My son, Ken, knows me well.  He recently recommended the new movie release, Nomadland, staring Francis McDormand and directed by Chloe Zhao.  The screenplay is based on a book with the same title by Jessica Bruder.  The story features Fern, an introverted 60ish woman in the tiny mining hamlet of Empire, Nevada. She loses her husband to a fatal illness and has no source of income.  Empire is a decaying company town lacking gainful employment, so Fern decides to live on the road in a rickety camper van to seek itinerant employment along the way.  At first, she’s hesitant and unfamiliar with nomadic life but soon settles into it and ultimately thrives, even turning down an offer to live with an admirer and his affluent family on the Pacific coast.  I enjoyed the film because it was well done and artfully characterized a subset of the vagabond lifestyle.  Nomadland also got me thinking (often a dangerous process) about my experiences with others living unconventional lifestyles.

Chet and Alice Blumenstein were outstanding neighbors, family friends living across the street from the Dyman household in a red-brown, wood-shingled two-story home in Geneva, Illinois.  Chet was a maintenance foreman at the Illinois State Training School, a reformatory for wayward female adolescents incarcerated for a multitude of crimes short of homicide.  Chet was an amiable guy, so much so that he even managed to befriend my father, a feat I found remarkable, considering Thaddeus Dyman Sr was not usually a welcoming guy.  It was an easy walk across the street to visit the Blumensteins’ and their talking budgerigar, Joey, an expletive-spouting avian.  Chet also found a job for my mother, Paula, as a cottage supervisor at the facility.  It was hard work, keeping a dozen miscreants disciplined, but a real break for her.  She worked there for 17 years and received generous vacation, medical, retirement benefits.  She shared fascinating and sometimes shocking stories about the residents. 

I was away at college in the late 1960s when my parents informed me Chet was retiring.  Not only was he calling it quits after many years, but he and Alice were selling their house and most of their possessions, and purchasing a large class B motorhome.  They intended to live the RV life full time and travel north and south across the country seasonally.  My parents were clearly disappointed to lose their neighbors.  I doubt my father could relate to that unconventional life, but my mother was more adventurous, and maybe admired their plan.  I was impressed by the Blumensteins’ spirit of adventure, selling everything and living a vagabond life on the open road.

 I was working in Houston in the early 1970s in the Oil Patch and heard from my parents that Chet and Alice were spending the winter months on Padre Island near Corpus Christi, Texas, a short two-hour drive from me.  I contacted them and we arranged a weekend visit.  I was genuinely curious to see their retirement home.  I found them on the beach south of town and learned the ins and outs of itinerant life.  I can still see their spacious Winnebago parked in the sand. The jalapenos Chet served with our sandwiches were memorable.  He liked his peppers hot! 

The Blumensteins’ were snowbirds, retired couples travelling seasonally to avoid cold weather.  I could definitely relate to their vagabond life, an unsettled existence, the freedom to travel to distant spaces, but I would live in a smaller RV and drive to more remote places.  Ultimately, Chet and Alice sold their Winnebago and bought a small house in rural upstate Wisconsin.  They lived well into their 90s. 

During my adult years, as a geologist and outdoor enthusiast, I sought any opportunity to experience mountains and deserts, hiking, backpacking, cycling, and camping.  I’ve met vagabonds of many persuasions along my route to adventure.

Somewhere in the 1980s, while camping in Utah, I stumbled into a neighborly couple, a retired 50ish Navy submariner and his 40ish female partner.  They were camping in a green 10 X 10 foot canvas tent and informed me they were full timers.  All of their material possessions fit snugly into their station wagon.  It was late summer.  They were slowly heading south to spend the winter near the Gulf Coast in Alabama or Mississippi.  I presumed they were living off his Navy pension and maintained some kind of physical address for financial and legal reasons.  They seemed to enjoy what they were doing.  I recall asking what they would do when cold weather set in.  “We have a propane heater”, the Navy man said.  The couple were snowbirds, but unlike the Blumensteins’, lived a life of extreme minimalism.

Five years ago, I visited Blackwater Draw, a Clovis age archaeological site in eastern New Mexico.  The site was discovered in 1929 and later excavated by several renowned research institutions including the Carnegie Institute and the Smithsonian.  Discoveries included fluted projectile points, bones, fire pits, and other cultural remains dating back to more than 10,000 BP near the end of the Pleistocene.  The site was located along the margin of a large playa lake, a popular hunting ground for early Americans.  I was camped at Oasis State Park just south of the draw.  As I returned to my campsite from a short hike, I spotted a Dodge Ram camper van just like mine.  It was a homemade configuration, so I stopped to ask some questions about what the owner had done.  I’m a schmoozer and approached a tall older male with thinning gray hair and pleasant demeanor.  He was organizing the back of his rig.  I introduced myself.  He told me his name was Joe.  He had lived in Pennsylvania until his wife died unexpectedly of a heart attack.  Joe decided to live the vagabond life.  I could tell he was lonely, just trying to find his way, seeking some meaning out of his tragedy.  He was a modern-day nomad in some ways similar to those that trekked through Blackwater Draw during the Mesolithic Period.    

Two years ago, while day hiking the Continental Divide trail along the Montana-Idaho border near Bannock Pass, I met Andrew, a young, 30ish soul trekking the Continental Divide trail from Mexico to the Canadian border in one fell swoop, a challenging journey to say the least.  He needed to re-provision, clean up, and rest for a day.  His itinerary called for a stop in nearby Leadore, Idaho.  I volunteered to take him to a local hostel since it was on my way.  He told me he was a computer programmer but had quit his job.  He was tired of living the hum-drum life working in a cubicle.  He wanted to be free of the rat race and decided to do the CD trail, clear his mind, and reset himself.  Anyone who quits a job and walks 3,000 miles to dramatically reboot their existence deserves my admiration.  Andrew may have been an adventure seeker too.  I’ve met many others like Andrew over the years, backpackers, long-distance bikers, world travelers, hitchhikers.  There is an element of adventure in the mindset of most wanderers.

Andrew’s story reminds me of Kenn Kauffman, the naturalist, a 16 year old high school dropout who wrote Kingbird Highway, an autobiographical account of his yearlong quest to identify as many birds as he could in a single year, now called a Big Year.  Kenn was an adventure seeker for sure, a non-conformist and vagabond.  He hitchhiked his way across the U.S. and Canada in 1973 eating out of a can on pennies a day to reach his ornithological goal.  He identified 671 species, a new record at the time.  Kaufman was a young vagabond obsessed with birding his way across North America.

I’ve known several geologists, biologists, and naturalists with a propensity for vagabondism and a thirst for nature.  Many fellow geologists are field enthusiasts, mappers, stratigraphers, or paleontologists seeking an answer to nature’s secrets.  They wander but are not lost.  They work from off-road vehicles and backpacks.  They roam, looking for the right rock outcropping.  There is nothing more rewarding to be in the field, the mountains, deserts, beaches, and cliffs, trying to solve an intellectual problem.

Jenni and I have a friend who lived in a Lance truck camper for several years, a former commercial potter who later owned a cleaning business in Taos, New Mexico.  Linda decided to travel the American Southwest in her rig during retirement and to volunteer as a host at campgrounds and visitors centers in national forests and state parks.  She vagabonded for last seven years and loved being in the outdoors in remote places, birding, hiking, and camping in the desert.  I met up with Linda once or twice a year, usually in southern Arizona or New Mexico, where we would catch up on rare birds and plants, rattlesnakes, the latest changes in the coyote and jackrabbit populations, and the ongoing effects of climate change.  Linda is a devoted naturalist and environmentalist, vagabonding her way through retirement. She now lives in Cottonwood, Arizona where she continues to experience nature.

The far edges of vagabond life include numerous interesting but also some sad examples. Like other large cities, Denver, Colorado has a significant homeless population, people living in tents and cars on streets and alleyways.  Are they really vagabonds?  There are many reasons for homelessness: psychological or neurological issues, personal tragedy, poverty, etc.  An older woman, overweight, a smoker, lives in her yellow two-seat Miata a few blocks from my home along a nearby parkway in a quiet Denver residential neighborhood.  She’s been living in her sports car for more than three years on the same city block, periodically moving to a different parking spot.  She’s there, rain or shine, hot or cold, nearly every day I drive by.  I occasionally see her sitting on the curb next to her vehicle smoking a cigarette.  My wife, Jenni, and I saw her once at a local Starbucks drinking coffee and reading a book. How does she manage to sleep in that tiny vehicle?  The homeless problem in the U.S. is serious and pervasive.  Every homeless person has a story, but I can’t even begin to understand the complexities of homelessness.  Are they truly vagabonds, or are they just unfortunate actors in the complex drama called life? Maybe she’s quite happy, doing what she wants to do.  I doubt it.

According to my dictionary, a vagabond is someone who wanders from place to place without a home or job.  The word suggests poverty but the meaning is far more complex.  A vagabond may have adequate or substantial means.  Webster says a nomad is a vagabond with a job, pasturing animals while on the move.  Both words have taken on a more complicated meaning, an idealistic or romantic one of abandoning the rat race just like Andrew.  I like both words because of the wide range of possibilities they imply.  Of course, there are many other words describing alternative lifestyles:  migratory, hobo, wayward, itinerant, rambling, perambulate, footloose, rover, tramp, wanderer, unrooted, vagrant, and others.  Many of these words are outdated or have a more specific meaning.  There are many words in the English language to describe lifestyle choices.  Hobo, an older depression-era term refers to homeless men riding in box cars and eating out of tin cans, just like a character out of a Scrooge McDuck comic book.  Then, there’s idler and loafer.  Both words imply wandering through jobs but not necessarily moving from place to place.  I prefer nomad, wanderer, and vagabond to describe individuals who live out of a vehicle, tent, or backpack, full or part time, and travel the byways, seaways, and footpaths of our World seeking employment, adventure, or just emotional fulfillment. They may or may not be running away or seeking something. 

Twenty thousand years ago, all of humankind lived a nomadic life like the Clovis peoples. They followed the herds and picked the berries.  They created myths and rituals to understand natural phenomena.  Their travels were seasonal.  I suspect their short lives were relatively stress free until they encountered floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions, saber-toothed tigers, or unfriendly tribes.  Imagine the sensory excitement and freedom of the first Americans who traversed the Bering land bridge into North America and made their way to the southern tip of South America in less than a thousand years.  Some of us are still travelling and searching for that ideal place in the mountains, deserts, or plains. Many of the early myths have been replaced with science and technology, but the excitement remains.  Some of us never find a permanent home because we continually need to look over the next hill.  I can imagine the dismay of early pioneer wives following their husbands west in a Conestoga wagon, likely never to see their relatives or former homes again.

I’m looking down toward the White River valley 4,000 feet below my campsite here at 10,000 feet elevation at the northern end of the Flattops Wilderness.  I’m on the edge of a steep escarpment.  Meeker, Colorado is about 30 miles northwest.  I’m boondocking in the White River National Forest, camping on US Forest Service land several miles from the nearest official campground.  It was 94 degrees when I left Meeker two hours ago, but it’s polar fleece time up here.  I’m a quarter mile from the Buford-New Castle Road, a north-south gravel route through the plateau, up and then down into the Colorado River valley 40 miles south of me.  My route from Buford was sinuous, tight switchbacks through scrub and cottonwoods, then aspen groves, and finally lodgepole and fir.  I passed some deer, a marmot, an elk cow, and finally an adolescent black bear on my way up.  The cinnamon-colored bruin, both cautious and curious, looked back at me after crossing the road.  No moose today.

Rain is predicted, but the American west is suffering from a multiyear drought, and dry storms may result, bringing lightning and the potential for wildfires.  There’s a whiff of smoke in the air.  Several blazes are raging to the west and north, near Craig and Steamboat Springs.  An active fire season is predicted. 

My site is well situated, flat, grassy, and well hidden from the road by a patchwork of green hummocks.  I have a fire pit but a fire ban is in place.  I usually avoid starting fires in warm weather anyway.  Blackened stumps and broken trunks litter the slopes below me, remnants of old wildfires.  The wildflower season has peaked, ending prematurely due to the dry conditions, but I still see wild rose, lupine, abundant yellow-petaled daisies, and red paint brushes.

Flattops geology is a complex mishmash of uplift and folding, volcanism, and finally erosion.  I’m camped on young (geologically speaking) basalt flows, iron-rich volcanic rocks extruded from a nearby vent 30 million years ago.  Older Cretaceous sandstone is exposed nearby, occasionally jutting out from beneath the flows.  The basalt varies in thickness, but the resistant layers manage to sustain the plateau, preventing the older and softer rocks from eroding.  The wind is light at first but soon becomes gusty as a storm approaches from the west.  I hear snippets of avian calls between gusts, the plurrri and kliwi puck puck of the pervasive American robin, and the po po tu tu tu of a thrush.  Clouds are billowing, rising and spreading rapidly.  There are strong convective forces at work above me.  I look up and follow some ravens, playfully swooping and circling, clearly oblivious of the impending storm.  Soon, some cloud-to-cloud lightning echoing down valley, then rain.  The smoke is dissipating.  It’s nearly dinner time.