TRAVELING
LIGHT
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FROMLEFT:FLOTO+WARNER(2).OLEGKLIMOV/PANOSPICTURES/REDUXM
y girlswere5 and9 whenwesetouttoexplore
theAmericanWestinanRVfortwomonths.
Thepressuresofestablishedroutinesandsoci-
etalexpectationshadtakentheirtoll,andit
wastimetoshrinkexternaldistractionsandpractice
livingsmall—whatever-fits-in-a-backpacksmall.
Whenyouhaveyoungchildren,youfeellikeyou
needtoplanandorganizeandconstantlyshufflethem
around,orelseyou’resomehowputtingthemindan-
ger.Here,theywerecapableandindependent,appre-
ciatingeachmomentwithoutcomparingit tothelast.
Kids,it turnsout,understandtheirplaceintheuni-
verseintuitivelywithoutgettinglostinourego-driven
games.Theydon’tneedfluffytowelsoraconstant
flow of new clothes to be happy. For us parents, need-
ing less means working less; it buys us independence
instead of weight.
Now, at our new home base in Chamonix, France,
we’ve bought little more than a rust bucket of a van to
explore our surroundings. My husband, Jeremy, doesn’t
have a cellphone anymore. And by fine-tuning how we
spend and how much waste we generate, we can live
smaller and smarter, wherever it is we want to be. <BW>We chose van life for our
children’s sake, but it
was my partner and I who
learned to lessen our load
By Cassandra WarnerAn epic journey by rail answers
the question: Where am I going?
By Peter HesslerTHE
WAY HOME
W
henI was25,I boardeda train,rodeittothe laststop,and
disembarked with a new sense of what to do with my life. This
kind of thing can happen when you’re 25. It also helps if the jour-
ney lasts six days and 5,000 miles.
The year was 1994, and I was traveling along the Trans-Siberian
Railway. I had bought a one-way ticket from Moscow to Beijing.
AfterpassingthroughthewesternpartofSiberia,thetrainwouldheadsouth
acrossMongolia.Backthen,theworldseemedbigger:nocellphones,noonline
reservations.Thingswereheavier,too.Inmybackpack—Lowe Alpine, internal
frame—I carried a tent, a sleeping bag, a camera, 20 rolls of film, a Sony Walkman,
and a few precious cassettes (Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, the Beastie Boys).
I lugged real books: brick-size guides to Russia and China, along with a copy of
War and Peace that I’d selected in Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford, England, for
its small type and minimal pages. But the lighting on the Trans-Siberian wasn’t
as good as Blackwell’s, and at night I wondered if the combination of Tolstoy and
the train would ruin my eyes.
Apart from the dim, flickering lamps, the carriages were more comfortable
than I’d expected. In those days, few tourists took the Trans-Siberian, and the
dozen or so Western backpackers had been assigned to four-berth compart-
ments in a car occupied primarily by Chinese and Mongolian traders. Their
luggage put War and Peace to shame. Mostly they hauled big bags full of Polish-
made Marlboros, but other goods were more mysterious. One Mongolian had