Lessons on loneliness from people living life on the road (2024)

Navod McNeil's breakdown happened on a drive out of Texas. The landscape slowly turned into desert while the bars on his cell phone started fading until there weren't any left.

Alone and without service, the 30-year-old — who spent three years living on and off in a Ford Transit — asked himself: "Do I really want to do this?"

Meanwhile, Tracey Tischler, 58, found herself crying in a Cracker Barrel parking lot in New Mexico with a terrifying mountain drive ahead. No one else was in her Roadtrek van to take the wheel.

People living life on the road know what it's like to be isolated. They spend days, weeks, and months alone.

Most of the people who spoke to BI about living out of vans, RVs, buses, and cars said the lifestyle made them better equipped to tackle loneliness, and others added that it's provided them with their strongest communities.

"I really, truly believe that it doesn't matter if you're in a van or a house or an apartment or a city or the country, you can be lonely anywhere," Christian Schaffer, a 38-year-old digital nomad who has lived in a van for over four years, told BI.

In a country facing a loneliness epidemic, there are lessons to learn from nomads like Schaffer living on the road.

If you're lonely, explore the feeling before abandoning it

The nomads BI spoke with all experienced more solitude on the road than in their old lives.

Short errand runs were often replaced with hours-long drives with their thoughts. And instead of late nights with friends at bars, there were solo hikes in national parks and remote camping adventures.

This solitude was initially uncomfortable for some.

Shahira Ellaboudy, for example, was burnt out after years of working in a lab. Finally, she had enough and moved into her Subaru Forester.

At first, it wasn't easy.

"What made the first few months of car life really, really dark was just not having any other voices around me to kind of drown out what was going on in my own head," Ellaboudy, 24, told BI.

McNeil had a similarly tough time. Moving into a van was his first time living alone.

He couldn't run away from loneliness. Instead, he found he needed to face it.

He spent intentional time alone assessing what he wanted in life and what he loved, and he spent more time doing those things. When that alone time got to be too much, he called friends and family.

Facing loneliness head-on is also Aidan Paringer's approach.

"Your first reaction to being lonely is, 'How do I get out of this?'" Paringer, who started living in a van in 2017, told BI. "When the most beneficial thing you can do is go deeper in this."

Paringer said by embracing loneliness, he came out of it more confident, learned who he was and how he wanted to spend his time, and began relying on himself instead of others.

Now, he considers loneliness "the best therapy I've ever done."

Schaffer came to a similar realization after a breakup in her van. When she and her partner ended their relationship, Schaffer continued with van life where "there was no longer any need to compromise or come up with an itinerary that everyone was happy with," she said.

"I don't think there is any magic formula to defeat loneliness," Schaffer added. "You have to experience it and sit with it in order to understand what your needs are, how to meet them, and what kind of lifestyle will best serve those needs."

Ellaboudy emerged out of van life with a stronger sense of self, too. Today, she no longer looks for voices to drown out her thoughts.

"I actually really treasure my alone time for once in my life," Ellaboudy said. "I don't think I would have gotten there just going through life like I was before, occupying all my time with work and other people."

Do things you love and community will follow

Phyllis Grover says she was lonelier living in the suburbs of Dallas than in her van.

"All of these houses have driveways and your garage in the back, so you don't see your neighbors," she told BI. "You're not just going to meet people in your day-to-day life."

When the 59-year-old sold her house and moved into a van, she said her challenges with loneliness disappeared. On the road, Grover put herself in situations where she could meet like-minded people.

Casey Hogan does the same thing to meet people as she travels across the country in her Ford Transit.

Whether it's at a concert or book event, the 31-year-old told BI she's "putting a little bit more thought into how to cross paths with people that I might vibe with."

For Zach Nelson, mountain biking helped him build a lasting community.

He moved into a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van more than two years ago, though he's loved mountain biking for much longer.

"When I'm outdoors and riding my bike, I do not have a care in the world," the 23-year-old told BI. "I am never lonely biking."

It's been more than a temporary escape. Simple hellos at mountain-biking trailheads have turned into years-long friendships thanks to a common interest.

If you can't find community, create it

Paringer realized he was missing a sense of community after a couple of years of living in a van.

He would spend days in the wilderness without seeing anyone else. When he craved being around others, he'd head to the nearest town in search of a campground to make friends.

But RV campgrounds were expensive and often catered to older, retired travelers. Meanwhile, cheaper campgrounds were typically filled with people keeping to themselves, Paringer found.

He realized he was looking for a van version of a hostel: a campground for people to meet and go off on spontaneous adventures.

He couldn't find one that fit the bill in the places he visited, so Paringer created one. In 2019, he bought land in Joshua Tree, California, which became the first location for Van Life Campgrounds.

"It was a way of melding remoteness and communities together, which in a way hadn't really been done before," Paringer said.

Since then, Paringer has launched six more campgrounds across the continent including locations in Mexico, Oregon, and Washington.

Prices typically start at around $25 a night and most campgrounds have amenities like hot showers, communal kitchens, Wi-Fi, and potable water. There are also weekly events like campfires, and board-game and movie nights.

The internet is a place to form community

Like Paringer, Garrett created her own solution to solve loneliness.

Garrett moved into her van without thinking twice about the potential for loneliness. "I'm an introvert, so this will be amazing," Garrett remembers thinking. But "that wasn't really the reality," she said.

Her introversion prevented her from talking to strangers at trailheads or in the towns she was traveling through, and loneliness crept in, she said.

One day, she hopped on TikTok and made a video brainstorming out loud about getting a group of single, outdoorsy people together.

Hundreds of people responded. One person wrote: "Just tell me the time and the location and I'll be there." Dozens of others said they were down.

The response made Garrett realize she wasn't facing these feelings alone. So, she went to Facebook, clicked "create group," and started "Outsiders, Together."

At the first event that Garrett held — a weekend of camping in Valley of the Fire State Park in Nevada— she said "forty strangers from the internet who had absolutely no idea who the hell I was or who anyone else was showed up."

"You just really have to intentionally put yourself in the way of opportunities that are going to give you community," Garrett said. "And again, I'm a total introvert. It was so hard for me at first to take my own advice and to do that."

Today, "Outsiders, Together" has 36,000 members. The group has hosted over 100 events with people connecting daily on the platform.

Sierra Fernald is one of those members. She came across "Outsiders, Together," after searching for other young people doing van life. She moved into a Ram ProMaster in August 2022, and for parts of her trips, she traveled with her boyfriend. Other times, she was by herself.

"I know they're out there, I'm watching their lives unfold on my screen," Fernald, 23, told BI, speaking of the videos she'd watched of young people living happy, nomadic lives. "And yet with every new place I visited, the only people we were really meeting were retired men, women, and couples."

Through "Outsiders, Together," Fernald heard about an upcoming meetup in Zion National Park. There, she met six other travelers. They won a permit to hike Angel's Landing through a lottery system and rented gear for traversing through The Narrows.

"It was exactly the kind of spontaneity with like-minded people that I'd been craving the whole time on the road," she said.

When Brittany Newson first moved into a renovated school bus in June 2019, she went to social media in search of other people living a similar life. There, she found pages and pages of people who didn't look like her.

"I didn't see a lot of Black people or people of color within this space," Newson, 36, told BI.

Then, she discovered a hashtag associated with the organization Diversify Vanlife, an online community dedicated to "creating a safe space for BIPOC and underrepresented" nomads.

Newson followed the community's Instagram account and started interacting with its members.

"I was greeted by so many people," she said. Some of Newson's online relationships have transitioned into in-person friends. Others haven't left her DMs.

Regardless, they've made traveling in a van a little less lonely, she said.

Others living on the road agreed that their online community has been a huge support in tackling loneliness.

When Tischler started posting about her journey on YouTube, she was shocked by how many people showed interest in her life. "I wasn't lonely because I started posting and all of a sudden I had these people following me," she said, referencing her 30,000 followers on the platform.

Schaffer has also been supported by people she met online. "Lean into social media to start building that community, and once it catches, it's like wildfire," she said. Today, Schaffer has nearly 315,000 followers on Instagram, where she posts scenic photos from the road paired with captions shedding light on the reality of van life.

Overcoming loneliness isn't one size fits all

While turning to social media and exploring solitude were common approaches to tackling loneliness, each person living on the road shared other strategies.

Nelson said he's traveled to some of the most breathtaking parts of the US, and there were still times he felt loneliness and "some of my lowest lows."

He said therapy helped him out of those moments.

Meanwhile, Newson said her Yorkie mix, JD, has been a key part of combating loneliness.

When Tischler's itching to talk to someone, she calls her daughter. Ellaboudy, on the other hand, FaceTimes her loved ones back home in California.

And Grover heads back to Dallas. There's no permanent house for her there anymore, but there is a feeling of home.

Ultimately, the people who spoke to BI about living on the road agreed that there isn't a single solution.

But regardless of where you live, there are plenty of people who feel the same way, and there's community in that.

Correction: December 1, 2023 — An earlier version of this story misstated Tracey Tischler's YouTube account and following. She has over 30,000 followers on her "Ad-van-tures Over 50" account on the platform, not 2,250.