You can’t take it with you
I spent today mostly relaxing at Dome Rock. I'm tired of walking around flea markets; it's a lot less fun if you can't buy anything. But that's okay; I've still got more stuff than I need.
When I had a big house, a big garage, and horse stables with no horses in them, I had plenty of room to store just about anything I wanted. But emptying and selling my home, if nothing else, taught me that having a lot of stuff is like building and living in your own prison. The stuff takes away your freedom and imprisons you with a never-ending desire for more.
And it wasn't just junk; a lot of my stuff was worth money. But selling stuff takes time, and not just any time; it takes the RIGHT time. But when your house sells in two weeks for your asking price, you don't have time to wait for the RIGHT time; you've got to empty the house quickly before closing.
Being able to quickly get rid of a lot of things that you once thought were precious changes a person, which I'm sure anyone who sold their home and went full-time would agree with.
I'm sure almost everyone believes that the old saying, "You can't take it with you, " means that you can't take your stuff with you when you die, but I look at it differently.
I believe that "You can't take it with you " describes a future full-timer standing outside their home of 30 years, looking at their old house overflowing with possessions and memories, and their brand-new RV, sitting in the driveway, and saying to themselves, "I can't take it with me! What the heck am I going to do? "
Theboondork
I took this picture a few days ago, and even though I've been walking around the area, I totally overlooked something that I could barely see in this picture when I put it on my computer. If you look on the far right side of the image, right about the middle, I can see what looks like a cross. You may have to zoom in to see it.
Walking over to that place, I found this.
Since I've found similar scenes in my boondocking travels, it looks to me like someone's beloved pet died during their boondocking travels.
You won’t find scenes like this at an RV Park, for obvious reasons, but when boondocking in places where boondocking is common, and it doesn’t get more common than Quartzsite, family pets do die, and burying them on site is about all the family can do.
I don't know how many RVers have pets, but it's a lot. Since the pets have to live in an RV, they become closer than normal house pets because everyone's always together, so I would imagine the bond between family and pets is even closer.
The tiny headstone can be seen in the very center of the picture, and it looks like it says "Codi". Which sounds more like a dog's name to me.
Another thing I observed is the pet must've been fairly large because the grave is fairly large, and it can't be easy digging in this rocky soil, so they wouldn’t make the grave any bigger than need be. They also gathered quartz and another pretty rocks to cover the grave, and along with the cross tells me that they went to a lot of trouble to make sure the pet wouldn't be forgotten even though far, far, from home.
The back of the headstone has what is apparently the date of Codi's demise, which looks like 2/ 5 /11.
The headstone's writing looks to me like it was done by a child. I wouldn't expect it to be perfect no matter who did it, but it just looks too amateurish to be done by an adult. And of course, that makes the loss of Codi even more heartbreaking.
So I took these pictures and, standing by the grave, assured Codi that he's not forgotten and that he has affected more people's lives over the years than just his family who loves him.