But oddly, as time passed, I began to feel more conspicuous when my curtains were up than when I was protected just by moderately tinted windows. People seem to be more willing to scrutinize a car in a parking lot with curtains than one that just looks like a car and, as a woman traveling alone, that made me nervous.
What else put my nerves on edge? An unexpected overnight snowstorm in late May in Fort Collins, Colorado. A slip and fall on a hiking trail near Bellingham, Washington, in which I severely sprained my tailbone. Driving an eight-hour stretch of desolate road in British Columbia where far too few gas stations kept far too limited hours.
Eventually, I got used to being constantly on display, to sleeping in parking lots, and to peeing in buckets. It didn’t matter that I rarely got to cook a meal, have a shower, or sleep in a real bed. Vanlife is gross, frustrating, lonely, and nowhere near as glamorous as Instagram would have to you believe.
But it also shifted my perspective on myself and my values, and tested the middle class urban identity I’d cultivated over the last decade. Without stuff, without excesses of cash, without a comfortable room to return to every night, vanlife taught me how to enjoy simple pleasures that I’d overlooked in regular life. It wasn’t easy, but it sure was worth it.
