The road goes on forever, people traveling on it do not. There is nothing really good about getting old and the end result sucks even worse. Pretty soon you realize you only have months, or weeks to live, not years like you’ve been used to your entire life and it’s time to wrap things up.
I set up this website to share photos and memories of the people I’ve known, the places I’ve been and the things we’ve done. It’s my website, but since I was usually the guy with the camera, there’s plenty of pictures of everybody else. I recently spent several months going through tens of thousands of photos and put as many as I can on the ronbarbish.com website. I don’t have any family, so I don’t know what will happen to all those photos and videos on a couple large hard drives, but, for a while, some of the photos will be on the website for everyone to see. There are also years of photos and videos, mostly outdoor activities, at watermanatwork.com.
As some of you may know, in October 2018, I was in a terrible accident that was not my fault. The insurance companies refused to pay for any medical costs or damages. As a result, I lost everything and became homeless. I have met a lot of good people in my life, but in the past several years, I seem to have run into some of the worst people on earth. A few years later, those bad people are running the country and now everybody else is watching their world crumble. It all evens out at the end I reckon.
I’ve been through tough situations plenty of times, but there are times when you just eat shit and do what you can. Against the most powerful criminals in the history of western civilization, the best I could do is record what happened the best I could. I built the ronbosroad.com website to tell my side of the story when I’m gone. Here is a post to help navigate the ronbosroad.com website.
This will be the last post on the ronbarbish.com blog. Decades of photography, video and writing will end here.For the last days, I’ll be spending my time the same as the last eight years, living in the mountains and the desert. I will add photos and comments as the days go by. Some of the things may be a bit disjointed or somewhat out of context, but I only have a couple weeks left so it is what it is.
For the past seven years, I have lived in the most remote places in the western United States. I lost my business to corrupt politicians and corrupt police and lost everything else to more corrupt politicians and cops. “Doing the right thing” has been the wrong thing for me. I left and tried to get as far away from civilization as I could to try and find some peace. American society has gone off the rails, pretty obvious when you look at it from the outside looking in. I may be gone soon, but I have a strong feeling that I am not leaving much behind.
This is a strange situation I am in. According to Christians, Jesus spent forty days and nights in the wilderness for spiritual guidance. I’ve spent two thousand five hundred days and nights in the wilderness, so things are pretty clear. It’s amazing how much of the valuable, limited time you have here on earth is taken up by your material possessions.
I have always been an early riser. I usually wake long before dawn to get the day going early. I always had something to do and the days never seemed long enough. Once I found out it would not be possible to continue my extravagant mobile lifestyle, I went through all the thousands of photos I have and put as many as I could on the ronbarbish.com website. I also made one last full length kayak fishing video and produced a number of shorter kayak fishing videos. I was up before dawn, put the solar panel out and worked on the laptop in the back of my truck all day long.
With all that work done, it started to set in that there was nothing left to do and nowhere to go. I felt like I was partially here, partly somewhere else. It’s like all the creative energy had left my body. No more photos to take, no more writing, no more movies. Being creative was a big part of my life. To not be that way any longer is an adjustment. Writing this, my last writing project, is a lot harder than it should be, but under the circumstances, I guess that should be expected.
Yesterday, I went into town to take care of some last minute business. When I stay in the boonies, I usually go into the nearest town for provisions about once a week. I’m not living off the land, I just don’t have a permanent residence. Yesterday morning, I had to go to five places instead of the usual one grocery store. With the extra walking and getting in and out of the truck, I could barely move. I thought my legs would give out just standing there. A clear sign that things are not going the right way for me.
June 7
Day before yesterday, I made a final trip into the local town for a supply run. I did not really need to, but these are my last few days out in nature, which has been my home for the past seven years. If you live in the city, it would be like leaving your house for the last time. Living in the mountains and desert has not been easy, especially at my age and with the injuries I have, but I guess it’s been better than living in some dump, barely enough money to survive, starving to death, watching TV and going to medical appointments. At least for the last seven years of my life, I have lived in the real world, not the artificial world of confusion that is American civilization. My trip took me from the Midwest, to the beach for a long time, to the Rockies and Cascade Mountains, to the Sonoran Desert. This is the last campsite of many, on the high plains of Arizona.
I booked a hotel for the last few days because I need to take care of some last minute business. It’s a very weird feeling. I have a few things I want to send to some friends, but I already have liquidated nearly everything in the past few months. After what I went through with my elderly parents, my goal is to leave absolutely nothing. Came in with nothing, leaving with nothing.
June 8
Last night was the most painful night so far. In addition to the pain in my lower body, there was intense pain all night from my stomach. Burning, stabbing pain all night. When I woke up, I was nauseous and my mouth tasted like blood. This has happened before so it’s not a one time deal. I only slept a couple hours. Since it’s the same every night, I’m always tired.
Today I finished transferring four terabytes of photos and video files to two external hard drives, which took a couple days. The drives have all the photos I’ve taken and videos I shot over the past thirty years. Since I don’t have a family, I will give the drives to two of my oldest friends and ask that they keep the photos in their families. There’s photos of stuff that is already gone and things people today will never see in person. All the content is real, generated by a human being. In the future, that will be important.
Tomorrow is the last day and night of wilderness living then off to the Last Stop Motel. Where I have several important things to do.
June 9
These are my last days in this world. No Netflix, no TV, no refrigerator, no microwave. It’s been tough, very tough in some ways and yet, the path to understanding. Just like monks in some mountaintop temple, I’ve lived in a similar environment. Limited contact with civilization, mainly a once a week shopping trip. With self check out in the stores, I usually don’t talk to anybody. I’ve gone weeks at a time without talking to another person. The places I’ve stayed, I’ve gone days without seeing another person. Eliminate most human conventions and spend twenty four hours a day, seven days a week in the natural world really cleans up your thinking.
As I put my solar panel out for the last time, I recall that even though I have no permanent residence, thanks to the solar power system I made, a laptop computer, and a couple of cameras, I was able to maintain the watermanatwork.com website, online since 2006. Also a regular blog covering kayak fishing, mountain biking, ham radio and SDR. I made a number of videos that appear on YouTube. I made ronbarbish.com to recall the people, places and things that shaped my life by publishing as many of my photos as possible. Following the 2018 accident, I knew I was in with very dangerous and corrupt people and made ronbosroad.com in case anything should happen to me, my side of the story would be told and that’s pretty much what happened. Time to pack up for the last time.
June 13
After one last night on the high plains and it’s back to civilization. I booked a motel room for the last few days to pack up all the things I wanted to send to my friends and just not be under a lot of pressure. Sleeping in a nice bed has not had any effect on my lower body. In fact, my legs and hips feel like they are barely working. It’s hard to walk up a single stair or stand up straight. Today is Friday and I just dropped off all the packages at UPS and the post office.
That’s it, everything is gone. No more photos because I sent the cameras away. Hopefully they will inspire somebody I know to start taking pictures. One more night and I’ll be off to see what’s over the hill. You have to move forward with an open mind. As you move along, you look for signs you’re going the right way. I’ve been following the signs, that’s why I’m confident I am going in the right direction, even though it may not appear that way.
It’s too late now to start discussions on what I’ve seen and experienced in the past eight years. I knew this day would come, that’s why I have the ronbosroad.com website. Describing all of the negative things that happened to me was no easy job, but I felt I had to do it so the truth would be known. Being honest and telling the truth has not helped me all that much, but it’s too late to change now. To balance all the negative things, there is ronbarbish.com that is mainly “the good old days”, and there were a lot of them. Please check it out and take a trip down Memory Lane. Finally, check out the watermanatwork.com website. Twenty years of fishing, bike riding, and more recently, ham radio and SDR. It’s been on line for almost twenty years. The last eight years, everything was created in the back of my truck using solar power.
So that’s it. I’ve done everything I wanted to do, I don’t have any regrets. If I was healthy, I’d want to live a little longer, but I’m not, so that takes care of that. I don’t owe any money and I’m leaving something behind that I hope will be a positive thing. What’s ahead? I don’t know, but its not the first time I’ve been in this situation. I will keep an open mind and see what’s up when I get there.
Keep an open mind, have some mental discipline and your life will go a lot smoother. Don’t listen to the voice on TV, listen to the voice in your head. Make sure you see what you are looking at.