How many times can one person recycle water? For a culture that is used to having water available at the tap whenever they want it, the question never comes up. For anyone who has to supply his or her own water, it is of utmost importance.

The year of 1989-1990 was spent working on a construction project on Highway 74, a mountainous road that crossed the Ortega Mountains from Lake Elsinore in San Bernardino County to San Juan Capistrano in Orange County. Highway 74 had a reputation as a blood alley due to the numerous deaths that resulted from heavy commuter traffic on a two-lane mountain road. Our job that year was to straighten out a few of the more deadly curves by removing part of the mountain and filling in a canyon

The costs of traveling while working highway construction are high. Motels, meals in restaurants and fuel can quickly cut a big chunk out of one's wages. Keeping as much in our pocket as possible was our goal, so my husband, John, and I had converted a 1969 Crown school bus into a simple camping bus complete with beds for six and a kitchen/dining area.

In February we decided to take the bus down to the job and learned that campgrounds in the area were charging four hundred dollars a month for parking. It seemed steep, especially since we were paying less that that on our mortgage in Tulare County for a four-bedroom home on an acre and a half. While looking for a place to camp, we were informed that the County was placing the job on hold because they had failed to do a proper public notification. Here we were, ready to go to work and no income, We were offered the opportunity to park the bus in the construction equipment yard and act as caretakers till the job started. The yard was located on a private ranch behind a locked gate directly off the hiway. There was no water or power on the property and even the creek was dry.

The Ortega Mountains are like much of the San Gabriel Range of Southern California, dry for most of the year and prone to flash floods in the late winter and early spring. In the summer, the Santa Ana winds kick up, drying the brush and oak trees creating perfect fire conditions; heat, fuel and oxygen. Most of the area we were working in had burnt out the summer of 1988 leaving a landscape of brushy black skeletons and thousands of empty beer and soda bottles strewn along the highway.

The equipment yard was at the bottom of a small canyon in the center of the job. The area had somehow escaped the fate of the fire and was a beautiful little area of oak trees and a dry streambed. Oak leaves lay undisturbed on the ground, in some places over a foot deep while the valley oaks supplied shade to our bus. The creek bed was full of powdery black ash washed down from the surrounding hills. Walking in it left deep footprints that looked like photos f the prints on the moon. By following the creek bed, we could walk under the highway and arrive at the main part of the private ranch, a luxiourius getaway for someone who had made some of that elusive big business money.

After setting up the bus, which consisted of trying to find the most level, picturesque spot, parking it and then trying out the beds to figure out which way to sleep so that our heads would be uphill, we needed to pay attention to the other basic needs; sanitation and water. The company had supplied a porta-potty and we owned a water truck so our non-drinking water and our toilet were taken care of.
Bathing became a huge issue throughout the summer. At first it was accomplished by either standing naked under the sprays of the Water truck or by climbing inside and swimming around. We realized how dangerous it was to be inside the tank one day when my nine-year-old son Kythe came in to the bus, pale and with one hand on top of his head. His two brothers hovered around him like concerned bees. When he removed his hand, the gash on the top of his head oozed dark blood. Kythe's short haircut made it easy to see the ragged skin. John saw the look of shock on my face and took over, cleaning the wound and applying a butterfly bandage to it, giving me the simple job of making the bandage.

Kythe and his brothers had been swimming inside the water tank, and Ky dove under water and had come up quickly and hit his head on a piece of jagged metal near the opening in the top of the tank. That incident ended the swimming pool era of Water Truck bathing.

The next phase of bathing, the season of the spray was cold and somewhat embarrassing. The traffic on highway 74 was visible through the oaktrees, as we stood naked below the sprays of old blue, the water truck. We knew that the traffic was busy watching the road, not looking for naked people hidden in the trees, but still…

The short-lived spray baths were replaced by the tank on the hill. I had worked as a supervisor for Lindsay Olive Growers and had purchased some large black plastic olive curing barrels from the company. We set one of the barrels on the bare hill above our campsite and rigged it with a hose from the bottom which gravity fed the water to a makeshift shower near the bus. We used black irrigation tubing for the hose and attached a showerhead and valve to the end, A blue plastic tarp mounted between trees afforded a small amount of privacy.

The sunshine warmed the water in the tank enough to take the chill off of it, but the really good water was in the black irrigation line between the tank and the showerhead. We used to rush home to be the first to take a shower so we could get the benefit of the first (and only) blast of warm water. By making frequent use of the shut off valve, it was possible to get enough warm water to take a complete shower with the warm water. However, whoever was next in line would always seem to get a teaser of warm water before the cooler barrel water would hit them.

It was several months into our stay when we discovered the ultimate in camp bathing. Old Blue was set up with a pony motor to power the sprayers. A pony motor is an auxiliary engine that is mounted separately from the wheel base engine that can be used to power auxiliary equipment such as the water pump on our truck. This one was a small Japanese car engine mounted on the side of the truck below the tank. Since there was no radiator attached to cool the water in the pony motor, the water from the tank itself would circulate through it to keep it cool. To prevent the engine from overheating when the tank was empty, a reserve of 150 gallons of water was always kept in the tank by a baffle between the engine water and the pump line.

What we finally figured out was that by emptying the truck of all the water but the reserve, and running the pony motor for about an hour, the water inside the tank warmed up to a steamy bath. Then by crawling inside with a ladder, we could sit in our own private steam room and bathtub. It could get so warm, that we would crawl up on the ladder to cool off and then crawl back inside and soak some more. Our hedonism knew no bounds when we got to the point of bringing in a pitcher of martinis, a couple of cigars, some lawn chairs and a Coleman lantern to read by.

One evening, around nine p.m. the kids were asleep and we were enjoying a nice bath inside the truck when we heard a strange noise from the woods. I stuck my head outside the truck and finally was able to make out the words "HELP! FIRE!" I told John and climbed out, threw the towel over my naked shoulder and started sprinting naked through the woods back to the bus. With the Coleman lantern swinging in one hand and my naked butt flashing through the trees, I must have been a site to the passing motorists.

When I arrived at the truck I grabbed the C.B radio and called to the caretaker of the ranch who lived down stream. We had made an agreement after befriending him to always leave our radios on so we could call each other. I told him about the yelling and that I could see a glow through the trees, that John had headed off towards it and to call the fire department. The kids were still sound asleep so I threw on some sweats and shoes and headed off to the locked gate. By the time I arrived, I could already hear the fire engines. We had lucked out because there was a volunteer firefighter meeting that night and everyone was already at the station. Five engines pulled in the road and went straight up the hill to the fire.

It turned out that another member of the crew was tired and didn't want to pay for a room at one of the hotels down the hill that night and decided to sleep in his station wagon. When he parked, he stopped on top of some dry grass and his catalytic converter ignited the grass. He jumped out of the car when he smelled the fire and tried to push it off the grass. He lost control of the rolling car, running it into himself and knocking out his glass eye onto the ground. When John had arrived he was bruised, scared and panicking. He called to John to get the water truck, but because we were using it for a bath that night, we had dumped all but the reserve water out of it. There was no water available to pump. The two of them were using shovels to try and cut the fire down. John was dressed in thongs and boxer shorts fighting the fire. With the arrival of the Fire Department, it was quickly controlled and everyone stepped back and started to relax. I walked up to John while a female fire fighter was standing next to him and asked him if he was chilly in just his underwear. He laughed and said some sweatpants might be nice.

That event put the water issue into solid perspective. We would often reuse water multiple times through the reuse of our melted ice box ice as wash water and then as dust control water. Even our bathing water inside the truck was reused the next day on the jobsite. The issue of water was put into perspective when we realized that the lack of water, when necessary, could have been a deadly problem if the fire had not been controlled.