Nights on the Road

Nights on the road can be quite lonesome if you are a solo traveller on your ownsome. Most fellow travellers who are happy to chat with you in the daylight are not so welcoming at night.

I have walked past while they have drinks and nibbles by their individual campfires by their individual portable fire boxes or containers and never in my ten years on the road has anyone ever said “Why don’t you come and join us.” I stop and say “Nice fire. .looks great ” and smile my happy smile and I walk past to my small van and go in and close the windows and doors.

I can read a book if I am in a powered site and also go on the wifi Internet if I am in an area with coverage and I am fine but the real loneliness is in an unpowered site with no wifi or phone coverage and darkness your only friend. At Heifer Creek there was no moon and no public lights and no nothing. I light tea lights and a couple of solar lights I travel with but I longingly looked at the campfires on either side of me and again wonder why my friendly neighbours do not invite me to join them in the evening when they had happily chatted with me during daylight hours.

Somehow when night falls campers huddle beside their own fires and retire into their own private worlds. There are groups that camp together and there are two or three cars that travel together and the happy comradeship makes me feel even more lonely. This trip has made me feel very isolated maybe because I am in areas where people don’t want to socialize with a single female even an old one. Night makes us invisible and unwanted like cochroaches and mice that scurry around in the dark.

So I play the ukulele and sing myself some songs until it gets too dark to see the strings and my fingers start missing the notes and then I change into pj’s and tuck under the blanket ready for the night for once it’s dark it’s bedtime whatever the time is.