Marion: I would like to start with the compulsion we’ve all heard
about on Zoe’s part, and frankly, we know more about that
from Zoe’s perspective than from yours. You were on sabbatical
in France. What was it you thought when she first
said, “Here’s what I’ve done: I bought that Born Free?”
Lovern: I was over there because I had been teaching for over
seven years in the college and I was eligible for sabbatical.
I had done my dissertation on Multicultural
Education in U.S. higher education. I was interested
in how Europe had approached this topic. They
approached it differently. Their workers that came
in from other countries were assumed to be going
back to their country eventually.
So they taught foreign workers their own languages
and all their cultural aspects. In our schools
at that time, we were trying to make foreign workers
become little Americans. I was curious about
the Europeans’ system.
I was in my little house. It was actually a 900-yearold
house in this little tiny French village. Zoe and I
were writing back and forth all the time, and sometimes
calling.
She wrote me that she’d gone to this RV show
and felt compelled to do so. She fell in love with the
Born Free and ordered it. It called to her, Zoe, and
she wanted it. That kind of surprised me because she
always said she didn’t like to pack and unpack. But
obviously that’s what she wanted to do now.
Marion: You get back from France, and now you have to go to pick
up the Born Free. What was that like for you?
Lovern: I just didn’t know what to expect really. I thought,
‘Well, that’s a long way from Iowa to Washington
State.’ Once we got there we went through the factory.
I saw that the Born Free was a very nice unit.
It was only 23-feet long, so it was small enough
that we could stop just about anywhere. I enjoyed
the drive back. It was very freeing. By the time we
got back, I was enjoying the RV.
Marion: What do you mean by freeing?
Lovern: Freeing in that you’re just taking off and going wherever
you want to go. You can do what you want to
do, and go where you want to go.
I should qualify that we had rented a van camper
one Christmas and gone up to Vancouver Island in
it. We had enjoyed that experience even though we
found out later the camper had bald tires. But we had
a grand time in that van.
Note: Lovern’s original interview was delayed due to
back surgery. A recovery challenge given the height
of the steps into her diesel motorhome…
Marion: I want to explore in more depth the strength of these women
who RV. I’m not talking about physical strength.
Zoe: I think that’s what binds us. It does take strength.
It even takes strength to get an RV and go out on a
weekend trip. It takes a different mindset. It takes
an ability to get out of the nest and quit copping out
on habit. Then when you go from a part-time RVer
to a full-time RVer, that takes even more strength. It
takes a very strong person to change the way they
have been brought up, to go against the tide of their
community and their friends, and to get out there
and do it.
That same kind of risk-taking would apply to
full-time RVing because it’s a risk. It’s an emotional
risk. You might not be able to cope with it, with not
having a place to land.
Marion: Not everyone needs to be anchored to a community. Ruth
talks about that. She thought she knew a lot about community
until she got on the road full-time and met all kinds of
different communities.
Zoe: You have to define community. Some communities
are very unforgiving, but it’s still your community.
You don’t think you can get out of it. A lot of people
don’t want those kinds of challenges. So this life is
not for them.
Marion: I’m using multimedia to capture these stories. One of my
goals over the long term is to have these voices so we can
hear them a hundred years from now. What is it that you’d
want people to remember about this and remember about
your participation in this interview?
Zoe: I think without RVW, Lovern and I might not have
gone back out on the road again because we wouldn’t
have had a community. We’d be right back where we
started in the beginning.
Marion: This was four years ago when you sold everything again?
Zoe: We have RVW now. We can do this. So we did it.
I think if I died tomorrow, that developing RVW
and the Park are the things I’m proudest of. All my
life I’ve wanted that kind of community.
If you have the dream, for heaven’s sake do it.
You can always quit. Take the plunge. You have the
support and the rewards are indescribable.
Marion: What did your friends think?
Zoe: That was a definite negative. Our friends knew we
were insane. They did not understand. None of them,
not one of them, understood. They couldn’t relate to
it; they couldn’t relate to us.
Marion: But what was that response about? You traveled a lot.
It wasn’t about the traveling then. It must have been the RV?
Zoe: It was because we didn’t have a home. We went off
and sold everything we owned, and went off into
the wild blue yonder. They couldn’t deal with this
notion because we didn’t have any roots. We didn’t
even try to convince them otherwise. That’s what
spawned the RV travel club. We needed connections
who didn’t think we were crazy.
I felt, Lovern didn’t care—she was having a good
time—but I felt I needed connections while I was on
the road. I needed to be able to see people and visit
people and have something in common.
Marion: I want to come back to your friends’ reactions.
Zoe: It wasn’t discussed. Everybody was very polite about
it. You just knew they didn’t know what was going on.
Now, the very same people understand completely.
We’re all good friends again. I don’t know what
to tell you.
Now this sounds easy. But any time you move
to another community, or move out of a community,
there’s a lot of emotional stuff going on. Some
people give up at that point. They say, “Well, there’s
this little thing to overcome and that little thing to
overcome, and I guess it wasn’t meant to be.” And
they give it up.
When you set a goal, you can’t let little things
get in the way. You can’t use them as an excuse not
to meet your goal. You just set a goal and you deal
with all the obstacles that get in the way until you
get there. But you don’t say, “Oh well, I guess it
wasn’t meant to be,” and give it up. You do it. Then
if it isn’t right, you can always quit. Nothing’s cast
in concrete.
If you look at it like, ‘this is the end, it’s all over, I
can’t change,’ you’re going to believe it’s impossible.
The truth is, you can change anything in the world
you’re doing.
Once you don’t have to work, then this philosophy
can be actualized. When you’re working, things are
different. Or when you’re raising kids, things are different.
You just do what you have to do. Once you’re
free, you haven’t got an excuse.
Zoe: I never thought that I’d be interested in RVing again
tent-travel back and forth across the United States
with my kids. After that, I decided I never wanted
to pack or unpack another rig as long as I lived.
But while Lovern was in France on sabbatical, I
had a compulsion to buy an RV. I shopped for weeks
for an RV, not really wanting one—knowing that I
didn’t even like RVing.
So I finally found an RV I didn’t want. I ordered
it custom-made, and I got it as small as I could. I got
a 23-foot Born Free and wrote to Lovern and told
her that I had bought an RV and I had no idea why.
Zoe: I had no idea. I was going to park it in the driveway
I was going to do.
Marion: You get home to Seattle, where Lovern has her work in
business. She decides to go out and stay overnight in the
rig in the driveway.
Zoe: We did take one overnight trip, and then after that she
I said, “If you’re going to do that, let’s move the rig to
an RV park and sleep there.” I didn’t want to sleep
in the driveway.
We kept the house, until Lovern said, “We could
go full-time RVing if you didn’t have to work.” So
that’s what we did. I sold my business and we began
RVing in the mid-1980s.
I was a psychologist by profession. Somebody
asked me once if I thought certain behavior modification
used with kids could work with dogs. I thought
that was the funniest thing I’d ever heard in my
life. Then I started looking at it. There was such a
market for it that I started taking care of issues on
the side.
Marion: What did your family think when you made the commitment
Born Free?
Zoe: I didn’t ask them at that time. I just told them and
just glad I was out of Los Angeles. They didn’t care
what I did.
Heads up: Notice the sound quality variation from
Zoe’s opening comments and the grainy variation
from then on…a microphone computer connected
quality versus a long distance cel phone connection.
Sally: What might be interesting for folks to know, Marion, is the
about that?
Marion: In 1993, we bought a ’93 Bounder motorhome. What
go into the video business. Someone who was doing
that in Denver trained us to do it. Within six months,
we learned from first-hand experience that Arizona
is the sixth largest state in the union. We were averaging
about six to eight miles to the gallon and we
were out on the road weekly. There were places we
couldn’t get that 34-foot Bounder into small video
store parking lots.
We had to find some alternatives. We had to buy
a van; we had to move into a park model; a small and
very nice trailer. I now know I can live simply.
It was a struggle for us because there’s a lot of
risk in starting your own business. We had started
a business before but not like that. So the RVing for
us didn’t last very long.
Sally: You meet some people who do RVing, some really amazing
telling of their story, what is your fascination with these
women who live this lifestyle—the RVing lifestyle?
Marion: I’ve always been a big fan of the WPA (Work Projects
student at Phoenix College and they built most of
the buildings there. I go over often and admire the
plaque with President Roosevelt’s name on it and say,
“Here’s the buildings those guys built.”
I met women who did work in that era. I found
that connection fascinating. I met Ruth Silver and
talked to her and heard her story. I began to realize,
while I may not be RVing anymore, I’m around
women who are and their stories are important. Then
just kind of all came together.
Sally: So here you are with a big Web site, www.togivevoice. com,
all of your own. But the big question is: Are you still
Sally: And what gets you beyond that? Because clearly, you’re
this stuff. Where does your love of the storytelling business
come in, in terms of telling other people’s stories that are
not fictional, for example?
Marion: One of the things Mom said about me as a kid is
me—to the point where she’d have to keep an eye on
me. And to me, that was just another story you hear
from your mom.
Someone I know said, “No, it’s something about
you personally.” So that was the first time I was aware
that people singled me out for a reason.
from in here. I don’t know if it’s a sense of empathy
or friendliness because I’ll tend to say “Hey” before
someone else does. I finally realized that’s my gift
and people don’t get heard, but they need to be heard
and that led to To Give Voice in terms of realizing
that’s my remaining life’s work.
Sally: People need to be heard. Can you say more about that? I
this is. I think this is really important—the whole “people
need to be heard” thing.
Marion: There are far more stories out there than I’ll ever have
from now, I think that effort will matter to someone.
My intent was to capture stories in a way that
would be put in a time capsule and buried somewhere
symbolically.
The challenge is that if people don’t keep up with
technology we won’t be able to hear these voices in
the future. The book becomes important because we
can still read it.
So the multimedia is important because it allows
me to afford people an opportunity to speak for
themselves. The only reason I’m being interviewed
is because others want to know, “Why are you doing
this?” Some people think I’m absolutely out of my
mind, and they’re probably right.
Remember…audio may not always match the text
due to book editing decisions…two different mediums.
I have always been fascinated by who people are, where they
come from and why they live on one side of the street instead
of the other. Imagine my surprise when I met a group of
women who chose to live on no street at all.
The following five interviews come from women who made
the decision to RV full-time. Each comes to her story from a
different perspective but they all share a strength I just had
to explore.
Who drives away from the American
Dream and into a nomadic life?
How do you build community
with other nomadic travelers?
And when you can no longer travel …
What happens then?
These interviews are not about buying an RV and they are
not RVing travelogues. Rather, they reveal the courage it takes
for a woman to RV. These women are unique. There’s a strength
within them—a strength they may not see themselves.
And THAT is the core of my passion for these stories.
I want to know what other women think, even if you don’t
RV, but you do see yourself reflected in their strength. Or you
would like to.
The interviews occur in an order that resonates as the stories
progress:
Marion Orem opens with this brief introduction and
Part I of my own RV interview, conducted by Sally.
Zoe Swanagon follows with her compulsion to buy
an RV and the legacy impact that compulsion would have on
1000s of women.
Lovern King shares a decision to RV full-time that led
her and Zoe to found RVW, a travel club for women who RV,
in the early 1990s.
Sally Exworthy & Jan Scott follow with what
they had to keep and what they had to let go when they began
RVing for a second time.
Ruth Silver reveals a story in her monologue that
begins with an RV focus but ends with her thoughts about
community.
Marion Orem closes with Part II of her interview by
exploring why these stories are important to any woman,
regardless of her RV experience.
Now, I‘ve been warned on occasion, “Senior women won’t
visit your Web site. They won’t care about a blog or even know
how to listen to a podcast. They won’t have a clue how to download
mp3 files. Who’s interested in these stories anyway?”
I’m interested, and as a member of the Arizona Book
Publishing Association I’ve been assured, “We all have an insatiable
need to read and to hear stories about ourselves ….” I’m
hangin’ with the authors and publishers on this one because if
we don’t get our own stories, no one else is going to.
This interview process has been a humbling experience. It
has challenged my own thoughts about community and how
each of us can benefit from these women, their strength … and
their wisdom.
Note: Episodes content may vary from the book and audio
due to reader and listener editing choices.
It takes courage to go off and live full-time in your RV, even
more so for a woman, I believe. Thoughts that can occur:
❖ Can I drive an RV?
❖ Is it safe?
❖ How will I meet people and experience a sense of
community?
❖ What do I do if I have a problem? Can I really sell everything,
give up my home and live in an RV?
Having a mentor, another woman who is living on the road
and who loves the RV lifestyle, can make the difference. She
provides you with a role model, someone to whom you can go
if you have questions. Think of her as a friend who has already
figured out the ropes.
Women who choose this lifestyle are strong and courageous.
They have bravely stepped into the unknown. They push forward
in spite of their fears, possessing the self-confidence to
know they will be able to figure things out as they go along
and deal with any problems as they arise.
The joy of the open road and their own personal freedom
are what matters most to these women.
Women Who RV and Their Kindred Spirits gives voice to women
who had the courage to follow their dreams and take the path
less traveled. These women are special and can be mentors to
other women who have thought of the RV lifestyle as an attractive
option but have not yet taken that step toward living it.
They are also role models for living your dream, whatever
that dream may be. It takes courage to step out of your old life
and try something new. These women did it in spite of questions
and fears. They found new adventures, new abilities, and—in
some cases—new lives as a result.
So can you.
—Jaimie Hall Bruzenak
Author of RV Traveling Tales: Women’s Journeys on the Open
Road, The Woman’s Guide to Solo RVing and other RV books.
—RVLifestyleExperts.com
Wednesday: “Your second book will be easier…”
By · Comments
I’ll be adding SmartDraw and other jpeg visuals to the July through September WWRV blogs and podcasts series. I was so focused on my first audio CD and book that I had little time for anything else.
Wordpress makes it very easy to add media once you learn how to do each option. Not only that, there are a lot of Wordpress resources around so you can minimize your learning curve’s impact on any one helpful soul.
ABPA members told me ”Your second book will be easier…”
While that’s true, there’s now a whole SmartDraw learning curve ahead. Social media’s influence and demands actually strengthened my NAOPB process.
Patience will be a key as I move through this podcast and blogs series. Mine not your’s…
I met with WWRV resource Media Mike (as I call him) today to get a brief but thorough overview of Wordpress. My Wordpress web site was recently revised by NAOPB resource Dave Barnhart – more on Dave shortly.
Monday: Preface: “Every end is a beginning …” (no audio)
By · CommentsI honestly thought that Kindred Spirit Marty Hanus
would be the last one standing. He was the first to fall.
Rest in peace my friend…
Women Who RV, Volume I
“Every end is a beginning … gain is disguised as loss …
and sunset. Dread drifted in like fog, unsuspected and unsettling.
It was my mind that I came to fear the most. A lifelong ally
suddenly turned enemy.
I became obsessed with the question: “Is the glass half empty
or is it half full?” For me, the glass was empty.
Haunted by negative fears and thoughts, a self-fulfilling
prophesy began to take hold—a prophesy I struggle with to
this day. “You are the biggest fear you face right now,” I was
cautioned by someone who reached out to help me.
I am the biggest fear I face and I struggle with that fear
every day. I exploit that struggle through writing and digital
storytelling. My mother’s love of the movies nurtured a legacy
that became my lifeline.
interviews. Interviews that will celebrate the voices of women
who follow their dreams.
For me, the glass is full now, replenished by stories yet to
be heard. Digital storytelling is not work for the faint of heart,
but it is my remaining life’s work.
My mother’s favorite movie: 42nd Street—1933 starring Dick
Powell and Ruby Keeler. My favorite memory: I can still hear
Mom tap dancing while she does the dinner dishes—always
a magic time for me.
