May 6, 2026. The wind last night was insane. The side of my van is 8 to 10 feet from the edge of the 950 foot cliff. The wind was howling and shaking the van with a vigor that was alarming in moments and kept me up deep into the night. Complete, absolute darkness outside. You could not see one thing. At some point I had to make peace with the notion that if the wind pushed my van over the edge of the cliff, it pushed me over the cliff, and that's that.
For the first few hours I was imagining that everything outside must have blown away: my 8x8 mat secured with ten rocks, my dish rack full of silverware, my two tables covered with cooking gear, the trash bag, the shower, the lights, all of it. At 12:30am I forced myself to get up, put on clothes and a headlamp, and go look. To my surprise everything was holding up pretty well. The wind was coming through the canyon directly into the passenger side of the van, and camp was set up on the other side, so despite the intensity my camp items were somewhat protected. What a night. I didn't get much sleep.
Yesterday was what I'd call a move day, even though we only traveled about a mile. Pack up the previous camp, make the van driveable, do the 4x4 trek, set up the new camp, restore the van to its liveable sleepable state. Full camp means everything out: portable solar panels, cooking station, sound system, lights, tables, rebounder. I've learned that takes a lot out of me. That's one of the principal things I've had to come to terms with in van life. All the moving around has a tremendous energy cost. If I begin a day with 100 units of energy and move camp like that, by the time I'm set up in the new spot I might have 40 units left for creative work. I had seemingly endless energy when I was younger. That's no longer the case, so I need to be increasingly intentional about how I structure my adventures. That's why I'm moving less and staying longer.
I patched a few more bugs in the Infinite Story Machine yesterday. It's working pretty well now and has personal and global stats pages. I'll keep refining it.
The view out of this van is something I'll never get used to. I'll be doing something else and the scenery catches my eye and I find myself just standing there gawking, taking it in for stretches of time before I realize I'm doing it. The scale of it, the expanse. The quiet is stunning. You don't hear a thing except the wind and the occasional bird, and the familiar ring of silence that I've grown to love. I regard it as an old friend, a familiar home. From here you cannot see a single light at night in any direction. And the stars. It's good to be alive.
Shannon and I have been making good use of my walkie talkies. The signal travels a few miles. One in each rig, a must have for traveling in two vehicles. You could get by without them but they're useful and fun. Like so much of van life, it appeals to the kid in me. We are these grown kids driving around in the coolest forts we've ever had, talking on walkie talkies.