A New Life on the Open Road

Reflections on VanLife Day 1

“We embrace the ways of a Mystic Wayfinder, one who purposefully gets lost in order to chart new ways forward. By getting lost and welcoming the reality that we do not have the answers or know the way forward, we enter a space of liminality and emergence. We are not attempting to fix ‘broken systems’ but are, instead, summoning entirely new worlds….” — Cameron Trimble

It’s quiet at the gate. That’s what I like about coming early to the airport. The mad rush getting to this point — crowds on the roads, crowds at the drop off, crowds at the security check, crowds in the terminals — it all resolves into quiet. Lots of space. Plenty of seats. Room to spread out. The only other people here are the quiet space lovers like me. We give one another the gift of nonacknowledgement.

It’s here my mind stops racing with all the tasks and lists and what if contingencies. My body sighs it all out, and all that’s left is just being. It won’t last. But for this one hour, give or take, it’s full on sacred.

I start to think again about what’s about to happen, but it’s still hard to wrap my head around. What began as an insane idea over breakfast with Tim two years ago is becoming reality today: I’m leaving normal life, and moving full time into a van. Every time I write that it doesn’t feel quite right. Not the van part. That’s definitely happening. The everything else part. The part where Tim and I wept together at that breakfast two years ago, because the idea didn’t just feel insane, it also felt holy … like a divine summons, as grandiose as that sounds. The part where I had to grieve the loss of my home on the mountain, a home I had dreamed about and prayed for for over 20 years, and when I finally got it, I never thought I’d leave. The part where I’m fast approaching 60, and something about taking a leap like this now feels particularly stupid and reckless, at a stage in life when most guys my age are settling into their golden years, content to play golf and live near the grandkids. 

The part where this feels more like a missionary journey than a vanlife adventure, even though I know there will be a ton of adventure involved, and the part right next to that where I don’t have any idea what that means.

Am I nuts? Or a genius who just looks that way, because that’s just how geniuses look, you know?

Probably neither. Well, definitely not a genius, anyway.

I think I’m just a guy who, like all of us, is hungry for a taste of something real, something really Good, really True, and really Beautiful in the time I have left on this tiny blue marble, and I’m just desperate enough to take a leap into the unknown to find it.

A line from Kerouac echoes through my mind …

“You guys goin’ somewhere or just goin’?”

Today I embark on a quest to find a richer, deeper, truer experience of life. I know I’m just a guy in a van, but it feels sacred all the same. Not quite a pilgrimage, because a pilgrimage is linked to a specific destination — you know, like the Cathedral in Santiago is for the Camino. Mine is more of a peregrination — a holy wandering in search of the transcendent and the divine. I don’t know where I’m going, exactly. But I have a pretty good idea how to get there.