How I Ended Up Living in a Van and Rediscovering My Passion for Photography

Leaning into risk and uncertainty with better questions

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Making breakfast in the Grand Canyon.

I woke up in the middle of the night. It was freezing cold. There were unusual bird noises coming from close by. It was pitch black, and I was disoriented. None of this made sense. Until I remembered where I was. I was in the back of a camper van. In Zion National Park. In Utah. 

This is not “Normal Steve Pratt Behaviour,” and it came about by asking a set of questions I’d never properly considered.

Travel Strategy Questions

At the end of the summer, I was doing some strategy work for a travel app. I was researching how travel planning companies filter their user experiences. Some filters were expected - ‘type in your location and travel dates,’ or ‘find the perfect location for your next trip.’

One set of filters caught me off guard. ‘What is the purpose of your travel?’ The options included purposes like

• Relaxing

• Special Occasion

• Arts & Culture

• Slow Travel

• Adventure Travel

• New experiences

As dumb as it sounds, I have never really given enough thought to the purpose of a trip. I’ve just defaulted to picking a place that would be fun to go without considering other possibilities.

When my wife and I realized that due to our newfound “empty nest” status, we both had a week off in October, we decided to take a 6-day trip. And because of the travel strategy research, we decided to talk about why we were taking the trip and what we wanted to get out of it. 

Those discussions led to a very unusual trip.

Weird Travel Planning Inspiration

As we discussed the trip, I explored two other unusual inspirations: 

1. Die With Zero, a book by Bill Perkins, talks a lot about the “compound interest” of travel experiences. In a nutshell, the more unique and memorable your travel experiences are, and the earlier in your life that you have those experiences, the more value they have. Why? You get the compounding magic of being able to talk about those trips, remember them, look at pictures from them, and enjoy them for years and years after the trip is done. Kind of a genius way of looking at the extended value of travel if you ask me!

2. The book The Power of Moments by Dan and Chip Heath, is about how to more purposefully engineer amazing experiences. 

So here’s how it played out…

Safe & Predictable or Uncertain & Risky?

My wife, Debbie, suggested two options for a mini-trip: hiking in the canyons of Utah and Arizona, or a few days of chilling by a pool somewhere warm. We talked about the purpose of the trip and agreed we wanted lots of time together to talk and enjoy each other’s company, but that we were also keen on adventure and new experiences. This made the decision easy - adventure and new experiences for us meant that we were going to go hiking in canyons.

Debbie is a masterful travel planner - the best I’ve ever seen - and she dug into researching the trip and came back with two different hiking options. One was renting a car and staying in some very cool lodges and glamping sites. The other was renting a Sprinter van modified for travellers, with a fold-out bed and a little kitchen inside.

We went for a walk and talked about the two options. We both had reservations about the Sprinter van. We were worried we would have horrible sleeps. We were worried it would break down. We were worried it was going to be cramped. We were worried about what we didn’t know about living in a van for a week. And we were worried that we were too old and lame to be camping in a van!

The Decision

This is where Dan and Chip’s book comes in. One of the ideas in the The Power of Moments is that if you want to make moments memorable, you have to break patterns. Something has to be unusual and unexpected if you are going to remember it. 

Boring trips fade away. Trips you do all the time fade away. But doing uncomfortable things for the first time? Whether the things we were worried about would end up happening or not, we knew we would not forget living in a van and exploring canyons. 

So we very consciously leaned into the uncertainty, embraced our discomfort, and booked the van. We decided that it was worth the risk to get the potential payoff of a really memorable experience. We promised ourselves in advance that if things went wrong, we were still making the right decision and that we would not second-guess ourselves. We realized that if we didn’t try traveling and living in a van now, we would NEVER do it. 

So what happened?

Just one of the best trips of our lives, that’s all.

The Trip

Debbie at Moterra HQ in Las Vegas.

We flew into Las Vegas and picked up the van from a rental company called Moterra. They really modified these vans for the purpose of travelling. It was stocked with fresh bedding, full kitchen utensils, a camping stove, solar lights, camping chairs, and more. It took almost 45 minutes to get walked through how everything in the van worked! 

And then we were off to Zion National Park, a few hours away.

Breakfast in Zion.

Our first night was in Watchman Campground, and it could not have been more beautiful. We backed onto a river and had views of massive cliffs. We set up the van for the first time, and… it all went shockingly smoothly. So we went for a two-hour hike in the mountains, which blew our minds. We even had a great sleep!

Just a casual sighting of mountain goats above us. No big deal.

The next day, we drove a couple of hours and did a big hike down into Bryce Canyon. It was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever seen. It was so spectacular that I took about a zillion photos. 

A planet from The Mandalorian. Just kidding. It’s Bryce Canyon.

Reconnecting to Lost Creativity

We talk about reconnecting to creativity regularly here in The Guild, so it was magical to be aware of it happening in real time. 

I used to LOVE photography. I took photos everywhere. I posted on Flickr. I posted on Instagram. I make a family photo album every year to capture all the memories and moments we’ve experienced together and print it out as an end-of-year gift.

However, I’ve lost my photography mojo in the last few years. I’ve been bored and uninspired. I have felt weird about posting anything on Instagram, worried that if I post photos of travel or experiences, they come across as humble-bragging. And with COVID and being trapped in our homes and neighbourhoods for so long, there was nothing novel or exciting to take photos of. Everything was overly familiar. 

Bryce Canyon. Not familiar or boring. Actually awe-inducing.

When I got into Bryce Canyon, though, a switch flipped. 

I was in AWE of my surroundings because I’d never seen anything like it before. It was completely novel for me and I could not stop taking photos of all of it. (I think Debbie may have eventually become annoyed by how often I stopped at every fresh viewpoint and pulled out my camera!)

The trend continued as we hiked out to Observation Point in Zion the next day, then drove to Page, Arizona and visited Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend. I was again in AWE of the natural beauty and the novelty of geography I had never seen before. I could not stop taking photos.

Antelope Canyon

The next day, we drove to the Grand Canyon. I had no idea what to expect, but I felt it would be underwhelming. Big but underwhelming. Like the Griswolds in National Lampoon’s Vacation.

So, I was not prepared for the instant and massive AWE of seeing it for the first time. My brain could not really comprehend the scale and scope of it all. It’s SO big. (Duh!)

We hiked 3 miles deep down into the Canyon and then back up again. It took about 3 ½ hours and despite my fear of heights (read: death) and the lack of any guardrails anywhere, it was again, amazing. At this point, you will be shocked to hear that I took a LOT of photos.

The Grand Canyon. Pretty, pretty, pretty… big.

We stayed in a Grand Canyon campsite that night, and again, it was just amazing to be sleeping in this weird van in the fresh air. 

Before we knew it, our magic trip was done. We had to drive four hours to Las Vegas to return the van and fly out the next day. (Note: holy moly, is Las Vegas a great way to extinguish the glory of nature. Ugh.)

What I Learned

I have so much to take away from this trip, but here are my big personal a-has:

• Talking about why you are taking a trip leads to much more interesting and meaningful trips.

• The safe way is boring. If you want compound interest in travel, you have to turn a trip into an experience. And an experience means taking risks, trying new things, getting uncomfortable and breaking patterns.

• Novelty is incredibly inspiring. Seeing things you’ve never seen before and doing things you’ve never done before in places you’ve never been before activates all sorts of creative energy, ideas, and inspiration.

• The majesty of nature is a massive driving force of creativity (for me, anyway)

• This majesty of nature creates AWE. Awe keeps you solidly in the present moment. I did not think about email or Zoom or anything else while I was in those canyons. I was 100% present the whole time. It was amazing.

What Next?

I want to push into discomfort and try new experiences more often. I’m not getting any younger, and if I don’t start doing more unusual things now, I’m never going to get to do them.

I want to do more weird travel adventures with Debbie. I bought Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, which I’ve heard about for years but never thought it was for someone like me. Maybe it is at this new stage of life?

I need to prioritize spending more time in nature. I know I love it, but this experience was a big reminder of how much I love it. 

I want to keep taking photos, and I now clearly see that nature is a really big and powerful creative inspiration.

Also… after a long hiatus, I posted a bunch of photos on Instagram. 

Speaking of Dan Heath and creativity, Dan has an amazing new podcast series debuting. It’s called “What It’s Like To Be…” and in each episode, Dan interviews someone in a really interesting job to find out… what it’s like to be… a mystery novelist. Or a stadium beer seller. Or a criminal defense attorney. I love it because it really plugs you into really different lives and livelihoods and you get a vicarious sense of what it’s like to have a career or life totally different than your own. You can check it out here.