Reflections

It was a challenge to write about the latter half of this trip, talking with one of my dearest friends we were able to sum the issue up as “multiple truths existing at the same time.” The challenge of describing infinite different simultaneous feelings. Essentially, wrapped up within all of the positive experiences, there were some themes and thoughts that I struggled with, areas of confusion and places where I became mentally stumped and lost. It’s all very intermingled, but I tried to write so that the road trip writings capture the experiential essence of it all and now, here, I’ll address the rest of it. Portions of the experience that I struggled with, and context for it all. I’ll try my best to make it coherent, I apologize if it doesn’t make sense. Ah, the duality of experience and self!

Backstory

I feel a bit of a backstory on me could give some perspective. I grew up in Alberta with a very comfortable and ‘normal’ life, which maybe I’ll expand on later in my writing life, but nothing is perfect. Two parents still married, sports, friends, etc. But for some reason, I just never felt like I fit. With kids my own age, with the happenings around me at most stages of my life, I was always commended for being ‘an old soul’ always being told that I was ‘wise beyond my years’, I often feel the opposite. Maybe its because the knowledge I seem to have doesn’t always seem applicable to practical life. Anyways, since the pandemic I’ve been navigating how to try to live on the edges of society (how apocalyptic sounding), by my own terms. I’ve really struggled to grapple with the way the world exists, and I’ve struggled to integrate myself into it. I struggled through school and university, I was pursuing a path more traditional or ‘integrated’ and even setting myself up for a Master’s degree related to marine environmental and ecological issues. In the end, I decided that I was to renounce everything and go live in the trees. I’m going to the trees to figure it out! Don’t call!

My van living days started during the pandemic, I moved into an old burgundy Ford Freestar with someone who whisked me away to Tofino on a mission to teach me to surf. After that I was hooked, going to Tofino during the pandemic and seeing this whole realm of alternative living that I didn’t know accessible for myself really changed the trajectory of my life. Since then, I’ve been often been on a mission to see how little I can live with, what I can renounce (anti-capitalist inspirations). After this started, I went back to Nova Scotia to complete my fourth year of University. I part-time lived out of my small SUV at the time, exploring and surfing and then found my first van, a great big blue 1975 Chevy G20, I fondly refer to it as “Blue van” now. I drove across the country, my best friend alongside me, to Tofino to work as a surf instructor where I lived in a gravel parking lot for 4.5 months - granted I was always at the surf school staff accommodation. After that, I found myself in a work-trade situation with a couple in Tofino, I worked in exchange for staying in a lovely little cabin. I did that for a year while working other jobs as well as finishing university online. Tofino is a bit of an oasis in a sense, you can hide out from the rest of the world a bit, but not forever. Although, it does seem like the greater happenings of the world are filtered out a bit as life comes along through the trees down the windy highway into town.

Other parts of my reality in it all

Now, we find me here, on the other side of the Astro road trip. There was so much enjoyment wrapped up in these 5 months, but I don’t want to project this image of a seamless, fully enjoyed adventure. There’s always ups and downs and in my own internal struggles, parts of this road trip, particularly in December and then again at the end were marred with anxiety. I set out on this exploration looking to do it alone, with no plan, while living in a relatively unsecure manner. It was challenging to remain grounded, I think in a sense I felt I couldn’t because I didn’t have a work visa, which meant technically I couldn’t work and I only had 180 days down there (this makes it seem much shorter than it felt, one week often seemed to stretch into multiple). The Transmission Paranoia also ended up directing a lot of where I ended up, the choices I made. I think its worthwhile to mention that I struggle with being in my head often, I think I spend way too much time in my head. I struggle to find the balance between living in the external world just letting things flow and assessing and analyzing the things around me and the things I’m doing. Sometimes, when I find an outlet that lets me live outside of my head I’ll get too far into it, have to wrangle myself back into my head a bit and check my trajectory. Other times I’m so in my head I stop living outwardly. I think that’s essentially a sufficient way to describe the duality and push and pull of my life in general. So, that’s part of the whole multiple truths existing at the same time thing, sometimes I was having a pleasant external experience, enjoying it, but also internally spiraling.

Have you ever seen those photos of animals thinking they are trapped behind a fence, but the open door is just beside them? That’s me. Not always, but its a very real part of my experience.

I guess at some point I asked myself how far I could take this whole trip, and I took it as far as I could (I’m sure others could take it farther). There was no part of me that was willing to call it quits before I’d felt I’d exhausted all my options. Essentially, the van would have to quit before I did. Looking back, I can view everything with more ease but I was pretty shaken upon finally getting home. Jumping into the abyss and trying to let go of everything was a challenging course of action for myself. Starting long ago I’ve had a desire to experience it all, and I’ve taken different avenues to achieve that. This trip, I’d been on a mission to be wholly open to whatever life had to chuck at me. I was so in it. All the time. Now, being on the other side I understand it more and the journey seems relatively easy and straight forward. Like the simple quote of hindsight is 20/20. When I was in it, it was like the current happenings would stretch out forever and never ever end, the good, the bad, and everything in between. I have very bad eyesight - I’m horribly nearsighted. I wonder if that should tell me something about myself, getting stuck in an immediate blur where I can’t see beyond into the bigger picture.

I was in such a state driven by anxiety in the time period between leaving Santa Cruz to finally getting to Tofino. I’ve learned that I become extremely and almost solely concerned with security when I do not have it. Surprising to me because beforehand, I didn’t think I was too concerned with security. Maybe things are just shifting as I’m getting older, maybe it was this trip, maybe it’s just being exposed to the realities of life. I guess that’s maybe what aging is?

By the time I landed in Tofino I honestly think my nervous system was just shot, my resources and myself stretched a bit too thin. After getting practical matters dealt with (lining myself up for work in March, setting up a bit of a stable home) I crashed, it was like I had been running on fumes. I did not feel good, very far from it. I felt sick, I was experiencing vertigo, anxious, nauseous, exhausted. I laid in bed for two days and just slept, then I laid in bed for a couple more days. I think I’d been teetering on this unstable edge for a bit longer than I would have liked, and the whole Oregon portion of the drive back was the tipping point. I was so confused and burnt by the time I got home that I didn’t want to finish writing any of this. But I felt I’d be doing a disservice to myself if I didn’t finish what I’d started, regardless of how I felt about it. And, if I lost my mind in this experience, in writing this all hopefully I did something interesting with my last few brain cells.

I had not planned on being back in the beginning of March when I set out last September, but when something shifted in February all I could think about was being stable in Tofino. I’m so grateful that I had a place to land here - my old home temporarily offered to me by the couple I was working for previously. Things would have felt very tough without having a space to come back to. I also want to commend the kindness of those around me on the whole trip, the road trip probably would not have lasted as long or been nearly as fulfilled were it not for the kindness of the friends I made down south. The people willing to just help me, give me a space to park and exist. My self and my experiences are made possible by those around me willing to lend a helping hand! So, if I have learned anything during this trip it is the value and necessity of community. Before this all, I’d been on such an individual mission. I don’t know if I was just trying to prove something to myself, but I really believed that I had to do everything fully alone, if I didn’t I was undeserving of the good I received. I was really trying to do it all alone. I think that mentality may still be a hard one to shake. Mental note to add “you’re deserving of the good you receive” to my affirmations list.

The whole American Dream thing

This whole thing has two facets, 1. My American Dream 2. The broader social and cultural dilemma that I witnessed in America.

1. To keep it short and sweet because its unimportant really, and I’m tired of writing/thinking about it I don’t think my weird American Dream needs to be written about further. Essentially, I had dreams about materializing my fullest self and life by way of experiences on the trip, in the end I realized that I already have and am all that I need. Fin!

2. The plight of the American Dream that propagates into social and cultural issues in the United States.

Working in the warehouse was a trip. Just seeing the volume of stuff that’s inevitably going to end up in a landfill absolutely dumbfounded me. The sheer scale and volume of it all. And my experience, what I witnessed, was the tiniest speck in the largest of pools. You’d have to multiply what I witnessed by thousands to begin to grasp the volume of ‘goods’ being sold and eventually discarded. It was honestly terrifying to see as someone concerned with the environmental and ecological crisis. Also just the lifestyles and working conditions I witnessed within that realm was wild, just hours and hours every day of every week of every month spent in a big concrete warehouse moving boxes of junk. Stephen West has an episode on his podcast where he talks about the worker’s plight in a capitalist system and how at some point you just have to stop thinking, become a robot of sorts, do the job.

The biggest thing that really got me was the amount of people along the US west coast experiencing homelessness.

Each day on my way to surf my favourite wave outside of Santa Cruz, I’d pass at least 8 encampments or people seemingly homeless on the side of the road. Traversing the coast it seemed endless, particularly I remember going a bit inland and seeing the Santa Maria river valley just teeming with makeshift shelters. Bright blue and brown tarps lining the hillsides, being pelted with the rain. Old tents and plywood shelters tucked along the highways everywhere I drove. Driving through Medford Oregon, as snow turned to rain I cried while I drove past the tents and tarps lining the river valley that cut through the town. It was the most extensive I’d seen it, it’s reach stretched for kilometers, just endless. There was more of it in Portland as well. It was all reaching.

I was further struck while driving past all of those big stupid strip malls, thousands of square feet sitting empty overnight while just on the other side of the highway great groups of people struggle to shelter themselves. It was the most blatant and stark example of skewed values that I’d ever really seen. All this infrastructure we’ve been able to build, all this progress, and for what?

I guess I was angry one day upon seeing one-too-many outlet malls as I drove and in my notes wrote, “The buildings are ugly spiritual graveyards - offering quick fleeting hits of dopamine in either the form of oily, sugary processed food or some cheap material good produced by exploited workers.”

So, how do I say that the US is culturally desolate but also everything is what you make it? *double thumbs up* Is it culturally desolate because that’s what I’ve chosen to see, or is that the reality?
There is certainly an energy of materialism, although I did find pockets and places that did not hold that. But, there was just an essence and routine of materialism that I felt, especially in the busy parts of southern California. It just seemed to hang around in the air. A different structure and priorities than what I’m typically used to and seek I guess.

Where’s the distinction between something sucks and we choose our experiences, what we get from them? We’re largely responsible for what we take away from what we’re experiencing, but if it does actually suck and we tout that everything is what we make it, are we just turning a blind eye in acknowledging the fact of suckiness and issue at hand? Is ignorance bliss?

**Also, as a disclaimer, Canada definitely has many big malls and areas with culture wrought by materialism. The US is not the sole perpetrator, it’s a plague of the western world one could say. I am also no saint! I fall privy to the clutches of materialism, I indulge in it sometimes too. I’m just trying to describe what I felt, and I think from my perspective, it felt more intense here. Maybe that is because the life I exist in, in Tofino, sits relatively far from all of it, and being in a van traversing the coast you’re just very in it. I will say though, that I’ve driven across Canada and been to all of our big cities and it does not feel as intense as I found it did in the US.
Also, I don’t think all materialism is bad, but I guess dear reader I will offer to you - How do you feel about your materialism? The hold it has and ways it plays into your life? How much of your life is influenced by it? It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about your materialism, what matters is how you feel about it. Just as I with mine.

I remember being in Ventura, I’d just come out of a fun surf to find a young woman strung out on something huddled beside my van. Everyone else in the parking lot seemed blind to her. I tried to talk to her and figure out if there was someone I could call for her, but she was out of it. I tried to bring it up to the two people I’d just surfed with, “It’s so sad.” they shrugged. We went on with our day, I should’ve called someone. I gave way to ignorance as bliss, or I simply felt helpless. It seems to be a bigger issue than just you and I, but moving on from it as I did that day really doesn’t feel like the answer.

I don’t know that I would’ve become this touched by seeing the extent of homelessness had I not felt at various times as though I was closer to it than I would’ve liked. Due to the circumstances of my life, the luck of the cards I’ve been drawn, I think it’s unlikely that I will find myself to really experience homelessness. But when things were going sideways in the van, when I felt like I was stretching it all a bit much, I felt that I began to understand the scenarios and circumstances that could lead a person to experiencing homelessness. I felt closer to it than ever before. It’s interesting to draw the line between “van living” and homelessness, I guess the line exists in whether or not it’s a choice and how you feel about it. Living in my van was a choice, and I could essentially always leave it, and even if I lost the van and all my money I’d have people to pick me up and bring me home. Therefore, I cannot liken it to the experience of homelessness. But after spending time in urban areas in a van, where it’s hard to cook, clean, shower and meet your basic necessities I felt I began to have a deeper understanding of the barriers that would exist to actually breaking out of that state if you didn’t have any easy out/it wasn’t a choice to be there. The toll it would take on your mental and physical being.

“When you keep yourself at a safe distance from everything going on in the world you lose the ability to see world clearly.”
- Simone Weil

I went to chase the American dream, and I sure got a glimpse. I think that in seeing all of coastal California the inequality was stark and pervasive.

The other thing that caught me up was some of the billboards and advertisements I saw. I remember a pawn shop, advertising “Guns, Loans, and Jewelry!” it was blast on front of the building sitting on one of the main streets in North Park, San Diego. I put it on my Instagram with the caption, “just the essentials, right?” It’s not that we don’t have pawn shops in Canada, we definitely do, but they don’t advertise guns. I think it also caught me up because I felt I was just seeing so much more of these sorts of things in the urban areas. I think their impact culturally and socially is important, these are the messages relayed, circulating within our eye space, being assimilated into our norm.

While driving in Oregon someone with a bumper sticker in the shape of a gun that said “Oregunian” passed me just after another car passed me featuring a sticker of a stripper plastered to their back windshield. I thought of the Virgin Mary sticker stuck atop my van, what different realities us three were likely living. And no, I am not Christian or Catholic, I do not follow any organized religion, nor do I believe that women need to be pure and holy or remain virgins. The sticker came with the roof box and I liked her, I can appreciate her symbolism when not taken literally and I also wondered what it would make people think, maybe these guys also had those stickers on their cars for shock value. I guess we’re just showcasing different values and sides of life.

Again, it’s not that we don’t have these things or differences in Canada. But I find Canadians in general are more connected to nature through many diverse facets, maybe aside from a big city or two. It’s a cultural aspect that I didn’t really realize we had until I left. As a country I feel within the general public there’s a greater awareness and more discourse around environmental and social issues, regardless of what side of the issues you fall on.

Anyways, I don’t want to tout totally negative ideas and labels upon it all. I cannot discredit the pockets of good things and people that I found. I just think that in relation to my greater societal concerns some of the things I witnessed in the US culture was unsettling, and it would feel weird not say something about it. And back to the multiple truths/duality of experience thing: While witnessing and absorbing all this, I was having very fulfilled and enjoyable experiences with myself and others. That’s part of the confusion I’m talking about, there was my internal reality and life that I was crafting which seemed to sit in stark contrast with some of the externalities I was absorbing and the feelings I had towards it.

God, the whole alternative living and ‘escaping the system’ conundrum

One of my notes, in the later bits of my reflections on everything, simply says, “I am being assimilated.”
In a sense, yes, I am. I lived on some edge of society for long enough that I am ready to be the good worker. To try to figure out how to make this societal and economic system that I have in front of me work for me, so that I can live a sustained long, life. It’s not that I don’t like work. I love having productive output, tasks to complete, something to put energy into. I just struggle with work in the areas where it feels alienating from the natural world. From the flux and flow of natural life. How it can become so rigid that us creatures of the earth are forced to separate from our natural cycle and fluxes to fit into this mode of production.

Is that a failure in the mission I’ve been on? Is it a regression of sorts? Maybe. What are my alternatives though?

Or, is it an issue in myself? A disfunction in my ways causing me to struggle to integrate into it all, an issue with my mindset that needs to be worked on so that I no longer feel alienated from my work? Who knows?

I understand the importance of these systems as modes of goods and resource allocation. As I’ve said before, I just really struggle to grapple with and integrate into the reality of the current structure. I spent a long time being angry and afraid of it. I’m no longer that, I’m still going to try to move about the world in a way that feels aligned with myself but I guess I understand the reality of it in the full sense of the word. That pure resistance to the parts of the system that I don’t like won’t get me very far, I have to be able to work with it in ways. I can’t escape it. Is this what growing up is?

I had a friend commend me for escaping the rat race, I want to say that I certainly have not escaped it. I’ll keep trying though.

On van life

I have something simple, and maybe controversial to say. There’s a view of ‘van-life’ spewed about on social media as people escaping the system and the 9-5 grind. When its often just people still so engrained within the structures that they hope to escape through van-life. The real van lifers are the ones who’ve chosen sleeping down by the train tracks, or out in the bush, night after night. The people that seem too far out are the people embodying the spirit of alternative living and non-conformity, it maybe just doesn’t always look as pretty as we want it to. The real van lifers often aren’t the Instagram palatable ones.

And I am not strong enough to be that forever. I need my comfort and security I’ve learned, the ones the system provides. Many moral dilemmas encompassed here.

Also, not everyone needs to be on a mission to change or break free from the current structures we have. I do not mean to talk down on anyone, we’re all just seeing what works for each of us. If the more conventional integrated pathway is the avenue that allows people to live their embodied lives then more power to ‘em! That is just not my reality, but my reality is not everyone’s reality and my reality is not necessarily the ‘correct’ one. If the van-life connected to a typical 9-5 job and more secure lifestyle is what works for someone, that’s rad. I think I just struggle with the idea that this hyper-palatable version shown on social media is unconventional but still ‘good’ and integrated enough to be socially acceptable, while the less palatable versions are seen as an issue or dysfunction.

Continual process of running and facing myself

A note from January reads, “continual unclothing and revelations of self.”

A trip like this awakened me to areas of myself that I need to work on, maybe one day reader I’ll let you in on these things. For now, it is for me! But, essentially I was running from 1. Society and 2. Myself. I’m no longer doing either of those things (for now).

I guess I’d found myself in a place where I really just needed to send it into the abyss. Or, to take a favourite quote that transcended, passed, lasted, washed, and held strong through all realms of the trip; sometimes one must “fuck around and find out.” So, I found out.

I’d also been reading Joseph Campbell’s Myths To Live By while I was on the road, he speaks about the importance and process of surrendering to adulthood. He broaches the topic with the idea that a lack of guidance through this transition for adolescents exists in our western society, thereby the young adults entering this new phase of life struggle and sift through choices, unaware of what’s happening to them. How western societies have lost a lot of the cultural structure and rites of passage to help guide the younger generation through this shift, to come out as well-adjusted functioning adults. In a sense saying that he feels culturally there’s a lack of support and recognition for the gravity of this change and process. I read something else, I can’t recall who to quote, but essentially they were talking about how children live fully in the sensory world and there’s a challenging process of transition from this sensory based experience into the more rational and involved side of life. We begin to develop thoughts, beliefs, ways of being in accordance with the system presented to us and in ways become alienated and lose the wholly sensory experience that we have as children. I guess, this transition is just something I’ve been experiencing entering adulthood. Maybe I should be over it by now and be a fully well-adjusted adult.

In summary

There was definitely a shift in this whole writing thing from, “woohoo fun adventure story,” to “here are the inner workings of my brain.” Sorry if this switch up was not what you were hoping for, just sharing as it comes to me.

Big takeaways:

1. I am nothing without community, need to cherish those around me.

2. Security is not a bad thing, in fact I didn’t realize how important that was to me. The balance of it will look different for us all.

3. To befriend myself, the good, the bad, and everything in between. To take myself wherever I go, to not lose the core of myself in the journey of expansion.

4. Slow down - I’m always trying to, always preaching it, often failing to actually do it.

5. Everything is temporary. Everything.

I guess trying to do a long solo road-trip on a small budget is in fact challenging. Who woulda thought! I’m really glad to have had the experience and the lessons, there’s a lot of things I hold dear to me from this winter that I didn’t write about. I’ve been on a continual mission to challenge myself and practice what I preach in a sense - living with less. I think that in ways I proved to myself that I could go out into the real world and handle myself (for the most part), but also I often felt lost and like I could have done things better. I think maybe it was just the insecurity of the situation I’d placed myself in, hopefully I’ll have learned to grapple with that better. There are areas of the trip that do not sit as I would have liked them to, things I mostly have not disclosed and won’t, dear reader. Maybe I will in the memoir, some 30 years down the line. I learned that it’s great to embrace and be open to experiences, but for me there is a necessity of slowing down and checking in with myself. Had I done so more frequently, maybe coming home wouldn’t have been so shaky. Alas, I’m only 23 and better to learn the lesson later than never. But, in the end I find comfort in this quote I picked up from my favourite podcast, Philosophize This, “The universe discloses more of itself to those who are willing to not stay at a safe distance.” The idea that I wouldn’t have the insights I do without pushing the boundaries I chose to push.

There are also still some unrealized desires, I guess there always will be though, won’t there?

All in all, it’s a mixture, a mash! It’s complex and hard to summarize. It’s life! How beautiful that in the end I was excited to come back to myself, and the aspects of a life that I’d been trying to leave - the things that hold me in this world as me, the circumstances in which I live in reference to. I’m just really grateful to be where I am now, I don’t feel the need to rush like I did before.

And next? Well, I’m going to do a yoga teacher training and then go live in a canvas tent in someone’s driveway. Maybe I’ll catch up with you then. Maybe I’ll never write again! Who’s to know?

Wish me luck and I’ll do the same for you!

As a parting treat: Enjoy my funny little summary of the Californian coast.

Northern California (North of San Francisco)
Lovely stretches of endless, seemingly virgin beauty, great stuff. Some spots methy. Two sides to every coin. I did not enjoy stopping in Gaberville at night.

Santa Cruz
Good people, interesting individuals occupy this space. True individuals. There is enough natural space out of town for comfort and wonder, there is enough human stuff for opportunity and to enjoy the integrated life.

Big Sur
I curse the tourists who stop at the big bridge. Do they come here to stop and take a photo of it because that is what they were told to come and take a photo of? Have your own experience I chastise.

Why are you flocking to this same stupid crowded point when there is an endless expanse of beauty and abundance around you? You come to look at the SINGULAR man made object in this oasis? Why do you think we are so important?
“Pull over honey, where all those people are stopped. There must be something to see.”
In fact, there is, pull over to witness the mass hysteria.

If you have stopped to look at the bridge and failed to stop elsewhere, I reckon you’ve missed the point.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the bridge, it’s very big and it let me get from one side to the other so that I could continue to pursue the realm in which the wild things are.

I digress though, the more tourists at the stupid bridge the less tourists occupying the lovely natural space that I’d like to gaze at.

After I wrote this, at 11pm upon trying to sleep, I learned that I had some very big feelings about the bridge in big sur. Sorry, I think it’s a greater metaphor that I see made so tangible and vivid in the bridge people.

Morro Bay/SLO/Pismo Beach
I wish I spent more time here, I have no idea what it is like aside from beautiful. I have a feeling that I would like it though.

Santa Barbara
I did not spend enough time here to form a strong opinion, although I did go to a very strange yoga class here. It was as if you went to yoga but it was a club in Berlin and everyone was on some upper doing very sweaty synchronized movements. (Hot Yoga Sculpt)

Rincon, the wave is incredible. The vibe is immaculate, no one is mad. No one can be mad because the wave is so good. Although it smells like sewage. Can’t have it all.

Ventura
Excellent, I met some great friends. I felt comfortable, there was not too many people. I got lucky with good swell so all my thoughts towards it are surfing related - 10/10. I even had a nice spot to park up the hill in the city where I could see the ocean. Great hiking too. Cool vibe.

North of Malibu
Cherished memories, fun surf (see Spiritual Experiences on the Road). Far enough south to be warm, just far enough out of LA to avoid the plague that LA ought to be.

Actual Malibu
Many sets of perfect pearly white teeth offset by some real lot lizards. It almost feels like an old school Hollywood movie set. The energy that surrounds that wave is insane, step to the other side of that stonewall and it cleanses and purifies you.

LA
Too many people, avoided it like the plague - aside from the art museum, that was the one venture into LA which was great.

San Clemente
Brief but positive feelings, would need more time.

Oceanside/Carlsbad
Can absolutely get behind the vibe. Grungy, lowkey. Good beachies. Some characters there that I’m guessing I don’t align with, rougher crowd. And I do not mind a rough crowd, I usually enjoy it, but some things I picked up on were a bit too far in a direction that does not resonate. I worked in the warehouse here.

Encinitas
Blissful. What can I say otherwise? I found my southern Californian oasis in a group of girls. Yoga, surfing, organic food, great dive bars. What more could a girl ask for? Great vibe overall. (See Days in Encinitas).

San Diego
Didn’t spend too much time here, too many people for me, all though there were very interesting pockets that I enjoyed, fun surf. Not the plague that LA seems to be.