How Living Out of a Van Inspired My Writing and Life
Author Kathryn Nolan details how moving into a van with her husband helped inspire her writing, writing habits, and ultimately her life.
On July 1st, 2017, my husband and I gave our keys back to our landlord, jammed one last bag of camping gear beneath our new cot beds, and officially moved into a white Ford E-350 passenger van we called Van Morrison—“Morty,” for short.
The back door was covered in bumper stickers (gifted to us by our friends and family as a going away present). This was not only a tender expression of love for our community but also a way to make our van look decidedly less creepy. Inside, a platform housed our two cot beds, while beneath it we used clear storage containers for clothes and food. Our ‘table’ was the top of our cooler and our ‘kitchen’ was a hunter-green camp stove. And the next six months of camping, trekking, and exploring the country while living out of Van Morrison were some of the freest and most glorious moments of our lives.
We were newly married and camping on the coast of California, in a tiny town called Big Sur, when we first broached the topic of semi-permanently moving into a van and traveling around. It was a huge, arduous undertaking, but we were eager to fling ourselves into the wilderness. One of the things that connected my husband and I the most was our deep love for nature and our desire to live life differently. We quit our jobs and moved to virtual, online work. We gave away almost everything that we owned. And we charted a wayward course across America and up into Canada.
Those first few months, especially, were some of the most feral and exciting and creatively inspiring times of my life. I’d been a writer since I was a kid but had abandoned it—like so many others—when I was swept into Real Life post-college. But I was newly writing in 2017—had just self-published a novella and a full-length romance novel—and was shocked at the sheer volume of words and ideas that spilled out of me on this trip.
For six years prior to this, I’d worked a job that was so stressful my mind felt like a permanently closed fist. Tight and resistant to change. Creativity was a lifeline during my near-constant anxiety and panic during that time, but within days of living in the van, that same creativity blossomed forth. We were clomping around hiking trails, gazing at trees, eating dinner in open fields, doing laundry at abandoned RV parks, working in random coffee shops, running into the ocean. Absent the rigid pressures of capitalism and societal obligations, I merely…floated along and stayed curious. Rose with the sun, drank coffee while watching elk, saw strange rock formations and kitschy road-side attractions.
Writing had been my entire life and yet I’d also convinced myself it was somehow lost to me. And it wasn’t. Our stories, our art, the creativity that makes us human—it exists in all of us. It was never gone or missing, I only needed to give myself a little bit of space and freedom to listen to it again. To listen to the messiest, most primal parts of my heart. Because when we lived on the road, stories were all around me, just waiting to be plucked. They existed in every chatty stranger and pretty vista, in every neon sign and field of flowers.
I’ve written 16 books to date and my 17th—a queer romance called Thrill of the Chase—released on Tuesday, July 1st. It tells the story of Harper and Eve, two rivals on a high-stakes treasure hunt through the desert in New Mexico. Like so many of my books, the themes of nature, adventure and exploration feature heavily. And this is largely because of what I learned while living out of Van Morrison—that something unlocks inside of us when we’re standing in front of mountain that’s been there long before us and will exist long after we’re gone. That its vital to see yourself as intrinsic to the world around you, as important as every ant and ladybug, as every canyon and river. And to take care of it, the way its taken care of you.
I’ll always be grateful for those months we spent enjoying our own adventure tale. My books exist because of it.
Check out Kathryn Nolan's Thrill of the Chase here:
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