Yadi and I have a vow: to go on as many adventures as humanly possible, have a snuggle every day, and always come back. The last part meaning if I go on vacation and he stays with family or if I go to work, I will always come home. His side of that part of the promise is to always come when I call but sometimes he's not as good as he should be at that.

Yadi paddle boarding in Routt
National Forest

Traveling with a dog is not always the easiest thing. Sometimes he gets carsick. Sometimes he won't eat or drink very much on the road. While he's good about not barking when we leave him in the van or at home, there's no leaving him alone in a hotel room or another strange place because he'll cry for hours. It's always in the back of my mind that someone will break a window in the van if they see him, but we'd never leave him without the vent fan regulating the van's temperature. 

Yadi riding in my lap. Abba in the
doggie slot between seats. 

Even still, traveling with my dog is the greatest thing. He never has any idea where we're going, but damn he's pumped to be along for the ride. My most favorite thing in the van is that his favorite riding spot is in my lap so he can watch the journey. He's way too big to be a lap dog, but we make it work. 

One of the most disappointing things about traveling with a dog is that most national parks don't allow dogs. In many of them, it makes sense. They're crowded. Trails are narrow. There's wildlife. People don't bring adequate water and supplies for themselves let alone for their animals. In short, humans are just not always very conscientious of others, their surroundings, or their charges (I say charges because I've witnessed many people not pay attention to their children's actions either). The good part is that most national parks are surrounded by national forests and other public lands.

Poor altitude sick nugget

We learned about this rule at Yadi's first national park: Grand Teton in Wyoming last summer. It kind of worked out because the hike we wanted to do can be accessed from the western side of the Tetons (not part of the park), and we will get to do it this fall. We did a shorter hike, and Yadi had altitude sickness so he didn't want to go out anyway. We shifted our plans to hit Yellowstone the next day--more of a driving national park--so that Yaddles could continue sleeping. 

Working out with the Tetons in view
at our free site in Bridger-Teton
National Forest

Free campsite somewhere near Monument Valley
at a site called Mexican Hat for the rock formation

This spring we made another big van trip right after taking in a foster dog, Abba--named for Jared's love of music and because she's always making noises. We've since become foster fails and she's officially taken the vow with us, but that's something for another post maybe. We traveled through Utah spending most of our time on Bureau of Land Management land (BLM land) and state parks, then we traveled on to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, and back through Utah BLM lands. While we were spending time near Moab, we drove through Arches National Park at sunset. In the Grand Canyon, we stayed in Kaibab National Forest--dirt road access off the main road in the national park. We got to experience the park in a way most people probably don't. I had no idea there was a forest surrounding the Grand Canyon. There's a lookout tower where we watched the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. And we only spoke to one other person. The Grand Canyon does allow dogs on trails above the rim. They also have a kennel where we could take the dogs to stay while Jared and I went for a day hike down into the canyon. We dropped them off at 7:30 am open time and picked them up at 4:30 pm making the most of our day with a long hike, grocery stop, and shower.

All of us at the south rim
of the Grand Canyon

Yadi and Abba hiking Red
Canyon near Panguitch, Utah

Bryce has a similar policy: dogs above rim on limited section of the rim trail. But there were so many people at Bryce! We pretty much wandered the dogs-allowed section of trail and headed out. The BLM land trails of Grand Staircase-Escalante and the Red Canyon near Panguitch, Utah provided miles and miles of trails with minimal foot traffic. Also, Panguitch has the cutest theater in the world where we watched Endgame. 

Wild horses somewhere between
Mexican Hat and Monument
Valley near the Utah/Arizona boarder

Where I'm from there's not a lot of public land. I've always thought of Nebraska as being this wide open country, but it's not from a freedom standpoint. Nebraska has a landscape interrupted by fences and property lines. It's beautiful, in it's own way, but heading west gives open spaces a new meaning. It's not be wide open fields where you can see for miles. It's land with trails and adventure open to everyone. I don't think I really understood how much space is out there with free camping and quiet. We've even stumbled upon wild horses on a run. No fences. This is what all of those dumb songs I had to sing in grade school music class were about: public lands are your land and my land. This land really is made for you and me. 

Overlooking the canyon at
Dead Horse Point State
Park near Moab

There's a reason national parks are incredible. They encompass as much of the cool things going on in the area as they can and show it off. However, you can often see parts of the same wonders for free, with your dogs, in the areas around them. We'll always have a national parks pass hanging in the window of the van. We plan on visiting the backside of Grand Teton in Driggs, Idaho this fall and taking that aforementioned hike, then heading up to Glacier and Banff Nationals Parks, but you can bet the park time will be shorter on our trip and the unmanned wilderness time abundant. 

So...It's been a minute since I wrote anything on here. Almost a year and a half to be exact. It's not that I haven't been writing (albeit, I haven't been writing enough), it's that I A. have been frustrated with different elements of the world around me and haven't had the heart to deal with anything non-fiction and B. I've been busy! My life has been a whirlwind of action this last year and a half. I've been beaten around by change and self-discovery: basically, I came to terms with myself that I wasn't living the life I wanted to live. I'd bought a house in a city I swore I'd leave a soon as I graduated college. I was working over time hours at a job that had nothing to do with my degrees, for a boss who made an ever growing pit of dread in my stomach. I loved the people I'd surrounded myself with, but I was living a life that was passively accumulated rather than the life I wanted to create for myself.

I wanted to live in a van and travel and volunteer and give Yadi the adventure life we both deserve. I also knew there was no way I could do it because of my limited knowledge of vehicles and limited building skills. I gave up on that idea and set sights on another dream I've had my whole life: living abroad. I sold my house and everything I couldn't fit in my Jeep.

Then I met Jared late in 2017. He started coming to my classes at Pinnacle when I was in my ultimate hole of fed-up-ness. I wasn't looking to meet someone, but rarely say no to a running buddy, and on our first run I told him I wanted to live in a van. He took off with the idea.

"I know how we can do The Van Thing," he said to me.

I was pissed. Who was this "we" he was talking about?

"You need me," he said. "You can't do it without me--you'll see." Jared's mom and step dad own a remodeling company. He had access to their tools and more importantly to their knowledge.

In the beginning of February 2018 my friend Aaron and I went on a trip to Costa Rica to volunteer at an animal rescue center. We met so many incredible people from all over the world. They were all young and traveling as much as they could. We both had a little come to Jesus moment with ourselves out there. Aaron worked his butt off building habitats for animals and realized he wants to work more with his hands and get out of the city. When we got home to Omaha, he started looking for Nebraska acreages where he can build a home. I told all of our new friends how I wanted to live in a van. And, rather than look at me like I was crazy, they were all pumped for me. I was surrounded by people who understood my need to roam. They also helped me realize I had someone else at home who got it too.


Jared and I bought our van on April 27th, 2018 after only 6 months of knowing each other. We were then broke so we couldn't start any projects until the end of May, but we did decide that if we were going to live in a 70 square foot van together, we should probably make sure we could live in an 800 square foot apartment together first. So, we sold everything Jared owned, too. We named the van Dracula (because Dracula the Vamper in which we go Vamping).


We lost track of how many hours we spent on the van this summer. I know it was over 50 on insulation alone. Those first 50 hours were awful, for me. I look back on the journal one of my clients encouraged me to write as we started The Van Thing, and even though I was working on my dream, I hated it. There are some very annoyed and dark thoughts in there. Mostly I didn't feel like Jared and I were in it together. He loved working on the van. He found it therapeutic. I am not a stranger to hard work and getting dirty, but I broke drill bits and felt dumb all of the time. Jared's stepdad would tell me to do a project one way, then 30 minutes later Jared would check in on me and offer "a better way" to do what I was doing. Then an hour later his mom would offer "the right way" to do it. No one was wrong. They were all trying to help, and they're all far superior in their knowledge of these kinds of things than me.

Jared's biggest fear was that we'd get the walls up and be done with the van and driving down the road and insulation would start squeaking inside the walls. My biggest fear was that one of us would annoy the other to the point of driving us all off a cliff. "I have Yadi to live for," I told him. "I guess it'll be you."

Once the insulation, vent fan, and subfloor were done, things went crazy fast, because we could actually see progress. Jared got the walls up in a weekend, and I could seal them with no guidance. The mailman gave us a stove and Jared and Gary (Jared's stepdad) custom built all of our cabinets. I enjoyed painting, and it was something I could do in the parking lot of our apartment so I wasn't dependent on others' time.

We took our tester trip at the end of August 2018. We went to Steamboat Springs, CO to run a 50k for my birthday, then to Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park. We had most things done--everything we could afford to do at this point. Missing were a toilet, cubby holes for our clothes and the slide out for our "garage."

Our bed sits 40 inches high. Underneath is the "garage" where we store our bikes, tools, outdoor kitchen and grill, dog food, yoga mats, backpacks, Camelbaks, extra water, and other "nonessential" things. Currently, our next project is to build a slide out tray that all of that stuff sits on so that we don't have to crawl around in there to access these things. We'll just be able to slide out the tray and grab what we need.

We have a full sized bed, extra long as Jared is 6' 3". Next to the bed is a wall of cubby holes for our clothes, then also an area for dirty clothes and one for towels. We have a sink for doing dishes. A gas stove and oven. We have lights and power strips hooked up to a charging system that connects to the solar panels we install on the roof. We use a Yeti cooler rather than a fridge for power purposes and because fridges are temperamental about sitting even. We have cabinets for food that doesn't need to be cool. We have a bench that sits behind the driver seat that now houses the toilet and all of our cleaning supplies. The toilet has been an incredible addition. We had no idea what we were missing that first trip. Our first trip we roughed it. It felt more like true camping: poop in a hole and bury it. Now we feel like we're truly cruising in our home.

So, we had the van! We spent our whole summer--the best time of year--sweaty and dirty working on the van. We spent all of our money on the van. We put in our notice to leave our apartment. My dreams were coming true!

Then my aunt and uncle in Steamboat told us how short the mountain was on staff for this year. It had always been Jared's dream to work on a ski mountain. Steamboat is the number 3 ski mountain in the USA. It's an awesome town. The best place in the world...in the summer. I don't enjoy skiing. I don't really care if I ever see another snowy winter. But my aunt and uncle also needed help in their business. And it was Jared's dream, so we said what the heck, we're leaving our jobs anyway, why not  go to Steamboat before we van it. So here we are :)

If you want to check out Jared's thoughts on things, here is an article he wrote about #vanlife for Omaha Magazine.

2018. Here we are: a new year. My goal this year is to write. I'm afraid I'm losing my writing practice as a ramp up my German practice. The only thing I've written lately has been with my poetry kids. And that's me writing poetry, so it really, really hasn't been good writing. With the internet as my witness, my goal is to write every day. Even if it's only for five minutes.

I know I need to write more on what the last year has taught me, but I'm not sure I'm in a place to do so yet. 2017 was exhausting in good and bad ways. For today, I'm going to highlight the goods in regards to my last year's resolution: run 3 50ks and in at least one national park. I ran 3 50ks: Stillwater, OK, Devil's Lake, WI, and Steamboat Springs, CO. And ran in Route, Rocky, Black Hills, Willamette, and Umpqua National Forests. And I hit five (Indian Cave, Ponca, Mahoney, Platte River,  and Niobrara) Nebraska State Parks. And Yadi Man got to visit three new states and THE MOUNTAINS. He loved it and is a natural little mountain goat.

Mahoney State Park

Fort Calhoun, Nebraska

Carol Joy Holling Camp, Ashland, Nebraska

Neale Woods, Omaha, Nebraska

Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota

Bluff Creek Trail, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Palo Duro Canyon, Canyon, Texas

Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma

Garmin Marathon Kansas City, Missouri

Niobrara State Park, Nebraska

Black Hills National Forest, South Dakota

Horse Thief Lake, South Dakota

Devil's Lake, Wisconsin

Indian Cave State Park, Nebraska

Platte River State Park, Nebraska

North Table Mountain, Colorado

Genesee Park, Colorado

Windy Mountain, Colorado

Hmmm...a trail I forgot near Steamboat Springs, CO 

Continental Divide 50K Steamboat Springs, CO

Willamette National Forest, Oregon

Umpqua National Forest, Oregon

Humbug State Park, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Fort Lauderdale Beach, Florida

Ponca State Park, Nebraska

When I look at all of these pictures of the things I got to do, places to go, friends I visited, miles flown/driven/ran, I feel like 2017 was maybe not so much a bad/hard/tiring year I've chalked it up in my mind to have been, but a transition year setting me up for where I want to go/see/what I want to do next. Today I am incredibly thankful to my body that is willing and able to do the things I love most, to having a stable job that allowed me to explore, and to everyone who's on this journey with me. And to Yads. Always that dude.

I am a runner. In the physical sense—I train for and compete in ultra distance races on the regular and I wish it were socially acceptable to run everywhere I go rather than walk—and in a less literal sense in that I need to skip town as frequently as possible.

In an emotionally complex chain of events that I am only just now beginning to realize, contradictory to everything I am, I bought a house four years ago. I’m finding now that this decision was an attempt to anchor myself. I did it in my way—white girl from small town Nebraska buys a beautiful old house in North Omaha. Alone. That was no surprise, but in committing myself to this house, to Omaha, to Nebraska, places I am so desperately escaping each weekend, I’ve been in total rebellion with myself.

Let it be known, I wouldn’t consider myself a rebel. I’ve always, always been a good kid/employee/friend/partner/whatever. After I bought this house, I was promoted to management at my job. I loved my job. In contradiction to running away from things, however, I am stupid loyal. So when my boss said we need you to manage things, my loyalty said OK, I can do this. That meant more work hours, more on-call. I told myself mo money mo travel, but Biggie was right, mo money, mo problems.

I keep going and going, committed to my job and to my house and in the back of my head is this voice saying, fuck it all! Screw capitalism and social norms! Go live in a van in the forest! On bad days I think, yeah! I’m gone! But a voice deeper inside of me knows that this would be fun for maybe a month. Then I’d probably feel like a total piece of shit because the world is a shitty place and I have things to say and an able body to dedicate to some cause somewhere.

I spend a month getting my house ready to sell. The second to last week in September, I list my house and book a trip to Oregon the first week in October. I’m going to Oregon to volunteer with the National Parks Service I tell my friends, family, and clients. You’re such an inspiration, I want your life, they tell me. I shrug. If I were really that cool, I’d figure out a way to make travel and volunteering my life.

There were pretty horrible forest fires this fall in Oregon. I assume this means people will be jumping for joy to have volunteers. It actually means that everyone is so busy unless you are a volunteer firefighter, they don’t have time to deal with you. I call and email and email and call and finally, the day before I leave, Debra asks me if I’d like to collect thermographs with her in Umpqua National Forest. I have no idea what a thermograph is but fuck yeah, I’d like to do that! Deb is instantly my best friend.

I fly into Portland and get my rental car. This is supposed to be a story about rebellion so I’ll let you know that, contrary to great urging by the rental car guy, I refuse to pay for extra insurance. I want to tell him, dude, I’m so cheap I plan on sleeping in this Toyota Highlander while I live in the forest the next few days, but decide against it.

My first day in Oregon is to be spent with one of my closest childhood friends on her weed farm so that I can hang with her and her new baby. Her husband is deep in the throws of marijuana harvest. Again, I wish I could tell you I rebelled hard and smuggled a bunch of pot back, and got caught and my life were way more exciting, but it’s not, I’m not. Walking into their drying shed with workers trimming buds of 48 plants (each plant produces about 5 pounds of weed) and plants hanging from the ceiling was thrilling enough for me.

My friend reads tarot cards and her online business is booming. Her baby is beautiful and healthy. Her husband excitedly tells me about his business and my heart is so full of their happiness. We talk about the upcoming full moon—both the baby and I have a hard time sleeping with the full moon—and politics and these horrible new trends of women eating their placentas after birth and flat earthers. I tell them I’m selling my house, that I’m going to go down to part time at my job, that I don’t know what I’m going to do next. They tell me I’m an inspiration.

The next day I volunteer with Deb. She’s magnificent. We’re spending 9 hours together that day so I don’t want to step on her toes too much. We spend the first hour feeling each other out, skirting around politics until I finally tell her I guess part of the reason I’m volunteering with her is in response to a Trump presidency. Then we’re on a roll. She tells me about her first women’s march in the seventies and then marching on Washington in the nineties. We talk about being bleeding heart liberals in, my case a red state, in her case a red county. She tells me how much easier it would be to just move the 65 miles north to Eugene. I nod. I’ve thought this so many times. But instead I tell her to think how much more her voice means in a community that needs those voices of change. When I leave that evening, she hugs me and tells me I am an inspiration and to never give up the fight.

I have a two-hour drive to the coast, where I’m camping for the evening. I drive west to Humbug Mountain State Park, and on my way realize, I haven’t seen the sun set over the ocean since grad school—over three years—I’d like to get to the coast to watch the sunset. I speed. I weave through the mountains and my phone is dying and there are two radio stations that I can get in this area: Jeezy stuff or NPR. I love NPR, but when you are hauling through the mountains, chasing the sun, NPR isn’t exactly spurring you on in that race.

It’s pitch black by the time I make it to the ocean. I can hear it, smell it, see it in the full moon’s light, but I don’t see the sunset. I make camp in the back of the Highlander. I’ve nothing to do so I go to bed at 9 pm after sending my mom the I’m Alive text. Again, not a rebel.

The next morning I wake before the sun rises. I plan to have a full day of running—I want to do about twenty miles in two different parks so I need to get going. Before I’m ready to run, I walk through the campground toward the sound of the ocean. The sky is the most beautiful rainbow of pink, orange, and blue. Framed between two mountains is the moon. Instead of looking at the water then making my way back to camp to change and run, I sit down. I listen to the waves and watch the moonset and remember what my friend told me about the feminine moon eclipsing the male sun in a year that has seemed like women will fall three steps back. I have the beach all to myself and I think that it just might be an inspiring thing to love yourself enough that you’d fly halfway across the country to sit on a beach alone.

 

I've had quite the whirlwind of a last few months. If you read my last post or heard my story slam at The Sydney, you can see I'm trying to move forward and keep putting pieces together--doing my best to figure out this thing called life.

I think I'm getting closer to the life I want, however, if someone were to ask me what's new, I'd sound crazy and a bit like a hermit: I'm starting to brush my dog's teeth, I sold my house and almost everything I own, I'm learning German, and my favorite two hours of my week are spent with Middle Schoolers working on slam poetry. I'm also working really hard on affirmative self-talk, so instead of saying I sound crazy, in my head I'm telling myself that the good, the bad, the crazy are all part of my story and if I only get one life, why not go for it?

I'm brushing Yadi's teeth because I want him to live forever. I sold my house and most things in it because I want to be free to go anywhere and everywhere. I'm learning German because I want to live  in Germany. I love being a teaching artist with the Nebraska Writers Collective's Louder Than a Bomb youth poetry program because my poets are really damn cool. And talented. And they aren't afraid to tell me when my writing is crappy.

When my writing is not my best. The affirmative self-talk is not my strong suit. Scratch that. The affirmative self-talk is something I'm working on. Mostly, it's to stop thinking, oh, yeah, f-that every time I think something that makes me angry or sad or is hurtful or negative. The things that hurt are part of my story and that is beautiful. I'm surprised how often I think f-that now that I'm trying to be aware. To be clear, I think feeling, really embracing and feeling the suck of sadness and angry are important, but, as Andre 3000 says, Spaceships don't come equipped with review mirrors. My past is my story. I get to choose what happens next--if the focus is only on what's behind, how do you rise?

In embracing my story (and the crazy), things are staring to happen. My long short story "The Volunteer" which I posted a clip of earlier this year was pick up by the anthology I wrote it for. I rewrote the entire piece in less than a week for the press submission. You can find the anthology here if interested. One of my pieces of flash fiction is being anthologized and nominated for best flash of 2017. I got my eyeballs fixed. I slammed another story. I've traveled to Oregon to volunteer in the forest and chased a sunset over the Pacific ocean only to miss it and happen upon the moonset the next morning. I'm planning a trip to Costa Rica to volunteer with sloths. SLOTHS!

For 29 years. or whatever of my 29 years that I was capable of this thought, I thought that really living had to be extreme--jumping off cliffs and out of planes, coming face to face with jungle snakes, and scuba diving with sharks. For me, I think living is writing and hanging with Yads and running through forests and never stopping learning. Choose you. Choose your story. There will be shitty things and you will mess up, but if you stay true to you, the small things--story publications and sloths and a healthy dog--will fall into place and those little things will slowly start to make the big picture of who you want to become. And it's not weird at all that it's looking like the person I want to become is a writer in the German forest with a clean-tooth dog--I'm getting on that spaceship.