Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom (35 page)

“As some of my fellow graduates may know,” I began, “I’ve spent much of the past two and a half years at Duke living in my van. I’d like to share my story with you, but first, I should address some common misconceptions.

“No—for the millionth time—I do not live in a van ‘down by the river.’ No, I haven’t abducted anyone. And no, my van, I promise you, is certainly not ‘a-rockin’’ (but please don’t come a-knockin’—that would really freak me out).

“I came to Durham in January of 2009, a couple of days before the start of the spring semester. Two months before, I’d finished paying off my $32,000 undergraduate student debt. To pay it off, I worked for almost three years, mostly at low-wage jobs, putting nearly every penny of every paycheck toward my student loans. While I was working, I told myself that I’d do two things whenever I finally paid the debt off. The first was that I would never go into debt again. The second was that I’d enroll in a graduate liberal studies program so I could resume my education.

“So began two different educations. The first was an education in vandwelling, in loneliness, in frugality, in figuring out how to wash my pots and pans without running water. The second was an education in liberal studies, in Diogenes, in Rousseau, in writing, speaking, and thinking. Yet it wasn’t long before these educations came together, like two rivers meeting at a confluence and flowing together as one.

“That’s the thing about a liberal education: It’s a deeply personal affair. And even if we are enrolled in courses that may seem to have little relevance to our lives, the nature of a liberal education—the lectures, the discussions, the writings—tends to bring faraway subjects close to home.

“Some call the liberal arts self-indulgent and impractical without realizing that the classics, the social sciences, the humanities are fertilizers for democracy, and when the arts are
scattered onto college campuses, they create a healthy soil into which students can plant themselves and grow into empathetic, introspective, and conscientious citizens.

“Yet when I think of higher education today, I think of a James Joyce quote. Joyce said, ‘When the soul of a man is born… there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.’

“Today it seems there are more nets than ever. Today, students struggle to fly past a poor job market, around unpaid internships, and through the sticky web of student debt that is nearly as wide as the sky itself. And when curricula lack the liberal arts, college itself becomes another net.

“This education has taught me that one does not become free simply by staying out of debt or living cheaply in a large, creepy vehicle; rather, we must first undergo a period of self-examination to see, for the first time, what nets have been holding us back all along.

“Unfortunately, economic realities and political priorities require that most students pay an unreasonable amount of money for their educations even though the great majority of students only wish to better themselves and society. Yet I find it funny—and fitting—that those of my friends who went into nearly inescapable debt to pay for their educations still say they wouldn’t go back and change a thing.

“Today, I leave Duke much the same way I came. I have exactly $1,156, no job, and a degree that is—let’s face it—not going to have me, or most of us, rolling on a mattress covered in twenty-dollar bills. And to keep out of debt, I’ve recently put the van up for sale.

“While I am more or less broke, in exchange for the education I have bought, I have received a wealth in return. I speak of the wealth of ideas, of truth—such is a currency without rates, a coinage that will not rust, capital I cannot spend. I may leave this place with empty pockets, but I shall carry this wealth with me whether I am young or old, at home or abroad, housed or
homeless, rich or poor, till the end of my days. Thank you.”

The crowd cheered and my parents cried. I stepped off the podium and walked back toward my seat. My experiment was over.

In the days that followed, I wondered what I should do. Should I take the magazine job and all that came with it: the salary, the health insurance, the comfortable life? Was it time to finally settle down? I wondered what Thoreau would have done.

He was many things—a surveyor, a naturalist, a handyman, a pencil-maker—but I thought of Thoreau as a writer more than anything else. And his greatest story wasn’t one of his essays, or
Walden.
His greatest story, I thought, was his life. He knew that anything is possible when you wield the pen and claim your life as your own.

But the truth is that so few have the privilege to write their own stories. People are born into poverty without hope of redemption. Children are abused and damaged. Disease and war and famine and a million other things prevent them from wielding the pen. But for those of us who can, should it not be our great privilege to live the lives we’ve imagined? To be who we want to be? To go on our own great journeys and share our experiences with others?

When I’d looked at the austere furnishings in Thoreau’s replica cabin—the single bed, the rickety chair, the desk—I thought about how Thoreau had invented this home, this lifestyle, this life! Oh, how many things we can do! Oh, how we can turn the wildest figments of our imagination into something real!

Yet what stories can we write today? My generation was born in a strange age—an age when nearly every blank spot on the map has been explored, when so many of our wild places have been paved over, when there are no honorable wars to fight or frontiers to settle. Our adventures take place in virtual, vicarious video game worlds, or they’re tightly crammed into a gap year. Our inner wildness atrophies without a place to exercise it. We are cubicle monkeys and loan drones. Generation Screwed.

Maybe there is no longer a frontier, but for me the frontier is a horizon as wide and endless as it was for the first pioneers. We have real villains who need vanquishing, corrupt institutions that need toppling, and the great American debtors’ prison to break out of. We have trains to hop, voyages to embark on, and rides to hitch. And then there’s the great American wild—vanishing but still there—ready to impart its wisdom from an Alaskan peak or a patch of grass growing in a crack of a city sidewalk. And no matter how much sprawl and civilization overtake our wilds, we’ll always have the boundless wildlands in ourselves to explore.

This graduation was different from the last one. This time, I was debt-free. But I was more than debt-free. With the whole world within my grasp and ready to be seized, why should I call this the end of my adventures when it can just be another beginning?

I turned down the job offer and said good-bye to friends, family, and professors. I said good-bye to Duke and North Carolina. I said good-bye to my beloved Econoline. Might I have an actual job one day? Maybe. Might I come to live in a home that doesn’t have wheels? Probably. I had many lives to live still, and I’d get to them, but just not yet.

On a sunny day in early June, I gave away half my stuff, filled up my backpack, and stepped onto a plane that was headed to Alaska.

I was nervous about turning a new page and starting a new chapter, but I knew both by faith and experience that I’d be okay if I lived simply and kept a light load. I knew I’d be okay if I forever thought of myself as a student, whether seated within the walls of the classroom or on foot through the university of the great outdoors. And most of all, I knew I’d be okay if I listened to the oft-unheard voice within—that wild man who whispers into your ear when you most need it and least expect it:

“
Go for it.
”

1
As a result of my experiment, Duke has prohibited students from living in their vehicles on campus for reasons of, as one Duke official explained, “safety, security, health, and liability.”

.............

Because I was well aware of the limitations of living in a van, after graduation—with the hope of securing a stable Internet connection and source of electricity—I set off on a journey to write this book, hopping from one friend’s couch or basement or cabin to another. First and foremost, I must thank the Abbott of Acorn Abbey, David Dalton—master cook, gentleman farmer, dear friend, and unpaid editor extraordinaire—for providing me with delicious meals, grand accommodations, and a garden I could work in. Thanks also go to Coldfoot Camp, as well as its generous and supportive managers, Brett Carlson and Chad Conklin, for letting me be the camp’s first-ever “writer in residence.” I am grateful for Chuck Johnston for his apartment in Boston, Amelia Larsen for her basement in Denver, Professors Christina Askounis and Bob Bliwise for encouragement and advice, Josh Pruyn for his review (and for letting me use him as a character in the book), as well as Sarah Rice for her companionship and review. I am blessed to have the brilliant JanaLee Cherneski as a friend and reviewer, as well as Peter and Amy Bernstein as agents, who took my farfetched dream and turned it into a reality. I also wish to thank editor David Moldawer for taking a chance on a young wannabe writer who had only a couple of published articles to his name, and copyeditor Nancy Tan for an invaluable last-minute edit.