In the wake of summer
Four updates from a summer of knocking out goals, refocusing my creative energy, and most importantly, finding swimming holes
1.
I began this summer with an awkward but clear task: to visit the remaining five driveable National Parks in the lower 48 despite the stragglers being located from the Pacific Northwest to the northernmost coast of New England. I’ve spent most of my summer driving cross-country, and back east, and then north, and then again south, all to complete a goal I started exactly two years ago. Just ahead of my vanniversary Labor Day weekend, I’m excited and relieved to let y’all know that I just crossed the last Parks off my list, rounding out my total count to 48 National Parks in two years.
When I was transitioning from building the van to plotting my next moves, I found myself really stuck. I’d planned the build so meticulously and carefully that I continued to nitpick every detail in lieu of looking ahead to a very ambiguous, scary, open-ended future on the road, living alone in a van. It was intimidating and I needed something more tangible than a blank map to anchor myself to.
That’s when I decided to make a goal out of this vagueness: I’d drive to every National Park. Okay, well, not the islands. Or Alaska (yet). I kept the goal focused on visiting every drivable Lower 48 National Park, 48 in total. My definition of “visit” was given an intentionally low bar to remain flexible (aka: avoid having to plan too far in advance). At each park, I had to take a picture of the sign, get my passport stamped, and, if possible, complete one hike.
The National Park System, as complicated as its creation and maintenance may be, is what grounded my time in the van. It gave me a sense of purpose, albeit alongside a healthy dose of bragging rights. I learned a lot about America through visiting the often odd, small communities that exist alongside these remote natural sites, sometimes before those sites were designated. Visiting the National Parks evoked my childhood, jogging my memory of places I’d barely remembered experiencing as a child the first time around – though faded, those memories helped shape who I am today. I’m incredibly grateful for the past two years of getting to relive and expand those important memories of camping, hiking, and connecting with nature.
2.
I spent a week this summer at a writer’s retreat in New Brunswick, Canada where I lived in a communal farmhouse with two facilitators, three other writers, and a few friendly family members. We spent the week working on our respective pieces of work - some memoir, some fiction, and some academic - and offered critiques, inspiration, or even just lent an ear.
This was the first time I’d ever formally studied writing, in any official capacity, at least. “Studied” isn’t quite the right word – “initiation” feels more appropriate. I felt awkward the first night even suggesting that I was a writer, to which the cohort responded uniformly with their counters of “You already are a writer.”
This was also the most time I’d ever taken to simply sit, write, and think about writing; in fact, to think only of writing. It was exhausting, of course, but it did give me unprecedented and profound realizations about what I’ve been writing, what I’m trying to write, and where I’ve been bridging that gap, occasionally successfully. Most days I’d wake up, have breakfast and write on the porch with some of the cohort, retreat to my room to write for a few hours, possibly take a walk down to the dock and have some of the prepared lunch, meet with a facilitator about my work, continue writing through the afternoon before finally having a big communal dinner, and most nights, I’d be fully in bed by 9 pm, ready to pass out and continue dreaming out what I’d been writing, unable to escape my prose.
I kept hearing the same feedback from my facilitators, both published writers themselves: Lead with your experience, not your research. I knew I hadn’t been writing a travel book or anything strictly academic, but I hadn’t considered how much of this work was actually closer to memoir-writing than journalism. I’d been resisting writing any pieces that required too much emotion from me to confront and unpack, or that showed too much of the vulgar turmoil required to make the past two years of the van possible. By Friday of the retreat, I sat down to write a piece about my last few days living in DC and finished typing the last paragraph overcome by an outpouring of unexpected tears.
Needless to say, I’m entering a very exciting and somewhat scary phase of writing: the phase of being vulnerable in public. But I’m hopeful that I can continue to explore what writing looks like for me today and what it could look like in the future. As I have learned through building the van, then traveling around full time, and I will continually learn time and time again throughout my life: I can figure it out as I go.
3.
As I continue to detangle and reconstruct my ideas of writing from research versus writing from experience, I’ve been really grateful to publish my first-ever piece in The Washington Post. I’m now contributing to By the Way: the Post’s travel section dedicated to “Detours with locals. Travel tips you can trust.”
My first piece details my five favorite National Forest camping alternatives to nearby National Parks. It’s funny – most of these I discovered by lack of planning on my part, unable to outsmart the complicated booking hacks of various popular parks. The comments (which I already know I’m not supposed to read but too bad I’m going to continue to!) varied from “stop giving away camping spots” to “oh great, another privileged van life influencer.” The comments confirmed what I’d already feared: Who am I to give someone advice about van life? It’s not like I’m famous for it or even particularly good at it; it’s not even my full-time job.
It’s weird to pose as some kind of authority on travel when I, myself, am kind of an idiot about planning trips. But that’s when I realized: I give advice to people like me who don’t book their flights six months in advance, only have $500 to spend on a vacation, and want to do something memorable, not glamorous. People who want to explore what it’s like to camp on public land for the first time, or are nervous about their first big solo road trip. Folks who want to learn how to figure it out as they go.
Plus, it’s fun and rewarding to give people practical advice based on what I’ve already managed to fuck up over the years. If it hadn't been for free advice from influencers and other van lifers, I would never have been able to build the van in the first place. And this gives me an outlet for the more technical aspects of being in the van, whereas my aforementioned essay writing can focus on my personal and emotional experiences living alone on the road for two years.
4.
Substack started as my main accountability mechanism — something that I could make myself show up for because I’d promised an audience some content, regardless of that audience being mostly made up of people who already know me in real life. It felt like a needed intersection between social media, which has always exhausted me in terms of the skills and mental capacity needed to film oneself all day every day, and writing, which had always been an informal practice of mine. Little did I know, without much of a publishing strategy, I was signing myself up for weekly 2,500-word essays that I could never keep up with at the depth and quality I’d set for myself.
Substack is still something I’m figuring out, as many creators and writers are. I’d like to use this platform to write more regularly and transition from big personal essays that would fit better in a book narrative to more one-off stories about van life fuck-ups, weird American towns, and the politics of our rapidly changing country. I want these essays to be stronger and shorter as a means of honing my voice and expertise, not serving as my personal journal throughout this experience. I’ve also made some changes to my homepage, About section, and other Substack native features so be on the lookout for how the product itself is changing to better suit writer’s needs.
So, as the summer and my National Parks goals fade into the sunset, I’m looking ahead to the upcoming season of reflection, interiority, and harvesting my abundance: an autumn of writing. Just as the autumn equinox gives us the perfect balance between night and day, this fall, I’m eager to seek equilibrium, to slow down, and to spend as much time keeping up with my experiences as I do adding to them. And I can’t wait to share what’s next… just as soon as I figure that out.
Patiently waiting for the beta reader sign up to drop 🤞🏻🤞🏻