"During the first night, in a rustic hot spring resort where the talk of the town was an owl that had taken residence in a tree..."

"... I came to terms with the fact that this was indeed going to be uncomfortable. I’d once lived outside for a month in a Thai Buddhist permaculture commune, slept in countless hostels, and meditated for 100 hours over 10 days in the Southern California desert. Living in a van when nightly temperatures dropped to 30 degrees would be another notch on the belt, I thought. Caity was astonished by my equanimity in the face of hundreds of opportunities to complain. Discomfort is inevitable, I’ve learned, but suffering is optional. I shivered and smelled, but there was no use resisting what I couldn’t change." 

From "#VanLife, From the Passenger Seat/When Caity Weaver wanted to try living out of a van as research for an article, she recruited her friend Michael Arnstein to come along for the ride. He shares what it was like to ride shotgun for a week" (NYT).