In Chloé Zhao’s new film, Nomadland, an older woman named Fern (Frances McDormand), moves into a van after her husband dies and the gypsum plant where she worked for years shuts down. She traverses the country in her mobile home, taking seasonal jobs where she can find them. As her journey shows, the nomadic lifestyle—which many turned to after the financial crisis of 2008 and amid neoliberalism’s ongoing unsustainability—can be both fraught with hardship and so unfettered as to be sublime.
Zhao, per her typical filmmaking style, opted to have all of the characters in the film, aside from McDormand and actor David Strathairn, be actual people playing themselves. The most famous of them is Bob Wells, an elderly nomad and environmentalist of over 25 years who runs a popular YouTube channel called CheapRVliving and a non-profit called Homes on Wheels Alliance to help people transition to the lifestyle. Wells resembles Jerry Garcia, or Santa during his offseason, and inspires about the same amount of reverence amongst nomads.
When Wells and I talk in early February, he’s set up an impromptu studio in his van, which is currently parked in Quartzsite, Arizona. At one point, his dog Cody—a large, amiable mutt—bounds into the frame to greet me.
In journalist Jessica Bruder’s 2017 book of the same name, on which the film is based, she writes that Wells became a nomad after getting divorced and becoming unable to afford rent after he paid his child support on his Safeway cashier’s salary. But if he was a reluctant newcomer, even crying himself to sleep the first night in his van, he eventually became the movement’s greatest evangelist.
Here, Wells and I discuss what Nomadland faithfully captures of the nomad life, how this unprecedented year of crisis has affected nomads, and what exactly he does all day.
“Under ideal conditions,” he tells me about that last one, “you'll just go outside and sit and watch the sun move.”
GQ: What was the decision-making process like for you when you were approached to be in Nomadland?
Bob Wells: I'd worked with Jessica, the author of Nomadland, for many years now. I'm very fortunate to count Jessica as a friend. It was kind of a natural logical extension if they were going to make a movie. It was Chloé who used authentic people, the real people, and this was going to be a blend of fiction and nonfiction. I watched Chloé's work and was very, very impressed with her, so it was very easy to say, "Yeah, I'd love to be a part of this."
What did you think of the finished movie?
I'm hoping to see the story of nomads, but of course, it's a story and the story takes precedence. The story is really about grief and healing and I think it's a fantastic story for all who have suffered and been involved with grief and the healing process. I think it really demonstrates the healing power of nature. The sunrise and sunset should have been given star billing because they were in so many scenes. You see Fern's growth from devastating pain to healing and moving on.
I actually wanted to ask about your personal growth, because I read Jessica's book and was surprised to learn that you went into this world kind of kicking and screaming. What was the turning point for you where you started to enjoy it?
That was 1995, when I first moved into a van, so I don't remember a lot of the details of it, but I'd always been a camper. So going camping was normal for me, and eventually, it came to the point where I realized I was just going camping, except I was going camping for the rest of my life. Instead of “I’ve fallen,” look at, “the thing I love, I get to do.” It's just a mental switch, kind of like taking off a pair of glasses and putting on a different pair of glasses and you see the world differently.
Also, at the first of every month when I didn't pay rent, that was a life-changing experience right there. Instead of being broke all the time, because I was paying for housing, I had extra money. That was a very liberating experience.
Could you walk me through what an average day is like for you now, from the moment you wake up to going to bed?
Well, I'm not the normal nomad. I came out of retirement to do this, so I work a lot all the time, and so my day is not normal by any means. But for the average nomad, everything takes longer. Nothing is a flip of a switch: you don't flip a switch and get light, you don't flip a switch and get heat or cold. You wake up, it's cold outside. It's cold inside, probably. A lot of us don't have running water, so the normal things we do to take care of ourselves take longer. Bodily functions take longer.
You're in nature the whole time. You look out the window, there’s usually not a lot of people around—just the people you want to have around. Maybe you'll go for a walk, you'll read, visit with your friends. A lot of us will spend quite a bit of time on the Internet. That's our connection point. Maybe you have projects around the vehicle.
A lot of us take walks. Going for walks is a really big part of most of our lives. A lot of playing with the pets. It seems like there's nothing going on, but at the end of the day, you've been busy and it's hard to understand.
I was struck with what you said in the film, likening modern life to the Titanic sinking and how you’ve made it your goal to get as many people into lifeboats as possible. It's been such an economically devastating year for many people, and I was wondering if you've seen more people than usual turning to this lifestyle?
Yeah, for sure. I think the real wave is still to come. The government's put a lot of money in the economy and that's keeping people afloat. I think the real wave is still to come. Who knows? Maybe we'll avoid it. After 2008, there was an explosion of people coming out. There was a real disappointment with the economic system, especially the young people, the “vanlifers.”
I think in the future, the two combined—2008 and the pandemic—will shake people's confidence and they'll want another way out: "If things are going to get bad, I might as well enjoy my life while I can now." Living like a nomad prepares you for the worst. There's no jobs here, you can turn the key, drive away, and find a job. If the coast of Louisiana is getting hit by five hurricanes in a row or California is burning down, you can turn the key and drive away. That starts to be appealing in an extremely uncertain world.
I’d obviously been thinking about the economic aspect and the loss of jobs, but I didn't even consider how climate change plays into it.
Right. Look at California. Look at the Midwest this last year with some bizarre storm I've never even heard. What's coming? I don't know, but bad things are coming.
What has this year been like for you and other nomads that you know? I know that, generally, most of the nomads are of retirement age and this is a pandemic that’s had the worst impact on older people.
Well, like in most things, nomads are better equipped for this than anyone else. I'm sitting out in the desert and I have a few friends around me. Just people I like and I want to be with and I trust. I know when they go into town, they're careful, they wear masks. It has had no impact on my life, other than when I actually go into town and go shopping. If I go into a Walmart or a Safeway or a Kroger, then I have to be very careful, but that's not that hard.
You've been naturally socially distanced.
Yeah. I'm in nature. I live in nature. I wake up every morning and I step out and there's no one around except the people I want around. And those are few and they're far away. I mean, they're a couple hundred feet away.
I’ve always thought of the nomad life as being sort of a solitary experience and what you're saying now is affirming that a little bit, but you've also made it your mission to be more to have these meetups and to offer resources for people getting started in the lifestyle. Can you talk a little bit more about the collective aspect of it?
Humans are social creatures. That's just the nature of who and what we are. We need each other. Our personalities vary greatly and we do tend to be reclusive and introverts, but not exclusively. No matter how introverted we are, we need other people around, we need that interaction. I think almost without exception, every person I've met out here will say they have more deeper friends now than they ever had before.
In the average American's life, it's the family in our home and there's everyone else, and there's not a lot of interaction. Other than coworkers—and are those friends or just people you make the best friends you can out of? Most of us find more deeper friends out here than we ever did in our normal life and we also have richer alone time. The alone time we have isn't recovering from the stress and the business of life, it's enjoying the moment. It’s an amazing combination of deeper, richer alone time, and much deeper and richer friendships.
In the film, you talk about the tyranny of the marketplace and the fact that so many Americans are workhorses who end up working themselves to death. I have to ask, do you consider yourself political? If so, how would you describe your politics, and has becoming a nomad made you more political?
I think of myself as in between a rock and a hard place. I'm very political and I would very, very much like to talk about my politics, but as a YouTube creator, anytime I mention politics—even no matter how neutral I try to discuss something—the right and the left come out and whatever I say, 50% of the people hate me. So I make it a point not to be political, although it's very difficult for me because I do definitely have very strong opinions. I'm pretty radical left, but I keep it to myself.
What was the turning point for you becoming an environmentalist?
I would say there's one book that was pretty powerful in my life. It's called Animate Earth. It’s about James Lovelock, who is the author of the Gaia theory. To me, it was an incredibly powerful book and changed the course of my mind.
Is your primary source of income through your YouTube channel now?
Well, I do have Social Security and a pension and I can live on that comfortably. Anything I make on YouTube is just above and beyond that. I make a substantial amount of money on YouTube, and so I started a nonprofit and a lot of my money goes into the nonprofit.
Are you still doing seasonal work or anything?
No. No, I don't need to work.
Have you seen any trends in recent years of who’s coming to the nomad lifestyle? I know in the film, at least, many of the people were older. I'm a millennial and we've gone through two economic crises just in my early adulthood, so I was wondering if maybe you’ve seen more young people come to it?
Oh, absolutely. Yes. This country just does not care for its older people, particularly women. Women in their 60s were promised that if they stayed home, raised kids, they'd be taken care of, and that wasn't true. Now, they're in their 60s and they didn't build up Social Security, so they're making between 500 and a thousand dollars a month. You can't live on that in this country, and so that is a large group that is part of my audience.
Then there's people who just look for adventure, young people, particularly. After 2008, there were a lot of people who just said, "There are no promises anymore. Promises weren't true. They're not coming true. My house isn't just going to keep going up in value. My golden years aren't going to be golden, so I might as well live life right now."
What are the main questions that you get from people who are interested in dipping their toe into becoming a nomad?
All the nuts and bolts: How will I go to the bathroom? How will I sleep? How will I find a campsite? Will I be safe? And then, Will I be bored? That's usually at the core of it: What am I going to do with my life? Will I be lonely? How will I find friends?
In fact, before the pandemic, we had started caravans. A caravan is just a group of people. It can be up to 75. After 75, we need a permit. We want to avoid permitting. If you go to meetup.com, you'll find a caravan and you'll know where they're meeting, and you can drive to the caravan and never be alone other than on the drive. I think that is so important. That's the big question. They don't want to be alone. They want to feel safe in a group. We had to cancel those because of the pandemic, but as soon as it settles down, we’ll restart the caravans.
Do you recommend this sort of lifestyle for everyone or do you think there are some people who are just not suited to doing it?
I think everyone would ultimately be better for it, but that doesn't mean they can do it. A lot of people can never overcome the strangeness and the difficulties to get to the improvement in their life. So, no, it isn't for everyone, but it's probably for many more than you would think.
In Jessica's book, you talk about how your end-of-life plans are basically just to walk out into the wilderness. Does that still stand?
Actually, I have plans for the end of my life. Buying land is part of it. I'm going to buy land and have a place where, as my physical abilities diminish, I’ll spend more and more time on my land and less and less time traveling. And eventually, I won't travel out of it, and eventually, I'll need care. My plan for that is being in an RV park in the town where I can get in-home care. Once I'm beyond in-home care, that's where the final solution comes in, the trip out into the desert. So I have a plan right up until then.
Do you feel like the film does justice to the nomad lifestyle?
It does. We're talking about, “what do you do all day?” Well, you see that in her life. What does she do all day? She works. It's an incredibly good description of the nomadic life. I think it's a great description of the healing that's available in it. I think nearly all of us find our lives are richer and better for it and that's certainly true of Fern.
So you would say that Fern's experience in the movie is fairly typical of what you see for nomads?
I would. At times, it's painful and unpleasant. There's cold and there's wind and there's loneliness, all of that. And yet, given the choice to go back or to stay, there's no hesitation. “This is the life I want.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
