A culinary outlaw life trundling through the West in a retrofitted bus makes sitting down to a meal together that much more rewarding.
The noise in our bus is deafening as we rattle down this lonely road in the heart of the Mojave, a plume of pale dust in our wake. We can barely hear ourselves think, much less talk to each other, but neither of us is bothered. It isn’t that we’ve grown accustomed to the cacophony of everything in our home bouncing around on a gnarly washboard road, but rather that we are rapt with anticipation for what waits for us up ahead.
After what feels like an eternity—actually only seven miles or so—we turn off into a familiar camp, parking the bus just as the sun tucks behind the mountains, leaving only a trailing essence of orange gold across a cloudless sky. Tonight, dinner will be quick, just some leftover rigatoni alla vodka and a green salad. While I’ve made a name for myself with the elaborate meals I prepare out of our tiny kitchen, there’s no time for that tonight—we’re too eager to set up camp and enjoy the desert evening.
After scarfing down our meal and reshuffling all our stuff back into camp mode, we step out into the cool night, shed our dusty, sweaty travel clothes, and slip into the steaming water of the hot spring we’ve driven so far to enjoy.
The hot water, bubbling up to fill this natural tub, keeps the chill of the night at bay, letting us lean back and enjoy the night sky as it once was: filled with millions of stars, the ghostly path of the Milky Way as visible to us now as Orion’s belt might’ve been when I was a kid growing up in the suburbs. At moments like these, alone in the vastness of the Mojave, with no company save the occasional coyote howling in the distance, I can’t help but think that this old school bus that we’ve turned into a tiny home on wheels is the only way to properly see the Western U.S.
I grew up amidst the swamps, beaches, and never-ending suburbs of the East Coast, where only the brightest stars showed through the light pollution and finding even a tiny patch of wilderness meant hours in the car. It wasn’t until my early 20s that I first found my way out West, to chase smoke and fight forest fires for the National Park Service. Ayana, on the other hand, grew up in Colorado on a diet of wild country and 14,000-foot peaks. Our paths were different, but they converged in the sprawling, forested mountain ranges and vast, empty deserts of the American West, landscapes that enchanted both of us from the moment we first laid eyes on them.
We wanted not just to see more of these wild places in our backyard but to really come to know them, from their nameless springs to their secret canyons. The best way we could figure to do that was behind the wheel of an old school bus. With a bus, we wouldn’t just be tourists, we reasoned. We wouldn’t be like the road-trippers who sped across the country, seeing only interstate corridors and crowded trails. No, with a bus we could bring our whole house and live out there. We could cook steak Bearnaise and potatoes au gratin while we watched the sun set over the Grand Canyon or make a steaming pot of boeuf Bourguignon to fend off the chill of the high country when the first snows fall on the ponderosa pine savannah. Wherever we parked would be our home for as long as we wanted it to be (or at least as long as the rangers let us stay).
A Bus Backstory
After only knowing each other for about three months, we bought a retired short bus and started converting it. In total, it took us about a year and a half to finish the build, tearing out the original trappings and filling it with plumbing, solar power, a bed, a proper kitchen—everything we’d need to live in the wild for weeks at a time. During that process we not only built our dream home on wheels but also a deep love and solid partnership. As reckless as that first decision was, the ability to dream together has been a cornerstone of our relationship over the past six years. I can’t help but think that for all those years before we met we were maybe just waiting to meet someone brave enough to say “Hell, yes!” to our wildest dreams.
When the build was finally finished, we moved our lives into that tiny, 90-square-foot space and hit the road, off in search of adventure. What we found was not exactly what we’d expected. Yes, we found the vast wild lands of this country, and yes, we were suddenly able to call them home for weeks at a time between resupply trips. But there was more to it. In our first weeks we traveled to the San Luis Valley and listened each night to the ancient calls of the sandhill cranes on their migration through south-central Colorado, hiked Arizona’s red rock trails around Sedona, and slept tucked among the creosote bushes of the Anza-Borrego Desert in California, with a desert sky full of stars above our heads each night.
Living on the road was a dream—but it was also an enormous test. We were able to pull our home right up to campsites with views people work a lifetime for, but living this way also came with challenges. Sharing a tiny space every minute of every day, jockeying for room to work, navigating dangerous roads, always watching the water levels and solar charge, and living with the heat, cold, rain, and wind were just a few. It was often hard, scary, or uncomfortable, especially at first. But the best things often are.
Interestingly, we soon began to notice that it was through the discomforts and challenges that we found much of our connection to the natural world. They grounded us in the reality of wherever we were. Modern conveniences—access to unlimited resources (hot water flowing straight from the tap, plugs in the wall for electronics)—have changed how we experience every aspect of life. Everything is so easy all the time. When we suddenly had to haul a 60-pound jug of water onto our shoulders to be able to finish the dishes, we learned to treat that water with respect. When the length of the day, angle of the sun, and number of clouds in the sky decided whether or not we would have enough power to keep our refrigerator running, we learned to pay attention to the weather and take care with how we used our electricity. When the sun baked us during the day and the desert air chilled us at night, we learned to exert ourselves during the cool and rest during the heat, just like desert people have always done. The natural world is difficult and uncomfortable, which is why we so often insulate ourselves from it, but there is a real magic in slowing down, accepting the challenges, and getting back in touch with reality.
Home Is Where The Bus Is
The connection to the land and our slow pace of travel really let us get to know our temporary homes. When we spent a month parked among the saguaros of the lower Sonoran, we became familiar with not only the winding canyons, powerful heat, and impossibly beautiful sunsets of the Southwest, but also with the plants and animals and daily rhythms of the desert. We learned of the cholla, that cute, teddy bear cactus with the devilish barbs, and the way the summer heat brings the monsoons, powerful thunderstorms that arrive most afternoons and provide that scarcest desert resource, water, in such quantities that it can turn a dry arroyo into a dangerous torrent in a matter of moments. We learned about the prickly pear cactus, with its fuchsia fruits, stuffed with seeds and tasting of watermelon. And what a beautiful delicate syrup you can make from its juice—perfect drizzled over whipped cream and tucked into a fresh crepe. We also learned of the kangaroo rats and songbirds that make their living from that same fruit. Traveling like this was to become, for a moment, a native of wherever we chose, entwined with the land, the wildlife, and the weather. We were nomads, at home everywhere and nowhere.
Our bus was the vessel that guided us to the real West—that vast, wild country you can’t properly understand until you travel it, and travel it slowly. Out there, on the small, lonely highways, down barely there roads, parked atop red rock mesas with plains stretching out as far as the eye can see, in landscapes completely devoid of human touch, something began to change in us. As we disconnected from the familiar, trading it for solitude and simplicity, the trappings of society fell away as well. Leaving behind all of the excess stuff, all those old patterns, freed us to focus on what really mattered to us.
For Ayana, that meant studying dreamwork, helping people connect with themselves through their unconscious experiences, as well as silversmithing, crafting beautiful silver and turquoise jewelry in the lands where the style was born. For me, it meant finally focusing on writing, cooking, and photography and giving those old dreams a real try. Spending time in these beautiful places, all alone, or with other like-minded travelers, I found myself overflowing with creative energy. Every morning I was jotting away in a notebook or walking around with my camera in hand. When night fell, I had the time and energy to try out new recipes, perfecting them for a two-burner stove and tiny kitchen. Within a couple of years, I had my first book, The Buslife Kitchen: Cuisine for the Modern Nomad; I’m now completing my second.
No Regrets For Nomads
In those first two years on the road I developed more than 100 recipes in our tiny kitchen. I took photos of the food and the landscapes, hearty meals like Biscuits With Green Chile Chorizo Gravy on a cliff’s edge in the eastern Sierra, Mt. Whitney’s snowy peak in the distance; or Oaxacan Chocolate Mousse for a special occasion in the Mojave, rare snow decorating the spiky foliage of the Joshua trees. I also wrote essays about the joys of living and eating well in these most beautiful and wild places.
What originally drew us to this lifestyle was the simple desire to be able to live for a while in different places we adore—to be able to park our home amid groves of palo verde and barrel cactus, beneath towering hoodoos and red rock mesas, and along shady, trout-filled streams. And we found that. As I write this, we have been on the road now for nearly four years, during which time we have traveled all over the West, returning again and again to our favorite places, from the saguaro-studded deserts of Arizona to the towering fir forests of the Olympic Peninsula, and down to the desert beaches of Baja California.
Traveling the American West and living as nomads in our old bus we have come to know the country—and ourselves—in a way that before did not seem possible. And what we have found is so much more than that initial dream. We have truly come to know the land, from the windstorms that rock us to sleep at night to the fine red dirt of the desert that seeps into every nook and cranny of your home. But this lifestyle has been for us more than just adventure, more than just the memories and photographs from the spectacular places we’ve been. In the wild, in our tiny bus home, we’ve found freedom, purpose, and community—three things often absent in modern life.
When we first bought that retired school bus we knew that we were searching for something. But, like the camp at the end of so many of the rough desert roads we drive, we had no idea the riches waiting for us at the end.
From our February/March 2025 issue.
PHOTOGRAPHY: (All images) courtesy A.J. Forget