Encounters…
Lone wanderer
On the road we meet people. Those encounters might last only a few minutes, yet in that time people reveal things about themselves and their lives. I make notes about these encounters so that I remember them. Sometimes I write these notes into coherent mini-stories, into vignettes. This one of those vignettes. This is a story from winter 2019, part way along our nine-month road trip.
A BRIGHT ORANGE coaster mini-bus, the home-on-the-road for someone, was the only vehicle in the car park when I walked to the river. Now it was joined by another vehicle, a Toyota Hi-Ace commercial van whose faded white paint disclosed that this was no new vehicle.
I realised the van was set up for roadtripping when I noticed the solar panels attached to the roof. That was confirmed by the stickers covering a side and part of the back window. They were a graphic record of the places this humble van had taken its owner, places distant from where we were in riverside Dunbogan that rainy afternoon, places west of the ranges.
The driver’s door was open so I wandered over to say hello to this lone traveller.
He sat there, smoking cigarette in his hand. A man well into his seventies, I estimated. He wore a beanie and a checked wool jacket. Practical, warm clothing for this cool, wet day on the coast. His face had not felt the passage of a razor these past several days. I assumed he was on the road, heading somewhere. He wasn’t. He was a local.
“I moved into the area in the late-1950s. I used to live on the other side of the mountain”, he said, indicating the imposing, forested hump of North Brother mountain which dominates the area around here. “I moved to this side
about five years ago”.
I mentioned the stickers on his van. “Well, they’re only some of the places I’ve been. The others didn’t have stickers available”.
“So, where next?”, I asked.
“I’m setting out for outback Queensland soon”, he replied.
My impression from our brief encounter that winter day was that this was a man content in his own company, one of those people who have the practical, make-do skills that give the confidence to fix most of the problems that might be encountered. A lone traveller with little need for company although happy to talk when it came along, like our few minutes of conversation on the banks of the Camden Haven River that grey afternoon. Although he had a home base here in Dunbogan he had an urge to wander, to get into his van and go places.
You, too, probably have encounters like this if you spend time on the road, along the coasts and in the mountains. Brief coming-togethers at some campsite, in some mountain hut, on some beach or on the banks of some river. They are encounters of maybe a few minutes or a few hours with people who have different values to us, different priorities and life experience. They are people going somewhere. Some have destinations. Others have only a direction. I think these brief encounters make our lives richer.
Sometimes, memory of these encounters resurface and I wonder where those people are now and what they are doing. Unanswerable questions coming from a longing to know. I guess they are existential questions too, coming from a knowing that the people we encounter are out there someplace, somewhere, living their lives.
Maybe as we are driving south in the months to come I will remember our brief encounter on the banks of the river this rainy day and wonder whether the lone traveller is somewhere in outback Queensland, and whether he has found any new stickers to put on his van’s windows as a testament to his wandering life on the road?
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