Three Years and Counting

Or Seven ... Or a Lifetime

A subalpine ridge in the Yukon I visited not too long before I started the Rolling Desk. Zoom in, and you can see Ruby, my first van, waiting in the lot.

On a spring morning seven years ago, I ditched my apartment and headed down the US Oregon Coast on a bicycle. Recently empty-nesting (a grief I wasn’t sure I was entitled to as a birth mother who’d shared a roof with my teen and then adult child for only a couple of years), financially hurting, and reeling from the state of the world and the nothing sandwich I had to offer all that wanted for nourishing, I needed a new start. Panniers bulging on its sturdy rack, my bike carried everything I needed. I pedaled alongside sea stacks like giants of the deep bewitched to rock. I slept on beaches, below lighthouses, among the trunks of spruce and hemlock and Douglas firs in dewy rain forests.

By summer, I’d bought a hollowed-out ruby-red Ford E-150 van for $1,500 cash and set to building a home in her cargo bay. Soon she became the beloved Ruby van Jangles, short on creature comforts but towering when it came to holes that let in the light. I’ve been on the road (more or less) ever since. From Arizona to Alaska and back and a whole lot of in between during the pandemic and beyond, Ruby took me to wild spaces and reopened the wild spaces in me.

That’s where this Desk comes in, where you come in. Three years ago this week, I took a months-long house-sit in the woods so I could chop wood and fling myself full-on into some writing projects. One was the Rolling Desk. I was working on a memoir manuscript, about me and that teen/adult child, once an infant whose absence and return had shaped me. On top of that, I’d been on the road for nearly four years, and I had stories to tell. But all roads lead to each other, tangling or crossing or bridging, clover-leafing or merging or junctioning somewhere along the way. And the first piece I posted here was a story from the days when I was a baby journalist, an era defined by youthful optimism and unvoiced loss. An era that led to my first iteration of a nomadic life.

The change came abruptly and doggedly. It brought a new road I hadn’t even glimpsed. This was less than a month into the house-sit. One week, I was, as usual, jogging or hiking daily. The next, it seemed, I was shuffling. Pain would eventually become prism. Sitting up from bed in the morning, torture. Stairs, mountains to conquer. And I, redirected and split, saw myself and the world around me anew.

All the while, this Desk was growing. The connections and relationships I was forming, the words I was reading, the conversations in which I was immersing myself and to which I was contributing were filling a well in me I hadn’t even known was dry. Among the friendships cultivated here was one with Kimberly Warner, creator of Unfixed, “a multidisciplinary platform honoring the messy, mysterious, and miraculous ways we live, heal, and belong—especially when nothing gets tied up with a bow.” Even before I found the right specialist and received a diagnosis, Kimberly’s work spoke to me of the change that had already set in, the change a part of me already knew would remain “unfixed” and knew all change has two sides. So I lived in this gorgeous juxtaposition of agony and bliss. It opened me to myself.

A year after launching the Desk, a blunt, compassionate rheumatologist with a bottomless irritation for the US insurance industrial complex explained that a progressive, chronic autoimmune illness called ankylosing spondylitis had settled into my joints and spine. I blanched. A few months later, I was fortunate enough to start treatment that started to work. Since, after a few adjustments, with the exception of flare days and a chronic low-level ache, the pain and inflammation, along with its accompanying fatigue and brain fog have largely been tamed. Still, the old me feels distant. At times, I long for her. And also, I’m learning to understand what it means to ride the waves of this new body, this new me.

To get back to the life on the road that still called to me (and even more so now the only one I could afford), I needed something a little more roomy, with AC and heat and a real shower. Now, I roll in a big white beast of a van with all that and more, plus some unexpected … quirks, a beast with whom I’m nevertheless slowly falling in love. She’s called Vivian van Gogh.

But vanlife wasn’t my first version of nomadism. After a divorce, which coincided with the end of those baby journalism days, I moved into a 26-foot Chevy Leprechaun. I wish I had photos of her walnut cupboards and pink shag carpet and “bathtub” into which, notwithstanding it being the perfect size for a small toddler, I would fold myself. A few years later, I trekked the US East Coast by bus, train, and foot for seven months, carrying a backpack stuffed with sleeping bag, notebooks, and a pair of slinky heels. Fast-forward a couple more years, and you’ll find me rolling in a Toyota pickup with 31-inch tires I converted into a temporary home. Then there were those weeks on the road on a bike.

So like I say, this Rolling Desk rolling past its third year this week marks three years of roads. Or is it seven? Or a lifetime?

To celebrate, I spruced things up around here. Here’s the new About page. Here’s the new Start Here page. Hop on over and give them some love, if you want to see a map, replete with guideposts, of the roads explored here.

I shared with you recently that an agent is looking at my work! And she’s encouraging me to build my platform outside Substack. That, along with this birthday, inspired the charting of the map. At first, I felt resistant. (I just want to write! Social media, blah. And so on.) But then I found all these videos and gorgeous photos and tiny stories I’ve yet to share. And I found some good stuff with which to engage on the platforms.

Soooo, an ask—

If you’re on any of these platforms, please follow me for updates, videos, special features, and glimpses from the road, perhaps, pre-story or essay form 🚐🤎🖊️🌏

(And if you know how to format these icons/links in a less annoying way here, I wouldn’t mind hearing it. 😜)

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And a thank you!!

Sincerely, I can’t tell you what a massive part of the Rolling Desk you are.

I’ve found friendships here I’ll cherish for a lifetime and writers whose work and readers whose engagement reminds me again and again that writing has the power to change the world. The alchemy of your engagement with my words changes the course of the roads shared here. Even when I’m a little slow to reply, know I can’t wait to get back to you in the comments. I love hearing your stories, your takes, what spoke to you, how you’re faring.

I’m truly delighted just to have you here, reading and rolling with me.

And, if you’re so inclined, for the next month, a massive deal on yearlong paid or patron/founding memberships to the rolling desk—35% off each (so .50 cents/week for year of support or a little over $3/week for a year of patronage).

Plus, from here on out, all paid and patron Rolling Deskers get a discount for all the courses and bootcamps I offer through Caravan Writers Collective and 1:1 services. Click here to hit me up if you’re interested in more info on those offerings.