News Flash! I've Been Nomadic for Nine Years Today
It's my Vaniversary!
When I first began this journey nine years ago today, I thought sharing my stories would be as easy as drawing a line from where I started to my next planned destination. As I moved across the map, the line would keep stride with my motion, neatly scrolling over hill and plain, mountain and desert, eonstantly charting my progress.
I expected my reality to include a well-researched list of places to visit in each state, gleefully checked off as seen and savored as the mile markers waved a warm welcome from the side of the road. I accepted that I would be traveling on a shoestring and not a fat wallet, but shoestring life was something I had mastered long ago.
I knew that there would be days when the differences between road life and living in a sticks-and-bricks fixed location would seem humongous. I might long for life in a climate-controlled box now and again for a variety of reasons. Starting out, I could not even fathom those reasons.
The uncertainty of how each day would look kept me up nights in the pre-launch days. I had a hunch that if I just kept pinning the next place on the map, the road would open up before me. I would figure it out as I went, just I had done with most other things in my life. I would find a way to bend this next part of my life to match the dream I had held dear since childhood. I wanted to be the bear who saw what was on the other side of the mountain.
I realized pretty quickly that road life was a series of squiggles and cloverleafs, sky-high overpasses, detours, one-way streets, and off the beaten path fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants adventures that could never be mapped with a simple hand drawn line. If you knew ahead of time what was around the next bend, you might never put one foot in front of the other, nor the key in the ignition.
Many nomadic people would say that our lives, as a whole, are often lives of struggle, followed by a flight to freedom. This quest for freedom is guided by the imagination and the realization that you can do anything you wish, if you put your mind to it and make the effort. This life is not for everyone, but for me, it has been a celebration of MY life (then ours) and a chance to live in a way that I thought would never be possible due to severe illness. Once I actually took the first leap that set my life in constant motion, I realized that eventually, I would want to tell my story.
If you were trying to tell your own personal story, how would you describe the measure of your days? How would you share the significant and mundane happenings of your life, to encourage your audience to feel as if they had been along for the ride? How might you carry your buddies along in your rucksack so they could sample the unusual life you have chosen?
Could they really dabble and dunk themselves in your experience, given access to a multitude of words and pictures? We lament the fact that no matter how magnificent the sunset is before us, it is truly impossible to fully describe it to someone who is not standing right beside you, basking in its ice cream sundae glory as well.
Photos and postcards are flat and don’t reveal many of the details of a well-rounded life. Nonetheless, I do my best to share my stories through both words and pictures. Thousands upon thousands of photographs document 9 years of travel back and forth across the USA. The stories fill my personal Facebook page, my Facebook travel page, "The Sunny Side", and my @twentyonefeathers Instagram page. If you would like to see items that have been created with some of my stunning photographs (yes, I am proud), check out my art pages here:
My journey is an ongoing voyage of discovery, with plenty of short stops, rapid rolls, and for now, a second full stop to adjust to the world as it stands at the moment.
I wonder if I can claim nine years of nomadic life, given the length of our full stop in 2020, and our current staycation at our desert oasis, due to rising gas prices? True nomads don’t roll constantly, but move with the seasons and opportunities, or when the hoot owl calls and the nights get cool enough to sleep out under the stars. The next leapity-leap is currently a dream, but weren’t they all, before they become a solid plan?
Live in the moment, but plan for adventure!
Happy trails,
Brenda Cordray
“The Desert Rose”
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TheDesertRose
You are my heroine...and when I saw you walk hand in hand into jam and then have your Dan sit down and play keyboard.....I was amazed. I asked and you said....you have your own private musician but he did practice with headphones.
Happy Vaniversary!! I love that word!