This article was originally published in early 1994 in the "In Transit" issue of Crash Magazine.
I am 4,600 feet above sea level, on a mountain-top, at night. No one else is here. I am warm inside my little camper. The only sound I hear is the wind howling outside; the only light is the screen of this portable computer, a candle, and the glimmer of house-lights in the valley far below me.
For the last month, I have lived mostly in my Chinook camper. It's a tiny thing, just big enough for one person. I've got a bed to sleep in, a stove to cook with, a sink to wash in, and ample storage space for a mobile existence.
This camper of mine seems more like home than my rented room in the city. In the camper, I have what I need. It's all mine -- no rent paid to landlords. It's fairly self-sufficient -- I carry water, propane gas, and electricity (via the battery).
I have become very comfortable with my tiny moving home.
Even outside of the camper, I feel comfortable. It's as if the decision to not live in a house somehow makes the idea of a home less important, less central. I feel at home in more places -- in a coffeeshop reading a book, at a friend's house talking, at a park eating lunch. Even walking down a street, watching hawks circle in the sky, I feel like I am at home.
I parked my camper outside a friend's house one night. I was telling my friend's housemate about my new vehicle, and how happy I was with it. She sounded excited, and when I described it, she said, "Oh! That camper? I thought it was some homeless person's car!"
"It is," I said.
Traveling is familiar to me. For as long as I can remember, my family went on long trips around the US and Canada. Mostly, we went by car, occasionally in a camper. And we didn't stay anywhere long -- a few days at this campground, a few days with that relative, and a lot of long roads in between.
My grandparents -- my mother's parents -- owned a series of RVs and campers. I remember visiting them in Nevada one summer. For the entire 2 weeks I was there, I slept outside in their RV (they called it "The Snail") under the clear Nevada night sky. Away from the noise of modern houses -- the hum of refrigerators and air conditioners, squealing fans, and buzzing flourescent lights -- I slept deeply and calmly.
A couple of years ago, my mother found drawings created by my grandmother, Blossom. In clear blue ink on graph paper, Blossom had designed interiors of RVs. Wasting no space, she allocated areas for sleeping, sitting, and storage, and even made room for a tiny television.
Living this way has been a long-time dream of mine. For years, I've fantasized about dwelling in vans, pick-ups, campers, buses, and even cars. When I was 8 years old and in 2nd grade, our teacher asked each of us to describe what they wanted to be when we grew up. I said I wanted to be a truck driver.
Going out to the camper after a pleasant evening with friends in San Diego, I find the back door of the camper forced open, and the interior a mess. Clothes and bedding and books are scattered everywhere. Not much has been actually stolen -- a boombox, some CDs, my brand-new flannel sheets, a backpack, and a jacket. They have left most of the clothes, and apparently didn't care for books or cassette tapes (in fact, they have thoughtfully removed the tape in the boombox and left it behind).
It's not the loss of the things that bothers me; they are (more or less) replaceable. And it isn't that the camper was broken into; vehicles of mine have been broken into before.
Gypsy women in Europe and the Mid-East wear all their valuables. They are adorned with amulets, bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and rings. Until it was made illegal, they punched holes in coins and wore them on a string around their neck.
At first this seems a quaint and decorative custom. But it is a way to keep their valuables (for even nomads have valuables) safe and secure.
I think about the nomads and gypsies that we only read and hear about -- with caravans and horses, gaudy clothes, long unkempt hair. They are thieves, we are told: beggars, cheats, transients. This story has been passed down for hundreds of years.
But now I think, who are the thieves who broke into my camper? Were the thieves other nomadic travelers? Or did they live in the apartments across the street?
Does it matter?
For most of the journeys I have taken, the weeks and days before departure are filled with a kind of happy nervousness. Restlessness, perhaps -- the knowing that soon I will be out on the road, moving, traveling, seeing, experiencing. This sense of hopeful waiting amplifies my desire for travel. And then comes the moment of departure. All that hoping is fulfilled and I begin to move -- down the road, along the tracks, into the air, across the water.
But on my most recent trip -- from San Francisco down to Santa Barbara, then across Arizona into northern New Mexico -- that hopeful feeling never came. As I sped down Highway 101, trying to keep pace with the other drivers, I realized that there was little difference between the days before I left for a journey, and the current jaunt half-way across the country. What in the past was the change of states between settling and traveling, was now just another day.
What difference was there between this day and the day before? I was driving, again. I was moving, again. I was traveling -- again. Gone was the sense of adventure, exploration, newness.
Perhaps in order to experience the excitement of travel and motion, one must remain still for a while. And conversely, to enjoy remaining still, one must move fast.
And so I decided to settle. I resolved that after this trip, I would return to the Bay area and find a house to live in.
Now, since my decision to find a stationary residence, the Chinook has grown cramped, awkward, and uncomfortable. The bed never seems calming; the stove and sink just get in my way. I seem to have lost the desire to seek out new places to spend nights. I begin to think of rooms, furniture; of doors opening, windows shutting. A roof. A porch.
The other night I drove partway up a small, twisting road that led to the local dump. Parked on a pull-off by the side of the road, under dark trees, in total quiet, I had trouble sleeping.
