“Ha! Just because he sleeps in his car in the driveway doesn’t mean he hasn’t become a house cat”
Comparing our friends to being an outside cat or house cat has been a friendly jab used throughout the years. Surround yourself with enough people who have spent chunks of their lives showering in gas station sinks, the second you decide to have indoor plumbing you will be called a house cat.
Birthdays have never made an impact on me. Mostly because I was usually working and a number made no sense to me “sick, another year I didn’t die”. Turning 30 however has not just been a year I didn’t die, but a turning of a page to a new chapter. It’s the year I decide to go back to school, move to a new state, move to a city, and move into a house with all the basic amenities that make me feel like I’m living in a boujie mansion. Access to hot water and air conditioning will make you feel like a queen.
I find myself immersed in the same conversation with my closest friends. Hushed admissions “dude I really just want to own some land, and like… stay there for a while” like we’re quietly confessing our sins to a priest in the Church of Seven Days of Patagonia. We’re all making our way to wanting consistency, slow mornings, and gardens. In your 20s you’re invincible and have A LOT more energy. Energy to spend on figuring out where to sleep every night and how to work 3 jobs just to go on that trip. But you never realize expending that much energy on every small detail just to survive, quickens the desire not to.
Of course, I am speaking from personal experience and my small niche within an already small niche that we call the outdoor space. I know plenty of 60-year-olds who still work seasonal jobs and move every 6 months thanks to their now new knees that are better than mine. Truth is though, I never wanted that…actually, I never thought that far ahead. I’ve always just done whatever feels right in the moment. Professionally winging it through life. And as I look around it seems like what feels right now is also what many of my friends are feeling too.
In 2015, when I was 21 living in Salt Lake I stumbled upon two women I looked up to on Instagram. They don’t know I even exist and I hardly doubt they ever will. Two modern female Edward Abbys minus the illegal radical actions…that I know of. Katie Boué and Bri Madia were two women that I could relate to when I felt like a misunderstood feral little wild thing. What’s funny is, that both women are now doing the thing that also feels right to me. Once two nomadic women, Bri owns land outside Moab, and Katie owns a little homestead in Salt Lake. Watching their journey and how mine, although I am younger and a few steps behind, mirror each other is astounding. I feel even now that I can relate to them, and although that sounds quite silly to be relating to two people on Instagram that I’ve never met, it gives me solace.
I’ve experienced and learned a lot, like always having an original Leatherman because it has an old-school can opener and you’re currently living off of beans in your car. I would never trade a thing in the world for all the stories and lessons I’ve racked up in my 20s.
I often picture myself as an old man sitting on the porch with my dog, cigarette in mouth, smiling softly at the young kid who is bursting at the seams about the new van they just built out. “Yeah kid, it’s goin’ be great, it’ll be tough but you’re goin’ to love ever’ second of it and you’ll be tougher than nails at the end”. No, I don’t have a dog, I quit smoking, and I only find myself with a rural accent if you put enough whisky in me. But there’s something special to be on the other side of it.
I’m stoked to move to a city but I will confess that I still carry insecurities. I’m nervous that when I move the friends I make will be able to smell the wild on me. Things that are natural to me like picking flowers at the Botanical Gardens (found out that’s a no-no), peeing anywhere without batting an eye, or suggesting we eat a dandelion found growing out of the sidewalk crack. I’m still walking around in ratty jeans shorts, a sports bra, and no shoes. I’ll never tame that part of me I have no desire to, but I’m human and the idea of being ostracized for it nags at me sometimes.
Objectively, you could say all these domestic ideologies were the exact things we resented and ran away from, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. We may have roofs over our heads, and own bathrobes and refrigerators, but we’re doing it our way. We find land to walk around naked and barefoot but now we OWN it. We fill our kitchens with cast iron and used glass jars, and thrift every article of clothing (because fuck consumerism). Fill our inside living space with books instead of TVs, refuse to have lawns and let native plants thrive, collect our eggs from chickens we’ve given silly names to, and get excited about building sheds. It’s less about growing out of being a feral kid and leaving that part of us behind, but more about becoming the crazy lady that lives on the hill. Just a bunch of never-never land kids who didn’t grow up, but now have 401ks and get excited about refinancing the house.
There are still mountain tops I point at and say “I wanna stand up there” and so many places to explore and nights fall asleep under the Milky Way. But good golly, PTO is pretty fucking sick!
-Shelby Lynn
Where In the World is Shelby Lynn 