Location: Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport; Meridian, Idaho
Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.
Those are the concluding lines of Donald Justice’s brilliant poem Men at Forty. It is a hopeful and dignified characterization of the threshold at which we stand. Something good and noble is rising in us that will allow us to give back to the world: experience, confidence, a truer sense of self, a willingness to set aside the unimportant to focus on the vital and vitalizing. It’s true that we feel our limitations and the rush of time—”Men at forty // learn to close softly // The doors to rooms they will not be // Coming back to”—but this only creates the space for an expansiveness of soul.
That poem has resonated for years. My military retirement feels less like a career move than molting or metamorphosis: wriggling out of one skin into a new, larger life. Erik Erikson’s 1950 model of psychosocial development posited that human beings grow through eight stages. Each stage entails a developmental task, which the individual must complete or else face “stagnation and emotional despair.” In late middle adulthood, Erikson posited, we shift from “career consolidation” to “generativity”, one of my favorite words, which has earned its way onto my personal list of core values. For Erikson, it meant “Concern for establishing and guiding the next generation.” The word also denotes creativity, building, “the quality of being able to produce or create something new.”
So: midlife, renewal, a swelling sense of purpose, a recommitment to my writing, three weeks in the mountains to forge a new identity.
But about those mortgaged houses…
—
Rewind one year, in the thick of the bad times. My wife and I are separated and waiting for the divorce papers to clear the court. Then she gets cancer (she is better now). I’m drowning financially, paying two mortgages and for a slew of home repairs after our long-term renters suddenly bail from our rental house (I eventually get repaid when we sell).
Everything seems to climax at once, right as we’re entering the infernal summer, a time when even native Alabamans say you should escape the state with your life. It’s miserable, sweltering, mosquito-ridden. Right at this moment, my home air conditioning goes out. The unit is old and failing, the HVAC technician tells me. He can re-fill it with coolant for a lot of money, but it will probably leak again, or he can replace the unit for an ungodly amount of money. I can’t afford the replacement so I pay for the band-aid fix. We limp along through that summer.
Fast forward to a week ago. The kids are out of school. I’m done teaching. Life is amazing. Hannah and I take the kids camping before they leave for Africa, then prepare for our three-week getaway in the California mountains. We’re only a few days out from the trip when Montgomery’s temperatures skyrocket and I have a dreadful realization: it’s getting really, really hot in my house. It feels exactly like last year. Our house sitter comes over to feel things out. He’ll be fine, he says. Given our upcoming trip, we decide to wait to replace the air conditioner until we return.
Now it’s the night before our trip. We’ve just dropped the kids at the airport. We return home late and pack our last things for a 0430 morning departure. We go upstairs to catch a few hours sleep, only to find that it’s 83 degrees. On that very night, the night before my celebratory escape into the mountains, my home HVAC system has completely died. A heat wave is forecast to begin the next day, with temps rising to the high 90s. We have four pets.
I’ve been through too much these last few years to feel rage. Instead we lie there hopelessly, unable to sleep, sweating in the heat, feeling a kind of despair at the universe’s cruel jokes.
Hence Donald Justice’s last line, with his 40-year old father gazing out at the woods and his great new destiny. He can only see it because he has momentarily turned his back on the house, the mortgage, the entangling commitments.
—
I’m hardly the first person to daydream of escape into a commitment-free lifestyle in the mountains. The #vanlife movement exploded in popularity during the pandemic. The symbol of retreat today is not a $300,000 RV or a second home in Tahoe, but rather a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Van, tricked out with a bed and kitchen. These vans are Instagram ready, enabling intrepid adventurers to celebrate #vanlife amidst spectacular vistas from exotic locales.
Nellie Bowles wrote in the New York Times, “Vanlife has been an influencer trend on Instagram for years. It usually involved a good-looking young couple in a van posting gauzy portraits of each other and sweeping scenes of the places they visited. The fantasy life they sold is freedom and simplicity, a radical reduction in burden — but not comfort. For these are not backpackers looking tired and worn, with massive calves and wild hair. Vanlife is an aesthetic trend, closer to the tiny-home movement, yet even richer, lusher and typically sexier.”
I find this movement fascinating. One day I search for the #vanlife hashtag on instagram. Bowles nailed it. Three of the top nine photos are of attractive young people posing in lush, exotic locations. In the first, a ripped, shirtless man and bikini-clad woman stand waist-deep in some jungle pool, kissing. In the second, a topless woman in cutoff jean shorts, shot from behind, surveys a field of vivid green grass. In the third, a nude woman stands calf-deep in crystal water, arms outstretched in a sun salutation. Above her bare ass, naked back, and outstretched arms, her van is parked on the shore. I couldn’t create a better parody of this hashtag if I tried.
The bullshit factor is so high, but I won’t lie; it doesn’t stop me from feeling the appeal. I yearn for escape. I want an escape pod that can sweep me and my family off on incredible adventures in the outdoors. I couldn’t afford a van, but I did buy a tiny converted cargo trailer that holds our camping gear and sleeps three. We’ve used it dozens of times. It’s exactly what we wanted it to be: a mobile base camp for family adventures, crammed into every open space of our calendar between work days, guitar lessons, and basketball practices. My life involves a continual shuttling between civilization and wilderness.
—
And this is where I part ways with the Instagram-style #vanlife crowd. I’m not interested in selling a myth of eternal escape, even though that sounds superficially appealing. I do get it. I yearn to shed commitments. I’m tired of paying bills. I’m bored to tears with much of what passes for work. I’d love to erase events from my calendar for once, instead of continually adding them. It’s an appealing fantasy, hitting the road with a few loved ones in pursuit of wonder, joy, and adventure, with none of the work entailed.
But none of us live such commitment-free lives, even those who advertise otherwise. Those who try are destined for disappointment. A commitment-free life is a life without relationships, meaningful work, or a greater sense of purpose, as David Brooks has argued. We live lives of purpose and meaning by carefully choosing commitments that align with our values, and then leaning into those commitments with everything we have.
That means each of us lives in the tension between commitment and retreat. At times we give to people, projects, or causes outside ourselves; at other times we draw inward for times of refreshing. Each of us lives this balance differently, and different times and seasons of life call for re-adjustment. Rather than marketing escape, I’d much rather ask: how can real people best inhabit this tension between our commitments and our dreams?
—
After all this, I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’ll be living in a van for the next three weeks. Not just any van, but a really nice borrowed van, with solar panels and a stove and a sewer tank and every other amenity. Yes, I’m excited. Yes, I’ll post pictures on Instagram. Yes, I feel like I’m stepping into a dream, which is only possible because I’ve had opportunities and good luck that many people don’t. I feel both grateful and sheepish.
But I’m still that man in Donald Justice’s poem, standing between the dreamy woods and his mortgaged house. My air conditioner is still inoperative, and I spent a frantic day coordinating with HVAC service technicians from an American Airlines flight somewhere over the Rocky Mountains. I’m worried about my pets in the sweltering heat, and the gargantuan repair bill. I’m worried about my kids, who are currently on a plane to Africa. I am enjoying this quite moment on a patio, writing, but in a few minutes I’ll need to go deal with a litany of travel-related logistics. I’m also clear-eyed that these three weeks do not constitute my new life, but rather an interlude before I willingly embrace my next set of professional commitments.
But this is good. This is life as it is supposed to be, in all its multi-dimensionality. I don’t think Donald Justice was being prescriptive; he was acknowledging the tension each of us inhabits.