The Art of Living with Idle Theory Bus
Rachel was going to school in North Carolina when a yellow Volkswagen bus crossed her eye in a K-Mart parking lot. She immediately fell in love. She called her partner, Josh, who was living in California at the time, telling him to come test it out. That very day, the paid cash and became proud owners of a van they would come to affectionately call “Sunshine,” their very own micro home on wheels. It was their first, and only vehicle that they’ve ever purchased in the five years owning it. Shortly after they’d both finished school, they took the little money that they had been able to save while studying and hit the road.
After spending so much of their time in an academic setting they’d realized that they weren’t as present in their bodies as they were in their minds. It can be easy to become engrossed in the world of work and books and forget that there are other experiences out in the real world. This idea is what drove them to pursue a life of travel. For a year, they worked on farms, embracing manual labour that contrasted heavily with what they had experienced previously, but they loved every second of it. When they finally arrived in LA and tried to settle into normal jobs, they found that they weren’t as happy as they were when they were travelling. So shortly after arriving they decided to take off once more. This time indefinitely.
As they continue to travel, they pick up similar work every once and a while to continue funding the journey. While a lot of people might see this lifestyle as an inconsistent one, they find that the added variety of odd labour jobs alongside creative endeavors and entrepreneurial projects keep them well balanced. Instead of just working with their hands, or just focusing on propelling a creative career, they’re able to do a bit of everything and not get bored or jaded with one thing.
In their five years of full time travelling, they haven’t really left North America. They’ve gone coast to coast a few times while also venturing up into Canada and down to Mexico, but they haven’t felt the urge to push beyond these places like some people might. To them, what makes travelling in a camper van so special is that they’re able to stay in once place and really get to know it intimately. According to Josh, “We can't go but ten miles down the road every day and see something new.” They limit the amount they travel to only three states a season.
“We feel like slow travel is more like living in a place. You know, once you're in Wyoming for two months, you really feel like you get to know the culture and the people and you kind of settle in. You feel like, ‘Oh I'm familiar with that species of grass, that kind of bird’ and that feels really nice. It always feels like you're home even though you're always in a new place.” This desire to know their surroundings deeply goes even into what they read. They made sure to do research into the history, species and geography of each area they stay in order to absorb as much of the places they visit as possible.
To Josh and Rachel, the specific reasons of Vanlife and full time travel are often overlooked. A lot of people see it as an end to achieve and not a means to do what you really want. For Josh and Rachel, they simply wanted to embrace their interests more whole heartedly than they could otherwise, but they also want people to realise that vanlife might not be the vessel for others to achieve that goal. When browsing social media, it can often feel like we need to travel or live in a van to experience new things and be excited about your surroundings, but the real biggest hurdle isn’t our surroundings. In the end, you have to get over the mindset that your current surroundings are boring or lack value. If you decide to live with a different perspective, suddenly the world opens up to you in ways that you couldn’t have previously imagined.
This can start with the smallest of changes. “If you've never hiked a hike nearby your town, go and hike it this Saturday. Don't just sit there saying, ‘next summer I'm gonna do this thing.’ Go on Saturday and do something you haven't done before.” For Rachel and Josh, life’s greatest changes are often incremental.
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