The Counter Culture Continues to Grow: Joining the Van Life Movement

Angel Fire, New Mexico

I have been critiquing the American Dream for years. Ever since I entered public school in the 7th grade, I couldn't understand why the people around me were doing what they were doing. Why were we spending about 8 hours per day locked in a prison with no windows, no view of the sun, no exposure to the outside world? Why were we slaving away at pointless assignments, wasting hours on things like fucking word searches that had no potential to actually help us learn anything?

Then, I began to question the entire conception of grades, the bull shit processes handed down from on high (particularly in my English classes), and so much more. I questioned the social norms of popularity, of participating in certain sports just because they were "cool"—most everything.

Next, I questioned the dogma of going straight from high school into a normal university, graduating from said university, and getting a job sitting behind a computer. I never did want to end up behind a computer... but somehow, I still did. But on the way there, I did things differently by starting off at a non-traditional type of school that served as an excuse to shred pow all winter. Then, I took the next year off to work, travel, and live in the mountains. Those two gap years were largely responsible for catapulting me into the diehard mountain bike lifestyle and the rest, as they say, is history.

Fast forward to today, and the questioning of the status quo has only accelerated and compounded. I've questioned the assumption that we should spend our lives inside tiny boxes staring at glowing screens and instead, asked if we could go outside every single day and live an Outside 365 lifestyle.

And then I went and did it.

After my 5-month camping experiment and the lessons I learned along the way, I continued to question the assumptions about homeownership and what is actually worth investing my time in. I questioned what "stability" even means, and whether or not it even exists. I spent time trying to understand what my values actually are.

My personal value of connection to nature has only grown in importance over the years, becoming one of the most critical defining tenets of my existence. I strive to live in concert with my values, and from that striving, a few things arise naturally. One of them is the struggle to find ways to connect with nature as often as possible, even in the down moments of the days when reading, stretching, cooking, etc.

There are a few ways to achieve this goal, but one growing movement that serves as an answer and is slowly re-shaping the conception of the American Dream is known as "van life." While van life should need no introduction to most of the outdoor audience, for those who are unfamiliar, van life consists of converting a large cargo van into a residence on wheels. In order to fit all of your daily necessities into one small vehicle, van lifers eschew many modern conveniences in exchange for a minimalist lifestyle. While many people use converted vans as weekend adventure mobiles and vacation machines, a growing cohort of people have taken to living in their vans full-time. Instead of waking up surrounded by skyscrapers, you can wake up surrounded by sky-scraping trees and mountain peaks.

After many months spent living in a camper in the mountains, I was in search of a way to live that lifestyle more sustainably, and for even longer, and van life seemed to be the perfect method. So I dove in feet-first!

The van life movement is absolutely exploding, and by hopping in now, I'm by no means a pioneer on this front. Granted, plenty of people on the east coast still don't have a damn clue what you mean when you say "van life," but in Colorado, you can't drive down the street without seeing at least a handful of converted vans.

The Point Isn't to Reject Everything, but to Decide What to Keep

While I've spent an inordinate amount of time critiquing the status quo and various assumptions that have been handed down from on high, the point of critiquing things isn't to simply reject everything. The point isn't to be contrarian and to rail against everything and everybody. Rather, the point is to determine what things are valuable and should be kept, and what to leave behind.

During my adult life thus far I've had to teach myself about financial investing, and after learning about it, I've chosen to keep it... even though investing could be considered a part of the status quo. I've learned about rewarding, fulfilling work, and I've chosen to remain employed and apply myself in my job. And I've learned about the massive benefits of van life over many other forms of nomadic travel, and I've decided that even though it's ultra-trendy right now, that van life can be for me, too.

So here's to van life—a new mode of nomadic travel, and a new way of connecting ever more closely and ever more frequently with nature. It's an exciting time to be alive!