I had covered the windows with Con-Tact Brand Shelf Liner and Privacy Film, Clear Cover Self-Adhesive Semi-Transparent Liner, 18'' x 9', Frosty Diamonds. It had been a painstaking process: measuring, unrolling, trimming, and applying the uncooperative plastic film to the dark-tinted rear windows of my rusty, white 2002 Chevy Astro Van (Dutch Doors)—all while crouching, kneeling, lying awkwardly in the now-empty space where other people once sat. Fastidiousness merged with paranoia as I covered every sliver of glass so that nobody would be able to see into the van, to see the platform bed that I would soon build from plywood and two-by-fours, to see that the back of the van was indeed my bedroom, my kitchen, and, on one horrible occasion of which I shall speak no further, my bathroom.
Before it became any of those things though, I’d affixed a Grape Solar GS-STAR-100W Polycrystalline Solar Panel, 100-watt to the roof racks using a Renogy Solar Panel Mounting Z Bracket 4 Units and run a Signstek 25ft AWG 10 Double Layer MC4 PV Solar Cable Extension for Solar Panels with Solar Male and Female Connector through a caulked hole in the roof to an Interstate DC27 Marine battery. I had harnessed a new form of power. From a pair of alligator clips on the battery snaked the red and black cables of a BESTEK 12V 24V battery clip on cigarette lighter socket extension cord MRS301A to which an Igloo Iceless Thermoelectric Cooler (Silver/White, 26-Quart) was mated. But the pièce de résistance was the Cobra CPI 880 800 Watt 12 Volt DC to 120 Volt AC Power Inverter with 5 Volt USB output. This bad boy kept my LG Volt LS740 Android Smartphone and my Acer C720 Chromebook (11.6-Inch, 2GB) well-fed through the miracle of photovoltaic sorcery.
It also kept me well fed—by serving up daily smoothies (local Candy Apple bananas, Kirkland Signature Organic Peanut Butter, and Garden of Life Raw Organic Protein Vanilla, 631 Gram) complements of an Oster Classic Series Blender, Black BLSTSG-BOO. Nightly dinners consisted of Kirkland Signature Organic Quinoa mixed with Best Yet Lentils (Good Source of Fiber) and various steamed vegetables cooked with a BLACK+DECKER RC506 6-Cup Cooked/3-Cup Uncooked Rice Cooker and Food Steamer, White. My diet, my kitchen, my life: all three lean and mean.
And so it came to be that on that first night, parked on the roadside gravel abutting Hale’iwa Ali’i Beach Park, across the street from million-dollar homes, with the necessities of life stripped to the bone, my nerves humming with a new kind of freedom, the orange glow of street lamps fractured through Frosty Diamonds into scintillating sunbursts unlike anything I’d seen before.
Michael Bishop is an MFA candidate at the University of Idaho hailing from Oahu, Hawaii. Informed by studies in psychology and philosophy, and a career in environmental work and emergency rescue, his writing often explores the reciprocal determinism between nature and humanity. His work appears in The Normal School, About Place Journal, High Desert Journal, Ruminate, Points In Case, and is forthcoming in Star 82 Review. He has been awarded a 2021 Fulbright grant for creative writing in New Zealand and is an avid explorer of both wilderness and consciousness alike.
Photo by Gabriel Hohol from Pexels