Sharing Becomes Caring, Or Why Black Tank Stories Make Me Give a S#*t

Southeast Canada, Arizona forest, Kentucky/Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Arizona desert, Southern California. I was in all of those places this morning, enjoying a large diversity of geography, weather, culture, flora and fauna. From all those places I can venture out to numerous other locations and share even more sites and experiences. The variety of locales is matched only by the variety of lifestyle and personality of those I travel with. Working/retired, married/single, pets/furless, motorhome/trailer/5'er/car, fulltimer/snowbird, grandparent/childless, hiker/walker, hookup/boondock, and so many more. It's delightful to share these places with such unique and different people.

Sharing is the right word I think. It's more than reading and looking at pictures.

A magazine article about a place or a travel experience is a one-time enjoyment. I might save the article for future reference - about the place/thing - but not likely about the writer. I'm not "there" in a magazine article because I have no relationship with the author. A great photo in a magazine might move me and make me want to see the same view with my own eyes, but I'm not feeling the lasting inspiration or humor or pure joy of the moment. I'm still in my chair reading and looking at pictures.

Bloggers take me along for the journey, sharing the everyday experience.

For me, the journey is more than the travels and the beautiful locations. It's the human experiences of real people doing and seeing things that we look forward to doing and seeing. All the excitement of new experiences, as well as the frustrations of missed opportunities, give me a true picture of what our dreamed-about lifestyle can and might be. Like any lifestyle, it's more about how we handle adversity and less about how we avoid it. Knowing that this person has off-days, even while living my dream, makes my planning more realistic. Someone shares a black-tank story with you and you're going to trust them to be real about the rest of the stuff :-).

All that sharing makes me care. About the blogger, their traveling companions (two legs and four), their family back home, even their damn rig!

Blog archives give me a unique opportunity to return to the beginning of the blogger's journey - to start their story at the place I am now. In many cases these archives cover five or more years. Not only have I learned a lot about locations, mistakes, insurance, budgets, routes, weather, and alligators; but I've gotten to know supportive parents, childhood friends, faithful pets, personal phobias, and Valentine's Day surprises. After spending "years" with them I'm invested in their lives. I care about what happens to them. I care about how they feel. When the pet dies or the partner is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, I'm in tears. The purchase of a new rig or the notice of clean test results have me doing the happy dance.

Sharing in the blogosphere makes the world a much smaller place while keeping the comfort of distance.

Someday I hope to meet all of the bloggers I follow and spend some great face-to-face time with them. If one of them were in trouble nearby I wouldn't hesitate to offer help today. But I don't imagine finding a RV park where we all hook up permanent sewer lines and spend the rest of our days sharing lawn space.  Bill and I love our privacy and the quiet of each other's company - making our journey.

Besides, whose grand adventures would we share at our own pace? Who would introduce us to new and wondrous places? Who would share a life we aren't living, and expand our hearts to care about people we will never meet?

I'm off to travel north from Florida and Arizona, and east across Utah, and return to the S&B for the summer, and finish up some medical tests, and plan the route to the workamper job in the northwest, and see some more historic sites in the northeast - all before lunch.

Glad I'm not sharing the fuel costs :-).