My Living Room Is the World
“Chit-chit-chit-chit-chit-chit-chit.”
“Oh yeah? Is it that crow again?” I call back, pulling my lavender-scented sleep mask from my eyes to let the soft, crème fraîche light of dawn drape itself across my face. And also, “What did I say about walking on my solar panels?” And then, “You know it’s a Saturday, right?”
The squirrels who live in the western hemlock I’ve been parking next to of late are not the only ones who find my van, Ruby, part of the furniture. After a strong breeze has blanketed Ruby in soft needles and dew-laden, Barbie-pink rhododendron petals, I’ll hear a small chittering and look up from my laptop or book to see a handful of Pacific wrens, palm-sized and mottled, engaged in what I can only describe from my limited human understanding as sliding down my windshield, flitting off upon landing on the hood, and coming back for a second go. Whenever I park outside a friend’s house in Southern California, her hefty black house cat propels himself to my roof with only a single touch of the paw to Ruby’s side, in what strikes me as a joy of gymnastic achievement. He does this of an evening, and I imagine he likes the view of his prowling grounds and soaking in the heat from the solar panels, a harnessed sun spot.
The thinness of my separation from the world living in the van—the heat, the cold, the flora, the fauna, the houselessness, the well-housedness only a sliver away—has been like that for me. A harnessing of something vital. When the wind blows, my entire world rocks. The crystals in my window (and the hanging plants before I built them a window ledge) sway.
Once, I was parked alongside a woman who’s part of my road family. Rose and I had met up after months, tickled to find each other once again on the same land, this time in the Sonoran Desert. We’d just barely sorted out two relatively flat spots not far from each other in the haphazard, amber, drift-formed hills beneath the Catalina Range when the windstorm arrived already at full throttle.
For two days, the storm gasped and thrashed and wailed so we could only sit inside our own vans, popping our heads out to grin across the yards from each other and cry words both lost and known to each other, like, “This is fucking insane, right?” or, “My van’s making sounds I’ve never heard before,” or, “I’m glad you’re here.”
Airtight is not an adjective you'd apply to my old girl, Ruby. So, the desert had soon come into me even if I wasn't going out into it. I wrote, and I painted, and I napped, and I wiped sand off things. And still, the wind kept whipping every which way, like it wouldn’t be told, like it had taken all it could and, if it didn’t let loose, it would implode. It was hot, and Ruby doesn't have AC. At one point, I decided to try and prop open the back barn door alongside the bed. Just a crack, I hoped, would provide a touch of cool relief. My plan was for the bike and rack on back to work as a barrier to prevent the door from being flung open and ripped off its hinges. But I needed something to hold the door in place, so it wouldn’t bang against the bike with the wind’s ever-changing direction. I shoved my mustard-colored, golden-embroidered throw pillow in the open door slot and sat back, satisfied with myself.
I shit you not. Not three minutes had gone by when the wind pulled that pillow straight through the slot, sucking it past the bike and into a rolling journey across sand and cactus. I pulled the door shut, ran to the side door, and poked my head out. Because it was the color of the desert, I didn’t spot the pillow till it took flight again—and then stopped.
“Oh no you don’t,” I told the wind. Sliding into my boots, I braced myself and opened the side door, simultaneously leaning back to keep it from flying or yanking my arm from its socket; jumped out and slammed it shut with my hip; let out a holler; and gave chase. I would get close, and the wind would whip the pillow away—until at last I snuck up and snatched it.
When I returned, head bent into the wind and the pillow, now weighted with sand and dotted with cactus spines, in the crook of my arm, I saw Rose’s head poking out of her own van, thrown back in laughter, silky pecan locks whipping behind her. Framed by the berry blue door of her rig, she was a picture of gorgeous wildness.
When the wind at last turned gentle breeze like nothing had happened, the sun was cozying up to plump, drunkenly tilted barrel cacti and prickly pear, all soft and sweet pink and tender, as if to say, That wasn't so bad, was it?
Rose and I ventured out slowly into the dusk. She rolled us each an herby spliff, and I handed her a glass of pinot noir. We blew lavender-tinted smoke in hazy response that curled into the violet twilight. Nah, not so bad.
The silence was a presence unto itself as the sun made its final exit. The coolness rubbed the brow-beaten spiny ears of the prickly pear, settled the saguaro, and oozed the calm back into us. Rose’s white pit bull, Bella, poked her head out but declined to join us, not sure the wind was well and truly done.
When our voices came back, we wondered if we’d hear coyotes soon, how close they’d be, now the wind wasn't drowning everything else out. The waning gibbous moon took the spotlight from the cool and the silence—even still low in the sky as it was, pulling a silky, shimmering indigo curtain over the land.
“We should explore,” one of us said.
The other agreed.
“It would be a terrific night for some mushroom magic,” I mused, wishing I had some with me.
Her eyebrows raised. She grinned. “It just so happens that I do.”
A paradox of scale, life in my 60-square-foot living space has brought entire deserts, miles and miles of beach, towering glaciers, roaring rivers, critter-filled forests to my front porch. It’s piped into me birdsong and fox cackles and wild burrow brays. But its that thinness—how I feel myself melting into the life and rhythms all around me—that sends a thrill through my veins when Rose and I find ourselves stretched out on the desert floor, basking in the silvery calm of after or a western gray squirrel wakes me with a warning to a crow straight down my open roof fan.
I do highly recommend the van living, if it becomes available to you. That said, as you pointed out, no van or super long, extended period necessary to experience the sometimes paradoxical peace that comes from living so parallel to the rhythms of nature.
Your living reminds me of a Mary Oliver line “Nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees.” 👏🙏