The calendar announces that I have been living in a tiny house in Northern California for eight years and two months, if you count my first year when I spent two weeks out of every six  in Kansas City, which I do.  I registered to vote in 2018.  I changed my car registration in 2019 when I no longer had an address to use back home, but only because it was about to expire anyway.

That Missouri plate got me out of a few scrapes during those early months.  An ominous figure lumbered at me from a white pick-up while I photographed a field of turbines.  He demanded to know my business on the private property. I gestured to the RAV4.  I’m from out of town, I asserted.  I’ve never seen windmills like this, and I’ve never seen so many.  He studied me for a long moment before pointing towards the road.  Best get now, though, he said.  We can’t be too careful.  Indeed.  At least he didn’t pull the rifle that I saw through his truck’s back window.

I find myself surrounded with these sensational vistas.  When I drove over Vasco Road to Palo Alto, I cut through rolling hills with row upon row of these tall majestic machines.  When I get to the coast, I gawk at surfers in January, sea lions in March, and hang-gliders in June.  So much space exists here, wide swaths of it, hundreds of miles of rolling hills and two lane highways.   I’ve seen huge rocks just off the coastline on which thousands of sea gulls roost.  I crane my neck to watch majestic formations of cranes cut through the morning sky.

But nothing mesmerizes me like the ships at sea.  I have a thousand stills and an equal number of short video clips of the great vessels making their way through the deep channel parallel with our levee road.  I want to know where they will dock, what they carry, and the names of the sailors who sleep in the berths at night.  I long for a clear sight of the flags under which they sail.  I squint to read their names and then want to know their history.  Most of all, though, I yearn to board one.  I want to walk its slippery surface, touch the metal contours, and feel the hum of the engines as it lumbers eastward, to Stockton, or west to the open sea.

I long to look towards the shore, and find the eye of a lens taking my picture, as I stand on the deck, balanced, sure, and steady.

My mother told me once that as long as I breathed, there remained a lifetime of possibility.  Since I’ve promised to live to be one-hundred and three, I have time.  One day, I will be on that ship, with the wind rippling through my hair and the, salty kiss of the sea caressing my face.  I’m still here.  It can still happen.  Stay tuned.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Photo and video taken from Brannan Island Road, on the California Delta Loop, 09 April 2026

Both © M. Corinne Corley 2026