Gypsy Dreamin'...

Yeah, I want one...

Check out the rest of the pics of the build and the final product at paleotool.com, which is a fantastic and fascinating blog written by an archeologist with a penchant for pre-industrial tools and knowledge.  According to the blog, this is his modern take on the traditional "vardo" of European traveler culture, with a little influence from the sheepherder wagons that are still in use today in the American west.

Really, you need to view the build pictures. He built the whole thing from the trailer frame up, and it's awesome. This, I believe, is my ultimate bird-hunting and camping rig. I certainly don't have the carpentry skills necessary to do something like this, but a guy can dream, anyway. I've always wanted to try to design and build some sort of hybrid camper/dog trailer, just a small, simple, easily towable living space, and this comes about as close as I've seen to my ideal.

Oh, sure, I could just go out and buy a small camper (if I had the money, which I don't), but where's the fun in that? Where's the aesthetic? The sense of history? The pride of creation and ownership? I mean, this thing even has a damn bookcase!

This is the kind of rig I imagine Bradbury's Autumn People inhabiting as they traipse about the chill and pensive fall countryside; ancient, creaking caravans hidden in shadow and moonglow, riding the twilight winds of summer's death toward the dark magic and fear and unease of the October Country.

Sounds like a damn good time to me. I, too, would love to traipse about the October Country in a gypsy wagon, riding the twilight winds of summer's death (good freakin' riddance, summer, don't let the door hit your flaming ass on the way out) toward the promise of a fall on the plains chasing birds and dogs and dreams and memory.

And in this thing, I'd be doing it in style.

 
That just looks, I don't know...right, somehow. Like it belongs. Like the beginning of a good story. All that photograph needs to be perfect is me sitting in a chair holding a scotch in one hand, a good book in the other, and the dogs at my feet. That would be be my kind of  story. Minus, of course, the horrible gypsy curse that goes along with most good October stories...