So, this is the conclusion of 10 lessons I've learned from my year long nomadic travels in my beloved camper van, Honu. As a summary, Part 1 covered these lessons:

     1. Most people are kinder than the news would suggest.

     2. Weather controls more than you expect.

     3. Plans are only suggestions.

     4. Accomplishing hard things changes you.

     5. You need far less than you think.

And Part 2 covered these lessons:

     6. Nature resets the human mind.

     7. American is bigger than you can imagine.

     8. Beauty exists in unexpected places.

And now, the final two lessons ☺️.

 

9. People carry stories you'd never guess. 

Travel has a strange way of introducing people who would never have crossed paths under ordinary circumstances. In our home location, our lives tend to be organized into predictable circles - our neighbors, coworkers, family. All the people who cross our paths as we go about our familiar routines. But the road rearranges those boundaries. And the road taught me not to assume I know anyone’s story by first appearances.

Campgrounds, rest stops, fuel stations, and laundromats are full of people between chapters of their lives. Some are grieving. Some are escaping. Some are rebuilding. Some are finally living the life they postponed for decades. A retired fisherman in Louisiana, a solo hiker in Montana, a waitress in Arizona, and me - a grandmother driving a camper van solo across the country - all exist within the same temporary world.

Solo travelers tend to connect more deeply with strangers and with the world around them. Without the protective bubble of companions, people become more open to conversation, observation, and experience. And travel in and of itself strips away many of the social barriers that usually separate people.

Conversations become more honest on the road. There is less performance, less history, less expectation. I’ve had deep conversations around a campfire with people I had met only an hour before. That fleeting quality gives encounters unusual weight. Why does this happen? I think it is because of the vulnerability travel creates. I often felt temporarily out of place, even if it was of my own choosing. I was constantly navigating uncertainty in some form. Changing landscapes, altered rhythms, weather, the strange beauty of impermanence - meant that life felt immediate and not theoretical. All of this served to keep me fully present in my moments. And I found that a flat tire, bad weather, loneliness, exhaustion or getting lost has a way of softening human beings toward one another. Travelers understand instinctively that someday they may need the same kindness they are offering now. And kindness on the road feels magnified.

 

I firmly believe that everyone has a unique story carried quietly inside them. And those stories are shared more readily on the open road than they are when we are surrounded by all the familiarities that nourish but also enclose us. 

I met a lovely retired nurse who was traveling alone after losing her husband because she promised herself she would still see the country. I met a young man working at a campground desk who secretly wrote poetry between shifts. When I got in trouble with a flat tire in a tiny Kentucky town, the mechanic who helped me told me about the stray cats he fed behind his garage. I met an incredible man traveling alone who was partially paralyzed in an automobile accident a few years earlier. He decided that the wheelchair he required was not going to limit his travels and it did not. He pointed out some wonderful campgrounds that are now on my list when I again head out west.

American culture often celebrates visibility, wealth, and achievement, but the road introduces a different kind of greatness: resilience, generosity, humor, endurance, curiosity. I have met people who have survived devastating losses and still laugh easily. People who own very little but share freely. People who have reinvented themselves late in life after divorce, grief, addiction, heartbreak, or retirement. The road is full of people rebuilding themselves quietly. And having met these wonderful people - I have had my faith in humanity and in Americans - restored. These are the real souvenirs of travel.

Not objects.

People.

That was probably the biggest gift from my travels. I had grown weary of watching anger and hostility between the political parties in my country. I was ashamed about how I was being represented by Trump and the Republican policies of division and hatred. But meeting fellow Americans on the road reminded me that we are a good, independent, free-thinking people, united in our voracious passion for freedom and liberty. I am so proud to be an American.

And the final lesson of my travels?

10. The person who returns is NEVER the same person who left.

I refer to myself as a feral grandma because in the last few years that label has defined me. As a older woman - a grandma - much of what society has demanded from me is performance. Smile politely. Stay close to home. Be agreeable. Be careful. Grow smaller with age. Fade gracefully into the background. Modern culture often treats older women as though their meaningful years are behind them.

I was absolutely terrified when I started my solo travels. I didn’t trust my abilities to handle all the myriad problems that might arise with traveling in a complicated home on wheels. I felt alone, vulnerable, and questioned my own sanity. What was I thinking?

But the road changed me. As a feral grandma, I became an expert at adaptation. I’ve taken so many wrong turns that I’ve decided I’m not lost - just taking the scenic route. And often it is!

I’ve locked myself outside my camper wearing only flip flops and a bathrobe at six in the morning in New Mexico. I’ve backed into a campsite while 6 men watched me silently with crossed arms. And dignity is overrated when you flood your black tank in central Florida.

I’ve learned how to diagnose strange engine noises and how to do roadside repairs with zip ties and determination. I’ve learned to sleep through highway rest stop traffic with one eye half open. And I’ve learned that fear visits everyone at night, especially women alone, but courage is simply continuing to drive in the morning anyway.

Across nearly every culture and every era of human history, stories return again and again to the same pattern: someone leaves home and is transformed by the journey. In Travels With Charley, Steinbeck admitted that travel unsettled him physically and emotionally at times, but he understood that discomfort was part of awakening. He wrote one of the book’s most famous observations: “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”

Modern life is filled with noise - schedules, obligations, conversations, screens, and distractions. Traveling alone slows those distractions long enough for deeper thoughts to emerge. Long drives, quiet walks, unfamiliar landscapes, and evenings spent alone often led me to reconsider my priorities, relationships, fears, dreams, and the direction of my life. 

I embarked on this new adventure after being diagnosed with cancer. My solitude on the road became something very different from just being alone. It became ownership of time. Ownership of thought. Ownership of self. In grappling with my own mortality, the road has given me the space and the time to prove to myself that grief, age, disappointment, and loss do not end a person’s story unless they decide to stop moving forward. Age can sharpen a person instead of diminishing them. And freedom sometimes begins the moment you stop asking permission.

Every mile said the same thing: your life is not over yet.

Adventure has no expiration date.

I’m still alive and I’m still becoming.

Yes - I’m a feral grandma. I’m old but I’m not reckless or crazy - I’m just no longer tame ☺️ And there is enormous power in becoming untamed after a lifetime spent being careful.

So, the video of the day has to be Fast Car by Tracy Chapman. Recorded on October 18, 1988 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena in Oakland, California, this performance came the same year that Tracy received enormous attention when she appeared at the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday tribute. Her masterful storytelling and emotional honesty to ‘leave tonight or live and die this way’ in her song is a stirring anthem for women to create their own lives.