ABSTRACT
This riff or mini chapter explores the modern phenomenon of van-dwelling for its significant implications in the understanding of wanderers and wandering. “There have always been itinerants, drifters, hobos, restless souls,” writes Jessica Bruder in her nonfiction book Nomadland (2017), adapted for the prize-winning 2020 film directed by Chloé Zhao, adding, “But now, in the third millennium, a new kind of wandering tribe is emerging.” This new wandering tribe is mainly older Americans in financial hardship who take to the road in their declining years. Economic issues are center focus as van-dwellers take temporary jobs at national parks and Amazon Fulfillment Centers. These new wanderers are mostly the human byproducts of a global economy gripped by rapid change, including climate change. Wandering, in the nomadlands stretching beyond the subculture of van-dwellers, has economic, social, and political dimensions harder to see than a stealth camper parked in the desert. Alex Domash, a journalist who traveled with a caravan of migrants crossing Mexico, sees South and North Americans both affected by climate change. “Americans,” he writes, “are becoming climate migrants before our eyes.”
