Oh Captain my Captain: Three stories of real-life vanlifers
In 2022 I had a brief moment of living in my own campervan. While my van was initially built for adventures and comfort, it was quickly adapted for the task of full-time living. I spent my days working a reporter desk of the Sedona Red Rock News, and my evenings in the parking lot of the Planet Fitness some sixty miles away. The idea was romantic: I was excited by the Instagram posts about the beautiful life I could live without being tied to a mortgage or a traditional 9 to 5 job. Shortly after moving into the van, the veil was torn away. Nowhere to park, nowhere to take a shower, no close friends, and a constant low level stress about being harassed by police or security because of how I lived.
This romantic idea of a life lived on your own terms was one that took hold in my mind. Despite my jarring experience, I was able to see a glimmer of hope: the possibility of freedom. Campervans, motorhomes, RVs. These have more in common with historic vessels of exploration than they do with modern sedans, like enormous galley ships grew tires and came to land in a new form of evolution. I couldn’t shake the idea that there was more to life than working a job to pay for a place to live so you can go to work. As these thoughts swirled in my mind, they’d strike a cord in my soul, and it sounded very much like a combination of Walt Whitman and William Etnest Henley poems. It rang out as: “Oh Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done. The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won… I am the master of my fate, I am captain of my soul…”
Again and again it rang, I had to know if others had this same spirit compelling them. In my search for the answer I found Emily, Liz, and Kevin, vanlifers and brave captains in their own right. Each person weathering life's storms, and mastering their fate. As I listened to each unique and daring adventure, I began to hear that same spirit in their stories. They wanted to share their experiences and they wanted to share wisdom, too. It takes courage to live vanlife. And people who live in a vessel may do so because this is how they find the freedom to be alive: all three said if they had to make a choice to live in a vessel again, they would—but they would start sooner, and invest in a vehicle with fewer mechanicals.
Emily
It was unseasonably warm as we sat on the edge of the Colorado River, the kiss of the sun slowly overcoming the bite of the cold February wind. Emily closed her eyes, soaking it in, the image very much resembling a flower chasing the light. The moment seemed like a sacred practice as we sat there, taking a moment and being present with the peaceful scene around us. It was my first glimpse into a life she’s been living since setting sail on her search for freedom.
“I just wanted to be free,” says Emily. “I didn’t want to be stuck going to work, paying rent, going to sleep, all to wake up and do it all over again… I wanted to be present with my life.” She currently lives in her 1991 Ford Econoline F350 motorhome, lovingly dubbed “The Vehicle” since March 2024, and the move had been an act of liberation for her.
“I like being lost with a purpose,” she says. Emily talks about her life in “The Vehicle” now with fondness and hope. “I started this life because I didn’t like being stuck in the limbo of just surviving. I wanted to have the freedom to change and take charge of my life. Now I feel more comfortable being able to pick up and go and take my home with me.”
Emily lived in two other campers and her car, before buying The Vehicle. She’s lived in 13 states over the past several years, at times with two dogs and a pet turtle. Today, it’s just her and her rescue puppy Navi, equal parts companion and alarm system.
“...I still have stress, like all the work I’ve had to put into the vehicle lately, and worrying if I’m going to be harassed by the police or if I’m safe. I like being able to just get up and go if I need to. That was one of the selling points for “the vehicle”, I can go from the sleeping area to the driver's seat without going outside, it makes me feel safer.”
Even with all the restrictions placed on parking and concerns about safety. Emily feels like she has more freedom in some ways.
“Freedom to me means being able to make a change, the ability to make my own decisions. I think I have more freedom to do that than most people, I’m not tied into a lease, I don’t have a car payment. If I want to drive down to Tucson for the winter like I just did, and display my art at a fair I can! I feel like I’m restricted by finances though, I feel like someone who doesn’t have a nomadic life has the potential to earn more than me. But I like that I’m more present and connected with my community than when I did rent a [home]. There was pressure to be in it all the time, and now I’m just out and about all the time.”
Kevin
Kevin’s only stipulation to meeting and being interviewed was that it not be inside. He’s an unconventional vanlifer in that he lives in his van because of health issues. He sat on a park bench, looking very much like he was born on a mountain bike, with chain lube running in his veins. He was reading Foucault’s “Discipline and Punishment”, a book that made sense as I got to know Kevin as a sociology and philosophy major and someone who’s experienced first-hand social rejection because of his illness.
Kevin has dealt with extreme illness to mold toxicity, called Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS), his entire life, and was officially diagnosed in 2019. The effects of the syndrome are staggering. Kevin has struggled to find and keep work because most buildings have some type of mold contamination: A 2012 study published in Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene showed that 100% of homes tested had some form of mold present. For Kevin, even going into a store could cause severe complications with his health that would stretch weeks.
“I had massive fatigue that turned into depression. I also had brain fog or some severe cognitive impairment,” Kevin says. “I had speech issues, I had weird muscle ticks, lots of anxiety and fear… it was awful. I could walk into a store and then ten minutes later I’d have a severe panic attack, this physical response to my body detecting toxins and reacting to it.”
For Kevin moving into his GMC Sierra in 2023 was a decisive act to fight back against his illness. He had the van already—it was for adventures and weekend trips—and moving into it was “very much an act of survival,” he says.
“I couldn’t find a place to live that didn’t make me sick. I would spend a night or two in a new house and my symptoms would flare up again, and I had to leave. By this time I was running out of money for rent and eventually I had no choice but to go back to my parents' house until I got moved into the van,” he says. “I had no other options.”
“I would much rather live in a house, I’ve never wanted to live in a van. I’m not wanderlusty or getting sick of Moab all the time and leaving, I like being here. But it’s difficult to live here in a van. I have to rely on friends all the time, and it’s stressful to worry about getting harassed by police for parking in the wrong place.”
The ideal day in a life for Kevin looks very different from most people. “The perfect day revolves around my health, if I’m feeling good, the day is pretty perfect. Waking up feeling optimistic, feeling good. Eating well. Using my body. Doing something that gives me purpose and being productive.” Days like this are more and more common for Kevin since moving into the van, lessening the impact that CIRS has on his life.
Liz
(editors note: there is no photo of Liz because the day of the photoshoot she on a whim hopped on a plane to Madagascar and hasn't returned. It absolutely illustrates the concept of the extreme freedom of vanlife this article was intended to touch on!)
On the far other side of the spectrum we find Liz and her bright orange and white 2015 Ford Econoline lovingly dubbed “The Dreamsicle”, the image of which conjures memories of summer days on the river, laughing as kids, playing night games, and lounging on grass enjoying an orange creamsicle as the music from the ice cream trucks fades down the street.
“Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a hippie and live in a van,” Liz says. “I was raised Mormon and had this life that was set up for me: school, mission, college, job… then when I was 25, I wasn’t really interested in it anymore and I was coming out of that life where I felt contained. I just wanted freedom to explore all sorts of different lives to see what fit and what I actually liked.”
While Liz says her life looked like she had it all figured out, in reality she felt like it was spinning out of control. This path that had been laid out for her felt more and more like a prison made of expectations and fear: and once she realized that, she couldn’t unsee it. She wanted to know how people lived outside of the Mormon faith, and to experience the things she was always told were wrong.
She traveled. She worked at a ski resort and as a river guide. She acquired The Dreamsicle and took to the road. “I got to travel to Montana and meet people who lived there and experience their lifestyle,” she says. “I traveled to Moab, and experienced the Moab lifestyle. I traveled to Colorado and experienced the ski town lifestyle. I was just able to be around these people and ways of life that opened my perspective.” Curiosity was her driving force, the wind in her sails.
While this life has been a liberating experience, she acknowledges that it hasn’t been perfect either. “It can be isolating, constantly driving around from place to place,” she says. “The freedom can start to feel ungrounding… and when you get kicked out of a couple places when you’re trying to sleep it can stress you out, you worry if you’ll get harassed by someone.”
Liz has found that she has less—less money, less belongings, less food, less resources. But to her, that means what she does have is more valuable. Her money goes further, she food tastes better, her belongings are cared for more deeply. “When I had lots of money coming in, twenty dollars was nothing, now it’s food for the day. Five dollars becomes something joyful from the thrift store. Money has way more value now.”
“I’m not going to be super happy every day,” Liz says. “I have hard days while living my dream, I’m still a person with highs and lows. But since moving into the Dreamsicle I at least have the freedom to live my dream, and that makes all the difference.”
