I was 10 the year my parents drove from Michigan to the Rocky Mountains for summer vacation.  The trip meant six weeks in the back of a truck camper: no TV, no radio. No parental supervision, since they rode in the cab of the truck. These were the days before handheld video games or home computers or smart phones.

Mostly, my brother stared out the window and slept.  Mostly, I read.  I had a stack of books checked out the public library.  I’d just recently started reading novels.  One of these was Dracula.

There’s a photograph of me sitting on a boulder outside the campground at Rocky Mountain National Park.  It was beautiful there and I was excited about seeing mountains, but my dad and the camper were queued up in a very long line of campers and cars, waiting to see if there would be any campsites for…