I chose the winter months to live in my van because I reasoned they’d be easier to manage. I was right. And I wasn’t. Not going to lie, it was a long winter in the van. The following are some of the ways cannabis eased me into it.
Thursday. April. Midnight. Pitter-patter of rain on the roof, outside, the orange glow of street lamps and the croaking of frogs, inside, the buzz of a mosquito – a typical spring night in the van. Despite the chill, I keep the door open to avoid hot-boxing the van, have gotten used to the cold, the bite of low temperatures a small price to pay to ventilate the cabin on wheels I’ve called home over the winter.
No one warns when you moved into a van that you’ll spend a lot to time either fixing it or worrying about what needs to be fixed. Van life is an ideal way of life for those who are handy with a wrench. For everyone else it’s a spanner in the works, or a major learning curve. Along the way I learned how to use a screwdriver but got to help to plug leaks, install batteries and a solar panel, and re-attach the wall when it came apart from the interior frame.
To minimize the stress of never-ending repair jobs, I smoke hash. I’ve been a stoner for decades but my consumption took on a new guise living in the van. It’s both a balm and an anchor. Without it, the pressure to upkeep the van would overwhelm me. With hash, I can take a step back and remember how lucky I am to experience this alternative lifestyle, if only for a short while.
IN AWE OF NATURE
It’s impossible not to develop a deep relationship to nature living in a van because you’re so exposed to it. A few weeks after I moved into van life, the south of Spain experienced the worst rainfall in a century. Floods raged down streets. Rivers burst their banks. I was parked in a car park on the outskirts of a mountain town with a cluster of other vans. Water leaked into the van through the front windscreen window, bathroom window, skylights and roof.
All my socks were wet. The skin on my feet shrivelled like prunes. The damp got into my bones. The rain lasted three weeks, felt like it would never stop. In between downpours, I opened all the doors, hung my socks on the windows, used the gas stove to generate some heat and refill my hot-water bottle. I chatted with other van people taking the chance to walk their dogs. I listened to the challenges they were facing. We were all in the same boat, cold and wet.
It was the first time I realised that to survive van life I was going to have get comfortable with nature in all her forms. Hash helped. Curled up in the one dry corner of the bed, snug and stoned, I listened to the rain pounding the roof and found the romance in its insistent rhythm. After that, I sealed up some leaks and looked forward to rain, knowing I’d light candles, get cozy under some blankets and feel a kind of oneness with the weather. Months later, I sat in the front seat, and watched a squall engulf the van, awe-struck. It was magical. I was stoned.
CREATIVE TIME
Both writing and cannabis have made up the fabric of my life for decades. But in the van, the combo took on a new texture because the van became my muse. I found I could see situations from different perspectives and connect with the words on a deeper level – everything feels more vivid in a van. But I was also permanently aware that the van was not a long-term option and I’m on the clock. Some days, the ticking is so loud it’s unbearable.
I’m an unpublished author, which means I have more than one manuscript tucked away on my desktop and live with the crushing hunt for the value in my words. I believe in the power of words, have felt their magic, long to share it. But the world is not set up to help any old writer, and rightly so. You gotta earn those stripes, which means getting published. In the meantime, a longing that lives inside, burning, tormenting the absolute fuck out of you, looking for an outlet.
The van quells that torment in me, reminds me that it’s Practice that matters because that’s what gets the work done. Hash enables me to forget about the trappings of the publishing world and shift my focus to what matters, words on the page. Without words on the page, I’m not a writer, just a dreamer. Hash helps me turn the dream into tangible sentences. And with the van as my muse, the combination is dynamic. I keep writing. It’s the Practice that matters.
TIME DISTORTION
In the early months of van life, I had no WIFI, no TV, and not much in the way of home comforts. I had a bed, blankets, books, and a laptop I couldn’t charge. On an almost daily basis, I was running to a café or library or anywhere I could charge my laptop so that I could write in the evenings. I gave up on having WIFI on my laptop, accepting scrolling on the Gram and watching Youtube on my phone as the extent of my Internet access.
It was a flimsy system but I made it work though I was overwhelmed and missing the conveniences of home. The ongoing running around meant my days were busy and time flew by. But there were also days when I thought it would never end, and the van felt like a punishment. The stress gave me a reason to smoke more. I was self-medicating, big-time. One morning I woke up and four months had passed in a blur. That morning I was parked in a field next to the beach, and just outside my door was a beautiful scene of clear blue sky and ocean as far as the horizon.
In that moment, I remembered nothing is permanent and realised I was missing it, the whole van experience. I was so busy being busy, I was missing what was right in front of me. From that moment on, I decided to slow down, spark up and chill out. Soon after, I found a rhythm that worked for me, and settled into van life. And soon after that, I started smoking less, a lot less. Now, I think of home conveniences as luxuries and will never again take them for granted. I also think of the van as home.
Go to SUBSTACK to get more tales from Tasha’s van life experience, as well as her unique insights into the nuance of cannabis use and culture.
The Healthy Hashhead 