The End of the Road: American Nomadism
April 29, 2021 1:14 AM   Subscribe

A thoughtful discussion of American nomadism/vanlife in the context of the success of Nomadland.
posted by domdib (30 comments total) 29 users marked this as a favorite
 
She had signed up for a Hulu free trial just to see it

me too.

back in the early 80s I read this book from the library, which featured a computer hacker living the mobile life out of a truck camper.

this vision of living in the empty west, free to see whatever public land/park I wanted, has long been The Dream, but in my 20s - 40s when I had the money I didn't have the time, and vice versa, and now I'm not sure there's space for me out there as #vanlife nomads fill up the west while so much of it burns down every year.

Unlike any other good (well, like higher education and healthcare), housing supply is fixed and the status quo prefers people pay as much as they can possibly afford for it -- this is what is making people homeless as wherever there is property to live on people are forced bid its cost up to the point of unaffordability, devil take the hindmost.

I foresaw the current housing crisis years ago from the simple demographic fact that in 2021 the boomers are all age 57 - 75 while the boomer echo is now all in their 20s and 30s so we're undergoing max demographic stress on housing right now.

Housing bubble debt equity extraction (repeated borrowing against rising home valuations to support consumption) is what pulled the USA out of the Dotcom recession in 2003-2005 and the failure of the bubble in 2007-2008 (which halted this $100B per month of stealth stimulus) is what pushed everything back into the recession 2008-2012.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=DxlV is employment, with the dashed red line being the "full employment" reached in 1999, showing we had a 16M job gap to fill in 2010, but the Bush/Obama team mainly focused on saving the financial system itself (necessary but not sufficient) and once Obama lost Congress in 2010 that was going to be it for expansionary fiscal policy, until the miraculous trifecta the Democrats are working with currently.

We had just got back to the good times of 1999 when the pandemic hit!

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=DrtG (gasoline in 2021 dollars) shows gas is pretty cheap now and with BEVs growing to replace ICE this decade and next maybe will stay that way -- my plan is to get a Cybertruck or electric van (if & when somebody actually makes one) and live out of that for several weeks at a stretch . . . full-timing doesn't sound that attractive over the long-term but a week or three still might be nice.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 5:03 AM on April 29, 2021 [5 favorites]


Ran Prieur had this to say on his blog a few days ago:

"Either car-living has to get much bigger, or housing costs have to get much lower, and one of those things is politically impossible."
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 5:43 AM on April 29, 2021 [7 favorites]


There's one bit about Johnson's take on the film itself that I didn't quite agree with:
As time passes, and vibrant early scenes at the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous give way to Fern’s increasing solitude, her character is increasingly defined by grief for her husband and longing for her old, stable life. These are all reasonable things to feel, but her characterization rings truer to the expectations of a well-meaning liberal audience than to the way nomads understand and describe themselves. The resulting melancholy — mourning a steady job, marriage, and homeownership — misses the point. The point, as Bob Wells would put it, is that those things were unsatisfying to begin with.
Emphases above are mine - and point to the places where I disagree with Johnson's assessment.

I didn't get the sense that Fern (the main character in Nomadland) was "longing for her old, stable life" in the sense that Johnson seems to be implying. Living out of her van was not a deliberate choice for her, mind - early on, she runs into some former neighbors and when the teenage girl quietly asks "so are you homeless, like Mom says?" she is definitely putting a brave-face grin-and-bear-it look on when she says that "no, I'm houseless. That's different." But that's early on - before she's learned about this network of people she can draw on, before she learns how to find work and how to cope with the vagaries of the road. In the beginning she is very sadly choosing what to keep in the van and what to store in a storage unit in her Nevada home - but by the end she is back in Nevada at the storage center, unpacking everything and piling it up in the back of a friend's flatbed truck, telling him he can sell or keep whatever he wants. She's found her footing.

And even more telling - she actually gets the opportunity to settle down about midway through the film, and refuses. There's a very gentle, hesitant flirtation between Fern and another nomad, played by David Strathairn; they run into each other a couple times in one camp or another, then start kind of intentionally following each other, and then suddenly Strathairn's character falls ill and his son comes to collect him and take him in - and once he's recovered, Strathairn reaches out to Fern to invite her to join the family for Thanksgiving, park her van in their yard a while and sleep in a guest room. It's just meant to be a visit, but at one point he gently pleads with her to stay with him - "there's a guest house on the property you can have, and....I like you, I like spending time with you." It's a definite invitation to a romance. But - that same night is the night Fern is uneasy sleeping in the guest room and goes out to sleep in her van instead, and the next morning she leaves before anyone else is awake.

If she really were "longing for her old stable life" I feel like she would have jumped at this chance - even just the guest house, making it clear to Strathairn's character that they were just to be friends. But - she doesn't; in fact, the offer of stability is the first time that she's uneasy sleeping in the guest room.

There's another conversation Fern has with her sister at one point in the film, and over the course of that conversation her sister implies that Fern was always kind of an independent type - leaving home early, wanting to go see what was out in the world. I got the sense that while Fern didn't choose this life as such, something in her was always wired so that she was able to find her footing in it when it chose her. Even when she speaks about the old settled life she had with her husband, the thing she says she likes most is the fact that when she looked out her back window, there was vast emptiness for miles and then mountains in the distance. That suggests to me that she was always kind of a loner, preferring to seek out other connections on her own terms - and when it came to having to live out of her van, part of what helped her adjust was the fact that she was still kind of wired to be a loner, making connections on her own terms and then being a free bird the rest of the time.

Mind you, the film also doesn't pull punches about how this kind of van life is hard, and it also doesn't get into the Instagrammy #vanlife take on it very much. You do have some people who are definitely choosing this life for the political "fuck capitalism" approach, but many more of them are folks who kind of got forced into it - and for whatever reason, it's just kind of...working. It's hard, but there are moments of grace in it too, and for some, those moments of grace are...enough.

So I think the film is a little more nuanced about Fern's character, and it isn't as simple as her longing for her old life. She misses it, but I think she's accepted it's over and this new life is kind of okay too, actually; she wouldn't have chosen it, but she's figured out how to make it work and she'll be okay.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:13 AM on April 29, 2021 [34 favorites]


The book was better than the movie - a churlish thing to say but the movie was just a bunch of Hollywood tropes packed into a title. The Oscar voters love to watch an actor (Tony Hopkins who won the can't-tell-who-that-is-oh-wait-of-course-i-can wannabe Lon Chaney award) or actress get dirtied up or put on makeup and Amazon warehouse footage - oooh, edgy. I buy stuff from there! Maybe that's one of my packages!

The movie would have been so much more interesting if it had kept the ensemble nature of the book, a cross-section of people who choose/are forced into the van life instead of Frances McDormand (a fine actress) chasing Oscar bait by remaking About Schmidt.
posted by lon_star at 7:18 AM on April 29, 2021 [4 favorites]


If you have not read Nomadland, by Jessica Bruder, read it. It's very good, and tells a number of stories like his Mom's. The movie is one story created from many. In 2013, my life was in a weird place, and I'd read about vandwellers here on MeFi. I had some money and time, so I bought a used Honda minivan, packed my camping gear and dog, and took off. I was at the RTR (RubberTramp Rendezvous, meetup in the desert shown in the movie) in 2013 when Bruder was researching the book, met her briefly, met a number of the people who were in the movie and am still in touch with some. Everybody had an interesting story, an interesting rig.

I've almost always lived east of the Mississippi. There's a lot of public land in the west, you can camp on it free, mostly. There's a lot of forest devastation caused by beetles in National Forest land, a harbinger of Climate Crisis, but that's a digression.

I know a lot of people who were financially ruined by the Big Fucking Recession, none of them bankers. The current housing crisis is a slow-rolling disaster causing disruption, poverty, housing insecurity, and homelessness while profiting the already wealthy. Living in my minivan for 5 months, visiting national parks, family, seeing a slice of this gorgeous country, was, for me, an adventure. Meeting the vandwellers of Nomadland woke me up. Many are doing fine or okay, but many are just hanging on. Lots of stories on vandweller groups of people having a breakdown out in the boonies and having no money for repairs. The US is an oligarchy, and I'm not sure even Joe Biden can take us back. I was delighted that Nomadland won so many awards, especially if people can see that Fern is what happens when you squeeeze people dry.
posted by theora55 at 7:24 AM on April 29, 2021 [38 favorites]


See also the Fanfare discussion of Nomadland.

Thanks for posting this thoughtful essay, it seemed particularly meaningful in rooting Nomadland's story in 19th century settler culture. Also the author's mother's experiences. I appreciated her response the film was too sad, that her own nomad life has more joy in it. But that's what I liked best about Nomadland, the way the characters there find some dignity and purpose and occasionally joy in their lives despite difficult circumstances and financial need. If anything the film felt too hopeful to me.

We have several Metafilter users living some sort of nomad life, I am hoping some feel comfortable sharing their experiences with us.
posted by Nelson at 7:26 AM on April 29, 2021 [4 favorites]


For me, Nomadland feels like a modern update to “The Grapes of Wrath”, it brought up many of the same emotions.
posted by dbiedny at 8:02 AM on April 29, 2021 [8 favorites]


This was a beautiful and thoughtful piece. I shared the author's concern about the anti-politics of the film, and bringing their own family story into their analysis was very moving.
posted by latkes at 8:14 AM on April 29, 2021 [2 favorites]


Meeting the vandwellers of Nomadland woke me up. Many are doing fine or okay, but many are just hanging on.

I actually got curious about the handful of van dwellers who played themselves in Nomadland and followed up; the two that I was most curious about were the other two women Fern befriends, "Linda" and "Swankie".

In the film, Swankie is an outdoorsy type who has a brain tumor, and has chosen to live out her final days trying to get back up to Alaska for a second visit. There's a moment when she tells Fern the story of kayaking at a remote lake at just the right moment, where she gets to see a bunch of birds hatching; the film implies that she dies of her tumor, but not before she gets to Alaska, and sends Fern a video from atop her kayak and seeing the birds hatching again. In real life, though "Swankie" is Charlene Swankie, and is very much alive, is very much an advocate of her independent life, and has no plans to give it up. "Linda", on the other hand, speaks in the film of wanting to buy a plot of land in New Mexico and build an "Earth Ship" home and live off the grid. And Linda May is indeed doing that now - thanks, in part, to some of the salary she received from being in the film. And just in time as well - because her daughter was burned out of her own home during the wildfires in Oregon this past summer, and Linda was able to take her daughter in, when she wouldn't have been able before. So she's okay now, but....only because she happened to be one of the people who had a speaking role in the movie.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:39 AM on April 29, 2021 [20 favorites]


I know that demographically the folks we're talking about are mostly older, but one of the most fascinating things to me are nomad families. I met one doing a short hike in Glacier a few years ago -- family of 4 had dropped out, dad was doing a security-related IT job remotely, mom was homeschooling (RV schooling) the kids. They went from park to park, grabbing the campsites with the best wifi. I was curious how long they would keep it up -- they'd been doing it about a year. Honestly seemed pretty great, although very easy for me (as a parent with similar aged kids) to imagine some of the downsides.
posted by feckless at 8:55 AM on April 29, 2021 [1 favorite]


I have not watched the movie or read the book, although I have read quite a few articles about nomads/vanlife. More importantly, I grew up at a time when the last of the hobos were still traveling the rails. They were (in my experience) mostly WWII vets who came back to society and never could fit in. The greatest hobo of the 20th century, Steamtrain Maury Graham, was a good family friend. In his final years, he travelled around the country in a 1970s camper van.

I think if we look back about 100 years at the hobo movement, we will find many parallels for the modern nomad/vanlife movement. The hoboes I knew were often unparalleled characters, but their lives were definitely hard and expressed a dissonance with the Great American Dream (tm).
posted by Big Al 8000 at 9:47 AM on April 29, 2021 [12 favorites]




I agree the book, as always seems to be the case, was better, or at least quite a bit different, than the film. The film seemed to be telling a more personal story whereas the book was narrative non-fiction about a social movement. The most affecting scene from the movie for me was when Fern walked out on her would-be boyfriend's upper middle class family Thanksgiving. Like is there anything more miserable than being invited out of obligation to share a holiday with near strangers, especially Seattle WASPy ones -ugh? I thought that feeling was captured well.

Nthing to read the book. I definitely had mixed feelings about the whole thing. These are people forced into a situation by the terrible heartless economic reality of living in the U.S. On the other hand, they've made the best of it and carved out a life and community for themselves that can seem enviable in many ways. When I heard they were making a movie, I assumed it was going to be a documentary. I honestly still think that would have been a better choice. Also, why did they change Van Halen to Vanguard? That probably annoyed me more than anything.
posted by Jess the Mess at 10:55 AM on April 29, 2021 [1 favorite]


I would think to avoid getting sued by Van Halen, either band or person.
posted by tavella at 11:46 AM on April 29, 2021


Speaking of Steinbeck, Travels with Charley is probably due for a re-read.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:51 AM on April 29, 2021 [5 favorites]


I think the earlier comparison to The Grapes of Wrath is spot on. Fern, like the Joad family, keeps her dignity throughout. The characterization supports the underlying economic and social issues the author/filmmaker wanted to highlight. That's the difference between a story and an essay.
posted by vibrotronica at 11:52 AM on April 29, 2021 [3 favorites]


I long had fantasies about living this way, and as I've gotten older I've started to see differently. I have come to think that a big part of what is "wrong" with American culture is our detachment from the land in a very profound way. If we are not Native Americans who were uprooted (a lot weren't, and still live on on ancestral lands) our ancestors left the places they were, often out of necessity, and most of us have never recovered a deep attachment to the land we live on.

I've lived longer here in Northern MN than I've lived anywhere. And as a forager, naturalist, hiker, kayaker, and field guide reader, I've spent twenty-five years getting to know the land I live on. I have come to understand that a lot of rural folks I'd never agree with on almost anything have a deeper connection to the land because they hunt and fish and forage with the best of them. (And a lot of their disdain for city liberals comes from the fact that so many progressives think they know what environmentalism is, without ever spending anything but vacations in places they care about.) Some of those rural folks exploit that land to the limit and I hate that, but their *love* for the land is different from so many of the Americans I know, who really have no idea of the history and plants and places they live on or near. They might *want* to, but the next thing you know, they're moving on (also often out of some necessity) and continuing that disconnection forever.

So now, at this stage in my life, I'm digging in instead. I want to know this place as profoundly as I know myself, because that's how we'll continue on as climate change makes things more and more difficult.
posted by RedEmma at 12:25 PM on April 29, 2021 [7 favorites]


...the simple demographic fact that in 2021 the boomers are all age 57 - 75 while the boomer echo is now all in their 20s and 30s so we're undergoing max demographic stress on housing right now.

Housing bubble debt equity extraction (repeated borrowing against rising home valuations to support consumption) is what pulled the USA out of the Dotcom recession in 2003-2005 and the failure of the bubble in 2007-2008 (which halted this $100B per month of stealth stimulus) is what pushed everything back into the recession 2008-2012.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III

This is a definite tangent, but it has direct impact on all of this.

I don't know if I can stress how important this context is to so much of today's economic reality. What is missed is that over the next 10 years, housing prices are going to plummet AND/OR they are going to be bought up by foreign investors. If your top of the boomers are 75 now, they will crest average life expectancy at 78.5 years. Once that point hits - every year will be less and less political and financial power. As they hit this point, the asset wealth, which a significant portion will be tied into the housing stock will start to be limbered as they downsize or move into housing designed to address an increase in health related needs. This pandemic has put strain on homes designed for people to not use them for the 8-10 hours a day when folks were expected to be at work or commuting: stuff breaks.

So a stock of high end houses - the bigger ones - is going to be dumped onto the market shortly with no economic support for the groups (GenX and GenY) expected to transfer their value to, thereby absolving the Boomers of their responsibility. As such, they will push the upper tier of housing prices downward and eat up the stock of high end single-level homes. These houses were sold to the boomers with the intent to extract every ounce of wealth out of them and that the market would allow these homes to be sold at an increased value. This will *not* be the case once these are all on the market.

So. that leaves two choices: in urban areas (NYC, Boston, SF, LA, Miami, DC, Chicago, etc), foreign investment will purchase this at full price as an investment in citizenship, political power, and overall clout. There is always something happening in those cities, and they will always maintain foreign interest. Outside of those cities, foreign investment may see $$ opportunity in condo/apartment style rental income, there are some foreign entities that may see an element of financial pressure that they can apply to the US through a combination of fixing rental prices / and or running the banks to destabilize currency. Yes, housing stock can be weaponized.

Now lets pull this somewhat back on topic and discuss Mobile homes, trailer parks, RVs and the camper lifestyle. Lets start with this fact: these buildings are the only housing stocks today that are guaranteed to decline in value. Full Stop. So. Feel free to trade it all in for a lifestyle, just understand: you are not building an investment - even as shaky as an investment into housing stock could be. You are draining your supply of available funds. There is *no* recovering these funds. You are creating construction landfill waste. Even if you luck out and get a vehicle that lasts remotely as long as an VW van... you will never recoup your investment.
posted by Nanukthedog at 12:31 PM on April 29, 2021 [3 favorites]


So a stock of high end houses - the bigger ones - is going to be dumped onto the market shortly with no economic support for the groups (GenX and GenY) expected to transfer their value to, thereby absolving the Boomers of their responsibility

The median age of homeowners is like 58 years old. Sure there are quite a few boomers who age out of their homes, but what evidence is there of this "What is missed is that over the next 10 years, housing prices are going to plummet AND/OR they are going to be bought up by foreign investors." Also something like 40% of boomers have no mortgage, so their children will get their homes free and clear.

Per this, the vast majority of first time buyers are in the 22-30 range. Statista

None of this points to homes values plummeting. Foreign investment is going to increase, as is bank owned property, but banks say right in their prospectus now they expect continued supply restrictions, so banks are banking on appreciation due to continued NIMBY housing restrictions, and those restrictions growing in currently relatively unrestricted states, like Florida, Texas, and Arizona. Why would foreign investors even buy US housing, except that it's a seriously constrained, and therefore rising in value asset? Not only that, the pandemic helped single family housing quality because so many homeowners got a big bunch of money and couldn't leave, so they spent it on their home.

If you want my prediction, short serious income equality legislation, 10-15 years from now, there is going to be a large class of legit millionaires, maybe 25% of the US population, and the other 75% will have incomes similar to now and no chance of ever owning a property.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:45 PM on April 29, 2021 [2 favorites]


>10-15 years from now, there is going to be a large class of legit millionaires

seems like we're following the N Europe, UK, Canada, NZ, Oz pattern, yes.

Japan's ongoing depopulation might give them an out to this feedback loop.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:13 PM on April 29, 2021


> you will never recoup your investment

yah I intend to be buried in my 2022 Cybertruck, yes. Hopefully after dying of old age.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:16 PM on April 29, 2021


Like the early American settlers, the nomads express both a pessimism about human society and a deeply-held romanticism about the land. For many, communion with nature is what makes the whole thing worth it. Owning land is off the table, but experiencing it is free. “Like Thoreau,”
But also, thinking of the utter alienation from post-WWII consensus on technological progress and plenty, like Ted Kaczynski.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:00 PM on April 29, 2021 [2 favorites]


you will never recoup your investment

This presupposes that the majority of people going vanlife even have an invetment they're trading away. My impression is that a fair chunk, maybe even a majority, aren't homeowners to begin with.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:23 PM on April 29, 2021 [2 favorites]


Interesting to compare #vanlife folks in the rural west with what I see every day here in urban seattle. The piles of used syringes I see dumped near the parked RVs around here...

Doesn't feel like Nomadland. Feels like drug addiction and mental illness. We have to do better.
posted by Windopaene at 6:50 PM on April 29, 2021


just understand: you are not building an investment - even as shaky as an investment into housing stock could be. You are draining your supply of available funds. There is *no* recovering these funds.

So it's the same as renting an apartment, then.

Or buying into a housing bubble and being left underwater.

It's most people's experience at this point that yes, having a place to live costs money that you don't get back. What's new?
posted by automatronic at 4:12 AM on April 30, 2021 [4 favorites]


>buying into a housing bubble and being left underwater

a rising tide lifts all boats as they say
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:31 AM on April 30, 2021


Interesting to compare #vanlife folks in the rural west with what I see every day here in urban seattle. The piles of used syringes I see dumped near the parked RVs around here...

Yeah, so this is something that I appreciated about the film.

The whole Instagrammy #vanlife thing feels like a bit of a dodge to me - it's kind of like Thoreau going to build his cabin on the shores of Walden Pond and writing about "living deliberately", but glossing over the fact that he kept going to his neighbors' house for breakfast and to have his laundry done. It's like a reality-show version of this - it's a modeling of an aesthetic, which they're only able to do because someone in the background is funding things and providing a safety net. It's easy to be carefree and toodle around car camping and take gorgeous pictures of sunrises out of your back window and raise $100 a day selling home-tie-dyed t-shirts at music festivals if your parents are helping you buy the fabric dye and covering you on their Triple-A breakdown coverage.

That isn't this, and the film makes that clear - but without showing you one of those #vanlife types, either. It is a lot grittier and harsher - you do see moments of grace and beauty, like spotting a bison just beside the road as you drive, or watching the sun set over the Badlands, but that comes after you see what this life costs - the manual labor digging sugar beets or cleaning the bathrooms at National Park Campsites, the vigilance against mean cops who knock on your door at 3 am and order you to vacate your parking space, the broken axel that completely wipes out your savings because your van is so old the garage has to special-order the part, the arm that doesn't work right any more because you couldn't stay in one place long enough for proper physical therapy. Sometime within the first half hour there's a scene where Fern gets an attack of sudden diarrhea and we see (and hear) her shit in a bucket; that is not something you'd find addressed under the #vanlife hashtag.

That honesty is why I appreciated the moments of beauty more. You got a better sense of the reality and the hardship involved; the people i n the film who'd chosen this life (and there are a few) seem way more clear-eyed about exactly what they're doing, and why. They know the real stakes and they aren't doing it for the followers.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:21 AM on April 30, 2021 [3 favorites]


I am so glad this was shared on here. I watched Nomadland awhile ago, and found it lonely, bleak and sad, when I expected camaradarie and joy, on some levels. I couldn´t understand the Oscars buzz around it, but in truth I can´t get it out of my head.

I also don´t think the nomad lifestyle shown in the movie necessarily includes the drug users who park their RVs in various locations like Seattle and Olympia, as mentioned by Windopaene above. Theirs is a different sort of desperation.
posted by olykate at 10:25 AM on April 30, 2021 [2 favorites]


Thank you for the thoughtful essay. I appreciate the historical persepective and wider view. It falls between this negative take on the film and the romanticized version of vanlife from this Bob Wells interview, and rounds out my perspective on the subject much better.
posted by blue shadows at 6:49 PM on April 30, 2021


a rising tide lifts all boats as they say

So does catastrophic sea level rise, which is a better analogy here. The tide rises forever, until everyone who doesn't own a boat drowns.
posted by automatronic at 7:35 AM on May 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


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