All this fit into a handmade camper shell I found at the last-minute, on Craigslist.
All this fit into a handmade camper shell I found at the last-minute, on Craigslist. I cut a three-quarter-inch piece of plywood to size and lay it over the wheel wells as a makeshift sleeping platform. Like a coffin. As I drive I listen to the ultimate overlanding novel, As I Lay Dying, in which the progeny of a deceased matriarch build a coffin and, with her corpse inside, hitch it to a wagon, and venture overland to her desired burial ground. They get knocked into the river and the wagon capsizes, but they keep going. I took the Old National Highway, the first transcontinental road, through the Midwest. Each day I drove till sundown , then started looking for a suitable place to camp, limiting my stops to State Parks and National Forests. It had been a minute since I’d lived on the road like this. In 2014, at age 23, I tried to walk across the country. I walked for a hundred days, from Philly to Colorado. I had a paper atlas—no smartphone. I’d walk till dark each d...