July 20, 2025
As the warm, white sand mingles with our toes, the sun glows upon our contented face and the ocean breeze gestures for us to linger just a few moments longer- sure it’s a lovely sensation, but that’s why we call it a vacation. We know this is nice, but eventually we’re needing to pinch ourselves onto a plane and back to reality, as the months and sometimes years of planning and budgeting simply vanish into the salty coastal air.
Rum-fueled conversations during the middle of our trip might have had us professing the fact that “hell yeah, we could absolutely live here” in this little sliver of paradise; but when it’s time to depart, we acknowledge this as a highly unrealistic option. We might even say things like, “yeah, but those property taxes, oof!” or “the beach life sure is perfect, but I think I prefer experiencing all four of the seasons”. Which one do we like best, the 900 degre soul-liquifying summers or the icy wind chilled, bone-rattling winters? Um, Fall. Yeah, I like the Fall. Spring is nice too.
Table for Two, Thousand
Most of us live in the places we live because of work; we may even move to generally “undesirable” locations for any given amount of time because it’s a solid career move. Additionally, we’re left to consider things such as affordability, quality of schools, safety and everyday amenities that a high number of these seemingly utopian communities may lack.
On top of that, the shitty winters we endure in the places we return to as home are nothing compared to the often frigid attitudes of local residents toward visitors in these vacation hot spots. To be clear, not everyone living in a popular tourist destination is happy to see us crashing the gates and spending our money. The local economy may welcome our dollars and the jet-lagged, inebriated bodies that accompany them, but a local teacher who can’t buy bread or fresh fruit at the market because its visitor season and the shelves are empty, might not be so quick to high five us back.
Cranky people exist in every possible climate; and while it may be unfair to attribute their negative disposition to spikes in tourism, I did live in a highly “desirable”, vacation destination town for the better part of 10 years and can attest to a certain level of truth to that notion. Our paradise was located in the pristine West Elk range of the great Rocky Mountains and tourists would flock by the thousands every winter to chase the powder and behold the beautiful snowy peaks; and every summer to ride some rapids or ATV’s and be somewhere that is less hot.
When we had first moved to the mountains, I quickly learned that cool places do not attract only cool people. Regardless of the fact that we weren’t tied to the tourism industry by trade, it was obvious that out-of state jackholes were plentiful. I wasn’t shaken by this discovery (as aforementioned, jerks span the globe) nor was I baffled at how aloof and hollow people with gobs of money seemed to be– for they all had to eventually leave this paradise and go home; whereas, we were home.
There was undoubtedly some comfort and even a bit of hubris in knowing we were full time inhabitants of this mountain fairyland. We had made the necessary sacrifices and embraced every part of the wild; but by the time we were ready to say goodbye to this tiny community, things had become noticeably more challenging for its residents.
The cost of living was soaring to unsustainable heights for most seasonal workers, meaning they had to commute to their job from another town or simply leave the valley altogether. At one of the local pizza pub joints, the owner’s 15-year old daughter was slinging slices and pitchers of beer because there was no one left who would or even could do it. I guess whoever enforced child labor laws at that time must have been priced out of the valley too.
I don’t wish to paint a morose color over such aesthetically pleasing places. But just like anything new to us, living there often necessitates a profound shift in perspective; this and a healthy dose of enthusiasm can go a long way. In a sense, residing in one of these communities requires us to perform somewhat of a mental trapeze act: the same system we invoke when we’re living in a place that we think kind of sucks, but we leverage that experience with a good salary, cheap acreage, exceptional healthcare access, air conditioning and so on. So why then does it feel so preposterous to flip it around and make the necessary sacrifices to live in a place that absolutely rocks?
Room with a View
In Brooklyn, New York, we could bask in a simple 250 square foot studio apartment overlooking a brick wall for the same amount of money as it would take to rent a 5-bedroom house in Terre Haute, Indiana (on half a dozen acres, with a 3-car garage). This is where the “work” element might come into play: in New York anybody can be doing anything at any time, whereas- what the hell are we doing in Terre Haute? Probably sitting in our big fat house and saving money for another vacation.
Personally, I don’t wish to live in either of those places. I have nothing against them or their life offerings, but after living in both big cities and small towns, I tend to gravitate more to the size of a “college town” (for now). None of this matters, however, if our values don’t align with the community we have chosen to be a part of, whether we like it or not.
For my partner and myself, our kids come before everything; but this doesn’t mean we have or will ever probe the most densely populated areas in hopes of having the greatest chance at finding a suitable educational institution they could attend. When we lived in our small mountain town, we rejected the one and only school system that existed there (for many valid reasons), and we taught our children ourselves.
The sacrifices involved in reaching such a decision are enough to have most parents saying, “um, no thank you”; but we came to realize that there wasn’t really any point to living in a place of such natural abundance and beauty if our kids were going to be encapsulated by brick walls and talked at every day. Instead, they played and learned within their natural environment, outside.
Same goes for jobs– if we just want to look at the mountains or the ocean, hopefully we get a desk with a window or at least a scenic commute; but that’s just a visual reminder that we actually live there, which is, in my opinion and as I’ve expressed, hardly worth the price of admission. Those who are scaling the mountains and swimming in the seas are the ones who seem to be getting their money’s worth.
Joy Ride
It all depends on what the idea of “home” means to us. For most people, home is synonymous with comfort; and unfortunately, nowadays comfort is often synonymous with lethargy. This is why the idea of a camping adventure in the United States seems to involve driving around in a 55-foot-long, air-conditioned apartment on wheels called the “Wolf Runner”. This way people can still go on vacation without leaving home. And since Walmart will now bring our shit out to us, one may never have to take a single step outside of their vehicular palace cruiser– it does have windows, in case anyone decides to pull their attention away from the 70” TV inside of that thing.
It’s important for us to establish what our true comfort looks like and whether or not it is healthy for us. These massive RV’s are everywhere because we want to be surrounded by familiar things: the same friends we’ve always had, family we’re used to being around, schools we send our kids to because we attended there, the same TV shows, air-conditioning (as I’m writing this, the heat index forecast for tomorrow is 110 degrees fahrenheit). I’m certainly not renouncing AC, but humans still managed without it up until the 20th century.
We’re simply programming ourselves (with the help of big tech) to be comfortable at all times, which allows for very little imagination or objectivity. Vacations are a way to escape the chaos that comes with comfort, but if we do this one out of every 52 weeks, there’s no wonder why traveling for leisure can be so damned stressful; it becomes less of a respite and more of a disruption to the mundane routines and patterns of ease that we’ve established.
With that said, many of us still want to travel because we know that, regardless of whether it’s a break or an intentional disruption to our patterns, it’s good for us. These patterns and the systems within which they operate, however, are precisely what prevent us from questioning whether or not a week of “this” is enough. Most people are happy to get back to a less exciting place called home, fill the fridge back up, crank the AC, Netflix and chill– even if they did that the whole time while riding in the “Wolf Runner”.
When we try to turn our life into a vacation, that is to say “live there”, it can certainly backfire. A “tourist trap” may lack access to certain resources, cause exhaustion from constant party syndrome, gouge us on property taxes, or force us to confront very real parenting decisions; but as a friend of mine put it, “the first thing they teach you when you’re learning how to drive a motorcycle is that you will drift where you look”.
Whether it be the little things, like where to eat tonight or bigger things, like where to live– if we’re looking for reasons not to do them, then they will simply never happen. I’ve also heard, “well, it wouldn’t feel like a vacation if I didn’t bust my ass all year long, now would it?”. I don’t know, couldn’t you still bust your ass in paradise?