A Short Reflection on Two Months Living in a Car

***Written August 6th 2023, Remastered March 13th 2024

I’ve spent the last two months living on a free campground in West Virginia’s Fayette and Nicholas counties. 

At the start of my journey I wrote about why I wanted to move into the woods:

“to seek discomfort, reconnect with nature, eliminate distractions, reduce my dependence on modern comforts, face new challenges, meet new people, and live rent-free.”

Some of that’s happened, some of it a little less so. 

I’ll be moving back into a house in Belchertown, MA, in September—and I might even move to the area earlier to get used to everything.

So what was the point of it all?

Did I learn anything?

“I want to take in everything and learn from it all.”

Before moving into my car I spent five years living in Columbus, OH: most of it around college kids at Ohio State and some in the restaurant industry dropping truffle salted fries and rolling vegan wraps.

Before that, I spent the first 18 years of my life in Winchester, Massachusetts, a wealthy suburb 8 miles north of Boston. 

As I started seeing more of the world, meeting more people, and growing up (Turning 23 in a month), I kinda got to thinking about my place in it all. 

My cousin-in-law called my journey out to West Virginia my “Vision Quest.”

And I’ve definitely been trying to keep my eyes open.

I want to take in everything and learn from it all. 

I've been meeting tons of new people, visiting old friends, climbing, swimming, cooking, traveling, and reading a lot. 

In summary, I’ve been experiencing new people and places and ideas that are molding for me a new perspective on what it means to live as an American in what sometimes feels like a God-forsaken land.

“Everyone thinks we're crazy (of course we are but that's beside the point)”

Was was my experiment a success? Is it possible to live a happy and sustainable life living out of a car in this country? is it possible to rejection consumption, capitalism, modernism, and live on the outskirts of a viciously jealous and rapacious society?

Eustice Conway, The Last American Man and my initial inspiration, lived the ultimate rejection: dumpster diving, collecting roadkill, living in the woods and building everything he owns himself.

He wanted to save society by returning people to the beauty of nature. 

Then there’s Rucksacking (the more modern term is Vagabonding), which rejects consumption by living small, but still exists within modernity. 

Everything you need to live fits inside of a backpack. Hitchhiking, taking trains, sleeping on beaches and sidewalks, living cheaply but still subsisting off currency and societal structures.

It is a life of building nothing; owning very little; and being truly and proudly below it all.

I gave a hitchhiker the ride the other day; but Ray, Japhy, Sal, in the Dharma Bums, and Dean and Jack in On the Road, are the bums that have taught me the most. 

The third option is what I’ve been doing: living rent-free traveling out of your house.

I’ve met people in school buses, campers, a small teardrop camper, roof tents, 30 year old vans, and trucks; some are kids like me, and others have kids!

Everyone thinks we're crazy (of course we are but that's beside the point) and cannot fathom why we'd let go of all these "necessary" things, or how it's even possible to live like that. 

But it's quite a beautiful life. 

There's so much more room for spontaneity. 

For collaborating with strangers. 

For being alone, quiet, and slow. 

For enjoying the little things—which turn out to be the most important things. 

The setting sun on a slow river, the constantly shifting orchestra of bugs and birds, a hot meal cooked over a fire shared with a neighbor, the brief moment a cloud wanders in front of the sun on a hot day. 

That's why I'm still out here, I think. 

I'm learning how to enjoy being alive.

“I went into the kitchen and got a banana and came out and said

‘Well, I’ll tell you what nirvana is.’

‘What?’

I ate the banana and threw the peel away and said nothing.

‘That’s the banana sermon.’” (132 Dharma Bums)

Here’s what I’ve learned:

Silence is a pretty powerful thing.

And not necessarily utter silence or dead quiet. 

I mean the silence of a waterfall, of a flowing river or chattering bugs; the din of the highway and wind through the car windows; or the chatter in a coffee shop; even the chugging of a generator in the night. 

Music, conversation, podcasts, TV, all of this stuff kills silence. 

I almost always put on a podcast when I wash dishes: I hate it so much and I just need some distraction, something else to focus on to get me through it.

Or at least, I think I do. 

I convince myself that I do.

Because I really don’t. 

While all of these things distract me from unpleasant thoughts or feelings they also distract me from the feel of the breeze, or the shape of the ground under my feet. 

And while being distracted from unpleasant feelings might seem like a bonus, it also distracts me from asking questions and learning about my pain.

It’s not really living in reality.

It’s living in this fake construct and choosing to pay attention to that—the construct, the idea—instead of what’s actually happening in front of me. 

The first campground I stayed at for 16 days straight.

It had no service. 

I’d get back at 5pm, and until 11 or whenever I went to bed I had to stare at the river or read or cook without anything to distract me (and reading was still a distraction!!).

That taught me a lot about silence.

“How to be silent enough to fall in love.”

With everything being said, I'll be moving back into a house in Western Massachusetts in September. 

Kind of a plot twist I know. 

But the important stuff doesn't have to change. 

What I’ve learned from Jack and his friends as well as my own experiences isn’t necessarily how to travel, or how to live independently, or even how to live simply.

It’s how to appreciate the small moments of wonder. 

How to be silent enough to fall in love.

But I don't think I'm doing it because living in my car has been unsustainable. 

And I'm certainly not doing it to return to a cycle of work, produce, consume. 

I'll still be refusing—as much as humanly possible—to live and work for the ‘privilege’ of consuming.

The intention here is to take everything I learned and carry it forward with me. 

To live with love for life, people, moments, and with a faith in spontaneity. 

I'll still be in Nirvana, after all. 

We all are, always were, and always will be.

With peace and love,

-Andy