Learning How to Drive

What are we willing to undergo, struggle through, fail at, learn from, and challenge ourselves to do - in order to follow our dreams?

For as long as I can remember, I had this wild dream of roaming solo in my own little camper – just me, the open road, and the woods. I am happily married to a man I consider my best friend, I’m deeply rooted in my life, routines, and practices, and I’m grateful for the home in which I live. But there has always been something in me that needs time alone in nature – time to hear myself think, to create, to wander, to daydream, to sit beneath trees without having to explain myself. When I finally bought my little travel trailer, I thought the dream had finally arrived. What I did not yet understand was that between buying the dream and living the dream stood one very large, very humbling obstacle. I had to learn how to drive.

I needed to make this space my own. I chose soothing colors of sea greens and blues, complementing the cream-colored walls and bleached cabinets and floors. I arranged colorful pillows on the couch and the bed and hung deeply personal art on the walls. I stocked the pantry with essentials, mounted my knives on a magnetic strip, and hung a shelf for my spices. Nooks and crannies became home to green plants and bright flowers, a favorite comforter graced the bed, and a soft blanket lay across the back of the couch. I would visit the camper in my driveway to drink in the calm and to dream, enjoying the anticipation of travel but not knowing how to drive.

I asked my husband, Bruce, who can literally parallel park a tractor-trailer, to teach me. We went to a nearby parking lot to practice, reminiscent of my teenage years. I discovered, quickly, that backing up a trailer was very different from backing up a car. Turn the wheels to the right and the towed vehicle goes left. Turn the wheels to the left and the towed vehicle turns right.

My husband and I have very different teaching and learning styles. My husband wanted to teach me technique, and I wanted to know why. We finished our first driving lesson with me in frustrated tears and my husband in frustrated silence, not knowing how to teach me what I couldn’t seem to learn.

Back to the parking lot we went for Lesson #2. This time Bruce taught me the trick of placing my hands on the bottom of the steering wheel rather than at the top. Then he told me to move my hands in the direction I wanted the camper to go. Finally, I had instructions I could follow! Lesson #2 went a bit better, but I had to think through every move, never knowing how much, or how little, I needed to turn the wheel. And my normally patient husband, who has been driving towed vehicles since his teens, simply couldn’t understand why something so easy for him was proving to be so difficult for me.

Lessons #3 – 5 weren’t much better. Not being able to master something quickly was a new and humbling experience. My tears came easily and often. I began to see my dream slipping away. But my husband loves me, and neither of us gives up easily. We kept at it, over and over again, forgiving each other’s frustrated outbursts, trying hard not to say anything we would later regret.

I found myself thinking about backing up my trailer at odd moments of the day, desperate to integrate technique with intuitive knowing. With my husband beside me, I could follow his instructions and back my camper into a space. But I needed to do it alone if I was ever going to live my dream.

I was wandering through a big box store mulling over my inability to control the camper when suddenly I had a brilliant idea – toy trucks! If I could play with a toy truck and trailer, I believed I would see how the trailer moves in response to the truck. I raced over to the toy section and began scouring the shelves until I found what I was looking for – a small green truck and trailer with “Hot Wheels” written on the side. Feeling a bit sheepish buying a toy truck for myself, I paid for it and took it home.

As soon as I got home I began to play with my truck. I pushed it backwards across my kitchen table and noticed how both pieces moved. I slowly turned the truck to the right – and to my surprise – the trailer moved left – just as my husband had claimed. I moved it to the left and yup – the trailer turned to the right. I discovered how I needed to move the truck to straighten out the trailer, just as I would need to do when backing into a campground space. After weeks of practicing in parking lots, my brain finally understood what my arms needed to do. One more visit to an empty parking lot confirmed that something had clicked.

I felt ready to venture out on my own. For my first solo journey I found a farm about 15 miles from my house that allowed a handful of campers to stay overnight. I knew the route well, which gave me some confidence. Before leaving, I reached out to the owner and explained I was a new driver and was assured that access to the site would be easy. And off I went.

As I drove down my long driveway pulling my camper alone for the very first time, tears of fear and uncertainty were streaming down my face. I clutched the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles were white. I had to remind myself to breathe. I played soft and soothing harp music on my radio, the most peaceful music I could find, and forced myself to relax, continue breathing, and focus on the quiet music instead of my fear. Slowly I turned out of my driveway and onto the road.

I drove carefully to the farm, constantly checking my rearview mirror, convinced that at any moment the trailer would detach. The owner met me when I arrived and gave me directions to my site. He told me to follow the dirt road through the cornfields until I came to a numbered marker indicating my turn. Feeling confident, I drove deeper into the farm just as it started to rain.

I cautiously drove over the bumpy and rutted road, with corn growing on either side, looking for the site number sign. The cornfields ended, the road began to dip downwards, and I found myself driving through woods. Unexpectedly, the road came to an end at a fence. I could not go forward and there was nowhere to turn around. I was stuck at the bottom of a hill, in the rain, on a dirt road that was quickly turning into mud. My only option was to back up that wet hill using a skill I had barely learned, let alone mastered – in the rain.

I began backing up slowly, uncertain if the trailer was going in the same direction as my car. So every few feet I hopped out of my car to confirm that I was still going straight. My wheels started to spin on the slippery mud as I tried to drive backwards up a hill in the rain, and I realized that skinny farm roads were very different from parking lots.

I tried, and I tried, and I tried some more. I was able to back up far enough to get out of the woods, but now I had cornfields on either side of me and I was backing up far from straight. With every foot I traveled I was getting closer and closer to running over the farmer’s corn. The rain was coming down harder. The road was getting more slippery. Finally I admitted defeat and called my husband. Then I waited dejectedly, crying hot tears, for him to rescue me. When he arrived, he graciously reassured me that it was a genuinely difficult situation and many experienced drivers would have struggled too. Bruce easily backed up the camper, and together we found the missed turn. Then he left me to enjoy several nights of finally living my dream, my only company being the fireflies and my dog.

Learning continued to humble me. Twice I pulled into thickly wooded campgrounds and became wedged between trees, jackknifing my camper, unable to move forward or back. Another time, I forgot to stabilize the wheels, and the camper rolled off its supporting block, yanking out the electric line. Then there was the improperly attached sewer hose spilling raw sewage over my shoes and onto the ground. And finally, while turning into a stranger’s driveway too tightly, I knocked down his newly installed and very expensive fence, punching a hole in the side of my camper and shearing off that same sewer outlet, sending sewer water across his driveway as he watched. This wasn’t quite the peaceful solitude I had envisioned when I dreamed of camping alone.

But then there were the moments of pure happiness – watching sunrises and sunsets. Listening to crickets and birds. Cooking gourmet meals in my tiny camper kitchen and outdoors on my grill. Feeling the peace that comes from temporarily stepping out of the busyness of life. Enjoying the solitude of no schedules and no demands – time to simply be, to create, to walk, to reflect, to meditate, and to write.

Looking back, I smile at the tears, the mud, the jackknifed trailer, the spilled sewer hose, and the expensive fence. At the time they felt like failures. Now they feel like tuition.

Dreams rarely ask only for desire. They ask for humility. For persistence. For the willingness to become awkward before they arrive.

Every time I pull my little camper into a quiet campsite, I remember that none of those moments were obstacles to my dream. They were simply the price of admission.