The Cult of Nomad
My father was a teacher, and so he had his summers off. During my younger years he would take a summer job as a camp counselor, and my four brothers, my mother and I would spend the summer days at camp. But in my teen years, he decided he wanted to see the country. He bought a VW Van, packed all seven of us in it, and we embarked on a series of summer camping trips, each summer venturing farther out from Long Island towards the west coast, hitting the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles in the summer of 1969. My souvenir of that trip was a copy of the Berkeley Barb.
In the summer of 1976 my wife and I took a “bicentennial tour” of the US in a VW Squareback. My wife had never been camping before. I ended up throwing out my back in Whitefish, MT, and had to spend a few days in the hospital there. The timing and injury spoiled a planned trip down the Bright Angel Trail to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The Squareback lost a cylinder two days before we got home, so we limped home on three cylinders.
This past May/June, I took a solo camping trip as a present to myself upon retirement. I drove to Key West, and then back up the Appalachian Mountains from northern Georgia to northern NJ. I fitted in a few hikes here and there, and almost melted in some unexpected 98+ degree heat.
All this is to say that I enjoy camping and travelling. With age came a used RV, a small 22' Class C motor home, a concession mostly to my wife’s comfort and our preference for not sleeping on the ground (although I have to say that air mattresses have come a long way, and beat sleeping directly on the ground). I hope to take a few extended vacation trips in the near future. Who knows? Perhaps I will become a snowbird, looking to set up the RV someplace in the southwest for the winter. An old teacher of mine has been doing just that.
Recently, it appears that the idea of being an “RV Nomad” is having a moment. RV sales are up nationwide, and even millennials are getting into the “#vandwelling” scene, so it’s not merely a baby boomer phenomenon. The publication of Nomadland by Jessica Bruder has brought more visibility to this phenomenon. One person in particular, Bob Wells, has turned this whole phenomenon into something of a cult.
Mr. Wells is, in many ways, the self-styled “high priest” of living in a van. He has established an active presence on the web through his website and his YouTube channel. Like most cult figures, he preaches the benefits of van life without ever getting into the negatives; to Mr. Wells, living the van life is “the best life you can ever have.” Mr. Wells also rails against modern middle-class living, seeing it as the great evil that will somehow bring down all of humankind. According to Mr. Wells, we should all abandon our houses, climb into some sort of mobile apartment, and live on the road, out in nature.
As someone who enjoys camping and living out of an RV, I have ambivalent feelings about Mr. Wells. On the one hand, his website contains a lot of useful information about maintaining and customizing a mobile dwelling. On the other hand, he spends a good deal of time talking about how living in a van is both a spiritual experience as well as an ecological ideal. I’ve enjoyed looking through his website, as well as viewing his unapologetically amateurish videos (in which he both dispenses his wisdom as well as interview other vandwellers and tours their rigs), but I find myself repelled by his evangelical manner. He tends to portray himself as someone who has “found the light,” and he actively encourages people, especially those already on the margins of society, to join his nomadic tribe. Whether he’d admit it or not, he has become the leader of a cult, the “Cult of Nomad.”
Like many who become true believers of one thing or another, Mr. Wells arrived at his cult status indirectly, and mostly because, by his own admission, he failed at many things. According to his book, he had a job at a supermarket, which he hated, as well as two failed marriages. When he finally could not keep up with rent, his economic circumstances drove him to buy a van and live in it. During his second marriage he went back to living in a house, but discovered he disliked the chores and upkeep and wasted space of a house. So Mr. Wells decided to continue living a mobile lifestyle. He purchased truck camper, took an early retirement from his job that provided him a small pension ($1100/month), and hit the road. In the ensuing years he has taken to spreading the gospel of van life. In addition to his website, he has written a book, been interviewed in a documentary, organizes an annual gathering of vandwellers, creates videos, and now has appeared in Prof. Bruder’s book.
I certainly don’t begrudge Mr. Wells his lifestyle. He’s entitled to live as he pleases, and if he gets enjoyment and contentment out of living in a van, then fine. And I really do respect his knowledge and skills when it comes to van life. His practical knowledge is often very useful. What concerns me, however, is that, like many cult leaders, Mr. Wells does not present a fair and balanced viewpoint to his tribe. Mr. Wells touts his way of life as the only way of life, and other ways of life are, in his view, somehow inferior. He takes many good ideas — the notion of living small, having less, spending less — and wraps them up in the conclusion that the only way to accomplish these things is by living in a van or some other mobile lifestyle.
The other aspect of Mr. Wells’ cult that is disturbing is that his message generally resonates only with people who are, in some way, the victims of society’s unfortunate tendency to treat humans as economically disposable products. In his so-called “review” of Prof. Bruder’s book, he raves about it, as if somehow Prof. Bruder is, through the book, supportive of the nomadic lifestyle. In point of fact, the book takes no particular side of the issue, but does go a long way to demonstrate how hard the lifestyle is. Prof. Bruder does not paint a romantic picture for the reader. In her forward, which Mr. Wells reads aloud in his review, she does recognize the “call of the road,” a romantic call that has spanned the American imagination since its beginnings. But the main character of the book, Linda May, lives a life that would hardly be described as romantic. Ms. May endures her life with incredible good spirits, as do many of the vandwellers portrayed in the book. But Prof. Bruder makes it clear to us that Ms. May’s life is anything but pleasant or romantic.
I consider myself to be an unbelievably fortunate person. I worked for 42 years as a teacher and college professor, a job I truly enjoyed, and I pursued that career because I saw numerous advantages to it. My career gave me a large measure of security, autonomy, freedom, and time off. The example my parents set for me in terms of lifestyle rubbed off; I do not buy things I don’t need and don’t live beyond my means. I found my “dream job” in a small town where I bought a house for $59,000 and have since paid it off. I just celebrated my 43rd wedding anniversary. I paid for all three of my children’s college educations so they have no college debt, and I have no substantial debt either. We recently retired, and my wife and I have reasonably well-funded retirement accounts, enough to supplement our Social Security.
Our small 22' Class C takes us on nice, long, comfortable camping vacations (I prefer my solo tent-camping trips, however). Almost all the furniture in my house is second-hand, and I do my level best to reduce my carbon footprint, like heating my house only to 65 degrees in the winter. I know that we are a dying breed in America; a middle-class couple, neither of whom ever made a 6-figure salary, living pretty well. In some aspects I have been lucky, in other aspects I made good choices relative to career and lifestyle. My lifestyle is just fine, Bob — just as fulfilling as yours. I neither need nor want to live in a van, and I can find my spiritual well-being elsewhere.
I’d wager that if Mr. Wells had had better luck and had made better choices, he might not be living in a van today. It is one of the more remarkable aspects of human behavior that, even when forced into less-than-desirable circumstances, people tend to put on the best face possible in their situations. Prof. Bruder puts it best when she says:
The truth as I see it is that people can both struggle and remain upbeat simultaneously, through even the most soul-testing of challenges. This doesn’t mean they’re in denial. Rather, it testifies to the remarkable ability of humankind to adapt, to seek meaning and kinship when confronted with adversity. It’s possible to undergo hardships that shake our will to endure, while also finding happiness in shared moments, such as sitting around a bonfire with fellow workampers under a vast starry sky. (Nomadland, pp. 164–165, Kindle edition)
Van living is a coping mechanism, and as a way to handle economic distress is probably as good as any, and better than most. “Houselessness” beats homelessness by far. And being able to find a certain measure of happiness within it is remarkable, and should be commended. But in the end it’s nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig. It shouldn’t rise to the level of glorification, and because it still requires a source of income, is no long-term solution for the societal ills we face today. Mr. Wells does a disservice to society by glorifying van life and turning it into a cult, because by trying to convince people that living in a van is a wonderful, inexpensive, and beneficial lifestyle, he allows Corporate America to continue getting away with treating people in an inhuman and undignified manner. Amazon is thrilled to death that vandwellers are willing to come work under such inhuman conditions as Prof. Bruder describes, as they get incredibly cheap non-unionized labor willing to sacrifice their bodies for a few dollars. And in the end, advanced age and medical issues will force most vandwellers out of their vans, as they become physically unable to work or even to drive. Then what? Mr. Wells has no answer for that.
Mr. Wells has stated on more than one occasion that he is a person who likes his privacy and enjoys being by himself. And yet, he has built for himself a cult following of people who praise and admire him, and come to his gatherings and his web sites to be around him and bask in his words and influence. This, of course, is the great contradiction of his own existence: a man who claims to want to live away from people, and yet proselytizes his views and produces content that draws people to him. I would challenge Mr. Wells, if he really wants privacy, to renounce his web presence and live in his van without spreading his gospel. Or at the very least, stick to offering practical tips, at which he excels, and which truly provide a useful service for people caught in these circumstances. He’s welcome to have the private life he claims he wants. He should realize he is not offering a solution that gets at the root of the problem. He’s only offering a crutch to people who probably have one too many crutches already. The Cult of Nomad is a trend that should be exposed for what it is: the continued disintegration of our social contract and the hollowing out of the American middle class. -twl
