Maybe Vanlife Was Never For Me

Gratitudes:
1. I am grateful for the energy to get some work done in my yard.
2. I am grateful for a good book to read.
3. I am grateful for my art-making space.
Plan for the day:
1. Get the cutting mat out of the cargo trailer.
2. Break down remaining boxes.
3. Get winter clothes out of the van.
Currently reading:
1. Holy Transformation, by Chip Ingram
2. The Ivy Tree, by Mary Stewart
3. Galatians study continues

Lovely day, but a little on the warm side after the morning chill wore off. It has been this way for a week or two now, ever since that last minor rain storm. 

I've had to realize something about myself, and this is rather hard for me to put in print. You see, I bought a nice van thinking I'd be living in it and traveling around the USA. That hasn't happened. I got sidetracked during my first few months when I visited HC and intended to keep going south to Arizona for the winter. However one morning the Lord spoke to me and told me to stay in HC for the winter... exactly what I didn't want to do because of the cold weather. I was really suffering from the climate.

During that winter someone offered me a nice property at a low price and I took it because I do like having my roots here. Shortly after I moved in the pandemic started and I was grateful to be in a remote mountain town while the world was in lock-down mode. I thought maybe the Lord knew this was coming and didn't want me to be part of it. I felt gratitude though it wasn't what I had intended for my life.

A few months later I woke up to the news that a fire had started at the top of a nearby ridge on a very windy September day. Before midnight my home would be engulfed in the flames. About 200 homes were burned here that day. Terrible! And everything since then has been fire recovery, which I'm still feeling locked into.

I have to admit that I like living in a travel trailer and that I never felt 100% comfortable living in the van. Part of that is that the van has never been properly converted into a camper. The other part is that I need an art studio and that was something entirely missing from my vanlife experience. I tried but was so unsuccessful in doing anything to fix this issue. 

At this point the van is in the hands of the Lord. His will be done. I can't afford to drive it with these ridiculously high West Coast gas prices of 5 to 6 dollars. I think that opportunity for travel has passed. Instead of grieving it, I'm happy I have a desk to make art at and a little piece of land to park on where I don't have to pay rent.

End of confession.