Campo Vista RV Park

The Campo Vista RV Park is 5 acres of land scraped of native chaparral along Campo Creek in the mountains east of San Diego, squeezed between the U.S.-Mexico border and the original Southern Pacific railroad line.

It would be generous to call Campo Vista an RV park. It is better described as a storage/junk yard with a few spaces that have water and electricity hookups. And the few people who are using those hookups aren't there for recreation. They live there year-round, one step removed from homelessness.

Bill Sanville hooked up his RV and his family at Campo Vista shortly after marrying his second wife, Maria. His first wife, the mother of his two children, died of complications of diabetes that were further complicated by morbid obesity and an addiction to diet sodas. Shortly after her death, Bill met Maria while vacationing (in his RV) in Rosarita Beach, Mexico.

If it were left up to Bill, he would have kept the RV and the family in Mexico, where the rent is even cheaper than Campo Vista. Maria, however, insisted on living in the U.S. to secure her citizenship and a proper education for the children. Campo Vista was a compromise between Maria's desire to live in an American city and Bill's compulsive desire to live cheaply.

Bill loves his children and he enjoys the company of Maria, but as a long-haul truck driver, he spends most of his time in the cab of an eighteen wheeler, alone with his own appetites and prejudices, fed by truck stop diners and talk radio. When he gets home, it takes a few days to get his attention pointed in the direction of the needs of the family, and then he is off on another trip delivering a load across the country, eating a load, and listening to a load.

Living in a 30-foot RV with someone else's children 500 yards from the Mexican border in the middle of nowhere was not Maria's idea of the American dream. But at forty, with two grown children of two long-gone fathers, she was happy to have an American opportunity, even if it wasn't her idea of the American dream. In Rosarita Beach she was able to eke out a living cleaning hotel rooms, but that was all there was to her life — long hours to sustain an existence, for what? To her, the difference between Mexico and America was choices. In America, she felt like she at least had choices. Not that there is any guarantee of anything really being any different, but at least she had choices in America. In Mexico, in Rosarita, there just weren't any choices for her any more. Her life was reduced to existence — tedious hours of hotel cleaning existence. For what? While her children were with her, she had an answer to that question. But now they are gone, living their own lives, eking out their own existence somewhere in the north eastern United States.

Not long after arriving in Campo Vista RV Park, Maria started to realize that choices weren't a function of a border. American choices didn't suddenly rain down on her when she crossed the border. In fact, she realized that there was no such thing as American choices or Mexican choices or a lack thereof. When she decided to marry Bill, was that a Mexican choice or an American choice? When she agreed to live in Campo Vista, was that an American choice? It didn't matter what side of the border she was on. She made choices, and her choices were what brought her to Campo Vista and that's what she had to live with.

Since her arrival, Maria discovered a dual passion that has made her isolated life tolerable and enjoyable. She discovered cheap wine and telenovelas.

Both, a bottle of wine and the telenovelas, would start in the middle of the afternoon and last into the early evening, which was exactly the time slot in Maria's daily life that needed filling. With the wine, the characters of the telenovelas became animated as if their dramas were the genuine dramas of lifelong friends. Maria could feel the pain of their tortured relationships and the glory of their romantic triumphs. With the wine and telenovelas, Maria could feel passionately. Without them, her feelings were empty.

Shannon and Tanner, Bill's children, quickly learned that the RV was not the place to be when Maria was enthralled with her wine and telenovelas. That was a closed world and outsiders only brought rage on themselves if they dared to enter or interrupt that world.

Barred from the inside of the RV for much of the day and left on their own, Shannon and Tanner explored the outside world of Campo Vista and its surrounding countryside. They know every one of the Campo Vista residents, and their pets.

They know the Millers, Harold and Ginger, an elderly retired couple who came from Minnesota because they could no longer afford to heat their home and pay for Ginger's heart medication. Shannon and Tanner helped them look for their dog, Millie, when she ran off one night. They didn't find Millie, but were certain that the coyotes did.

They know stinky Floyd who lives in his trailer with four cats and drinks too much and occasionally passes out naked outside his trailer. It seems that Floyd is never sober. He's always somewhere between very buzzed and semi-conscious. He's also very thin and frail, choosing alcohol as his primary nutrient. He's actually eloquent and an engaging conversationalist when he's capable of constructing complete sentences. During those times, Shannon and Tanner hang out with him and talk about the books they are reading.

They know Bonnie, who has half a dozen rabbits. Bonnie is very nice and whenever Bonnie is hospitalized, Shannon and Tanner take care of the rabbits. Usually Bonnie is hospitalized for just a few days until she is stabilized with a variety of anti-psychotic medications.

Shannon and Tanner have explored the entire length of Campo Creek along southern edge of the RV park. They experimented with diverting the flow of the creek by building dams and canals in the creek bottom. Sometimes they would catch small frogs and lizards, but found it impossible to tame them into meaningful pets.

On the north side of the RV park, along the railroad tracks, there is a rock formation that they dubbed Castle Rock, and they consider it their fortress which commands all the land within sight of the top of the rock. From Castle Rock they can look down on the Southern Pacific freight trains that come through twice a week. From Castle Rock they can see Highway 94 and the Border Patrol vehicles that race up and down the highway trying to stem the tide of illegal immigration coming up from Central America and across Mexico. They can also see the border fence as it ascends into the mountains, rusted and broken at places but never ending and always emphatic as it demarcates this country and that country.

If Shannon and Tanner aren't playing in the creek or posting lookout at the top of Castle Rock, they can usually be found in the shade of Castle Rock with a book, for they are voracious readers. Unlike most of the adults in their life, they somehow acquired a natural curiosity for lives and lands that are far — very far — from their own. It's probably something that, like their blonde hair, they inherited from their mother.

Shannon was reading in the shadow of Castle Rock and was startled when Tanner jumped down from above her and only paused to shout at her as he ran towards the railroad tracks, "Shannon, c'mon! The coyotes got something!"

"What?" she shouted back, irritated at the interruption to her reading.

"Just c'mon! The coyotes got something!" Tanner yelled back as he scrambled up the railroad embankment onto the tracks.

The coyotes got something? Probably a rabbit, Shannon thought as she marked her place in her book. This is not something she would want to see. Tanner is such a boy.

When she got up to the tracks with Tanner, he pointed further down the tracks. "See, there" he said softly. Indeed there was a coyote, intently chewing on something next to one of the track rails. So intent was it on whatever it was eating that it didn't seem to notice Shannon and Tanner, just about 30 yards away.

It wasn't a rabbit; Shannon could see that, but neither could she make out what it was. As they watched, trying to make out what this coyote had gotten a hold of, something sparkled from one end of it as the coyote pulled off a piece from the other end.

"What was that?" Tanner said. "What is that?"

"I don't know. Part of a deer leg?" said Shannon.

Tanner knelt down slowly and picked up a rock, and then quietly took a step toward the coyote, and then another, and another. Shannon did the same, trading the book in her hand for a good throwing rock.

They got within 15 yards of the coyote before it noticed them, and when it did, both Tanner and Shannon shouted at the coyote, threw their rocks, and rushed at it. The coyote was so startled at this display of aggression that it ran off into the brush, leaving its found meal behind.

"Oh my God!", "Wow!" said Shannon and Tanner at the same time when they recognized what the coyote was so intent on consuming.

"It's an arm!" said Tanner.

They wouldn't have recognized it at all — it was so dirty, mauled, covered with bugs and ants — were it not for the hand and the finger with a diamond ring that sparkled in the sunlight.

Shannon and Tanner both stared at it silently for a moment.

Then suddenly with a fright, Tanner looked all around when he realized that this arm must have been attached to a person, or an armless zombie, seeking its missing limb, might come crashing out of the brush at any moment. His momentary panic subsided when he forced himself to accept that zombies only existed in comic books.

"What should we do?" Tanner asked after pulling himself together.

"Go get Maria," Shannon said.

"Oh no, it's the end of the season and she's already half way through her wine. She wouldn't believe me anyway, and she'll just yell at me."

Shannon knew he was right. There was nothing that was going to get her out of the RV until the end of the finale of "Ano de Amor."

"What about Bonnie?" Tanner said.

"No, this would freak her out. She just got back from a week in the hospital. I don't think she could handle this," said Shannon.

"There's no way Mr. Miller could make it up here with his walker. And Floyd is…" Tanner didn't complete the sentence, but Shannon knew what he was saying.

"Dad will be back tomorrow," Tanner continued, "but we can't just leave this here until then. The coyotes will get it again."

"We'll show it to Dad tomorrow," Shannon said. "You wait here and I'll get a trash bag. We'll hide it until tomorrow when Dad gets back."