Solivagant

Mavrik Joos seeks happiness and meaning while living in a truck.

By Charles Villeneuve

Mavrik Joos is a YouTube content creator with over 760,000 subscribers and has made a name for himself as a professional outdoorsman. He is most known for his truck-camping, fishing, cooking videos, and winter vlogs. Joos isn’t your average run-ofthe-mill Van-Lifer who makes a mockery of the lifestyle through overzealous showmanship but rather a regular guy who simply relishes his newfound freedom by sharing his honest “truck life” and not glamorizing the artificial market many #Van-Life enthusiasts have peddled. Joos travels the open road in an effort to see as much of this world as possible, from the frozen lakes of Michigan to the scorching red rock near Moab.

The idea to live out of a truck first sprouted when he took a trip to California to visit a friend living in a boat. The idea of living in a marina intrigued Joos. The simple but non-tethered lifestyle offers plenty of opportunities to experience the world and not be restricted to a single city. Bound by few possessions and carrying no excess baggage, he can pack up any time he wishes.

“I sort of had the idea in my head when I was in college and thought about it,” says Joos. “I wanted to do a road trip to California and just travel. So I thought about how I could travel for as cheap as possible and go around and see interesting stuff.”

Now he cooks and sleeps out of his truck, giving him plenty of freedom and time to go wherever he might take an interest. “I like to take advantage of the seasons,” says Joos. “If you like the cold then go where it’s cold. With no ties, you can just pack your house up and leave, go where it’s a good fishing season, and experience warm or cold weather.”

Joos loves sharing his life with his followers, offering a “raw and real” view of what it is like to live in a truck. However, modern media loves to romanticize van life, showing an unrealistic depiction of what it is like to live out of a vehicle. “I wouldn’t recommend it to the people who want it for the sexy, glamorous life looking at it through rose-tinted glasses… If you are nervous or have trouble making split-second decisions then that’s a red flag right there,” says Joos. “It takes a certain personality. It’s cool that people are interested, but some for the wrong reasons.”

Even Joos admits to sometimes subconsciously trimming out the bad stuff when editing videos, which does not even come close to how filtered professionally made Van-life videos are when they are designed to sell a product or service. The “Van-Life” was originally created by Foster Huntington in 2010 as a joke based on Tupac’s tattoo “Thug Life.” Huntington himself, not being of the rough and dirty group, but rather a former New York fashion designer, revealed a “dirty” lifestyle he described as classy as “pissing in a cup.” It showed the unglamorous side of living in a van. It never was meant to be the big, trendy, front page for the millennial living with avocado toast, yoga, and sponsorships. In 2013, Huntington began this van life trend by immediately marketing it, selling a $65 picture book featuring all his meticulously cherry-picked photos, romanticizing the whole trend.

Now vans are marketed for van living on the weekend to escape from home or work. Commercials nowadays, without fail, show an attractive actor driving their vehicle away from the city in dark, luscious forests, promoting an adventurous spirit free from all of society’s strings, even though its sole purpose is selling consumers something for a profit.

The van life community itself is almost non-existent off of social media, true explorers are few and far between. Joos himself admits to having difficulty with this lack of interaction, void of any true sense of community. “I’m still overcoming the lack of a sense of community/feeling. You don’t have deep connections with people,” says Joos. “I don’t know them or will be able to get to know them, not like where if you are settled you know people and have a place.”

Most #Van-Life posts seem to be the same, with the stereotypical attractive couple and their dog posting up in less than fully clothed shots with their state of the art “van” giving an unrealistically biased view to gain sponsorship or sell a product all while giving off the illusion of freedom by including the accompanying beauties of nature—sea, sky, and trees. This draws on the natural desire to go outside, explore the world, and find peace far from the constricting tyranny of everyday living.

This kind of marketing can be detrimental to the unassuming average Joe, that is, it cuts out all the real stuff, which might be the best part of the experience. Waking with the dawn, and cooking your breakfast while watching the sunrise is the first thing Joos does in the morning, without the ordinary comforts of a regular house. For Joos, the good always outweighs the bad. The ability to see it all makes it an enjoyable experience despite the cramped spaces. Going out and traveling on your own means living differently and learning new things. This kind of learning while you live approach of being self-reliant builds character.

“I’ve learned how much being alone and being able to depend on yourself makes you a better friend or person to be around,” says Joos. “I feel like I’m much more a piece of the pu. zzle and able to help out. It’s rewarding when I complete these things by myself.”

The ability to solve problems and build the necessary skills to make due is fundamental to what it means to be free. If one spends their whole life having others help them they might never develop the ability to help themselves. The killer of any real sense of self is conformity, or rather the act of shunning what the heart desires and succumbing to outside expectations. People for the last 200 years have been examining the human condition, thinking about how best to live our lives. Nonconformists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson suggest people find their own way.

The fondness Joos feels for living untethered is key for finding happiness. If people spend their whole life controlled by others or their circumstances it might feel as though they aren’t truly living. For Joos, he has discovered his own unique place in life.

“I feel like I am free out there,” says Joos. “When I traveled with someone else it felt like I was just going along as if there was a different force driving me. I never really felt like I pushed myself. I didn’t feel like I reached my full potential.”

The freedom to do anything, and at a low cost, makes living in a truck truly enjoyable for Joos, and it may just be a clue as to how to best avoid getting caught up in the rut of everyday, repetitive slumps so many people find themselves in.