On Being A Nomad

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On Being a Nomad

I’ve lived as some version of a nomad for most of my adult life.

Since 2007, I’ve worked in the oil and gas industry, which means I’ve spent a good portion of my life going wherever somebody told me the work was. Sometimes that meant flying. More often it meant driving. Sometimes it meant getting a phone call and knowing that within a matter of hours I might need to pack my things, get in the truck, drive sixteen hours, and show up ready to work the next morning.

I’ve seen a lot of America that way.

Not necessarily postcard America, either.

I’ve spent time in ordinary towns most people would never have a reason to visit. Places without famous skylines or national parks or anything particularly noteworthy to put on a tourism brochure. Just towns. Gas stations. Motels. Walmarts. Diners. Job sites. Places where somebody was born, somebody grew up, somebody fell in love, somebody got divorced, somebody died.

Places people call home.

For years, I hauled a 33-foot camper behind my truck and lived in it wherever work took me. I used to think the whole “van life” thing sounded pretty cool. Now, after actually living in a camper for years, I look at it a little differently.

Thirty-three feet started feeling small eventually.

You accumulate things. You find another pair of boots, another jacket, another tool, another souvenir, another piece of your life that needs somewhere to go. Cabinets fill up. Closets fill up. Corners fill up. Eventually the walls start feeling like they’re moving inward.

So when I see somebody living full-time in a van now, part of me still thinks it looks adventurous.

Another part of me thinks, Man, that looks miserable.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always laughed a little at the phrase “gypsy soul.”

I understand what people mean when they use it. Somebody takes a trip, discovers that they love traveling, feels that first rush of freedom and suddenly decides they have a gypsy soul.

And that’s fine. It’s cute.

But somewhere inside I’ve always thought, You don’t know the half of it.

Try getting a phone call and having a few hours to figure out what belongings you need for the next several months.

Try driving sixteen hours because work starts tomorrow.

Try hauling your house behind your truck.

Try waking up somewhere and needing a second to remember what state you’re in.

That has been normal life for me.

Maybe that’s why the word nomad has always felt different.

I think I first became consciously attached to it because of Sons of Anarchy. There was a character who needed to “go nomad.” In the world of the show, it meant he wasn’t attached to any particular chapter of the motorcycle club anymore. He was still part of something, but he belonged nowhere in particular.

He was on his own for a while.

Something about that stuck with me.

Of course, I already knew what the word meant. We all learned about nomadic people in school—people who moved with the seasons, the weather, the herds, whatever survival required of them. They didn't build their identity around one permanent place because movement itself was part of how they lived.

Maybe work was my herd.

I followed it.

Oklahoma. Texas. Louisiana. Pennsylvania. North Dakota. Wherever it went, I went.

Eventually the movement expanded beyond work.

I backpacked through Europe. I stood in Egypt. I traveled through Iceland and South America. I wandered through Japan. I’ve driven countless roads across the United States and flown across oceans because there was something on the other side I wanted to see.

And somewhere along the way, movement stopped being something I did and became part of how I understood myself.

I was a nomad.

There is strength in that word for me.

A nomad knows how to leave.

A nomad knows how to arrive somewhere unfamiliar and figure things out.

A nomad can pack a bag, get behind the wheel, board the plane, cross the ocean, walk into the strange restaurant, navigate the unfamiliar city, and make a temporary life almost anywhere.

There is independence in that.

But there is loneliness in it too.

I don't think I understood that part as much when I was younger.

I've been alone for a lot of my adventures. I've spent countless hours driving alone. I've eaten alone. I've wandered cities alone. I've watched landscapes disappear behind me through a windshield knowing I might never see them again.

After my divorce, I found myself living alone again, and the word nomad started feeling different.

Less romantic, maybe.

More honest.

Because sometimes being a nomad means freedom.

And sometimes it just means you don't know where home is anymore.

I remember walking through Reykjavík, Iceland, and finding a store called Nomad. I thought it was the coolest thing. By then it had become one of those words I seemed to notice everywhere, probably because I was already carrying it around inside me.

I've even considered having it tattooed somewhere on my body.

I've never gotten a tattoo, so maybe I never will.

And maybe someday the word won't mean what it means to me now.

That's possible too.

Because lately I've started noticing something else.

I'm getting better at staying.

Or at least wanting to.

The younger version of me could always find peace in the next horizon. There was comfort in knowing I could leave. If life became stagnant, uncomfortable, boring, painful, or simply too familiar, there was always another road.

Another job.

Another city.

Another country.

Another airplane.

Another horizon.

Going has always been easier than staying.

But as I get older, I find myself appreciating the comforts of home more than I once did.

A familiar bed.

My things where I left them.

A kitchen that belongs to me.

Knowing which light switch turns on which light.

Knowing the road home without needing a map.

And more than any of that, I find myself longing for something I don't think the younger version of me understood very well:

a permanent family.

People to come home to.

Maybe that is the strange contradiction of being a nomad long enough.

Eventually you start wondering what it would feel like to belong somewhere.

I don't know whether I'll always live this way. I don't know whether work will always keep me moving. I don't know whether I'll always feel that familiar pull when I look toward some distant place I've never been.

I suspect some part of me always will.

There will probably always be another road I want to drive, another country I want to wander through, another ordinary town I want to stop in just because I've never been there before.

But maybe being a nomad doesn't mean you can never have a home.

Maybe it simply means you understand that home and the horizon are not necessarily enemies.

And maybe that's why I called this place Nomad Was Here.

Because that's what I've been doing all these years.

Passing through.

Watching.

Taking photographs.

Collecting stories.

Remembering people.

Writing things down.

Leaving pieces of myself in places and carrying pieces of those places with me.

Nomad Was Here isn't really a declaration that I belong nowhere.

It's a record that I was somewhere.

That I saw it.

That I felt something there.

That for however brief a moment, among all the billions of people who have passed through this world before me and all the billions who will come afterward—

I was here.