Of course I endured the anguish of a first horseback ride for the next day or two, but it was worth it, and by the time we were ready to start for home I could sit down quite comfortably. The trip was accomplished without a jolt or jog sufficient to disarrange Grandmother's curls. Aunty and I were always so thankful that we defied the family and let her have her last adventure, for soon afterward her mind began to grow dim. For myself, I treasure the memory both for her sake, and because I can't climb trails myself any more, and that is something I didn't miss. Was it Schopenhauer or George Ade who said, "What you've had you've got"?
Twenty years later another party of four, consisting of a husband and two boys, were led by a lady Moses into the promised land, and were met by an old friend, the Civil War veteran, with a motor instead of his pair of black horses! He was too old to drive, but he had come to welcome me back. Billie and Joedy were thrilled. They adored the tales of his twelve battles and the hole in his knee, even more than their mother had before them, being younger and boys. It was as lovely a land as I had remembered it, only, of course, there were changes. The motor showed that. I should not say that the tempo of life had been quickened so much as that its radius had been widened, or that the focus was different; the old spell was the same. To reconcile the past and the present, I have thought of a beautiful compromise. Why not a motor van? The family jeered at me when I first suggested that we spend J----'s next vacation meandering up the coast in one. Of course, the boys adored the idea at first, but sober second thoughts for mother made them pause.
Billie: "But, Muvs, you'd hate it, you couldn't have a box spring!"
Joedy: "And you don't like to wash dishes."
Quite true. I had thought of all that myself. I don't like to wash dishes, but we use far more than we really need to use, and anyway I had rather decided that I wouldn't wash them. As to the bed-spring, I could have an air mattress, for while it's a little like sleeping on a captive balloon, it doesn't irritate your bones like a camp cot.
The family distrust of me, as a vagabond, dates from a camping trip last August to celebrate Billie's twelfth birthday. It lasted only one night, so "trip" is a large word to apply to it, but I will say that for one night it had all the time there could be squeezed into it. We selected a site on the beach almost within hallooing distance of the Smiling Hill-Top, borrowed a tent and made camp. I loved the fire and frying the bacon and the beat of the waves, but I did not like the smell of the tent. It was stuffy. I had been generously given that shelter for my own, while the male members of the party slept by a log (not like one, J---- confessed to me) under a tarpaulin--I mean "tarp"--with stars above them except when obscured by fog. My cot was short and low and I am not, so that I spent the night tucking in the blankets. The puppies enjoyed it all thoroughly. Though they must have been surprised by the sudden democratic intimacy of the situation, they are opportunists and curled themselves in, on, and about my softer portions, so that I had to push them out every time I wanted to turn over, which was frequently. I urged them to join the rest of the party under the "tarp," but they were firm, as they weren't minding the hardness of the cot, and they don't care especially about ventilation. I greeted the dawn with heartfelt thanksgiving, and yet I'm as keen about my vacation idea as ever. I have simply learned what to do and what not to do, and it won't matter to me in the least whether my ways are those of a tenderfoot or not. Why not be comfortable physically as well as spiritually? Think of the independence of it! To be able to sit at the feet of any view that you fancy till you are ready to move on! Doesn't that amount to "free will"? Yes, I am resolved to try it out and Billie says if I make up my mind to something I generally get my way (being descended from Grandmother probably accounts for it), so if you should see a rather fat, lazy green van with "Why not?" painted over the back door, you may know that two grown vagabonds, two young vagabonds, and two vagabond pups, are on the trail following the gypsy patteran.