The Art of Manliness - Walden on Wheels — A Man, a Debt, and an American Adventure

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.740 Millions of young adults know what it's like to graduate from college with student debt.

00:00:15.940 For some, it's a frustrating annoyance. For others, it's a worry-inducing burden.

00:00:20.760 For Kendall Gunas, it was a drag in need of slain and a pathway to adventure. 0.57

00:00:25.660 Ken is the author of Walden on Wheels, On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom.

00:00:30.000 Today on the show, he shares a story of how his quest to erase his debt led him to the Arctic Circle

00:00:34.860 and through the peaks and valleys of living a totally unshackled life.

00:00:38.880 Ken explains why he went to Alaska to work as a truck stop burger flipper and park ranger to pay off his student debt,

00:00:43.940 what it's like to hitchhike across the country, how reading Thoreau's Walden got him questioning how we live our lives,

00:00:49.620 and how that inspiration led him to living in his van while attending grad school at Duke.

00:00:53.940 Along the way, Ken shares his meditations on nonconformity, engaging in romantic pursuits,

00:00:58.960 and the benefits of both de-institutionalizing and re-institutionalizing your life.

00:01:03.960 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash waldenonwheels.

00:01:19.700 All right, Ken Ilgunas, welcome to the show.

00:01:22.700 It's awesome to be on. Thank you.

00:01:24.340 So you had a varied and unique resume after you graduated college.

00:01:30.060 So you moved to Alaska, and then while you're there, you cleaned a motel at a truck stop there near the Arctic Circle.

00:01:36.940 You flipped burgers during the night shift at a diner at this truck stop.

00:01:41.100 You guided cruise tourists.

00:01:43.400 You worked as a backcountry ranger in a national park.

00:01:46.640 Then you hitchhiked from Alaska to New York, so you were kind of a tramp for a bit.

00:01:51.160 You served in the AmeriCorps, in the American South, in the capstone.

00:01:55.760 There's some other stuff you did too. We're going to talk about it.

00:01:58.060 But the capstone of this career that you had after college was you lived in a van on the campus of Duke University

00:02:07.300 from 2009 to 2011 while you pursued your graduate degree.

00:02:12.880 And it was crazy. You did all this stuff so you could pay off your student debt.

00:02:18.000 Let's talk about this. How much debt did you acquire during college?

00:02:21.840 And was there a moment you had in your life when you saw your mounting debt,

00:02:26.520 and you're like, oh my gosh, I got to do something about this?

00:02:29.120 It was $32,000. I think with interest, it climbed up to $35,000 that I had to pay off.

00:02:37.420 For the most part, I did a good job, as so many growing debtors do,

00:02:42.120 in that I just completely put it out of my mind when I was at college.

00:02:46.360 I never really thought about debt. I was just focused on my part-time job,

00:02:51.040 writing my essays, getting whatever grades I needed to get.

00:02:54.420 So I just kind of put it out of my mind.

00:02:57.600 And then one day, I think this was maybe after my third year,

00:03:02.240 my mother called me down to the kitchen table.

00:03:05.660 I was commuting to the university at Buffalo in New York.

00:03:09.420 And she had all of these kind of loan bills and papers just kind of piled up on the kitchen table.

00:03:15.940 And she's just like, you're going to be in a lot of debt.

00:03:19.160 And at this time, I was pushing carts at the Home Depot for $8 an hour.

00:03:24.200 And she was just like, what are you going to do?

00:03:26.600 Like, how are you going to get out of this situation?

00:03:30.920 And I just kind of said, Mom, you know, don't worry about it.

00:03:34.240 I'll deal with it.

00:03:35.720 And, you know, I always had like fantasies of just kind of like moving to a different continent

00:03:41.040 or faking my death or, you know, or just like weirdly happening upon a well-paying job, 0.91

00:03:48.280 just kind of just stupidly optimistic. 0.97

00:03:51.560 And I just kind of joked around about it. 0.93

00:03:54.880 And it was one of the few times in my life where I saw my mom fold her arms and put her 1.00

00:04:00.340 head down and weep.

00:04:02.720 She was so scared for me.

00:04:06.120 And that was kind of a wake-up moment.

00:04:09.280 I was just like, wow, I really do need to think about all this debt I need to pay off.

00:04:13.480 And a lot of that debt you talk about in your book, Walden on Wheels, a lot of that debt

00:04:18.420 you acquired, it happened during that first year of college because like a lot of high

00:04:23.840 school students, you think, well, you know, when I'm going to go to college, I'm going

00:04:26.560 to go to the best college I can get into.

00:04:29.580 And I'll worry about how much it costs later.

00:04:32.340 So I guess the first college you went to was kind of an expensive private school, right?

00:04:36.280 It was an expensive private school called Alfred University in Southern New York.

00:04:42.500 Now, it's not that expensive to a lot of students who can get grants and scholarships.

00:04:47.560 I was just a lousy, slouchy high school student.

00:04:50.440 So they just charged me as much as they could.

00:04:54.060 So yeah, I racked up about $18,000 in debt just from that first year alone.

00:05:00.160 And it didn't take me long to realize I'm probably not going to be someone who makes the big bucks

00:05:05.800 someday.

00:05:06.420 So then I changed schools to University at Buffalo, which is a state of New York school.

00:05:11.840 So that was kind of mistake number one.

00:05:13.860 But when you're in high school, this is like the first big decision you have to make.

00:05:19.420 Like what school are you going to go to?

00:05:22.660 And you just don't want to have like a mediocrity frame of mind.

00:05:28.480 You know, this is your first thing.

00:05:30.180 You want to kind of launch yourself into the world and be ambitious and go for the best thing

00:05:35.040 you can.

00:05:35.740 And I was told again and again, don't worry about the debt.

00:05:38.420 Just go to the best school you can.

00:05:40.440 So that kind of what got me into this problem.

00:05:43.900 Now, if I was advising other young folks, I just try to say, you know, go to like the

00:05:48.640 best state school you could go to and save yourself a lot of grief if you can.

00:05:54.340 All right.

00:05:54.520 So third year, your mom sees the bills and she starts freaking out.

00:05:58.140 And that kind of had you have a come to Jesus moment about your debt.

00:06:02.660 And you got really motivated to pay off your student loans.

00:06:07.620 What was behind that?

00:06:08.480 Besides your mom, you know, crying, was there something else going on where you're like,

00:06:11.860 man, I want to get rid of this stuff as fast as possible?

00:06:15.140 There was a couple of things.

00:06:16.300 One, I was right on the edge of being like a loser, you know, like low status man who

00:06:23.720 can't get a date.

00:06:25.060 So there was just kind of desperation and really wanting to self-improve and getting rid of

00:06:31.780 my debt was kind of the obvious thing.

00:06:35.480 And oh man, like what I wanted to do was be a journalist.

00:06:39.800 I joined the student newspaper at university and I loved it.

00:06:43.380 I interned at alt-weeklies and I kind of put all my eggs in the journalism basket.

00:06:50.620 So I applied to 25 paid newspaper internships.

00:06:55.140 And over the course of my last semester, I got 25 letters in the mail rejecting my applications.

00:07:01.340 So I was kind of just standing there in my underwear, completely vulnerable, having no

00:07:07.760 idea what to do.

00:07:09.360 Because if you don't deal with your debt, the interest accrues and swells and suddenly

00:07:14.480 a $30,000 debt could be a $50,000 debt.

00:07:18.960 So part of it was just desperation.

00:07:20.740 But I don't know, I guess I had romantic longings.

00:07:25.260 And by romantic, I'm not talking sexual romantic.

00:07:28.620 I'm talking more of like a sentimentality.

00:07:31.600 Like I wanted a life of adventure.

00:07:34.940 I wanted to pursue dreams and goals.

00:07:38.320 I wanted to live my life fully and interestingly and in the way I wanted to.

00:07:44.760 So I saw my debt as this ball and chain, which was going to prevent me from living that life.

00:07:53.100 So instead of getting just a regular job, so you can pay off that debt as quickly as possible,

00:07:58.560 you decided to go to Alaska and work these odd jobs.

00:08:03.260 Why'd you go that route?

00:08:04.320 Was it just because you couldn't find a regular job?

00:08:06.360 So you're like, well, I'll go to the Arctic Circle and see what happens there?

00:08:11.600 Yeah, it was a bit of a little thing.

00:08:13.160 One, it was like if I had a job offer in journalism, I would have taken that.

00:08:18.040 But I didn't have that.

00:08:19.340 The previous summer for a couple months, I worked up in Alaska.

00:08:22.680 So I had a connection there.

00:08:24.180 So it was just like, if this is my worst case scenario, you know, cleaning beds or flipping

00:08:30.360 burgers or tour guiding visitors up in the Arctic, I'll take that over getting my old

00:08:37.540 job at the Home Depot pushing carts and, you know, sleeping in my boyhood bedroom.

00:08:43.700 So, so yeah.

00:08:45.600 And when I went up to Alaska, I was a bit depressed because it's just like, here I am working these

00:08:51.020 a low wage, low skill job, which I would have been perfectly able to do out of high school,

00:08:57.300 except now I have a college degree, $32,000 in debt.

00:09:02.360 This is not an idealistic career.

00:09:04.780 I don't feel like I'm launching myself towards anything meaningful.

00:09:08.680 So I was just kind of like, I'm just stuck in this purgatory and I could be here for who

00:09:13.580 knows, like 10 years working jobs for low pay.

00:09:19.200 But what I quickly realized was I accidentally landed myself in an almost ideal situation to

00:09:28.640 pay off my student debt.

00:09:30.680 And that's because a lot of these jobs up in Alaska and out West, they provide room and

00:09:35.940 board, meaning, you know, your rent and your food.

00:09:39.180 So when I was living up there, I had no cost.

00:09:42.140 I had no health insurance.

00:09:43.960 I didn't have to pay for my food.

00:09:45.940 There was no cell phone service.

00:09:47.360 I didn't need a car.

00:09:48.820 I had literally no bills at all except for my student debt.

00:09:54.480 So I just decided I'm just going to put everything I can towards my student debt, making $9 an hour.

00:10:01.460 And working a full year, you don't make much working $9 an hour. 0.80

00:10:06.660 I think I accumulated $18,000, which to a lot of your listeners will sound pathetic.

00:10:12.860 It's like, oh, you worked year round, you made $18,000.

00:10:15.200 But guess what?

00:10:16.520 I saved $18,000.

00:10:19.320 Now, working kind of a normal job in a normal American town, how much do you need to make

00:10:27.360 to save $18,000?

00:10:29.200 I calculate about $50,000 to $60,000 living a normal American lifestyle.

00:10:35.360 Then you can save $18,000.

00:10:36.760 I did that working up in the Arctic.

00:10:40.320 And that would be really helpful when it came to paying off my debt.

00:10:44.000 Yeah.

00:10:44.180 You, in this book, Walden on Wheels, you do a compare and contrast between you and your

00:10:47.840 friends.

00:10:48.260 You have a really good friend from high school who was having the same problems, had a lot

00:10:52.060 of debt, couldn't find a job after graduating college.

00:10:55.280 And while he was doing the job search, you were up in Alaska, in the Arctic, making $9 an

00:11:02.240 hour.

00:11:03.100 But you were paying down your debt.

00:11:05.700 And this guy's debt was just constantly accruing.

00:11:08.960 Yeah, he graduated with something like, he thought it was $58,000, and then one day he got a letter

00:11:17.260 in the mail.

00:11:18.240 And they're like, oh, it's actually $8,000 more.

00:11:20.500 So yeah, it was something like, I don't know, $65,000 in debt.

00:11:25.920 What he wanted was control.

00:11:28.180 He wanted kind of a stable situation, you know, a decent job where he could begin kind of chipping 1.00

00:11:34.660 away at that debt.

00:11:35.920 What I wanted was urgency.

00:11:37.660 I wanted to pay off my debt as fast as humanly possible.

00:11:44.340 And I was a little crazy about it.

00:11:47.840 I call it practical insanity.

00:11:51.400 And what I mean by that is when you take things like, I don't know, narcissism, delusions of

00:11:59.220 grandeur, megalomania, OCD, just obsessive thinking.

00:12:05.220 And then like applying that to a problem to help you get over kind of insurmountable odds.

00:12:12.780 So that's kind of how I thought of my approach to this is just like, be crazy, be obsessive,

00:12:21.720 and kind of devote your whole self to this.

00:12:24.320 Obviously, there's some drawbacks to that, you know, mental health drawbacks to that, because

00:12:30.660 you don't feel like you can take a break at all, because if you're just so obsessed with

00:12:34.480 your goal.

00:12:36.300 And I think I also kind of had, and this was all unconscious at the time.

00:12:40.020 I didn't articulate it this way when I was 22.

00:12:42.640 This is just me 40 thinking about it.

00:12:44.520 But I was also, as I said earlier, I just kind of had a romantic frame of mind, kind

00:12:51.280 of like a mytho-poetic.

00:12:53.520 And I thought of my debt as like a dragon to slay, and me this hero up against it.

00:13:01.100 So, you know, if you can apply these kind of romantic frame of mind to something like

00:13:08.860 that, it can help you get over something big.

00:13:12.020 Well, speaking of this romantic frame of mind, did you go to Alaska also?

00:13:16.780 Was this also, there's some kind of Jack London romanticism going on?

00:13:20.760 You're thinking, I'm this kid from the suburbs who hasn't tested himself, and I'm going to

00:13:25.780 go to the wilds, the great north, to see if I can withstand it.

00:13:30.340 Was that going on too?

00:13:32.020 I was always drawn to Alaska.

00:13:35.220 I begin my book, Walden on Wheels, with, I dreamt of grizzly bears, because I had these

00:13:41.580 chronic dreams of grizzly bears.

00:13:43.880 These grizzly bears would be just munching grass in my western New York suburb.

00:13:49.960 And I remember in my dreams, I'd just be in awe of these, you know, big brown towers of

00:13:57.040 fat and fur.

00:13:58.460 And I was just like, why am I dreaming about grizzly bears?

00:14:01.500 And I remember one day, I looked at an atlas, and I saw Alaska, and it was just like, I was

00:14:06.740 drawn straight to that place.

00:14:09.080 And I don't know why exactly.

00:14:11.440 Looking back, I think it was because I'd been such a suburbanite growing up.

00:14:17.460 You know, I grew up just outside of Buffalo, New York, Niagara Falls, New York, around these

00:14:22.700 boneyard, de-industrialized cities, where there's kind of endless cookie-cutter suburbs, just

00:14:32.160 landfills.

00:14:34.160 Four miles from my home was Love Canal, the site of this 1970s environmental disaster.

00:14:41.000 And I just saw people around me, it was almost like the people living around me, they weren't

00:14:46.820 living a life that kind of accommodated normal human instincts.

00:14:52.400 They were going to these nine-to-five jobs they hated, paying bills for the rest of their

00:14:57.460 life, cramming vacations in tiny two-week windows.

00:15:00.720 And it just seemed crazy to me.

00:15:04.000 And I think I wanted an escape.

00:15:06.420 And again, this was all kind of unconscious.

00:15:09.160 And I think there was something in my subconscious saying, you need to get out of here.

00:15:14.220 You need to go to somewhere completely wild, and then maybe you'll kind of escape this

00:15:20.140 surreality of the suburbs.

00:15:24.080 And I'm happy I listened to that inner voice.

00:15:27.180 So you were in Alaska, you did a bunch of different stuff at this truck stop.

00:15:30.580 What was life like working at this truck stop in Alaska?

00:15:35.260 Like what kind of people were you interacting with?

00:15:37.320 Kind of give us a day in the life of, I mean, you're pretty close.

00:15:40.620 I mean, you're like in the Arctic Circle, right?

00:15:42.180 Yeah, I was 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

00:15:47.640 This was about 250 miles north of Fairbanks.

00:15:51.700 So the nearest store, stoplight, movie theater, whatever was 250 miles away.

00:15:58.880 And I'm right in the middle of the Brooks Mountain Range, which if any of the listeners

00:16:03.760 haven't seen it, try to go up to the Brooks Range someday.

00:16:06.700 Because it's one of the most amazing, wildest landscapes left on Earth.

00:16:11.920 It's this 800-mile east to west mountain chain full of grizzly bears and moose and herds of caribou and wolves.

00:16:21.940 And yeah, so the population of there was 32, not 32,000, 32 people.

00:16:29.580 And half of it, I'd say, were kind of debt-ridden college students.

00:16:34.100 And the other half were just kind of working class folks who did this for a living, kind of bounced around from camp to camp. 0.85

00:16:40.700 So there was a good mix of people.

00:16:43.020 And I just found myself working alongside and living alongside truckers, pipeline workers, carpenters, a lot of weirdos.

00:16:53.180 And, you know, if you're going to go 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle, you're going to be a bit different.

00:16:57.440 So I remember I lived in a dormitory.

00:17:00.420 And on one side of me was this young man from Utah who was just high all day long.

00:17:06.400 And this was a big step up from him.

00:17:08.320 He worked at a porn shop where he had to clean out booths every day. 0.84

00:17:12.700 And then the other side of me was this half-white, half-Vietnamese guy who was a schizophrenic. 0.81

00:17:18.900 And I'd constantly hear him talking to himself.

00:17:22.180 And every day he would bust open his doors and he'd have two invisible machine guns on his arms.

00:17:28.680 And he'd start to shoot people with this invisible machine gun.

00:17:31.940 And it was very kind of interesting from a sociological and anthropological perspective to, you know, rub elbows with people who were normally outside of my bubble.

00:17:46.680 And it was that way for a few years up there.

00:17:50.480 And there was one guy in this town, in case we can call it a town.

00:17:54.240 It's Coldfoot, right?

00:17:55.200 It's the name of this place?

00:17:56.000 Yeah.

00:17:56.480 There's this guy who would later serve as the inspiration for your van dwelling phase of your life, which we're going to talk about.

00:18:03.820 Tell us about this guy.

00:18:05.400 Well, there was actually two older gentlemen who really inspired me.

00:18:10.060 The first was this guy named Jack, and he lived in a town 12 miles north, this semi-subsistence village called Wiseman, which had like 15 people living in it.

00:18:21.320 And he hunted for a living.

00:18:23.320 He fished.

00:18:24.240 He trapped.

00:18:25.100 He grew his own vegetables.

00:18:27.360 This was the most northern vegetable patch in North America, to my knowledge.

00:18:31.900 He had solar panels.

00:18:33.180 He had his own wind turbine.

00:18:34.420 He had this beautiful cabin.

00:18:37.640 And I was just transfixed with his life.

00:18:41.160 You know, this is someone, there was kind of no division between life and work for him.

00:18:47.860 You know, he went out and hunted and fished.

00:18:50.360 That was his work.

00:18:51.280 And he came home and cooked.

00:18:52.600 There was just kind of no separation as there was back in kind of contemporary American society.

00:18:57.320 So I was really inspired by that.

00:18:59.340 And then there was this older gentleman, James.

00:19:02.020 He was in his mid-70s.

00:19:03.320 He had this long, white kind of mountain goat beard.

00:19:07.500 And he worked for the Bureau of Land Management.

00:19:10.480 And he lived in his 1980 Chevy Suburban truck, this yellow truck.

00:19:17.040 And he did that for six years in the Arctic.

00:19:20.780 Now, in Coldfoot, it once got to negative 81 Fahrenheit.

00:19:26.340 I don't think it got that cold when he was living in his truck.

00:19:29.760 But he lived in that thing for six winters.

00:19:33.080 He put a little propane stove that popped out of the roof of his truck.

00:19:37.500 So I kind of looked at these folks up in Alaska.

00:19:41.860 And they were just living lives the way they wanted to.

00:19:45.780 They were living them creatively, with imagination, with independence.

00:19:50.300 And I thought I could take this kind of wild style of thinking back with me down into the

00:19:57.860 lower 48.

00:19:59.120 What did you do when you were working up there when you weren't working?

00:20:03.160 So you didn't have the internet.

00:20:04.500 You didn't have cell phones.

00:20:06.040 How did you keep yourself entertained and not going crazy, particularly during the long,

00:20:10.600 cold, dark winters?

00:20:13.180 Yeah, the winters were tough.

00:20:15.220 I mean, that's when the town went a little bit crazy.

00:20:19.920 You know, that's when people started drinking.

00:20:21.960 They were doing drugs.

00:20:23.840 There was a lot of clicks.

00:20:25.160 I'm talking about 12 people.

00:20:26.780 There's like 90 clicks.

00:20:29.860 Wasn't there like people crapping on people's cars or something like that?

00:20:33.280 It got pretty hostile.

00:20:35.060 Yeah, there was some roof defecation happening.

00:20:38.920 Um, one guy poured some water on someone's husky, which you don't want to do when it's

00:20:45.840 negative 20 below.

00:20:47.360 They would go on these drunken joy rides.

00:20:50.320 And once they went off a cliff and into a frozen river, and I'm like, okay, thank God

00:20:56.340 they're going to get fired.

00:20:57.560 And they were back at work the next day because you can't just fire one fourth of your workforce.

00:21:02.980 Um, so I would just kind of hide away and went inward and I was reading a lot.

00:21:09.940 That was the most books I ever read in a year.

00:21:11.400 I think I read 62 books that year, despite working long hours and just kind of planning

00:21:17.700 my, my exit.

00:21:19.100 You know, I didn't know what was next for me, but yeah, I was studying for the GRE.

00:21:25.100 I was thinking about grad school.

00:21:26.660 I was starting to really crave going back to school.

00:21:29.100 So one of the books you read and all that reading you did was Henry David Thoreau's Walden.

00:21:35.520 What did that book do to you when you're in Alaska?

00:21:38.340 You know, one of those books that you read and you're just like underlining almost every

00:21:43.340 word in it, or you just find yourself nodding your head and, and recognition.

00:21:49.620 And he wrote that, I think in the 1840s, but it felt like it could have been written

00:21:55.160 apart from the archaic prose.

00:21:56.720 It felt like it could have been written in the 21st century.

00:22:00.480 And I remember reading this passage where he's talking about shelter and he would go

00:22:07.160 past the railroad and the railway workers would lock up their tools in this little six foot

00:22:13.960 by three foot shack, which at the time sounded like a coffin to me.

00:22:18.760 And he's like, you know, for a dollar, anybody could live in one of these.

00:22:23.460 And then he says, if you think I'm jesting, I'm not.

00:22:27.140 And I just, I just love that.

00:22:28.740 I love it.

00:22:29.660 It reminded me of the folks in Alaska, like they'll do whatever it takes to make it work.

00:22:34.480 They'll use that imagination.

00:22:35.820 They'll think out of the box.

00:22:37.420 And I admired Thoreau for just being kind of like an artist of life.

00:22:43.020 He thought very deliberately.

00:22:44.760 He wanted to craft his life in a very specific way, the same way an artist, you know, very

00:22:51.520 meticulously put something onto her canvas.

00:22:55.380 And I too wanted to be an artist of my life.

00:22:58.860 I wanted to design my life.

00:23:00.380 I didn't want my life just to happen to me like it had been happening.

00:23:03.780 I wanted to carefully think it through.

00:23:07.980 So between Jack and James and Alaska and Henry David Thoreau, I was questioning everything.

00:23:15.820 I was questioning how we shelter ourselves, how we work, how we live, and how we transport

00:23:23.700 ourselves, which probably, we should probably get into hitchhiking, right?

00:23:27.280 Yeah, we're going to get to hitchhiking.

00:23:28.960 But before we do, tell us again how much debt you were able to pay off thanks to your work

00:23:33.860 in Alaska.

00:23:35.240 So that first year I made $18,000.

00:23:38.560 And again, there were some mental health drawbacks to being so obsessed.

00:23:44.020 So the one kind of fix I applied was any tip money I made as a cook or a guide.

00:23:49.920 I was like, okay, that's yours.

00:23:51.540 You can do whatever you want to do with it.

00:23:54.060 But everything else goes towards your debt.

00:23:56.860 So I think I made $22,000 and $18,000 went to my loans.

00:24:00.880 And it would take me another year and a half to fully pay them off.

00:24:05.400 During your stay in Alaska, this is kind of a detour.

00:24:08.460 You went to go see this Canadian motivational speaker who did 18th century Canadian explorer

00:24:15.180 reenactments.

00:24:16.280 So he would get in a canoe and go down these rivers.

00:24:20.040 And then you ended up doing an expedition with this guy.

00:24:23.760 How did that happen?

00:24:24.800 And did you get paid for it?

00:24:26.580 Was this part of the plan of paying off your debt?

00:24:28.780 Or was this something you just thought, hey, this would be fun to do?

00:24:31.740 It had nothing to do with the debt.

00:24:33.540 What had happened was after the tourism season in Alaska died down, my boss invited the tour

00:24:40.380 guides to this tourism convention in Valdez, Alaska.

00:24:44.440 And one of the motivational speakers was this guy named Bob.

00:24:48.080 I forget his last name, but he puts together annual voyages across Canada, kind of replicating

00:24:56.580 some of the historic voyages of the voyageurs who were kind of the fur traders in the 19th

00:25:02.860 and 18th century Canada.

00:25:04.280 So I was listening to him talk about his voyage across Ontario and Quebec.

00:25:11.240 And he said at the end of this, I'm actually trying to put together a team for the next

00:25:15.780 summer.

00:25:16.640 Let me know if you're interested.

00:25:18.280 So at the end of that talk, without thinking about my debt or anything like that, I just

00:25:23.200 walked up to him and put my hand out.

00:25:25.560 And I said, Bob, I'm your man.

00:25:29.700 And sure enough, I got selected for that summer journey.

00:25:34.480 So for two months across Ontario, Canada, I think it was about a thousand miles, we lived

00:25:42.060 as if we were in the 18th century.

00:25:44.340 So we didn't have tents.

00:25:46.340 We didn't have sleeping bags.

00:25:47.680 We didn't have toilet paper or bug spray.

00:25:50.840 We had two very leaky birchbark canoes, and it was as close as a person can get to living

00:25:58.380 in a different century, I think.

00:26:01.040 What did you get from this experience?

00:26:03.260 It was just memories, or did you actually develop any skills that you could say, I could

00:26:07.060 take this and apply it to my life?

00:26:09.460 I learned a lot about knot tying, which helped a lot.

00:26:14.300 I think I learned a couple things.

00:26:15.860 One, I've kind of talked about all these wilderness experiences I've had, but I hadn't been on

00:26:23.340 a hike on a trail until I was 21 years old.

00:26:27.020 That's just not what you do where I come from in Western New York.

00:26:30.920 A lot of us don't hunt or go camping or hiking.

00:26:33.720 So this was all kind of new to me.

00:26:35.240 And my relationship with nature was changing.

00:26:39.300 I grew up in a hockey rink and on a football field.

00:26:43.020 And I thought of the mountains as just another one of those arenas, like something to win,

00:26:49.820 that you beat a mountain or something like that.

00:26:53.400 And when I was out in Ontario, paddling over Georgian Bay, I began to feel something different.

00:27:01.620 It was almost like an indifference to nature.

00:27:04.220 Because I think when you see nature through a windshield, it's just like, oh, that sunset

00:27:08.120 is so beautiful and magical and serene.

00:27:12.760 But a sunset, when you're out on the water like that, could mean, oh man, here comes the

00:27:16.960 mosquitoes, here comes the cold, here come the storms, and you don't have a tent or a

00:27:21.720 sleeping bag.

00:27:22.580 So I felt like I was just kind of becoming nature.

00:27:26.440 That kind of divide that separates man from nature was just kind of dissolving.

00:27:30.860 And as I noticed, nature was indifferent to me.

00:27:33.900 I was kind of indifferent to it.

00:27:35.800 So some of that mesmerization kind of went away a little bit.

00:27:39.520 And I'd also say this, like, it made me reflect on how Americans were really lacking kind of

00:27:47.300 just that period of no responsibility adventure.

00:27:53.480 Like, we had this Métis guy on the trip.

00:27:56.300 He was half First Nations, half white.

00:27:59.640 And he would talk about how his tribes would go on these spirit quests where a young man

00:28:06.900 would go off into the woods and starve himself and wait for a vision or something like that.

00:28:13.000 I was like, does kind of my sort of culture in America, do we have anything like the Native

00:28:20.840 American spirit quest?

00:28:22.420 And I was like, no, we really don't.

00:28:24.200 And I do think we used to have a legacy of traveling and journeying as young people,

00:28:29.740 whether it was being a tramp in the 1930s or beat poets going on long road trips in the

00:28:37.160 50s or being a hitchhiker in the 1960s and 70s.

00:28:41.540 And it's just like, we kind of don't have that.

00:28:43.820 We don't have that thing that serves as a bridge between school and career.

00:28:50.640 That period of adventure, it's just kind of been abridged from a young person's life.

00:28:56.120 And I just began to think, this is what we need.

00:28:58.780 We need 21st century spirit quests.

00:29:02.340 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:29:04.540 And now back to the show.

00:29:11.360 Before you did this Canadian reenactment expedition, you had to get back home to New York because

00:29:17.720 Ontario is close to New York.

00:29:20.020 In order to save money, you decided to hitchhike.

00:29:24.620 And hitchhiking, it used to be a thing in America, but it's not anymore.

00:29:29.760 First off, what do you know about hitchhiking culture?

00:29:31.820 Do we know why hitchhiking went away?

00:29:33.640 I mean, we can take a few guesses.

00:29:38.880 One, I'd say the crime rate in the 1980s up to the mid-90s was pretty bad.

00:29:44.800 And maybe that's when hitchhiking culture really started to die down.

00:29:49.520 Hitchhiking, being represented in movies and whatnot, the hitchhiker was always the homicidal maniac.

00:29:57.080 That didn't help at all.

00:29:58.480 And I think Americans, we were just kind of undergoing this period of reduced social capital and public trust and just general fearfulness and paranoia.

00:30:10.840 So I think that's why we kind of stopped.

00:30:13.200 But there are pockets in America where it's still commonly done and not too hard.

00:30:19.180 Like I think if you're in the through hiking community around a big through hiking trail, the locals there see someone with a backpack and they know it's just kind of normal and they'll pick you up or whatever.

00:30:29.460 Alaska, Yukon territories, British Columbia, Washington State, you know, some of these Western places, it's still somewhat easy and practiced a little bit.

00:30:41.880 But yeah, like where I grew up in Western New York, I never once saw a hitchhiker.

00:30:47.700 So it's just kind of more common in some places than others.

00:30:51.600 What did you learn about people being a tramp for thousands of miles?

00:30:56.600 It was terrific.

00:30:57.760 I mean, I would have to wait on the side of the road, I'd say on average, 30 minutes to two hours.

00:31:03.900 I kept some calculations for a while.

00:31:06.040 So you'd have to be on the side of the road for a while.

00:31:08.200 But when you get picked up, you get the feeling of like a Christmas morning.

00:31:13.280 It's just like, oh, thank goodness, I finally got picked up.

00:31:16.080 And then you have a few seconds to determine, you know, is this guy going to kill me?

00:31:21.880 So you have to have a quick conversation to determine how sketchy they are.

00:31:26.200 And I'd say I turned down less than half a dozen rides and I've accumulated probably 10,000 miles of hitchhiking across North America.

00:31:34.600 So very, very rarely would I turn down a ride.

00:31:37.760 But it was a great time to, it's like the ideal travel experience.

00:31:43.060 Because think about any other way we travel, whether it's cycling or on bus or train or planes.

00:31:51.420 When we get on a plane and travel 5,000 miles, we usually have some earbuds in and watching a movie.

00:31:58.760 We're not talking to people.

00:32:00.340 We're not experiencing the culture.

00:32:01.820 But when you're hitchhiking, you're thrown right into that person's culture.

00:32:06.740 Like you're going to get to know that person really well.

00:32:09.760 And what I found is after two hours of talking with a complete stranger, I'd often hear secrets they probably never told their wife.

00:32:19.320 It was almost like a therapy session.

00:32:21.200 And that's how I paid for my ride, by being a really good, active listener.

00:32:27.520 And yet you really get to see all sorts of folks.

00:32:31.620 Like I don't want to say I grew up in like a complete liberal suburban bubble, but I sort of did.

00:32:38.500 And suddenly I'm getting in the car with ex-cons and people who tell me about their alcohol addictions or their meth addictions.

00:32:48.160 And people who had problems that were very different and far more extreme than the problems I grew up around.

00:32:56.460 So in some ways, it was very enlightening.

00:33:00.080 But more than anything, it just made me feel like we do have this wrongheaded and somewhat unfounded view of our country.

00:33:09.100 I think we are overly fearful, overly paranoid.

00:33:12.920 And when you're picked up again and again by complete strangers who don't ask you for money or any favors, you know, you begin to see your country and your culture in a new and much more warm-hearted way.

00:33:29.960 Like in some ways, hitchhiking really renewed my love for being American.

00:33:36.220 Any advice for people out there who are listening and thinking, I want to hitchhike?

00:33:40.800 Any tips for the road?

00:33:43.620 Well, you probably don't need to listen to me because one of the funnest parts about it is just learning how to do it on your own.

00:33:51.460 But let me get you started with a few tips.

00:33:53.740 The biggest one is placing yourself in a situation where the driver is probably going less than 30 miles an hour and has a lot of space to pull over.

00:34:04.380 That's the biggest thing.

00:34:07.380 Also, dress for business.

00:34:09.440 You know, you got to dress nice.

00:34:11.120 You know, wear a nice ball cap, put on a collared shirt, tuck in your shirt into your pants, and just kind of look presentable.

00:34:20.660 Never show any anger or frustration because sometimes people will go past you and then feel guilty.

00:34:25.780 And then you'll see that same person five minutes ago.

00:34:28.780 So don't kick the gravel in the road or, you know, show any frustration because you will be frustrated.

00:34:33.940 There was times when I've just been in pouring rain for 12 hours and you're so angry.

00:34:38.400 It's just like you guys are all heartless.

00:34:40.760 And also, take a box of crayons and write a nice sign.

00:34:44.540 Don't use your thumb.

00:34:45.840 Write a nice, colorful sign that'll make you seem a little bit more family-friendly.

00:34:50.840 Gotcha.

00:34:51.500 That's awesome.

00:34:52.720 So you did this expedition.

00:34:54.220 After the expedition, you had this period where you're back at home with your parents.

00:34:58.100 And you talk about how being back in your childhood home in the suburbs, you started kind of falling into this funk and depression.

00:35:07.160 And the mountains, the wilds started calling you again.

00:35:10.680 And this time you decided to go back to Alaska.

00:35:13.080 But this time you were going to be a park ranger in, I think it's like the most remote national park in the United States.

00:35:21.520 So tell us about that experience.

00:35:22.660 Yeah, I remember I went back home and, you know, sometimes when you're away from home for a few years, you can kind of see your milieu, your natural environment more clearly than before.

00:35:35.220 And yeah, I had some really tough conversations with my mom.

00:35:38.820 I remember once she sat me down and she said, you know, are you trying to kill yourself doing all this?

00:35:45.760 And she told me she's going to start to distance herself from me because she just thought I was acting in a very kind of reckless and erratic way.

00:35:55.800 And she once said, you know, when are you going to grow up and start acting like a human being?

00:36:02.340 And I understood because she was fearful of losing me because I was hitchhiking and all that.

00:36:08.700 But I'd never felt more like a human being.

00:36:11.620 I'd never felt more alive and more charged with life when I was climbing a mountain in the Brooks Range or getting into a car and, you know, hitchhiking across Mississippi or something like that.

00:36:25.960 So I felt this very stark disconnect with the place I grew up and the life I wanted to lead.

00:36:33.380 So, yeah, I got a job with the National Park Service, which paid a lot more than the wages I was getting working at the truck stop.

00:36:41.120 So this would help put me over my student debt.

00:36:44.780 And it was just an amazing job.

00:36:47.180 I had this job as a backcountry ranger in the gates of the Arctic National Park where they dropped me off on a little four-seater plane in the middle of the wilderness with these big bush tires or land me on a pond out there.

00:37:02.560 And I'd go on an eight-day backpack patrol, either on canoe or on foot, and I got paid to go hiking.

00:37:10.280 And honestly, that was enough.

00:37:11.720 Like, having three months living in the wilderness, I didn't kind of need any more adventure or wilderness.

00:37:16.920 That was like an ideal amount of time living in a state of adventure in the wilderness.

00:37:21.780 Because then I was kind of eager to go back to school and embrace the life of the mind.

00:37:27.300 It was just that for a couple of years, I had a really nice balance between the life of the mind and the life of adventure.

00:37:35.320 What were you supposed to do when you're out on these trips?

00:37:38.640 Were you writing tickets?

00:37:40.340 Like, what was your job?

00:37:42.260 Oh, no.

00:37:42.760 I mean, you have to imagine gates of the Arctic.

00:37:45.200 It's over 8 million acres, and it's, I think, the second least visited national park.

00:37:50.940 So over the course of eight days, I'd be lucky if I saw one group of people.

00:37:56.140 So no, I wasn't that sort of a ranger.

00:38:00.040 But it was more kind of presence to prevent poaching activity, any sort of trash cleanup.

00:38:07.420 Sometimes we'd be told to go in and take out an old gold mining barrel or a caribou collar or educate folks out there about bear safety and fire safety, stuff like that.

00:38:21.440 It was a great job.

00:38:24.340 And I probably, you know, one part of me could have just kept doing that for the rest of my life.

00:38:28.820 But there was something missing.

00:38:31.300 I didn't want to, because it kind of felt like a vacation.

00:38:33.600 You know, I felt like I was getting paid to hike, and I'm sure there's some listeners like, oh, you had it made.

00:38:38.520 But I was seeking something more.

00:38:41.020 You know, I wanted more of an existential, spiritual fulfillment from my work.

00:38:48.240 And rangering wasn't that.

00:38:50.600 Yeah.

00:38:51.240 No, if you're a young person, I think I would have done this if I were, if I could do this again.

00:38:56.620 Jobs with the National Park Service or the U.S. Forest Service seem like they're really cool.

00:39:01.400 You can be doing something like you did where they just drop you off for a week and you get the backpack in beautiful country and get paid well for it.

00:39:09.360 We had a podcast guest on a long time ago.

00:39:12.280 It's one of my favorite episodes we did with this guy named Philip Connors.

00:39:15.940 And he is a fire watcher for the U.S. Forest Service in New Mexico.

00:39:22.160 And he just goes to one of the few remaining, these fire towers where they're looking for smoke.

00:39:26.320 And he just lives there during the fire season.

00:39:28.540 And it seems like a great gig.

00:39:31.020 Like you just, you're out in nature, you get to hike, and it seems awesome.

00:39:35.300 If people want to listen to that, that is episode number 473.

00:39:38.820 They want to check that out.

00:39:40.260 Okay.

00:39:40.560 So you did this backcountry park ranger thing.

00:39:44.580 It was paying a lot.

00:39:46.060 And because of this job, you're able to pay off your debt.

00:39:48.180 You're finally able to pay off like $32,000, $34,000 worth of debt.

00:39:52.440 How did that feel?

00:39:53.420 How did it feel to finally accomplish this goal that you've had for years and were obsessively trying to accomplish?

00:39:59.840 I wish I could say there was a celebration with champagne and confetti, but there wasn't.

00:40:06.780 I don't even think I barely acknowledged it.

00:40:09.680 Because I did the math months before, and I kind of knew exactly when the debt was going to die.

00:40:15.300 So it was kind of rehearsed in my mind well ahead of time.

00:40:19.240 And I don't know, sometimes like you're in a relationship that's kind of bad for a long time.

00:40:25.920 And when it comes to the breakup, you kind of feel nothing.

00:40:29.180 And it's kind of because you've rehearsed this so many times in the past.

00:40:33.900 And I think that was kind of the case with my debt.

00:40:36.240 But honestly, I missed the debt a little bit because, and you know, that's going to sound crazy,

00:40:42.680 but I just loved having purpose and a goal and something, you know, a dragon to slay.

00:40:49.840 So, you know, you kind of have to be ready to kind of replace that one sense of purpose with another.

00:40:57.920 And luckily, I had something lined up, you know, as we'll get to.

00:41:01.040 I was ready to go to grad school.

00:41:02.500 So, yeah, there was no, there was no really real sense of relief or celebration.

00:41:07.620 I was just happy it was gone.

00:41:08.960 Yeah, I think that's what happens with most goals that you think a lot about.

00:41:12.440 When you finally get it, you might feel good for like two seconds.

00:41:17.340 And then it's like, you're okay.

00:41:19.760 We got to find the next thing to work on.

00:41:21.600 And so for you, the next thing to work on was you're going to get your graduate degree.

00:41:25.940 And you decided to go to Duke University.

00:41:28.440 But you did not want to go to grad school and take on any more student debt.

00:41:34.940 So to avoid that, you decided to live in a van on the campus of Duke University.

00:41:42.800 So let's talk about just the van you bought.

00:41:44.720 Like, what kind of van did you live in?

00:41:47.280 Was it a creeper van?

00:41:48.840 Like, what are we talking about here?

00:41:51.060 Well, almost all vans are creeper vans.

00:41:53.820 And it was a 1994 Ford Econoline.

00:41:58.280 And I should say this is back in 2009.

00:42:01.380 So this was kind of before the whole hashtag van life movement.

00:42:06.560 And I remember as I was thinking about Thoreau living in that like coffin box,

00:42:11.500 I was like, oh, I could do that at Duke University, live in a little coffin or something.

00:42:15.560 But a van made more sense.

00:42:17.520 And I did some research online.

00:42:19.940 And I couldn't find one person who'd done this before on a college campus.

00:42:25.040 So I felt like a pioneer in a way.

00:42:26.800 Because again, back in 2009, you were either like homeless or a pervert if you were living in your van.

00:42:33.400 So I'm happy to kind of help change the image away from that.

00:42:37.680 So yeah, I thought if I could buy a cheap van and just live in it year round,

00:42:45.620 then maybe I could avoid expensive apartment payments.

00:42:51.000 And I'd do all my cooking in the van and not move it around on campus.

00:42:56.260 And the big thing was I had to keep it a secret because I did not want campus security or any students finding out.

00:43:03.480 Because I thought if they found out, they're going to spread the news on social media.

00:43:08.680 I'm going to be like the van man on campus.

00:43:11.420 And suddenly I'm going to get kicked out of my parking lot.

00:43:14.640 So stealth and secrecy were the names of the game.

00:43:18.680 Well, it was technically not against the rules to do this.

00:43:21.300 There wasn't a rule about this, right?

00:43:24.100 It was kind of vaguely worded.

00:43:29.320 And I think I just kind of purposefully look the other way.

00:43:32.880 What's that saying?

00:43:33.720 It's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.

00:43:38.560 And that was kind of a huge approach to almost everything in my mid-20s.

00:43:43.260 So I just decided I'm just going to secretly live in this van.

00:43:47.000 So the van came with blinds.

00:43:49.380 And I put up this big black sheet behind the windshield whenever I was in there.

00:43:54.100 So nobody knew I was in there.

00:43:56.120 And Duke, I mean, that's where a lot of affluent young folks go to school.

00:44:01.680 So I didn't think any locals or campus security were thinking that one of their own was living

00:44:08.320 in a vehicle.

00:44:09.040 So I had that going for me as well.

00:44:11.500 Okay.

00:44:11.580 So you did everything in this thing.

00:44:13.020 You cooked.

00:44:13.740 Like what kind of food were you cooking in a van?

00:44:16.540 Well, I've learned a lot about nutrition since then.

00:44:19.620 So I was just eating a lot of peanut butter, cereal, oatmeal.

00:44:25.600 I kind of put peanut butter in almost every meal I ate.

00:44:29.780 But some of it wasn't bad.

00:44:30.820 I had like a Whole Foods basically right next to my van.

00:44:34.600 So I'd go there and buy a couple of vegetables, chop them up, put them in a stew.

00:44:38.340 So just kind of like a vegetable stew or rice and bean burrito night.

00:44:42.820 Just really simple stuff.

00:44:44.780 And that first semester, I was quite extreme with keeping my budget as low as it could be.

00:44:51.460 I had it down to about $4.34 a day for my food costs.

00:44:57.600 And all my other costs, whether it was gas for the van, car insurance, whatever, came to

00:45:04.740 about $103 a week.

00:45:07.820 So I lived on a budget of about $400 a month, which I found quite manageable.

00:45:14.700 And it was all possible because of the van.

00:45:17.240 And then your bathing, I guess you did at the school gym, the locker room there.

00:45:21.560 It was not a life of deprivation at all, I should say.

00:45:25.300 I mean, like the Duke gym had like a sauna, like a swimming pool and a sauna and a basketball

00:45:32.640 court.

00:45:33.520 So it's not like I was living in complete deprivation.

00:45:37.000 The library was open almost all hours.

00:45:39.760 So if it was too hot or too cold, I always had a place to go.

00:45:43.840 I had a really good sleeping bag.

00:45:45.600 North Carolina winters don't get too cold.

00:45:48.540 And man, I slept so well there.

00:45:50.840 I have a four-year-old daughter now.

00:45:52.320 So I know what it's like to be in a state of sleep deprivation for years on end.

00:45:56.660 But I slept so well.

00:45:58.220 One of my favorite parts of that period of my life was just waking up because I was so time

00:46:04.220 rich.

00:46:04.560 I would just wake up and just like slowly wake up and think and just kind of stare at

00:46:10.500 the roof of my van and listen to all the birds and the bugs outside.

00:46:15.180 I just kind of slowly wake up for an hour.

00:46:17.260 That's the biggest thing I miss about that period of my life.

00:46:19.860 You talk about how the hardest thing about living in a van, right?

00:46:23.720 So it sounds like you were living pretty good.

00:46:25.080 Like it wasn't, you weren't deprived.

00:46:26.680 You're eating well.

00:46:27.760 You were comfortable.

00:46:28.700 You had access to showers, to a sauna, to a gym.

00:46:32.000 But the hardest part was the social isolation.

00:46:34.480 But you were seeing people at your classes and whatnot.

00:46:37.620 Why did you feel so lonely?

00:46:38.900 Well, one, I'm an introvert, a little bit shy and things like that.

00:46:46.080 So making connections out of nothing doesn't come as easy to me as it might to others.

00:46:53.760 So there was that.

00:46:55.460 And then there was the whole secrecy factor.

00:46:58.000 Like, I didn't know who I could trust with my secret of living in a van.

00:47:04.060 So I just found myself telling little white lies with all these new acquaintances I had.

00:47:10.980 They'd always ask me, you never know how quickly the question,

00:47:15.020 where do you live, comes up until you're secretly living in your van.

00:47:18.600 It's usually like question number two, where are you living?

00:47:21.940 And I would say I live on 9th Street, which was true in Durham, North Carolina. 0.95

00:47:25.880 But they would always think I lived in the apartment complex there and not the parking lot.

00:47:32.660 So yeah, so it was just in grad school and college in general can be quite lonely

00:47:40.220 when you lose your neighborhood and your old friends and your family.

00:47:44.580 So I think what I was going through was quite common.

00:47:47.720 It was only exacerbated by the van.

00:47:50.860 In Walden, Thoreau talks about the cost of a thing.

00:47:53.880 And thanks to your unconventional life, you're able to pay down your debt and you're able to avoid new debt.

00:48:00.840 But were there unintentional costs of your extreme measures that you might see now thanks to hindsight?

00:48:08.680 Well, at some point, I would say I kind of – my 20s was a period of deinstitutionalization.

00:48:16.940 And what I mean by that was I was getting rid – I was just shedding off all institutional influences,

00:48:24.960 whether that was your family, your neighborhood, your church, stable work.

00:48:32.540 All of that was kind of being shed in the name of independence, of self-improvement, of adventure,

00:48:42.360 of living your life the way you want it to.

00:48:44.780 So you're kind of playing with fire when you shed everything.

00:48:48.440 And when you live in a state of institutionlessness, there's a lot of wonderful things that can happen in that period.

00:48:57.840 You know, you can really see your society and your culture around you almost with fresh eyes

00:49:03.640 because you're viewing it from the outside.

00:49:06.300 And you're really able to kind of fashion your own character outside of these institutional influences.

00:49:13.540 But there's a cost with that.

00:49:16.980 And this was a period of my life where I wasn't devoted to developing friendships,

00:49:21.640 building that friend network, finding a church or a workplace.

00:49:26.100 So you just – when you're completely adrift like that, sometimes you feel a bit empty and a bit lost.

00:49:35.500 You know, I was living the life of perfect freedom.

00:49:37.400 I had no debt, very few bills.

00:49:40.600 I could kind of do anything I want.

00:49:42.320 And that sounds like the American dream in some ways.

00:49:45.800 But there's nightmarish qualities to that too.

00:49:49.680 Yeah, Aristotle talks about that.

00:49:51.560 People who just live by themselves, solitary.

00:49:53.960 He says they're either gods or beasts.

00:49:56.860 There's a part of humanness you miss out on when you're not embedded in a community.

00:50:02.080 And I hungered for that.

00:50:03.760 And I just – and I didn't go on that journey, I'd say, until my mid-30s.

00:50:07.860 So did people eventually find out that you were living in a van on the campus of Duke University?

00:50:12.940 Like, what happened when they did find out?

00:50:15.760 Yes, they did.

00:50:16.580 I kind of outed myself after a year of doing it.

00:50:20.780 I wrote an essay in my – a travel writing class I was in.

00:50:25.180 And my teacher said – it was kind of like, I live in a van down by Duke University.

00:50:30.200 And she's like, oh, man, you got to publish this.

00:50:32.600 This article is going to go viral.

00:50:35.220 Because this is like – this was just in the height of the Great Recession after 2008.

00:50:40.560 So everybody was in debt.

00:50:42.440 There was a lot more awareness about student debt.

00:50:45.600 And she thought the story of someone desperately trying to live within his means would really register.

00:50:52.080 And she was right.

00:50:52.960 So I wrote this article for Salon.com, an internet magazine, and it just took off.

00:51:00.240 So overnight, I went from completely anonymous and secretive van dweller to momentary celebrity.

00:51:09.380 Like, the next day, I had, like, NPR on the phone.

00:51:12.700 Inside Edition was calling me.

00:51:15.020 Rachel Ray wanted me on her show to pimp out my van. 0.99

00:51:19.840 And I remember I was on the phone with, like, a rally newspaper.

00:51:23.340 And my hand was just shaking, like, shaking uncontrollably.

00:51:27.640 It was, like, exciting in a great and terrifying way.

00:51:31.100 So I kind of outed myself.

00:51:32.100 One of the first things Duke University, their spokesman, said, we're prepared to help Ken find guidance and counseling.

00:51:41.580 I was crazy.

00:51:43.640 And soon after that, a local student complained that they didn't want to share a parking lot with someone living in it.

00:51:50.180 And that's when I felt like I was being persecuted.

00:51:53.080 It felt like, oh, they're persecuting the van dwellers now.

00:51:59.040 But Duke was kind enough.

00:52:00.520 They just made me sign a contract saying I wouldn't sue them for anything as long as I parked near the campus police station.

00:52:09.940 So they gave me a new parking lot and let me finish and graduate.

00:52:13.800 And when I did graduate, they passed a new parking law prohibiting anyone from doing what I did, which is the legacy I left out.

00:52:22.080 It's the Ken Ilgunis Law.

00:52:24.000 Yeah, they should have named it after me.

00:52:26.300 Okay, so this period of your life, you call it the deinstitutionalized period of your life.

00:52:31.740 But recently, you said in your mid-30s, you've gotten married, you had a kid, you've put down some roots in a village in Scotland.

00:52:38.060 So you're starting to re-institutionalize yourself, kind of reintegrate yourself into community life.

00:52:45.220 How do you think people should balance freedom and having institutional attachments?

00:52:51.260 Like, what's been your experience?

00:52:54.960 I wish I had all the answers.

00:52:57.260 And it really varies on the person and the culture the person comes from.

00:53:01.660 Like, whatever it is about my ethnic background or whatever, you know, I kind of glorify this kind of thorough, individualistic frame of mind.

00:53:13.460 Whereas, you know, some of my Italian-American friends, they're just a lot more connected to their families and don't have those same kind of lonesome longings. 0.93

00:53:24.100 So I don't want to say don't do that.

00:53:26.280 But just speaking from my own point of view, I do think it's good to kind of deinstitutionalize and go on that crazy year-long or two-year-long journey where you're kind of outside.

00:53:39.980 You take a break from all those institutions.

00:53:43.580 And again, I think it's great to kind of see them anew from the outside and to fashion, you know, your own individuality and character through experiences that no one has ever had.

00:53:56.280 I think that's an education in and of itself.

00:54:00.980 And I would advise not trying to rebuild your institutions as late as I did.

00:54:05.480 I remember I was 34 and I was living in a cabin in Alaska in this park called Lake Clark National Park.

00:54:13.160 And I was surrounded by grizzly bears.

00:54:14.740 I'd see about 30 grizzly bears a day.

00:54:18.160 And I'm just like, what am I doing?

00:54:19.680 Like, I'm living the dream of my 21-year-old self in my mid-30s.

00:54:25.900 Like, I felt like I should have been, like, dating and trying to find a partner and trying to find a home.

00:54:32.680 And I just keep going back to these really remote, dangerous places in Alaska.

00:54:38.780 So that's when I kind of unconsciously made the decision.

00:54:41.440 It's like, oh, I got to find a home.

00:54:44.240 I got to find a partner.

00:54:45.240 I got to build a family and stuff like that.

00:54:48.200 So that's kind of the journey I've been on.

00:54:51.300 And my journey is not over with.

00:54:52.760 Like, you know, I'm not religious, so I don't have a church.

00:54:55.840 I'm a writer, so I work from home in front of my computer all day.

00:54:59.860 So there's still things I want to do to kind of rebuild the institutions in my life.

00:55:05.980 So maybe have like a rumspringa, like an Amish rumspringa when you're young.

00:55:10.760 Have an adventure, and as you get older, start adding attachments back into your life.

00:55:16.800 But don't wait too long.

00:55:18.120 So how are you doing this today?

00:55:19.060 I mean, do you still have that itch to go off to Alaska, go off to the wilds?

00:55:24.300 How are you balancing freedom and roots as a 40-year-old?

00:55:29.960 Well, first of all, I think rumspringa, that should be like the name of someone's memoir.

00:55:34.020 That's an awesome title for a travel memoir or something.

00:55:40.780 Yeah, I mean, I've got a four-year-old daughter.

00:55:44.020 I moved into a very shoddy house that needed a lot of work.

00:55:49.320 So I've just kind of been living the domestic existence for a few years.

00:55:55.620 And as my wife has a much more stable job than I, I was kind of a primary caretaker for

00:56:01.700 my daughter for a couple of years.

00:56:03.440 And there was an extreme sense of loss.

00:56:07.980 You know, of course, I gained a lot.

00:56:10.580 I gained a family.

00:56:11.500 But it felt like I almost lost a part of myself.

00:56:16.440 And I remember I had these weird ideas of creating an effigy of myself and burning it over a bonfire

00:56:25.460 just to kind of wish him well and say goodbye.

00:56:29.060 But things get easier as a dad and things are getting a lot easier for me now.

00:56:35.280 And yeah, I feel like that kind of wilder half of myself, he's still there.

00:56:40.780 He's just in a state of hibernation.

00:56:44.640 And I look forward to the day when I can let him out again a bit.

00:56:49.100 Yeah, maybe you'll be like that guy who lived in his Subaru.

00:56:52.380 He's in his 70s and he's living in a Subaru in the northern.

00:56:56.540 That's going to be you when you're 70.

00:56:58.360 That's going to be my rum spring sequel memoir to Walden on Wheels.

00:57:03.880 Exactly.

00:57:04.660 Well, Ken, this has been a great conversation.

00:57:06.340 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:57:08.860 Just go to my website, kenilgunis.com.

00:57:13.880 You can sign up for my free newsletter.

00:57:16.880 I won't overburden you with that.

00:57:18.300 That's just kind of like a once a month or once every two month thing.

00:57:21.720 And you'll see all my books on the page.

00:57:24.100 Fantastic.

00:57:24.500 Well, Ken Ilgunis, thanks for your time.

00:57:25.700 It's been a pleasure.

00:57:26.800 It's been my pleasure.

00:57:27.680 Thanks so much, Brett.

00:57:29.560 My guest today is Ken Ilgunis.

00:57:30.980 He's the author of the book Walden on Wheels.

00:57:32.920 It's available on Amazon.com.

00:57:34.660 You can find more information about his work at his website, kenilgunis.com.

00:57:37.820 Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash Walden on Wheels.

00:57:41.540 We find links to resources.

00:57:42.740 We delve deeper into this topic.

00:57:51.620 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.

00:57:54.420 Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com.

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00:58:17.600 Until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you

00:58:19.540 to how to listen to AOM podcast would put what you've heard into action.

00:58:36.280 Absolutely, thank you.

00:58:36.760 Thank you.

00:58:39.500 Bye-bye.

00:58:45.500 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - April 08, 2024

Walden on Wheels — A Man, a Debt, and an American Adventure

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