Waiting for the Last Gasp – Adam Overland

I’m coming up on 65 consecutive nights in the camper, and while I always leave my return open-ended, it seems like 60 days or so is the point each year where I start thinking about heading home. I miss seeing my friends, of course, and I miss the relative comfort and familiarity of my house. I miss the familiar faces of people in the neighborhood, and that dog that always barks for no reason. I even miss going to the gym, although after two days of going to the gym I will be sick of it. 

The first year I did this in 2023, I overshot. I lasted about 85 days total, with 75 of those in the camper—gone almost a quarter of a year—a pretty long time to live in about a 115 square-foot space. It felt like a little too much, and so in 2024 I did about 65 days, which seemed just right. Although I’m not sure it’s necessarily the living space that causes the fatigue.

People have a hard time believing it, but for me, the first week in the camper each year is the toughest adjustment. After a week, you begin to adapt to your living situation and it really doesn’t seem like that small of a space/big of a deal. Still, it helps immensely that the outside is your living room when you’re camping, and it’s when it rains that the space can begin to feel more confined. 

If you think of your house, you probably have a favorite room, a favorite chair. And then you have your bed, of course, where you spend a third (if you’re lucky) of your day. Between those few places, that’s probably 90% of the space you consistently occupy in your home (I’m speaking from an “I live alone” person’s POV here). 

In a small camper, you essentially have just one room that is all of these things, and so by default it’s your favorite room, even if it is your least favorite room (like Schrödinger’s Cat). And the plastic veneered dinette with the half-moon bench seat? That is also your favorite plastic veneered dinette and seat. So maybe since we can’t have two favorites, we really don’t need all that other shit that we think we do. But it’s easy to “adapt” to nice things, more space, etc. 

Personally, I’m convinced that I could live year-round in a camper if it were about 20% bigger than what I have. But I wonder if after a while I’d start to think, “You know what would be nice, is if this 20% bigger camper I bought were about 20% bigger.” And so on until you’re driving a 45-foot, 3-bed, 2-bath, $950,000 motorhome with 700 square feet of space and a hot tub (not the worst scenario).

But I think the biggest thing that gets tiresome is just the lack of routine. Routines are comfortable, and safe, and we humans like things to be comfortable and safe. And as much as I try not to get too locked into that mode of thinking, it’s easy to return to it. It calls you. 

But planning where to stay every couple of weeks and what stuff to do in your new location can get tiresome (1). Driving certainly gets tiresome (2). Eating out more often and cooking and doing dishes in a very small space so that water gets all over the counter and floor every time gets tiresome (3). You know what doesn’t get tiresome? Threesomes. 

Or maybe it’s just this campground (Clear Creek, Coconino National Forest) that’s getting to me. It’s kind of a dud. After a week at Lake Mead’s Boulder Beach Campground, which I’d stayed at previously, I wanted to see Sedona and Jerome and more of the Verde Valley (which I passed through on my way west in early Jan.), so I found the only campground with availability, about 35 miles from Sedona, and booked it for a week.

I walked around both Jerome and Sedona for a day (beautiful, soaked in history), saw the nearby Montezuma Castle National Monument (built nearly 1,000 years ago by the Sinagua people), and now I’ve done the only two hikes close to my campground, so I’m about ready to flee. I’m hoping to pass through Great Sand Dunes National Park this weekend, and possibly stay near there for a week, but it may be too cold for my three-season camper. 

In the meantime, here’s a cool list published recently: The 15 least visited national parks (I’ve been to just four of them). 

And here is a poem I came across recently that kind of speaks to a lot of themes I’ve uncovered during my own travels: 

You start dying slowly

You start dying slowly
If you do not travel,
If you do not read,
If you do not listen to the sounds of life,
If you do not appreciate yourself.

You start dying slowly:
When you kill your self-esteem,
When you do not let others help you.

You start dying slowly:
If you become a slave to your habits,
Walking every day on the same paths…
If you do not change your routine,
If you do not wear different colors,
Or speak to those you don’t know.

You start dying slowly:
If you avoid feeling passion
And their turbulent emotions—
Those that make your eyes glisten
And your heart beat fast.

You start dying slowly:
If you do not risk the safe for the uncertain,
If you do not chase a dream,
If you do not allow yourself,
At least once in your lifetime,
To run away from sensible advice.

Don’t let yourself die slowly.

~ Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971