Pictured: a woman in sunglasses and a hat smiling

A Girl & Her Van

So, hi it’s really nice to meet you, my name is Alex. The path that brought me to writing and creating this journal is a long story, and comprises of many lived lives. To start, when I was 26, I had a 20-something crisis and packed up my whole life in my VW bus and headed to Alaska, I figured that’s where you go when you’re looking for an epiphany. Life on the road was many things - life changing, lonely, isolating, empowering, and vast. It brought me to so many amazing places, but mostly it brought me home. To a place where I could trust myself, alone, without input or agenda. I was able to stand up, so slowly I barely noticed, and when I did I realized I had found something I never knew I was looking for. Something that only isolation and a deep sense of loneliness could navigate me towards. It sounds cliche to say myself, but it was a strength and a conviction of who I was that I would never have found had I not struck out and being alone was the core of that.

Ultimately, I found my way back to the lower 48 and met a dirt bag climber at a grocery store parking lot in Moab, Utah. That dirtbag is now my husband. A life of movement and a deep neglect of the priorities my friends who worked for corporate America held, we have lived and adventured in Alaska, Southeast Asia, Australia, and ultimately back home in Leavenworth, WA.

I truly believe that life doesn’t happen to you it happens for you, and that above all life is short. How often has something changed for the worse in our lives and we’ve thought to ourselves, “I never appreciated it when I was healthy, when life was good, when they were still here.” There will never be a better time than now to start - to tell them you love them, to take the solo trip, to invest in yourself. I’ve never met someone who risked it to look back and regret the journey that got them there.