Van life is all about finding privacy, and staying clean.  Things most people take for granted, from bathing to being able to change your clothes while standing up (without being outdoors), are all luxuries to be savored.  The American West is good for free camping on BLM land (Bureau of Land Management), especially Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada.  California isn't bad either.  Colorado is beautiful, but it's also steep and narrow.  It's hard to find a place where the van will be level, and you tend to be in narrow gulches with NO communication ability.  It's beautiful, but I preferred Arizona.

Arizona was my favorite.

The best place in Arizona to sleep in your van was 89B, a dusty tributary of Hwy. 89A, about halfway between Cottonwood and Sedona.  There are many great places to spend the night in Arizona; Hwy. 260 most of the way to Strawberry and Pine was good (bad phone reception though), and there was a lot of wild land near Parks, just west of Flagstaff.  But 89B was the best.  It was in the middle of the Verde Valley, close to Cottonwood and Jerome, but far enough away to give the transient van-dweller a modicum of privacy.  The picture above was taken there in 2008, when my 2nd wife and I first visited the area.  You could have campfires 6 feet tall, and nobody would bother you.  Nobody was there to bother you, but you have to be careful.  You don't want to be that guy, the directed-energy homeless guy who burns down the desert because he wanted to make some coffee.  I had to put out a small campfire in the Mojave desert in California because it was just too windy.  Even though I made a fire ring, I was afraid a spark would escape and ignite the sand, and turn the desert into glass, a picture window into hell.  After awhile, you don't bother making fires anymore anyway.  The smoke gets in your clothes, and once transient burnout is achieved, anything that drags you further away from the shore of civilization, of showers and motel rooms, becomes an extraneous burden.  Why build a fire?  So I can put on clothes that smell like homeless smoke?  Why heat the can of beans, when you can just drink it from the can?  There's nothing to wash but the spoon.  Lick it clean and wipe it down with alcohol.  Done.  Instant coffee can be made while sitting in a pile of laundry.  Cereal can be poured directly into the mouth from the bag.  Don't touch it, the residue from the sticky, rich-people's breakfast flakes will have to be washed off later with bottled water, perhaps in total darkness.  And you can't keep milk in the van anyway.  Dry Ramen is the best.  It's like a big, clean cracker made of dry noodles, and tastes better than you think.

Eating is a chore.  I haven't spent the night in a van in years, but I still view eating with the same hesitation and disdain I did when I lived in a van.  My transient training kicking in.  In fact I still see a bowl of cereal as a delicacy.  Having a place to keep a bottle of milk is an extravagant luxury to me.  An extra-vagrant luxury, perhaps.  Something extra for the vagrants.

A refrigerator, and a place to shave the exhaustion off your face.

Utah

It's unsightly, but it's better to keep your hair very short.  Trim your hair to jarhead standards; jug baths are a pain in the neck, and the less time you have to spend dodging hikers and helicopters while pouring water on your head under a juniper tree, the better.  Who cares how it looks.  We have a motel room for one night?  This is our chance to cut our hair.  Overdo it, in case we don't see the inside of a private room for awhile.  There's an actual bathtub, covered with cigarette burns?  Marvelous.  Break out the dishsoap, sweetheart, we're gonna bathe like millionaires tonight.

It's funny, but exhausting.  Colorado is better for bathing, but make sure you are prepared for the ice chunks floating by, as you ladle freezing water on your head.  Do it before the runoff from the mine turns the stream to rusty paint, usually in the early afternoon.  RV parks and/or camping grounds in the middle of nowhere are good, both in Nevada and Texas and other places too; show up super-late, use the shower, and leave before dawn.  Don't make a mess, there's no need to be disrespectful.  As far as the park rangers are concerned, no one was ever there.  I used to pay.  I'd put my money in the little envelope with all the official license plate information filled in, and slide it through the payment slot.  But after arguing with a park ranger about it, who lied and said she didn't get the envelope, I stopped.  I do remember taking pictures of my money spread out on the envelope, for future reference, but I only did that once or twice.  I lost respect for the system after being shaken down by the Gringo Twig Pig Karen Cartel, and just started leaving at dawn.  It's not like dawn is very early anyway.  Van life is a daytime existence all the way.

When the sun comes up, the day begins.

There is no sleeping in.

Mojave Desert, California

It is from this overheated, dusty mindset that "Tumbleweed" was born, 10 years ago today.  I wrote it on 89B in Yavapai County, Arizona, all at once, in one sitting.   I wrote it on a blanket next to the van, under a juniper tree on one of the dirt roads branching off of 89B that would eventually become impassable for most street vehicles.  "Hwy. 9840a," according to the lyric sheet.  It was my favorite place to spend the night in the van, when there was nowhere else to go.  It wasn't bad.  You could see Jerome glittering like a heavenly chandelier fallen like a devil down to earth, on the mountainside in the distance.  It sparkled like a puddle of champagne in the night.  I made this video in the cemetery there, 2 days later.  The song is so new at the time of this recording that there's a stanza that didn't make the final cut, but which hadn't been removed yet.  I was still a few months away from quitting drinking, as well, so I was still wearing my beer insulation suit.  You can also see my jarhead haircut.  Not my most aesthetically-appealing moment.

But the jacket is nice.

The actual recording from the album is actually pretty good.  I've pasted the AI-generated music video of it below, and the "official" version from the YT topic channel below the lyrics.  Feel free to subscribe to both.  The topic channel, supposedly, is monetized.  Supposedly, it helps.  

And if you're ever in central Arizona, and need a place to spend the night, check out 89B.  Apparently it's called "Angel Valley Road" now, but I never saw any signs.  The big wide area in the first photo above, which serves as the staging ground for all the dusty songwriting tributaries that evaporate into both the clouds and desert like so many discarded stanzas from a song packed in beans and blankets has a name now, apparently.  "Javelina Campsite," or so it says.  I guess Google has to call it something.  But it was just a flat, dusty place on 89B to me.  If you need a place to live that you can plausibly deny is where you really live, I highly recommend it.

Thanks for listening.

Tumbleweed

Take my hand,
take my soul
I gave my life to Rock & Roll
I got 2 bad marriages
and 3 days clean

My bird has sailed
my ship has flown
the whole damn world needs to get stoned
every girl I know
is a beauty queen

Sitting in the dirt in the freezing cold
I know it looks fun,
but it gets old
hold me tight,
I like the way you feel

But really I'd rather just be alone
between the choice of love
and a broken bone
I say there ain't no difference
except the time to heal

               *     *     *

Got no history,
got no plans
I'm standing tall on my own 2 hands
look ma, no feet

The sky is glue
and the glass is green
but hey, I'd rather be free than clean
the dust in my hair
don't bother me

Cuz I've got time
to get it done
and I'm in no rush to meet anyone
people are crazy,
why should I be,

When I can be free?

               *     *     *

God in Heaven,
take me home
living on the side of this dusty road
makes me miss
what's left of my family

And yeah I know the man in church
is a very good singer,
but I've got more pathos in my middle finger
than he's got in his entire
maudlin discography

Cuz I've had it bad
and I've had it good
just cuz I'm broke don't make me Robin Hood
I do what I can when I see the need

So pick up your Bible
and pass the bong
this ain't no Redemption Song
but I see no conflict,
and I feel no need

I'm a tumbleweed

©2014 Nathan Payne