked at, and a seriously fixer, but the price was right, and she was a keeper. Game on.