When I first moved to Taos, I wrote a blog titled “Coming home to the unknown” about how it felt to call a strange and new place home. I was freshly out of the van and although the house was my home, I knew nothing about my new town or state.
I got back from my most recent van trip this week and it felt entirely different than the first time I moved here – coming home to the known. From the moment I crossed over the state line from Colorado to New Mexico, I felt like I was home again.
My neighbors waved hello and asked how my travels were. Friends at my yoga studio hugged me and welcomed me back. I recognized cashiers at the store, and my dog was ecstatic to walk her neighborhood loop again. I wave to my neighbors and relish in the familiar stock of the grocery aisles. My community was happy to see me.
Framed in my living room window, the Sacred Mountain anchors me in my home. The meandering Rio Grande gorge beckons me to escape from the increasing heat of the sun and the endless swathes of the Mesa welcome me with their familiar and distinct sagebrush scent. It is no longer unfamiliar to me
When I first came home to Taos, I had nothing but an inclination. A call in my heart to this high desert town, a pull I could not ignore. Today, I have a home.
I dreamed as much about getting back to this house while on my month-long van trip as I did before we ever moved in here. Though Montana and Wyoming were beautiful and adventures had, there was another call I could not ignore: a call to be done with living in a vehicle. I suspected I would feel this way about getting back in the van, but I had to test it to be sure. Would my fatigue with life on the road continue, or would the adventure of new mountains, horseback rides, bear spotting, white water rafting and hiking fresh trails rejuvinate me? It did not. The pull to be in a house and not a van remained. It is a decision that came to me easily, but one I had been debating for months.
It is not a decision made without emotion. Pursuit of van life led me to build the life I lead today. It was the impetus to leave my office job, create my own business, move into the cannabis industry to build a viable stream of income, and ultimately, the reason I moved to New Mexico. To bid that farewell is to close the chapter of the last five years of my life. Everything I enjoy today I have because of my single-minded determination to live in a van.
Where does that energy go? Working towards van life and living in a van was the hardest I have ever worked towards a goal. It lit a fire in me like nothing else had before and I knew the journey would be long but worth it. Where will I direct that now? I sit with the uncertainty of what is to come against my certainty of what I must do next. I wondered who I would become if I lived a nomadic road life, and now I wonder who I will become next – but I do it from my home.
