**_8:25 AM

_**

I wake up like any day. In the dark. I sit there for a couple minutes, listening for any sounds. Any noises. After hearing nothing, I come out from under, pulling my bag with me.

Looking out the window was mountains and a big green field. Last week we were in a city.

Opening the pantry, I grab cheese and toast, eating it hastily, needing to go back to my hideout. This van isn’t e...

Adventure was always on my mind growing up. My parents had to hide their laughs as I hung up motivational mountain posters in my bedroom. They took me everywhere they could, but I never went alone. That changed on my twenty-sixth birthday.

They gave me a fixer-upper blue van that took six months to repair and two more months to make it clean and cozy. And then I said my goodbyes and started my fi...

Theres not much space in here but I don’t complain. In fact, I dont mind at all. I have everything I need in here—although it’s not much. But it’s enough. Enough for me.

I think my favorite part living in a van is the fact that I can live anywhere I really want to. With my best friend, of course—Joe. We do everything together; from morning walks to eating dinner in crusty fast food places. He al...

On days like these, when the wind whistling past is wet and cold and the air inside the van stinks of petrol and coffee, I wonder if my mother was right. Perhaps I truly am a house mouse at heart. This itinerant life carries such stress. Such uncertainty.

Maybe when they finally park for the night, I’ll investigate the buildings nearby and find a nice little place to settle down and integrate wit...

I'm on my phone again. That's all I seem to do. I’m bed-rotting in this four-cornered van where my days blur into sleep, sitting, cooking (rarely), eating, washing up, and only going out when I absolutely have to—like when the trash bin is full, I need food, or when I get a rare burst of motivation to buy groceries.

I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do. I’m scared of being seen. I feel shy g...

**The whistles began, birds chirping at the break of dawn. Singing in a way that set Philip's heart soaring the moment his eyes opened. Crisp rain filtered in through the cracked van window, the sun just warm enough to make waking in the cramped space bearable. Droplets of rain cascaded down the glass like a trail of happiness, searching for a place to call home.**

****

**Yet Philip didn’t have on...

She sat in the back of her old dodge caravan, the light coming through the edges of her window covers, even though it was night, it wouldn’t get any darker than it was, for she was parked in a Buc-ee’s parking lot.

Pulling out her phone, she laid back against her pillows on the makeshift bed in the back of the van where the back seats had been folded down or removed, and thought about how she’d ...

New destination, this time: mountains. Last time, I parked at the foot of a waterfall. Crazy, right? There are some in the States where you can park right up, if no one else is there already, and I got lucky. Got lucky with this mountain, too. Looking out at it now, at sunset. Makes me appreciate being here with my van, like it’s some friend of mine. It is, in many ways. I make food with the van, ...

“I live in a van down by the river. I know classic Chris Farley but it’s really nice. I’m free you know. Totally free. I can travel where I want, when I want. You just got back from Rome, huh? Cool. Cool. I went to Hoboken just the other day. My niece had a thing, never mind. Traveling helps me from me.

“So you and Bells still have that loft by the Art Museum? Oh you’ve moved to a house in Old...

It’s definitely a pain not to see things from such small windows but you can hear everything you can feel every vibration and my gods can you smell everything...