In the Wind

Josh Works

This morning I was browsing around on nymag.com (daily obsession), and clicked on an article about ten new types of selfies. The article itself was kind of funny and a breezy scroll through, but one thing really caught my eye: this “drone selfie” taken by Josh Works. I thought it was beautiful and was kind of fascinated with it, so after watching no less than 3 times in a row, I clicked through to Josh’s website. What I found was really, really amazing.

Josh, his wife Jessa, and their son Jack have been traveling around the country in an Airstream since 2011. Their goal is to visit all 58 of our national parks (so far, they’ve seen 26). The travel project — and the name of their trusty Airstream — is called 1337Stream, and I’d say it’s a must follow. The family’s Instagram photos from all over America are truly spectacular, and beyond that, I think their manifesto is so inspiring. Here’s a bit that they’ve shared about why they’re doing this — it’s not just a fun family getaway (I highly recommend you read the whole thing here): 

Josh Works

[We] began to lament all the ways we were being sheltered from the world. We’d become socially-lazy, content to “just stay in” and sink further into the comfort and safety of our home, regardless of what great things might be happening around town. We’d bought tons of â€œstuff”, aiming to fill the vast emptiness of our house, boxes & boxes of flat-packed, particle-board furniture and machine-shaped pottery from faceless, distant factories. We ate food from big-box chain stores with origins often impossible to trace and seldom to anywhere considered local. Our daily loop-de-loop commutes, besides being expensive and boring, have deadened our sense of distance and direction to meaningless noise. The interminable routine of bed too late, work too fast, eat too much, see too little has been difficult to interrupt and leaves far too little time for anything truly meaningful, including each other. Even the weather itself often seems too distant in our dense & opaque home.

Sound familiar? I thought so. After realizing they wanted to make a change, they created a list of “motivations & desires” for their family:

• to escape our growing ennui of the suburban lifestyle
• to feed our insatiable wanderlust & explore!
• to own & consume fewer but better things
• to live more efficiently & inexpensively
• to cultivate a closer relationship with the natural world
• to significantly curb our use of costly natural resources
• to pursue passionate, self-fulfilling work (and work less!)
• to provide a humble & engaging worldview for our children
• to indulge our curiosities and control our experiences
• to face our inevitable vulnerability and learn to enjoy it
• to live while we’re young and hope that it sticks

Josh Works

I’m pretty fascinated (and okay, impressed) with how thoughtful and deliberate they’ve been with the path their family wants to take. I’m also interested in this whole fewer, but better mantra that seems to be taking hold in many areas of living and culture — fashion definitely included. Have you noticed this theme popping up too?

And what do you think? Would you ever want to up and change your life in such a drastic way? Though I’m all around pretty content with the life that I’ve built for myself, there’s something about the idea of just getting up and going that always captures the imagination. Perhaps it comes from a place of wondering if the goals you set forth for yourself and the fantasy of the future you have in your head will actually live up to the reality. It’s interesting and inspiring to watch a family who hit that point B, realized it wasn’t really where they wanted to go, and reset their course. Even if you couldn’t or wouldn’t do the same, it’s fun to live vicariously through them, and if nothing else, examine your own experiences, desires and life too.

Image via Josh Works/Worksology Instagram. You can follow the Works’ family Instagram accounts here, here and here. They’ve also created a cool video about their journey here.