Nomadic Homes (175)

Tiny Homes on the Move

I’ve only spent a few hours so far with the book and it’s already sent me into day dreaming mode about adventures and alternate ways of living out there on the road or water. This book … serves as a sort of inspiration guidebook. It’s full of free thinking and artistic people who are among a growing trend of people who are attempting to down scale their lives and simplify what we are doing with our time. Smaller spaces mean less stuff; less stuff means less to take care of; less to take care of means more time and more money; more time and more money means freedom. These core philosophical beliefs are not always supported or represented very well in the mainstream media. This book is proof that there is a movement afoot and to simplify is at the top of the list: be it a French woman who sailed her boat with no engine to the canary islands, or the English artist who built a tiny home on the back of a 1959 French army truck, or even a homebuilder/woodworker from Texas who is doing his best to build a more simple existence.

–Tohner S. Jackson
One Tree Woodworks

I was going over some old files in preparation for working on our new book on 21st century nomadics, and ran across this letter from Serena in Home Work (p. 176). It refers to the 37 Chevy flatbed truck converted to a rolling home by Joaquin de la Luz and his wife Gypsy, and featured in Shelter (pp. 90–91), and in later years used as a bedroom by 4-year-old Serena. It was such a nice example of happy childhood memories, I thought I’d reprint it here.

My earliest memories of the Gypsy Wagon begin when I was three or four years old. At that point, our family had settled down in a little house on the Klamath River, in Northern California. We had all moved out of the Gypsy Wagon but I really missed it. I remember begging my mom and dad to let me use it as my bedroom. Luckily for me, my parents were such free spirits that they could really relate to my independence. The wagon became my room.
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