My distaste of nature began as early as I can remember, during one disastrous weekend my family spent RVing in Wisconsin. In their youthful naiveté, my parents not only enjoyed being outdoors but actively sought time to be outside exclusively, like some kind of forest animals, content with only the trees and a bonfire and a fully equipped RV. I was never on board with the concept of the RV, even as an infant, when I still regularly shit my pants. If you’re putting an entire house on wheels just to drive it into the woods, why don’t you just stay in the fucking house? You can call it a recreational vehicle all you want, but an RV will always be the vehicle you don’t want to drive behind on the highway because there’s a 100 percent chance that an infant child is giving you the middle finger from the rear window. I was that infant child. And that middle finger was my cry for help. I like to point out this fact to clarify that I myself was never an RVer, simply the child of RVers and an unwitting participant in the culture of RVing. And yes, RVing is not just an activity, but an entire culture, with a rich history of camping in Walmart parking lots and dumping buckets of piss and shit on the side of the American interstate highway system. It’s a beautiful culture, respected by many, and disrespected by many more.

My parents never owned an RV, but our family friend Sue owned one, and that was good enough for us. Sue was an old, sprightly woman who worked with my parents years earlier at the department store where they met. (Yes, my parents met working at a department store. I am a child of coupons and cheap garments.) By the time I was born, Sue was already widowed and retired, and spent her free time driving out into the wilderness to enjoy nature. I loved Sue. She had a nasty sense of humor—most of the time, I didn’t know what she was laughing about, but I laughed along with her anyway. She had a bunch of cactuses in her house that were taller than I was and a full basement with a pool table and a bunch of paintings of clowns that when the lights were turned off I’m pretty sure sprang to life to feast on cubes of beef and carrion that Sue flung to them from upstairs. She was a quirky old broad who would do stuff like that.