We Tried to Do Vanlife Right. It Broke Us Down.

“Whether I realized it or not, I’d thought of vanlife as a sort of test for my interest in adventure, the outdoors, freedom…Here’s what living out of a van was: a massive stretch of raw adventure and also an earthquake, destabilizing my life, showing me I didn’t really know all that much about risk, privilege, happiness, failure, and my own mental state. When it was all over, I got to see what had crumbled—and what hadn’t. That was vanlife’s gift to me.”