The Sunday Read: ‘I Lived the #VanLife. It Wasn’t Pretty.’

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.5 • 97.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

The Times journalist Caity Weaver was tasked by her editor to go on an adventure: With an old college friend she would spend a week in California, living out of a converted camper van, in pursuit of the aesthetic fantasy known as #VanLife. Given the discomfort that can arise even in the plushiest of vehicles, it’s a surprising trend that shows no sign of letting up. As Weaver explains, even the idea of living full time out of a vehicle has “become aspirational for a subset of millennials and Zoomers, despite the fact that, traditionally, residing in a car or van is usually an action taken as a last resort, from want of other options to protect oneself from the elements.” Unpacking the craze by testing it herself, Weaver offers a humorous account of the trials of not being adequately prepared, claustrophobia, long restaurant lines, the increase in traffic within the national parks, and the disappointment that occurs when an Instagram aesthetic bumps up against reality. Sometimes fantasies are too good to be true.

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0:00.0	Wow, where do I begin?
0:05.4	I'm going to need at least 65 minutes to explain.
0:08.4	It's all coming back to me now by Selindia.
0:13.8	I was on this road trip in California that I coerced my friend Michael into joining me
0:18.4	on.
0:19.4	Here we go, we've been practicing a lot.
0:22.8	So on our drive, Michael and I spent hours upon hours upon hours upon hours for no reason,
0:29.4	trying to learn all the words to the Selindian version of, it's all coming back to me now.
0:39.7	This is a song that Selindia recorded that is incredibly complicated.
0:45.4	It has really subtle changes of lyrics that sort of repeat.
0:50.4	There were days when the sun was so cool.
0:54.9	So we would listen to the song a couple times and not along with her and try to say the
0:59.2	lyrics at the same time.
1:00.2	Then we would cut the music and Michael would pull up the lyrics on his phone and just
1:09.7	read them aloud as if he were reading an article or reciting a poem.
1:13.7	And we would talk about the songs interior logic, the way it progressed, we would try to
1:18.0	come up with hints or mnemonic devices to help us remember the order of the words.
1:23.3	The more we listen to this song and sort of recited the lyrics over and over like a prayer,
1:37.0	it just started to seem oddly reflective of our reality.
1:42.0	It opens with the line, there were nights when the wind was so cold and we would look
1:46.4	at each other like there really are nights when the wind is so cool.
1:52.0	That is living in the van, Selindia is right.
	...

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