(This is Chapter Five in my “Thoughts on Van Life” series of posts, in which I discuss that every upside of van living carries a defined downside. Check out Chapter One , Chapter Two , Chapter Three, and Chapter Four if you haven’t already).
When you live in a van: you’re free, but also feral.
Upside– You are Free to Do Whatever You Want
There’s a part of day-to-day living in a home, community, or neighborhood that has social and societal obligations irrevocably tied to it. Whether renting or owning, there’s stuff that needs to be done.
If you want a lawn, decorum says to mow it and water it. If you want friends, you ought to go to their birthday gatherings. If you want to keep the power on, you better pay the bills.
While living in a van, one is not entirely released from all these obligations, but most of them give way. Nobody is expecting anything of you, polite society does not require anything of you, there’s no dinner parties or events to RSVP to— so all that’s left is one question: “What do I want to do today?”
For some people, this might be a paralyzing wide-openness— but for others, it might feel like total freedom. I think initially for me, it felt like the latter (though interestingly, the longer I stayed in the van, it began to feel like the former. But that’s another story for another day).
‘Freedom’— a word that can now feel like a political identifier, really means: the ability to wander anywhere, anytime, without constraints.
Part of what provides that feeling of being free in the van? Having all the stuff you need to survive day-to-day—and to counter any emergency— at-hand, all the time. As I covered in a previous post, part of feeling the security to wander is knowing one has a safe bed and ample food for any journey.
But another component of that freedom comes from casting off the necessities of daily life that can end up eating hours or days of one’s time. Little things: like weeding the garden, getting the mail, making this month’s bookclub, seeing your in-laws, going to a kid’s soccer game, or finally catching up with that friend you have been meaning to see over coffee— all of those obligations are null and void when it is just yourself behind a steering wheel.
I wasn’t entirely cut off from people. No way. I still had meetings and work. I still caught up with friends via phone and texted folks every day— this was necessary for my survival— but that is not the same as running all over town to get to meetings or bridge club or your nephew’s baseball game, either.
Pointing the van exactly where YOU want to go in a moment? That is a pretty freeing feeling. I’m not sure there’s any equivalent in a more rooted life to feeling the absolute openness of every single day living on wheels.
Downside— That freedom can begin to get feral over time
In the past, I’d gone nearly a week without a shower in the van.
Sometimes, I looked in the mirror for the first time in weeks and seen my eyebrows had practically merged into one.
And, at the risk of TMI, shaving my legs in a freezing campground shower that requires a new token to be inserted every 2 minutes to keep the water flowing? No thanks. I just let the hair grow most of the time, rather than dealing with that noise.
When you’re released from social and societal obligations, and you’re all on your own— grooming kinda goes out the window. There’s less reason to put effort into that, and no real payoff to it. Of course, you might be thinking— ‘holy cow, I could never let myself go like that’— buuuuuuut, I don’t think you know that for sure.
Impressing the random guys at the gas station or the Boomer couple at the campsite down the lane wasn’t a goal of mine, and so I focused outward rather than inward. I spent my limited mental capacity thinking of where I’d go next, what hike I’d do next, where I’d eat next, and of course— where I’d sleep next, rather than fussing about my appearance.
Beyond just the aesthetics— since Mac wasn’t much of a conversationalist— I also could retreat pretty far into myself. Small-talk-chit-chat with strangers made up the majority of my interactions for long stretches, months even– which is fine and well, but… I began to just get… quiet.
Which, if you know me, is rare for this VERY BIG extrovert.
When I say I felt free in the van— that’s true— but I also felt feral. Unconnected from daily culture and society and habits. Living outside 90% of the time. Grooming as little as possible. Seeing very few people. I was reading the news and keeping up with events, but I wasn’t being a “person” the way the culture requires in daily life when stationary.
I felt my social skills waning a bit. I’d forget to say “thank you” to clerks at checkouts, or forget to actually check to see if my shirt was inside out and backwards. I didn’t care if my socks matched.
At-times, I felt disheveled on the outside and the inside. Like my social skills were declining as I retreated into myself further.
I’m sure this is not an issue for people who caravan frequently with others, or people who travel with a partner or friend group— but in the end, it had been a year since Moon had left the van, and despite plenty of visits to the houses of friends and family, I felt my capability eroding in the “civilized human being” department.
This feeling is hard to put into words— I’m not sure I can convey it. But the disconnection to regular, societal life— and the people who lived within it— was very real to me.
I felt free, and unconstrained— but without those constraints of social culture and the people who make it up, I lost my balance a bit. I felt a little like Tom Hanks in that awful movie in which he’s stuck on a desert island alone for so long, he befriends his volleyball and talks to it.
My ‘volleyball’ was poor Mac.
Thinking back, I see that I could have done things differently. I could have made more community with people on wheels— more than just the occasional events I attended with them. I could have caravanned before a full year and a half into my van living. I could have stayed longer with friends and family, to give myself a rest, and a chance to re-enter society.
But I didn’t. And I felt so feral, that it stretched my mind— and to be perfectly honest, sometimes I didn’t know if I would find my way back to polite culture so easily.
Luckily, I always snapped back into the morays and culture once I re-joined it, stepping out of the van for a long enough time to regain my footing. The reality is, my body had been in civilized society longer than I stepped away from it– so I was able to re-ground quickly.
Yet, being feral is no joke– it’s a definite downside to (solo) van living.
Posted by Sun
