Re-entry Part III - Unpacking Reality

Journal Entry #42

October 24, 2022

I have been dancing around this entry for awhile, avoiding putting pen to paper (thumbs to phone keyboard?) because I am struggling to wrap my head around my feelings right now. Mostly I have been journaling the “tasks and tactics” of our return to stationary living. That’s the easy part. Like any big move it’s heavy on logistics and fix-it projects and unpacking things.

But what really needs unpacking and sorting through is how I am feeling about the transition away from road life. And what I have managed to unpack so far is that my emotions about it are messier than I imagined they would be.

On the precipice… of life changes - Black Canyon of The Gunnison, CO

For example, we had many “welcome home” messages from well meaning friends and family. It’s a figure of speech of course; a “congratulations, you made it” and a “well done!” On the one hand, these notes and reactions warm me; they come from a good place, speaking of reconnection and rejoining and open arms.

And yet, sometimes I am struck with a sense of melancholy about them. They have an effect on me that is contrary to the spirit of the rejoicing commentary by our well-intentioned loved ones. In my darker moments they reverberate in my head like this: “Good of you to rejoin real world.” As if this year of living on the road wasn’t “real life” at all. As if it was just a passing thing, a phase, and that it’s good that “we’ve come to our senses.”

Grappling with endings... and beginnings - Red Canyon, UT

But van life wasn’t like that at all. Living on the road was hard and interesting. It was fun and intense. It was challenging, gratifying and led to more personal growth than almost anything else I have undertaken in my 54 years. And I didn’t “arrive home” just a month ago. I WAS already home. The van, the road, was home. My life wasn’t in some sort of suspended animation. Nomadic life was our daily reality.

I am deeply grateful for the “welcome homes” but sometimes I don’t know where to put my ambivalent feelings when “welcome home” messages surface them.

This was home… Indian Bread Rocks, AZ

Early in our travels, I shared that I often felt like a “stranger” in a strange place. In the initial weeks of our journey I missed that feeling of “belonging” to a community. That unmoored, “always a stranger” feeling shifted and faded as we fully embraced van life.

In the end, it was actually much easier to befriend people on the road than we imagined. There was a certain magic about the camaraderie and connection with other like minded folks who had made similar lifestyle choices. We had an immediate connection of shared experience and philosophy as well as stories and kindnesses to share. The ease and depth of these friendships that surprised and delighted me. We are in contact with several “road friends” that I can imagine will remain good friends for years to come.

Reflections… on next steps - Paulina Lake, OR

We have landed in Ithaca by choice but there are challenges with “belonging” here that we will have to hurdle. For one, we have no pre-existing ties — no kids in the local schools, no professional work connections, no “immediately obvious” commonalities that help forge a framework for integration into the community. We will have to be effortful about the process of belonging. We are enthusiastic about diving in but are still literally and figuratively “the new folks on the block.”  Remember being the new kid? Remember being a college freshman and trying to figure out who your people were and how to get involved on campus? It’s like that. I will say that van life has emboldened us to talk to and be more open with strangers so that’s a skill that will be put to use.

Establishing new “roots” is a process - Sol Duc Forest, WA

So, it’s a strange thing to feel anchored at the same time as feeling unmoored. I think back to the year leading up to our journey and the journey itself. We had a clear goal— we wanted to successfully live full time on the road in a van and see the country. All of our activity, from buying, designing and building our mobile home, to figuring out our finances to be able to do this, to exiting our work obligations, to readying H for college, to downsizing and storing our things, to getting our administrative life in order - all of it was undertaken with this goal in mind. Our life on the road was also shaped by goals and tactics to reach them; determining where we would sleep, how many miles we needed to travel, what we wanted to see, choosing routes to drive and trails to hike, finding provisions we needed.

We are in the same flurry of activity now with resettling in Ithaca but, in contrast to the crystal clear end state of “living for a year on the road,”  we are struggling with what the “goal” is here. We are settling in Ithaca, to do what exactly? So that we can… (fill in the blank here)… because neither of us can yet articulate a clear goal or a plan for what is next. We can’t answer the what or why yet. We have many ideas but they are still a jumble of thoughts with no clear homing beacon. Hence the feeling of being anchored but, as yet, still unmoored in our new home life.

Calming the mind… to open doors - Carl Washburn Park, OR

Mostly, it’s “monkey mind” of course. The truth is that some of our best “on the road” experiences, those times where we felt the most joy and connected most with the present moment, were those that unfolded by chance or happy mistake or manifested themselves because we paused to allow for them. Or, in Amie-Tom travel parlance “you don’t always have to be “going somewhere” to get somewhere. We need to take our own advice.

We are working hard to remind the goal-driven part of ourselves that landing in Ithaca is both a literal and metaphorical pause. To hold still and see what unfolds.

At least for the next six months, that is. We have decided to lift anchor next spring — a two month journey is beginning to take shape already.

Taking new paths - Ithaca, NY