When my feet, and knees, and inner thighs betrayed me after 60 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, I renewed my love affair with our van. Apparently I am a #vanlifer though I did not know such a thing existed until my friend asked me if I was one. Apparently I am; however, my van life is much less fancy than most of the amazing van pictures that can be found by searching #vanlifers on Instagram.

We have no fancy pretty things, only an old comforter and mis-matched pillows and blankets. We have no extra insulation, no extra battery power, no bathroom, no kitchen (my kitchen is a cooler that plugs into the cigarette outlet and a Tupperware box that has a cutting board, knife, foil, etc.), no curtains, no extra heat or cooling. When it’s warm, we can roll down the windows and cover them with mosquito nets, held in place with magnets. However, mosquitos are kind of smart and figure out how to crawl under the netting between the magnets, so we will have to upgrade this feature. In the winter, we have sleeping bags and lots of blankets. We have woken up to find ice inside and outside our windows some mornings. We have some plans for curtains, insulation, and storage pockets, but we are also lazy and busy and what we have is functional.

Having a van that looks like a delivery van really helps with stealth camping. I should probably not list the places we have gotten away with sleeping in our van—don’t want to alert the authorities to the tricks of our trade—but we save a lot of money crawling into the back of our van to sleep on our thick, cushy camping pad from LL Bean. We’ve only been bothered by people a couple of times: once on the first night we slept in the back of the van (at a rest stop in New York) when some people tried to ply money from us at three in the morning and once when someone in Downeast Maine called the local Sheriff because our van looked “suspicious.” He checked our IDs and said there were no signs saying we can’t camp there so have a nice day.

We fit all of our summer and winter gear into this little van, though we have had to make adjustments at times and our winter gear and random junk is currently in storage with friends while we travel for the summer. But, my expert-packer can shove a lot of stuff into the storage space he built under the bed platform. The only thing that I’d really like to have in the van is a bathroom, but I survive.

(The slideshow above shows some of the places where the van has taken us in this last year plus--on my "unauthorized" sabbatical last winter and my real sabbatical this winter and spring, as well as on my resupply trips while my husband hiked the 100-mile wilderness of the Appalachian Trail last fall.)

My husband dreams of the things he could do with our van—or, another, better van—if only we had the financial resources. But I like the non-fancy, non-designer Ford Transit van that has been my home for several road trips and became my refuge when I had to stop hiking. When you can’t even stand on your own two feet let alone hobble the short distance to the bathroom, laying around in a van is a pretty nice thing.

So, while he hiked, I rested and read and was even able to do some restorative yoga in the back of my van. (Reclining butterfly with blanket props is quite comfy!) Some of my resting and waiting happened road-side. Some of it happened in the parking lot at the Warner Springs Community Center, a fabulous resource for PCT hikers. In addition to wi-fi, charging stations, an activity center, a backpacking gear store in an Airstream camper, bucket showers, foot baths, laundry services, and flush toilets and running water, the Warner Spring Community Center is a gathering place for hikers to rest, socialize, and re-stock with two free nights of camping

In my van, I was an outsider, an observer, but this is more about my typical mode of operation, and was not exclusive to me being in a van while the “real” hikers set up their tents in a field. No one really paid any attention to me or my van, even when I did weird things like walk around the track (unheard of among people who have just hiked 101.5 miles of the PCT!) and practice yoga under one of the big oak trees. Only one person stopped by my van to talk to me—a fellow New Englander thru-hiking the PCT who noticed our Maine plates (the one thing I feel is not at all stealth about our van).

Now that I have returned to my temporary home base and have a bed and the related amenities, I kind of want to go out to the carport and sleep in my van. I kind of want to live in my van, waking up to mountain views and river sounds and fresh air and solitude. A simple van for simple dreams….

 The Pacific Crest Trail has entered popular culture’s radar via Wild, Cheryl Strayed’s book—and more, Reese Witherspoon’s portrayal of Strayed in the film based on the book. But most of the pop culture activity related to the PCT happens online. Hikers create videos—informative and artistic. They communicate with each other on Facebook pages and in other social media forums. More popular than ever, the number of hikers is increasing each year. Beginning April 11, 2018 I will be hiking a significant portion of the PCT with my husband; it’s a hike that has always been a dream of his. It is part of my sabbatical. So, while I will be enjoying the adventure and challenge, and relaxation and beauty, of the trail, I can't help but also think about this unique aspect of American culture.

Bragging rights exist for those who can complete the entire hike in one trip. I’m happy to hike a portion, at an enjoyable pace, over the next three and a half months. We’ve backpacked many shorter trips, many challenging hikes, but the PCT is a different kind of experience. There’s the time commitment; through hikers often commit four to six months to the endeavor. There’s the cost of food and permits and gear and the work of planning and assembling re-supply packages. There’s the wear and tear on the body and the sometimes-monotonous task of putting one foot in front of the other. The varied terrain and climates mean being prepared for anything.

There is also the culture of the PCT. There’s the culture that begins before-hand through films, documentaries, YouTube channels, blogs, books, magazine articles, and other media spaces. On the trail there’s the trail names and shared understandings. There’s the well-known spots to camp or eat, the towns that are friendly to hikers and often have a tourist industry devoted to hikers. There are the Trail Angels who leave water or food caches for hikers. There’s the continuation of the social media spaces that help prepare hikers for the experience, reporting on hiking progress and trail conditions.

No doubt there are many aspects of this culture that can only be discovered through the experience of hiking. This portion of my sabbatical takes me into different cultural realms. Being a scholar of American studies and women’s studies with an interest in culture, enhances my experience of the PCT and, I hope, brings another perspective to our understanding of this cultural experience of the American West, the American wilderness, and the many cultures that surround and intersect the PCT.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is a unique example of dystopian fiction. Centered around an aging (and dying actor) at the cusp of the old world and a traveling symphony navigating the new world, Mandel reveals the ways in which the past shapes the future, as well as the ways in which the past is reshaped into the future. She also gives us a different way of telling a story about the future—shifting from one plot line to the next, through a number of character’s lives and stories, rather than focusing around the exploits and struggles of a single protagonist.

One of the things that makes this book unique is that it is a more of a story of the re-building of the world than it is a story of its unraveling, though it is both stories at the same time. The past is intricately woven with the present through people’s memories, through objects that become artifacts, and through art. A wide-ranging cast of characters are connected by coincidence and by the necessities of surviving after nearly everyone has been wiped out by a flu epidemic.

A New York Times bestseller, the quotes from reviewers are always telling about how a particular book is positioned in the world of literature, generally, and the “burgeoning post-apocalyptic” genre specifically. Several reviews mention other authors or works, including The Road and Cormac McCarthy, but in these mentions, Station Eleven is also compared to writers known for their character development like Joan Didion and James Joyce. And in any review of post-apocalyptic fiction, a reference to Orwell is inevitable. But what these quotes reveal is the author’s ability to connect numerous strands and unfold them in a compelling way.

Another unique feature of this book is its ability to portray an international, borderless future even as our mechanisms for creating such a world, like air travel and the internet, disappear. The first border that becomes invisible is the one between Canada and the United States as characters migrate from Toronto, walking south into what used to be Michigan. Another border disappears as passengers from a variety of domestic and international flights are stranded in an airport, survive the flu epidemic, and build a new community. The divisions of the old world are obsolete.

While this book is certainly not among the genre of young adult dystopia that I write about in Girls on Fire: Transformative Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Literature, Mandel brings us the character of Kirsten Raymonde, who certainly qualifies as a Girl on Fire, even if she is not the protagonist and she has had to abandon girlhood for survival. Instead, she is a character embedded in a community and a touchstone for connecting the past with the future. She is eight years old when the flu pandemic strikes and she survives a number of dangers on the road as a child and lives a kill or be killed existence into adulthood. She is an important Girl on Fire—one who has to fight for her life and to protect others as well as one who helps to sustain art through her Shakespeare performances and her role in the traveling symphony. Kirsten’s story unfolds on a new horizon.

Like most every good book, Station Eleven leaves the reading wanting more. We are left out of some conversations while we are privy to others. We are left with questions about characters who are briefly highlighted and then disappear into the backstory. We are left with questions about what happens next. The loop of the past closes while the road to the future is left wide open.