Houseless Not Homeless

This is my second morning at Cowboy Camp, a free BLM campground in Lake County, California. The air is full of birdsong and the oaks are casting shadows in the delicate sunlight. It was chilly last night but not cold; cold is where you struggle to be comfortable, chilly is more bearable form of cold. I don’t have a heater in the van and I’ve spent nights where it has gotten below freezing; you get used to it, I guess. I’ve weathered 98 degree days where, at night, you just lay on top of the bed and sweat. Nature doesn’t give you a pass when you live out of a van: There is no heater, no air conditioner aside from when you’re driving. Out in the middle of nowhere the bugs congregate around you because you’ve the only source of food, water, and—I suspect—entertainment.

I am houseless, I do not have a house or an apartment or any other sort of stick and brick place where I get mail and enjoy indoor plumbing and a real kitchen. I am houseless, but I am not homeless—my minivan is my home. I can cook food, bathe, and relieve myself, I even have a fridge. How can you say you’re living if you don’t have cheese and cold beer in summer? Aside from my four months in Sacramento, it has been this way for two years.

The two months since I quit my job and rented a room in Sacramento I have done a lot of soul searching. I won’t lie, I miss cooking in a real kitchen, I miss the convienece of having a freezer and being able relieve myself without all the calculation required when on the road. I have great credit; if I got a regular job by next winter I could finance a condo or a cheap house….and then I’d be deep in debt, as deep in debt as I’ve ever been. It’d be great to have a homebase, a place to collect books and rocks, to get off the road for weeks or months—but at what cost? Renting is even worse; I played that game in Sacramento, working forty hours a week and twenty of those hours going towards having a roof over my head. To me, renting is investing in someone else’s future. But don’t get me wrong, there are many times I miss having indoor plumbing and all the things that have become luxuries after two years in the van.

I re-read Nomadland this week. That book really resonates with me, you know? My resume doesn’t open that wide of doors, lots of service gigs that a monkey with a head injury could do. I prefer physical gigs like that, situations where you don’t have to think, but I don’t have any illusion about becoming prosperous from them. Most likely I will be working the rest of my life. Social security should still exist in ten years but my monthly checks will not be enough to keep the S.S. Izaak afloat.

The two months I’ve been back on the road I’ve noticed how smooth everything has become: Everything in the van has a place, all routines like cooking or putting the van into “night mode” occur with military precision. I can find a bathroom or a safe place to spend the night. And, when I wake up in places like this, I have my morning coffee surrounded by nature. Birds, I’ve become mesmerized by birds, for some reason. But it can be tough, vault toilets are creepy as hell, for one thing; the echo, the mysterious dripping of what you hope is water. Vault toilets are something I never get entirely comfortable with…but they are part of this life. And looking at all the options out there for me this life is the one that makes the most sense.