Still searching for home

Most days, I can't tell if I'm in my right mind or not. Some days I think, I can do this, I can camp in my car, be a nomad, go on adventures, be a digital worker, drive around and see things, and somehow magically maintain a healthy life despite not having a home base. Then I read about the challenges of getting car insurance without a fixed parking spot, and I think, I'm out of my mind. This is insane. This is disaster. I should do everything I can to avoid homelessness. There will be no coming back if I drive off this cliff.

Then I think, well, wait, other people do it. These nomad vanlifers live in their cars, or at least, they say they do. If they are telling the truth, then clearly, it can be done. So I dig around in the great brain in the sky and find out, wait a minute, some of my confident nomadic heroes might not be completely legal. In fact, their suggestions are liable to inspire my insurance company to cancel me, should I ever get in a wreck. This would not be ideal. Then I remember, my vanlife heroes make their money from naive idiots like me watching their videos. Oh, the horror. 

Last week, I was sure I could go live in the forest—you know, park my car under a pine tree, set up my internet gizmo, and write my next novel. Eat nuts and twigs, commune with the coyotes . . . hey, city girls can learn new skills. I called it a retreat.

This week, my brain retreated from that idea. I know I can live in my car, but I'm not so sure I'm up for communing with wildlife. Coyotes, bears, packrats, no-seeums, no thanks. The idea of being homeless scares the spit out of me. Homelessness is not a viable option for a person my age. Once I cross that line, I don't know if I can come back to the adult world. You might as well send me to the psych ward.

I'm planning a second road trip later this month to eyeball some small towns in Arizona. I don't think the vertigo problem is going to be solved any time soon, no matter where I am on the planet, so I'm opting to scope out possible housing options at higher elevations. Small towns, slightly cooler temps, maybe that will work. Maybe there will be a place for me there.

It's unsettling to not be able to call a place home. 

I searched on my epic road trip, I really did. I put 5,000 miles on my car in search of home. I burned hundreds of dollars worth of gasoline. I slept in parking lots. I pooped in a bucket. I really tried to find a home. Even so, it wasn't enough. Maybe I drove past the one place I could have called home, fooled by the red-tile-roofed mansions on the hills above the freeway, assuming I could never afford such a place. Maybe it was Ashland, or Indio, maybe it was Medford, or Spokane, or Bishop, or Wickiup. Jeez, it could have been Wickiup, and all I did was buy gas there for the umpteenth time and get back on the road.

I probably drove past a hundred places that I could have called home, but I was so busy dodging trucks and looking at my gas gauge, I missed them all. 

How do other people find home? Some people are lucky enough to be born in a place they consider home, but what about all those folks born into the wrong climate? Hm, what about them? The ones born in Portland who hate rain. The ones born in Tucson who hate being dessicated and wish they had been born in Portland? How do you figure out where you belong? 

I guess that is what Google Street View is for. But it's not a substitute for seeing a place with your own eyes, feeling the air on your skin, observing the clouds over the skyline, noticing the pace of cars cruising main street, noting the nods of strangers as they take you in and process your strangeness. Don't you have to see it for yourself?

You can just pick up and move, sight unseen. I did that twice. I could do it again. But this time, I want to see it for myself first, before I make the leap.