The Van Life Diaries: The First Month

On July 22, 2024, I walked into our new home, closed the front door, turned the key, and pulled away from the curb.

The new home had a name (Sugar), four wheels, an engine, and a steering wheel. My wife and I had just sold our two-bedroom, two-bath house in Helena, Montana, trading it for a nomadic life in a 17-foot Winnebago van (a Solis Pocket 36A on a RAM ProMaster chassis with V6 engine and 280 horses of power, for all the gearheads out there).

We’d been planning this moment for eight years. Once it arrived, we realized living in a van was a bigger deal than we’d anticipated. We no longer had a fixed place on this planet we could call our own, other than the RAM ProMaster chassis beneath our feet and the van built up around it. This motor vehicle, sleekly white with tinted windows, was now our enclosed bubble. Picture that: a bubble on wheels rolling across the landscape, both of us peering out of the windshield at the passing parade of towns, forests, cities, deserts, and then an ocean or two. Everywhere was our somewhere now. We planned to float across the map in this bubble with our three cats (Ash, Ember and Kindle), roaming at will, following whim, obeying fancy. We carried everything we needed with us, leaving the remainder of our material possessions in a small storage unit in Montana. We were New Pioneers.

As we transitioned to van life, I captured the days in my journal….

July 31: We’re still adapting to the rhythm of this new life: the boundaries of personal space, inconsistent mealtimes, stifling heat (it’s in the triple digits in western Montana), and going without showers. We’ve had two showers in the last 10 days; otherwise, we do an evening wipe-down with Water Wipes. We live on Water Wipes. We should buy stock in Water Wipes.

We eat twice a day: lunch and dinner. I rarely cook breakfast, though we’re carrying around a refrigerator full of eggs and bacon. If we eat out, we try to order one meal to split; but if not, then we’ll each get something of our choosing, eat half, and save the rest for later in the van.

And sometimes it’s too hot, too late, or we’re too emotionally depleted to cook anything. So, like tonight, we might have a charcuterie plate: something simple and quick as cheese, salami sticks and nuts.

The refrigerator is small, so our meal options are limited. When we bought too much broccoli at the farmer’s market, I was stressed about having to cram all the large florets in the wee spaces of the fridge. Finally, I screamed: “This broccoli is out of control!”

So, I made cream of broccoli soup: delicious and filling. The refrigerator exhaled a sigh of relief.

August 1: We are making daily mistakes as we learn How to Van, and we couldn’t be more grateful for the lessons, though they’re often difficult to live through. I’m learning to take a deep breath, speak calmly, and be proactive. So far, I’d give myself a C+.

Most of the mistakes involve spatial issues—namely, lack of awareness of my own body. My stupid arms and legs flail around like spastic octopus tentacles if I don’t keep an eye on them. I’ve grown clumsier as I’ve gotten older, and that klutziness has increased exponentially since we moved into the van. I’m always hitting my head on cabinets and the “pizza oven” above the cab—new spaces for my brain to learn micro-distances and the spatial relationship between walls and objects. I bang and bruise and hope that someday I’ll figure it out. But for now, I’m collecting skull-bumps.

This morning, I was making coffee with the Aeropress, pushing down on the plunger carefully, straining the coffee into the travel mug. Just as I finished pressing the coffee through the filter, Ember started walking across the table. I panicked, thinking he might bump the coffee, so I swooped over and picked him up. And in the process, I bumped the Aeropress and tipped over the entirely full mug of hot brown liquid and all its soggy grounds. The whole mess cascaded across the table, splashed down and spread across the sofa cushions, sending a tiny brown waterfall trickling to the floor. Faster than you could say “Well, shit,” Jean and I started unrolling paper towels and sopping up Lake Uh-Oh.

I didn’t get mad, only allowed myself a short tooth-grinding episode of irritation, then went on dabbing with my towel. Funny how such a small movement—picking up a cat—can ripple into such a disaster inside this bubble.

So far, I haven’t stepped on any of the cats—only Ember’s tail once, several weeks ago (and even then, it was just a “shoe graze”).

August 7: We sold the Jeep today after putting it on Facebook Marketplace. It was one of the last strands of the tether holding us to the old life; my job at the BLM is the very last (and that will be snipped one week from today). The sales transaction was quick and painless: 15 minutes at the buyer’s bank, signatures, the exchange of the title for a five-figure check and that was that.

Now, we’re down to one vehicle, four wheels, and just one tank of gas to worry about. We are streamlined.

August 12: The end of my 36-year career with the federal government draws near. For the time being, though we sold the house at the end of July, we’ve been tethered to western Montana and my responsibilities with work. We hop from campground to campground, trying to find a cool piece of shade in this oppressive heat, this foreshadowing of the climate apocalypse heading our way. It feels like we’re just doing hundred-mile loops around western Montana, like a dog tied to a stake in the back yard, running circles at the far length of his chain. We’re eager to be on the road, unleashed and exploring new places.

Today was my last Monday Morning Meeting in my federal career. How many Triple Ms have I had over the last 35 years? Too mmmany. This morning, from my telework location in the van, I logged onto my last conference call and said a brief farewell during the weekly District Leadership Team call. Someone sent up a flurry of heart emojis, someone else wrote “Safe travels!” in the Chat, and then we moved on to the next order of business. I stayed on the line for a few more minutes, then hit the “Leave Meeting” button. Click. I felt lighter but at the same time burdened by a future without a steady job.

August 14: MY LAST DAY OF WORK FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. I thought this wave would never break upon the shore.

I went to the office early to start the off-boarding procedure. The whole process took about three hours—delayed by technical problems with my final Evaluation Report. I turned in my camera, computer, iPhone, and ID card. Then the acting District Manager handed me a Hallmark card in a blue envelope, shook my hand, wished me the safest of travels, and I walked out the front door without a backward glance or tug of sentiment. All the past 35 years of daily employment, first in an Army uniform, then in jeans and a button-up shirt, streamed past in a colorful blur of places, faces, and computer screens. They filled my head with short, sharp nostalgia—then a drain suddenly opened, and all those memories just swirled away, ending in a gurgle. I was left with just the present: this here, this now. A fresh page in a new chapter.

This first night of true freedom, we’re camped at Bannack State Park. In the 15 years we lived in Montana, neither of us had ever been to the historic town, once the state’s capitol. We were both emotionally drained, wandering the streets of the faded town listlessly. It seems fitting we begin our journey at a ghost town. We are tattered sheets in the wind.

Jean and I are in odd moods today: we’re quiet, stunned, anxious, but still determined to make this new life work.

We’re worried about the cats’ mental health: Ember (the “middle child”) has been prickly, and Kindle, our youngest, has started crawling under covers to sleep (That lump in the blanket that seems to be breathing? Yeah, that’s Kindle.). Ash, the black cat and the granddaddy of the trio, plays it calm, cool, collected—but there are moments when even he starts drooling from the stress.

“The cats are fine,” we tell ourselves. “They’re doing nothing they wouldn’t be doing back at home.” (Oh, that oddball word which no longer applies!)

August 23: There is so much to report from the past seven days, so many miles traveled, so many different places where we’ve stayed. I haven’t been faithful to this journal. I’ve been in “busy mode” with camp life business: plugging in, filling Sugar with water, cooking, dumping the grey tank, cleaning the solar panels, washing the exterior once a week at a car wash, sweeping the floors with a whiskbroom five times a day and setting up the interior when we stop (putting up window shades, setting out cat food bowls, swiveling the seat, placing my briefcase on the driver’s seat, moving certain items from their “travel position”).

I’m sure I’m forgetting other items on the checklist. There are a lot of moving parts to this new life. Some, we’re learning how to streamline (I’m getting faster at setting up the grill); others, we’re still finding our way (the most efficient method to wash dishes). I forgot to mention the other time-consumers right now: finding a place to stay each night and shopping for groceries (we can hold about two days’ worth of meals in the tiny fridge).

The rest of the time, when we’re not traveling or setting up camp, we’re learning how to relax into the state of being. Here in the stillness of the forests, we’re breathing softer, slower. We’re learning to listen to the music of the moment, rather than the noise of the past. We’ve been staying in public lands campgrounds: BLM, Forest Service, state parks—places where Nature is stronger than Man. We do a lot of reading. We take hikes. We walk the cats around the campground. We play backgammon. Jean listens to politics on TikTok; I read some more, maybe do some writing. We are often quiet in the van together; on our walks, Jean does her best to pull me into conversation, though I don’t always rise to the occasion. I need to do better at that.

We are finding our rhythm with the solar-powered house batteries: we need to plug in once every four or five days, depending on our use of the lights/fan and weather conditions. So far, we haven’t had any more drained-battery disasters like we did when we first got Sugar. We monitor the Zamp control panel constantly, taking note of how well the solar is charging and what the current amp level is. When it dips low, we go recharge at a campground with a plug in.

By now, we’ve made our way from Missoula down into the eastern edge of Idaho and the Sawtooth Mountains. We stayed for free one night in a grove of trees with somewhat sketchy neighbors at a bridge in near Carmen, Idaho; we camped cheaply ($5) at a Forest Service campground in Sun Valley along Trail Creek, Ernest Hemingway’s ghost tramping through the grass outside all night long under a full moon. When we reached Boise, and the heat was bearing down, we stayed at a military Family Camp on a National Guard base. The space was no bigger than a thin wedge of pie, but we backed in, plugged in, and filled up with water. It was strange to be back on a military base, with all those trim bodies running around the track and doing pull-ups and push-ups, seemingly for the fun of it. We stayed inside the van where it was cool. I took short forays into the Idaho furnace to walk Kindle through the strip of dry brown grass, the size of a welcome mat, to one side of the van.

Kindle is doing a great job on his leash walks. He’s the only one of the three who has really taken to it and now he’s a pro—it seems like he hardly notices the harness anymore. He still waddles a little bit, but the gear doesn’t encumber him from slinking through the tall grass in search of prey. When he runs and pounces, he comes up short at the end of the leash, and I’m sure that’s frustrating for him—I do try to allow him to complete the arc of the jump, as long as I can still retrieve him in the end. The two things that still freak him out: cars (which is a healthy fear) and Other People. This latter is something we’re working on with him, reassuring him the other humans in the campground won’t come over and do him harm. Nonetheless, when we encounter fellow campers—even at a far distance—Kindle freaks, darts and slinks back to Sugar. And then in ten minutes, he begs to go back outside. Typical cat.

After Boise, we angled northwest into Oregon. Pioneers and their oxen-pulled wagons once lumbered along this path, following the Oregon Trail. As we drove the interstate through the rolling hills, I said, “If I’m not wrong, the last time we were here was December 1983 on our honeymoon.”

“If we passed through here, I don’t remember it,” Jean said.

“Neither do I. It was so long ago. Another life.”

We fell silent. The hills, which hadn’t changed much in four decades, rolled past brownly—also with nothing to say about these two small humans and their three cats in their bubble passing through on their way to somewhere else.