This land
An aging van drives off down a highway into a fantastical landscape of southwestern mountains and mesquite. In 1977, that could have been me, or any of my folksinging friends as we toured the US, working our way into debt (TM Andy Cohen). In 2020, however, the van is occupied by Fern (Frances McDormand), one of the few fictional characters in the film Nomadland, directed by Chloé Zhao, and based on the book by Jessica Bruder, which itself grew out of her 2014 article for Harper's magazine.
Nomadland captures two competing aspects of American life. First, the middle-class dream of the nice house with the car in the driveway, a chicken in a pot inside, and secure finances. Anyone who rejects this dream must be dangerous. But deep within also lurks the other American dream, of freedom and independence, which in the course of the 20th century moved from hopping freight trains to motor vehicles and hitting the open road.
For many of Nomadland's characters, living on the road begins as a necessary accommodation to calamity but becomes a choice. They are "retirees" who can't afford to retire, who balk at depending on the kindness of relatives, and have carved out a circuit of seasonal jobs. Echoing many of the vandwellers Bruder profiles, Fern tells a teen she used to tutor, "I'm not homeless - just houseless."
Linda May, for example, began working at the age of 12, but discovered at 62 that her social security benefits amounted to $550 a month (the fate that perhaps awaits the people Barbara Ehrenreich profiles in Nickel and Dimed). Others lost their homes in the 2008 crisis. Fern, whose story frames the movie, lost job and home in Empire, Nevada when the gypsum factory abruptly shut down, another casualty of the 2008 financial crisis. Six months later, the zipcode was scrubbed. This history appears as a title at the beginning of the movie. We watch Fern select items and lock a storage unit. It's go time.
Fern's first stop is the giant Amazon warehouse in Fernley, Nevada, where the money is good and a full-service parking space is included. Like thousands of other workampers, she picks stock and packs boxes for the Christmas rush until, come January, it's time to gracefully accept banishment. People advise her: go south, it's warmer. Shivering and scraping snow off the van, Fern soon accepts the inevitable. I don't know how cold she is, but it brought flashbacks to a few of those 1977 nights in my pickup-truck-with-camper-top when I slept in a full set of clothes and a hat while the shampoo solidified. I was 40 years younger than Fern, and it was never going to be my permanent life. On the other hand: no smartphone.
At the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous nearQuartzsite, Arizona, Fern finds her tribe: Swankie, Bob Wells, and the other significant fictional character, Dave (David Strathairn). She traces the annual job circuit: Amazon, camp hosting, beet harvesting in Nebraska, Wall Drug in South Dakota. Old hands teach her skills she needs: changing tires, inventing and building things out of scrap, remodeling her van, keeping on top of rust. She learns what size bucket to buy and that you must be ready to solve your own emergencies. Finally, she learns to say "See you down the road" instead of "Goodbye".
Earlier this year, at Silicon Flatiron's Privacy at the Margins, Tristia Bauman, executive director of the National Homelessness Law Center, explained that many cities have broadly-written camping bans that make even the most minimal outdoor home impossible. Worse, those policies often allow law enforcement to seize property. It may be stored, but often people still don't get it back; the fees to retrieving a towed-away home (that is, van) can easily be out of reach. This was in my mind when Bob talks about fearing the knock on the van that indicates someone in authority wants you gone.
"I've heard it's depressing," a friend said, when I recommended the movie. Viewed one way, absolutely. These aging Baby Boomers never imagined doing the hardest work of their lives in their "golden years", with no health insurance, no fixed abodes, and no prospects. It's not that they failed to achieve the American Dream. It's that they believed in the American Dream and then it broke up with them.
And yet "depressing" is not how I or my companion saw it, because of that *other* American Dream. There's a sense of ownership of both the land and your own life that comes with living on the road in such a spacious and varied country, as Woody Guthrie knew. Both Guthrie in the 1940s and Zhao now unsparingly document the poverty and struggles of the people they found in those wide-open spaces - but they also understand that here a person can breathe and find the time to appreciate the land's strange, secret wonders. Secret, because most of us never have the time to find them. This group does, because when you live nowhere you live everywhere. We get to follow them to some of these places, share their sense of belonging, and admire their astoundingly adaptable spirit. Despite the hardships they unquestionably face, they also find their way to extraordinary moments of joy.
See you down the road.
Illustrations: Fern's van, heading down the road.
Wendy M. Grossman is the 2013 winner of the Enigma Award. Her Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of earlier columns in this series. Stories about the border wars between cyberspace and real life are posted occasionally during the week at the net.wars Pinboard - or follow on Twitter.