Paddling a designated mangrove trail, I cringe as our inflatable kayak rubs the bottom of the pond. “We’re stirring up the mud,” I worry aloud. “How many organisms call this mud home?” Sean shakes his head.

We turn around shortly after. By this point we’ve already seen five alligators (one swimming parallel to us, disquieting agility on full display) and a dozen birds and too many fish to count. I’m in awe that this has been our Monday morning activity.

I’m also wondering if it should have been.

So often close creature encounters fill us with wonder—they allow us to more fully appreciate our fellow animals. But they are also, so often, one sided. What does the cardinal get from me peering closely except a modicum of discomfort? The Florida tree snails are dormant for the winter so my photography (in theory) doesn’t stir their slumber, but still—I am here, in their world, leaning in. And I am clumsy and species-centric and unable to coexist without inadvertent harm.

“Oh no, you scared him,” Sean said of the small toad I tried so carefully to step around on yesterday’s trail. “Shoot, she ran away,” I echoed about the anole I paused too long to observe.

How much of these reactions is normal? Creatures move toward and away from each other all the time. Perhaps I am not adding to their stress (the alligators certainly seem unbothered by my presence in their swamp); perhaps it’s self-aggrandizing to think so. But perhaps I am. Perhaps I am layering harm upon small harm, weaving fear deeper into their nervous systems, making their already fraught existence harder, all out of a desire to love them.

Love can hurt. Especially when it comes from a person.

Little Me developed so much respect for the natural world by engaging with the natural world. That’s the justification for practices—some worse than others, certainly—at organizations from SeaWorld to the tiny elephant sanctuary I called home after graduating college. Where do we draw the line? On our guided night hike in the Everglades, I was thrilled to see a nightjar illuminated by the ranger’s flashlight—but guilt pinged within me, too, at the creature’s small form huddled in the beam. Would we, me and Sean and five middle-aged couples, have felt less inspired if we hadn’t gotten to see up close? Would the bird have felt less scared?

Whose experience is more important, and do they have to interfere with each other, and how can we ever understand costs and benefits?

These questions are top of mind thanks in part to Nerdy About Nature’s recent post on whether outdoor recreation is a form of resource extraction. He thinks it is, and I largely agree. I also agree with the article’s top comment: “outdoor recreation is a gateway to caring about the planet,” writes Nick Costelloe. “The more people engage with natural spaces, the more they’ll care about them—and the more willing they’ll be to advocate for climate solutions.”

I’m just not sure what, exactly, ethical engagement with nature spaces ought to look like.

This past fall we drove up a steep, bumpy road to the most beautiful dispersed campsite we’ve ever seen overlooking the Great Tetons. We carefully followed every National Forest Service guideline. No campfires. Don’t stay more than five nights. Drive on previously used roads. Pack in what you pack out; leave no trace.

I grinned almost every minute we were there. I threw wide my arms and teared up at the sunrise and leashed Scout the second we saw another animal or person. But afterward, despite being a perfect stickler for the rules, I still had to ask: Is it truly possible to leave no trace?

One morning a fox trotted along the edge of our site. They paused, head raised, before darting away down the mountain. Neither we nor our dog pursued this breathtaking creature—but the canid knew, unmistakably, that we were there. Every living thing nearby knew we were there. How much of my own joy (and make no mistake: I experienced bright, bursting, overwhelming joy) is worth native flora and fauna’s discomfort? How much do NFS restrictions, even when meticulously observed, actually mitigate human impact?

How much could I love that mountain—that view, those creatures—if I hadn’t breathed their same air?

I don’t know. It’s easy to preach platitudes about respecting the environment. (Pick up trash, be bear aware, don’t bend the rules, do what the organizations in charge tell you to.) It’s harder to trust that these actions are good enough. And everything is exacerbated by the crisis facing American public lands under our current administration, worsening, it seems, by the day: staffing cuts, hiring freezes, harrowing sound bites to “drill, baby, drill”.

Never has holding great wonder—the kind that inspires us to care, that doesn’t allow us not to give a damn—about natural spaces been more important. Never has asking how we skew the ratio toward much more awe than harm.

I am unduly proud of the ways we eschew marriage norms—and I think I’m finally able to name why.

I worried for a while that my feelings were some sort of petty self righteousness or a “look how I’m not like other girls!” desire to be special. (Which... ew.) But that doesn't track with the fact that I’ve felt truly, properly happy for all the people in my life who do embrace western relationship norms in their own ways. Like, I have never once wondered if my best friend’s relationship is any less fulfilling or progressive or meaningful than mine because her ring is fancy gorgeous. I would never dream of telling my badass feminist colleague that taking her husband’s last name makes her a slave to the patriarchy. Still, though: I loved that I wasn’t doing these things.

What gives?

In my serious relationship before Sean, I relied on any and every surface-level signal that we were a couple. I needed evidence—traditional, obvious evidence—that our love was real. It wasn’t just the big things like my fancy engagement ring (come to think of it, my ex spent more time talking about how he chose the diamond on the day he proposed than why he loved me) or our over-the-top anniversary presents. We also needed constant nicknames and good morning texts and social media posts. (We once had a huge fight after a road trip because I captioned an Instagram of us—just one of many from those two weeks—something simple instead of using it to profess my love.) We were that couple. You’d hate seeing us on your feed, using public posts to insist things we didn’t even truly feel in a flawed attempt to grease the wheels of a squeaking, falling-apart relationship. (Sidebar: This habit made our breakup even harder because I’d spent so long convincing casual acquaintances we were great!! that they couldn't believe we’d actually had a billion problems. Ugh.)

Anyway: I needed so much “evidence” of our love precisely because there wasn’t, in reality, all that much love. I thought I could cover our failings with the right decor. What do you mean there’s a massive gap in the floorboards? No no, it’s nothing; we can hide it with a super fancy sofa!

It’s the exact opposite with Sean. I don’t crave external signals or classic traditions to reinforce our commitment because I already know we’re real. I believe in our love more than anything else—I have never doubted it, never felt the urge to mental-gymnastics something out of nothing.

Saying no thanks to nice rings and elaborate rituals isn’t a larger statement about how I think things “should” be done. (I do not believe there’s one “right” way in basically any area of life. And obviously not everyone uses traditions to mask massive relationship problems, in which case… more power to you. My past self is jealous.) No, my pride in this regard is about me, as an individual, emphasizing the juxtaposition between where I used to be and where I am now.

It’s funny that the excuse I gave some family members for why our nuptials were so small (I already planned a big wedding and we didn’t work out, I want my real one to feel as different as possible) turned out to be so centrally true. I love not doing these traditional things because I love not needing these traditional things.

If you want them, though? That’s a whole different story.

We just spent a long weekend with my brother-in-law and his girlfriend in Miami. After we bade them farewell, I found myself gushing to Sean about how perfect Scout is (“I mean, she’s the most perfect creature to ever walk the planet, right?!”) and gushing to her (not that she understood, of course, though she did like my tone of voice) the reasons she deserves a big thank you. The people we love deserve a big thank you, too.

So here’s some gratitude.

Scout Finch: Thank you for rolling with our chaos—for peeing in whatever random parking lot we bring you to next (and in all types of weather) and never barking at strange city sounds or passerby. Thank you for allowing us to adventure without you when needed. Thank you for boasting one of the strongest pet dog stomachs I’ve ever encountered. Thank you for, despite your intestines of steel, still not eating discarded sidewalk food. Thank you for loving our van home so much. Thank you for feeling safe and comfortable in your crate. Thank you for handling a few boring days unbelievably well for your breed’s expectations. Thank you for welcoming new friends with a quick sniff and adorable wiggle followed by complete neutrality. Thank you for gracefully allowing those new friends in your house (I know it’s not very big to share). Thank you for never demanding any sort of set routine.

Friends new and old: Thank you for following instructions about interacting with our sensitive dog. Thank you for laughing when I make the (admittedly weak) joke that she’s a liar when explaining that even if she sits directly in front of you with perfect sweetness, she’d prefer you didn’t reach for her face. Thank you for humoring me when I over-analyze one of her quirks not for the first time. Thank you for understanding when we’re on a schedule dictated by her bladder. Thank you for making everything so easy. Thank you for loving her, too—the most important extension of us—even when “love” looks more like reserved respect and short ball throws than the unlimited snuggles you might have first dreamed.

Catherine Raven, a solitary biologist in the mountains of Montana, wrote about befriending a wild red canid in her memoir aptly titled Fox and I.

The most magical moment in the book occurs one night when Fox brings his kits—baby foxes! I nearly squeal with delight imagining a rough version of the scene—to Raven’s cabin. While he settles for a nap, she watches his progeny tumble around and atop each other, close enough to touch. They are illuminated by the moon and awash in fresh air.

Afterward she talks about assigning value to these events. Raven gives up so much—close human connection, quick access to resources, career opportunities—to live the way she does. Are the sacrifices worth it? What would she trade for another night of fox kits?

Nearly everything, she answers.

Me too, I think. Of course it’s presumptuous to compare my life directly to Catherine Raven’s—she is infinitely more badass than I am—but the last two years primed me to understand her calculus. We’ve given up dozens of previous staples to travel full time in a converted van. On occasion it is exhausting. But when you ask if the sacrifices are worthwhile? I do not hesitate: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

I have never witnessed a fox-kit moon, but I have fallen asleep to wolf howls outside Yellowstone National Park. I have heard bats echolocating—rare, these clicks audible to human ears—just above my head in Utah’s desert. I have gasped at Florida tree snails, Liguus fasciatus, shining in their narrow Everglades range.

I see the Milky Way so often I almost forget how precious the sight has become in our artificially lit human world. Lately I take pride in knowing, without having to think, the current phase of the moon simply because I’ve spent so many recent nights outside. This morning I stayed in bed for half an hour counting bird songs through our open back doors. Yesterday Sean and I ambled a boardwalk trail more slowly than my past self could have imagined, gasping at the smallest air plants you’ve ever seen and strangler figs’ wild acrobatics and white lichen decorating tree trunks in a pattern reminiscent of my hometown’s dairy cows.

I do not always know where I am going to sleep, if we can park without disturbance, when I will next find a fully stocked grocery store. It is scary to get sick on an island in another country thousands of miles from the place you once called home and only hope the local pharmacy can help. We constantly befriend the world around us—try to, anyway, balancing our own curiosity with the removed reverence fellow creatures deserve—but always through the ache of missing our human friends, longing for the ability to call them up last minute and ask if they want to meet for a beer.

I hurt, sometimes: physically, emotionally, deep in my chest.

But my sense of wonder grows. Lights up with the fireflies, sprints with the deer, dives on the ospreys’ outstretched wings. It is a salve for the sacrifices’ sting—and I would trade even more for moments like this.

Passages I highlighted in Fox and I

* Page 22: You don’t need much imagination to see that society has bulldozed a gorge between humans and wild, unboxed animals, and it’s far too wide and deep for anyone who isn’t foolhardy to risk the crossing. As for making yourself unpopular, you might as well show up to a university lecture wearing Christopher Robin shorts and white bobby socks as be accused of anthropomorphism. Only Winne-the-Pooh would associate with you.

* Page 34: I wasn’t trying to emulate normal people, but I did like knowing what they were up to.

* Page 233: In the twenty-first century, everyone wants everything to be natural—with a few exceptions: medicine, transportation, energy, communication, televisions, wrinkles, cell phones, bad eyes, weak hearts, worn knees, small boobs, old hips, indoor temperature. The more we humans pamper ourselves with manmade toys and tools, dressing in polypropylene, Gore-Tex, and nylon fleece and availing ourselves of dentures, braces, statins, vaccines, diet pills, hearing aids, and pacemakers for everyone over the age of seventy-five, the more we demand that unboxed animals stay natural. Like a seesaw with humans on one side of the fulcrum and wildlife on the other, we sink further from a natural life and force wildlife closer to it. Our pursuit of the natural life is as vigorous as it is vicarious.

* Page 245: Those of us who have barnacled ourselves to inhospitable places may be trying to avoid people not because we do not like people, but because we love the things that people destroyed. Wild things. Horizons. Trolls.

* Page 265: Looking back, I would say that when a person thinks they are wrong for doing something that feels right, well, then, the definition of wrong needs to shift.

* Page 293: lack of imagination is not a career choice, it’s a personality crisis.

Reading Maybe You Should Talk to Someone makes me realize (not for the first time, but I’m terrible at internalizing this morsel) the obvious: There is no finish line. There will never be a finish line. No streamers, no cheers, no clear-cut you did it, well done (note the past tense) because until I die, I will still be doing.

Sean and I used to talk about “moving the goalposts” in regards to Scout’s fear reactivity. Those first months after I realized the extent of her behavioral problems, I told every trainer we consulted with that I just wanted to take her for a walk—a boring neighborhood walk—without her freaking out and embarrassing me.

Eventually we could go on walks. They weren’t seamless, but they were possible, and I yearned for more possibilities. Now I want to go on busier walks, longer hikes. Now I want to sit at a brewery, a coffee shop, the restaurant near our apartment complex. Now I want to go on outings with other dogs. Now I want trick titles. A Canine Good Citizen certificate. Engaged games of tug in distracting environments. Twenty thousand Instagram followers. A more polished narrative.

Mostly, what I wanted with Scout was the same thing I want in all areas of my life: to be seen. Not just observed, but seen, and specifically seen as successful. Each time we made progress, the line for “success” moved with us because there was always someone ahead doing it better—and our past selves fell further behind, failing to remind me just how far we’d come unless I actually sat down, took out the binoculars (read: scrolled my camera roll or Instagram memories), and tracked their blurred forms.

I rarely think about life with Scout feeling different now. It’s not that we crossed a finish line—we didn’t—but that I’ve come to see our journey as something beautiful and flawed and ongoing. As the end of our shared life approaches, faster each year, I run from finality and can’t believe I ever craved it. If we finish all the struggles, then eventually we will finish the joy. I never want our time to be past tense.

Why is this hard to translate to the rest of my experiences? Haven’t my insights about the pet world—training and emotions and optimization and all the rest—always fit rather perfectly into my growth as a human being beyond the “dog nerd” label?

I hold the knowledge itself: Be present. Life is a series of nows. Don’t burn the future to stay warm. Sometimes I act on the knowledge, relishing the sun’s warmth or Sean’s skin or the fact that I can still at 27 lose myself in a story like I did as a kid.

But often I live at odds with this thing I express as a tenet. I act as if there is always a finish line, and it’s just around the next bend, and once I finally cross it I can breathe, I can sleep, I can relax without guilt—I can settle into my life, I can hold my own against the world, I can love myself.

Once I leave my nine-to-five marketing agency job. Once I land regular freelance clients. Once we move into our converted van. Once I make arbitrary-number thousand dollars a month. Once I finish the first draft of my book. Once I finish the second draft of my book. Once I get published in a magazine I admire. Once I have arbitrary-number “real” bylines. Once I find an agent for my book. Once my book is published.

But I know from meeting some of these milestones that I can’t hang satisfaction on the others. If I do publish a book and it’s well received? I will surely stack another goal atop its podium. If it doesn’t touch people the way I hope? I will punish myself with more hoops to jump through and the futile promise that once I clear them, then I can feel successful. Not now, though. Never now.

Because I am ostensibly a minimalist—my material belongings are few—I have convinced myself I do not struggle with our society’s “more more more” mantra. I mean, I travel full time without much in a converted van! I haven’t worked a “traditional” job in three years! I watch almost every sunrise! My physical space is less than seventy square feet (and I basically never complain about that) and I know at least a few people look up to me as a model of peace and contentment.

How could I have a problem with wanting?

Well, goes the too-simple but too-true answer, because I am human. Because I am a creature. Because I will never carve perfect, unchanged, permanent meaning out of my life—I will never finish my own story the way I sometimes finish an essay thinking wow, that wrapped up rather nicely. My accomplishments, my wants, myself will never be wrapped up. Isn’t that the beauty of being alive?I don’t want to be done.

And yet I do with so many things. I want to be done so I can be loved. Maybe the ultimate item on my checklist is separating the two.

I give Scout a treat, not because she needs it (there are still times where our use of food is more management than reward) but because it is a beautiful calm morning and she is a beautiful calm dog. “She’s so good,” croons the woman as they pass, chihuahuas’ legs working overtime to pull ahead. “Ours aren’t quite so composed.”

I laugh with her, give a final wave. And think to myself that even all these years later—and when it’s far from the first time—I still glow when a stranger tells me Scout is well-behaved. Composed. Good.

She is all those things nowadays. But most of all I think she’s happy. Scout is able to be well-behaved and composed and good because she is fulfilled and trusted and understood.

“We never scold her for anything anymore,” Sean remarked the other day. He’s right—we never need to.

Well, almost never. My standards shrink as we all age. But the love only grows.

“Yes,” I reply. “My key lime pie in our keys campsite!”

Later he sends the picture to his mom. She says it looks delicious—and it is.

Let vacation begin.

I can’t get over the view from our bed. I take entirely too many photos (Future Me will have a problem cleaning them out) trying to capture the awe—sun-bright awe—that my house is parked in a place like this. My backyard is a rocky shoreline. My kitchen rustles with an ocean breeze. My eyes can’t drink it all in.

Our campsite is Scout’s dream, too. No matter where she is—claiming her yellow lawn chair, curled in the front cab, sprawled on our bed—she is immersed in fresh air.

We breathe deeply, all three of us.

“What a faith-in-humanity moment,” I say to Sean, finally unclenching my jaw.

Shortly after we arrived at Bahia Honda State Park, an off-leash golden retriever barreled into our campsite. Sean tried to intercept while a boy looked on from the road. “Please get your dog!” I hollered, darting to my left to match the creature’s swerve.

The boy’s mother appeared at a leisurely stroll. “She’s friendly! She’s really friendly,” promised this woman I’d never met (and had no reason to trust).

“My dog’s been attacked before and isn’t,” I called. “Yours can’t be in our site.”

The next minute blurs a little, even in such recent memory. I know I body blocked the retriever again while her owner tried to attach the leash. Finally, oversized adolescent paws scratching my thighs, we succeeded.

“She’s only eight months old,” the woman said, a bit pleadingly.

I felt myself flush. Scout had done well—only barked once, stayed lying down on her blanket, knew her humans would handle it—but this was not how I envisioned the start of our vacation. My voice had an edge: “That’s not an excuse.”

“I’m not making excuses,” the other owner half-snarled before stomping away. “I’m sorry.”

I could feel my heartbeat in my fingertips. Sean hugged me; Scout asked to play; we tried to move on. Then I realized the woman and her dog and her son were our immediate next-door neighbors.

Then I realized they were also the campground hosts.

Is this a bad sitcom? I texted my mom, venting frustration. It is not encouraging when the people in charge of a shared space’s rules (like, you know, keeping your dog on a leash and under control) are the very ones violating them.

I buzzed with anxiety until, as Sean removed a raw neck bone from the freezer for Scout and I started thinking about our own dinner, the off-leash-neighbor-campground-host family again appeared in our site. Sans dog this time.

The woman had a special treat for our heeler. Her husband offered a soft handshake. Their boy rode a bright bicycle. I’ve never received such a sincere apology—I’ve never witnessed, so clearly, the results of a stranger pausing to consider their impact after the fact.

“That must have been so scary for you,” she said simply.

“Thank you,” I replied, meaning it.

Their dog never ran at us again.

It is not uncommon for people to comment on our campsite as they walk by. They like the van’s bright color; they love when Scout curls in a lawn chair of her own. (For introverts, we certainly aren’t inconspicuous.)

This morning a woman with arms of tattoos asks if our dog’s name is Macaroni. What? She clarifies with a grin: Then we could refer to her and the van, together, as “macaroni and cheese”.

Sean and I burst into laughs as she walks away, equal parts bemused and delighted. “That’s near the top of the ‘best comment ever’ list,” I declare. He agrees.

I have worked ahead—client work, the stuff that pays part of our bills—so I can avoid email and Webflow and Canva here on the ocean’s edge. It feels wrong to be lit by a computer screen when I could be lit by the sun.

My Kindle’s glow is different. I read three books in three days: lying on our bed, sitting under blue sky, stroking Scout’s fur. I read in my head while walking to the bathroom building (a few neighbors look on, confused) and aloud to Sean while he cooks breakfast (pancakes, mostly) and under my breath as the evening colors fade.

I wanted to live inside a book, wrote Ann Hood in her Morningstar memoir. How lucky I am to do just that.

I am still damp with saltwater. Sand coats my feet—more determined than I after two rounds of attempted toweling—and I realize I don’t even mind that our rug is a noticeably different color than it was two months ago.

This is pure luxury, I think. Lavender lotion on gently tanned skin after a day of fresh air. What more could anyone need?

I choose a postcard with a cactus—Organ Pipe National Monument—even though the landscape is nothing like our current humid world. I’m drawn to the simple shapes. I want to think simple thoughts.

Next to me Sean hand-solves a calculus problem his boss sent him “just for fun”.

Is this balance?

I sit, cross-legged, at the edge of our bed. My face meets the breeze. I can see more of the sky if I crane my neck forward, and I let my eyes adjust—I know, from two nights of sleeping with the back doors open, exactly where Orion’s belt will appear.

Sean brings me decaf dark roast with whipped cream. As I lean against the foot of the bed, legs toward our pillows to ensure the best sunset view, Scout sprawls to my right. “Can you get my phone?” I call to the front of the van. “I just need the camera. To capture this moment.”

This evening world is so quiet. I’m nearly done reading The Darkness Manifesto, and I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so excited for the night—for the bats, for the stars, for the sounds. For the stretching increments between “last light” and “full dark”.

For my newfound ability to appreciate them.

I painted my toenails when I was in Wisconsin, while my niece napped and wouldn’t ask to make her own mess with the bottle. Now the bright-orange squares peek above the water—satisfying contrast against an impossibly blue backdrop—as I float in gentle waves.

I’m not sure how long I lie there. (Sean tells me I’m lucky to float; he, too dense, always sinks.) I feel dizzy when I climb back on shore, struggling to reconcile the firm sand with the water’s give.

It’s not a problem. I just wade back out.

Scout tries to eat the cucumbers off my eyes. How can I expect her to understand food that is not food? I laugh so hard I snort; she wags back hopefully.

“You’re an idiot,” Sean and I tell her, often. The words mean so many other things: you are perfect, you bring us joy, we love you more than anything.

I never want her to change.

We are on this jog for a stupid reason: I saw a sculpted woman on the rocks late this morning and felt, crushingly, that I was not enough like her. Jiggly, I asserted to Sean, pointing at my triceps. He sighed. “Please don’t say ridiculous things.”

But now that we’re moving—feet brushing cracked pavement, shoulders sweating in humid air—I don’t feel “jiggly” at all. I feel strong. I feel chastised. I feel so damn lucky to watch the sun dip behind the water’s edge.

We detour to the sandy beach when we’re done. I sprint to the edge, trust fall in the water, nearly forget to close my eyes before diving under each wave. We stay, quietly—nothing needs to be said—until Sean is shivering and we cave to the promise of homemade ramen in the van.

I eat a huge bowl.

I pick my way around hermit crabs—too many to count—with a lawn chair draped over my shoulder. We are finally heading to the shallow bay we keep walking by, the one tucked along the road with a view of the old railroad bridge, for sunset. (And civil twilight. Maybe nautical and astronomical, too, if thoughts of Scout snuggling by herself don’t call us sooner to bed.)

The clouds put on less of a show than they did last night—we watched yesterday’s sunset from the van’s front windshield on our way to the dump station for a gray tank emergency—but somehow the evening is still more beautiful than I imagined. I inhale. An osprey squawks, perches on the sandbar a dozen feet to our left. Each passing moment reveals a new star.

I stop trying to chase my anxiety away and instead invite it to sit with us, share our snacks, sip from Sean’s thermos of decaf with cream. I sing “Of Love and Life” in my head. The song sticks with me all night, even after we’ve waded back to shore (without stepping on a single sea creature) and crept to camp in the dark. I sing it to Sean and Scout as we pile atop each other in bed.

“Hear me out, take your time, watch the setting sunTake your hands out of your pockets, feel the water runDon't worry about tomorrowAnd yesterday is gone”

Sometimes a stranger’s poetry seems written just for you.

Sean and I walk through the small restaurant’s door. Old-school entrée photos obscure the walls, captioned in Spanish; I feel a bit sheepish when the cooks’ replace their background chatter with “do you need an English menu?” as we reach the front of the line.

It’s a glorious day: pure sun, eighty degrees, shallow blue-green ocean on each side of the highway. Melancholy laced the morning as I thought about leaving the keys. We’ll be back soon (an incredible delight) but I’ve always struggled with endings—even the simple ones.

All that messiness dissipates with my first bite of tamale. We pass our Cuban coffee back and forth across the picnic table, Sean’s gentle grin—the soft one, the one that reminds me of his shyer college self—igniting my own. After this we have more local cafes to visit as we make our way toward Homestead (where home for the night will be a dingy Cracker Barrel parking lot). “A restaurant crawl,” Sean proposed before we left our campsite, doing what he always does.

“Thank you,” I say now. “For making today feel more like an adventure than a goodbye.”

How can I leave? she asks. This must be as good as it gets.I know she wakes up at three am gasping the opposite: This can’t be all there is.

It isn’t.

She dreams of good enough. She looks so small. She wonders how anyone can love her, and I’m ashamed of my flicker of agreement: I don’t tell her I look back as a stranger thinking thank god we are not the same. I sit around a campfire with her college friends and roast them—lovingly—trying to ask why they stuck around.

What made you stick around?

She’s engaged. I’m married. There is a lifetime of pain between those sentences, landmarks she can navigate only if she stops trying to write herself into existence and starts trying to live a life worth writing about—She isn’t there yet.

She’s here, checking her phone the instant it pings atop the table. He needs a picture of who she’s with (they’ll fight about this later) but won’t tell me the truth so I won’t tell her the obvious.

You’re not in love! I want to scream. This isn’t normal.She already knows.

My world is ending, she breathes, and for once it isn’t drama. She is about to tidal wave her future, cascade hurt in all directions, collapse the precarious foundation of an unexamined life—I tell her she’ll build a new one.

Look, I smile, hands outstretched. Look how I’ve built a new one.

“Would you go to Mars?”

I hesitated. “Safety guaranteed,” he added, tone suggesting an obvious answer. (Who wouldn’t want to go to space?)

“I couldn’t.”

There are no creatures on Mars: no fireflies, no frogs so small you can’t believe they exist, no rare snails on the edge of a hot spring’s pool. There are no sleepy dogs to welcome you home, no grizzly bears across the river, no foxes carrying prey. How could I smile in a world without scrub jays? Sans squirrels? Bereft of deer?

I want to be an animal among animals.

I almost laugh. I want to be the type of invested dog person who can still chuckle at jokes meant to be benign; who friends don’t hesitate to send viral animal videos out of fear I’ll latch onto questionable body language; who is not, in short, a killjoy. It is a funny shirt if you take it in the right way, only a few steps removed from “tell your dog I say hi” (we saw that bumper sticker yesterday) and on par with “dogs welcome, people tolerated” (the doormat of pet stores and vet clinics across the country).

But this year more than any other I’ve committed to seeing the ties between human and animal welfare. You can’t be anti human and pro dog, not really, because domestic dogs evolved specifically to live with people. Their success is tied to ours at the grand scale (they live everywhere we do, their population has grown with ours) and at the minute (the better off a given pet owner, the better off their animals).

I was first exposed to this idea of “helping people helps pets” in Bronwen Dickey’s Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon. Nearly three years after I read Dickey’s allusions to a broken rescue system, Carol Mithers more clearly sketched the landscape of saviorism in Rethinking Rescue. “Animals in shelters don’t necessarily belong to humans who didn’t love them, but to those who lacked resources, chiefly money,” she insists in the book’s introduction. “There’s a difference between protecting animals and blaming humans without resources for failing to care for them.”

When I read “anti human, pro dog” I think of well-intentioned but misguided rescue workers who tear beloved pets from people without housing. I think of shelter biographies that invent stories of abuse and neglect to make surrendered animals more adoptable. I think of my past self vilifying strangers to retain a sense of moral high ground when all I actually stood upon was compounded harm.

“Sis, it’s not that deep,” I imagine a Gen Z-er somewhere scoffing. Maybe it’s not. Maybe some of us are “anti human, pro dog” because we think puppies are better than people in a pure way. Certainly this was the intent of whoever designed the shirt in question—I doubt they were trying to say “humans are the cause of all worldly woes and do not deserve our support.” They just wanted to signal “I’d rather be around my dog than these strangers out in public.”

I relate to that particular sentiment. Left to my own devices, I do prefer the company of nonhuman animals over that of most people, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me. Humans (like domestic dogs!) have a remarkable ability to form bonds with different species. We’re also individuals with our own experiences. I regularly function through a haze of social anxiety, and connecting with living beings who aren’t people—and therefore can’t hold me to confusing and overwhelming and contradictory standards of modern human interaction—feels liberating.

But “I’m often more comfortable around animals” is not the same as “I am anti human.” I understand that people are necessary to care for this other dependent species I love—and I recognize that humans have inherent value of our own. I am a social member of a social species, and the sense of community that gets me through so many days (even when I feel it most intensely with Scout) would fundamentally not exist without human support.

“Anti human, pro dog.” It’s just a shirt. I assume I have a hell of a lot in common with the guy wearing it. (Although I don’t quite laugh before retreating to my corner table to write these thoughts, I do smile in his direction.) But I wouldn’t wear the slogan myself. “When people say, ‘It’s just words’ as a way to dismiss the power of language, you should be suspicious,” writes Anne Curzan on page 34 of Says Who? “Words often have consequences,” she says.

Maybe I’ll get a shirt printed with that.

Living in a van with a sensitive dog isn’t simple. We all made sacrifices when we hit the road in January 2023—Scout included. While my partner and I discussed our plans for months, daydreamed for years before that, and knew exactly what nomadic life would entail (on paper, anyway) our heeler came along for the literal ride. Sure, we slowly acclimated her to our rig. We spent hours parked in our old house’s driveway. We eased into this new home like every previous stationary apartment. But eventually we backed out one final time, confining her in the travel crate beneath the bed, and she didn’t get any say in the matter.

Scout’s given up some of her favorite enrichment toys because they proved too difficult to clean without access to unlimited hot water. Sometimes we can’t find her regular food brand and she has to adjust last-minute when the nearest specialty store is more than 100 miles away. It’s harder to fill her epilepsy prescription given phenobarbital is a controlled substance and we always pick it up from a different location (dear pharmacy technicians: I promise I am not sketchy—just a nomad!) which results in necessary detours of extra hours or even days sitting in urban parking lots.

We’ve given up privacy. Step outside our front door and we’re in public, full stop, unless parked truly in the backcountry. (Even then the land isn’t “ours”—and fellow campers have been known to appear out of nowhere with their own dogs.) Well-meaning strangers sometimes walk right over and ask for a tour. Window covers and white noise can’t fully mask the chaos that is parking on Manhattan’s Upper West Side or a downtown Madison street. Scout used to have a consistent, familiar backyard in which to sunbathe—a sanctuary carved out of the busy world just for her—and now might get nothing more than a corner of NYC sidewalk and a plea, in my most hopeful voice, to please use the bathroom so we can get inside and lock the doors and go to sleep. It’s harder to play in the living room on rainy days. We no longer set up indoor food searches. She has fewer toys with less variety. She hasn’t had a proper bath in almost two years.

Physical space, of course, is what we’ve given up the most. Scout once had her own room in our house. Today? Her travel crate is small because that’s what will keep her safe in a crash—but accident potential isn’t on her mind when she wonders why she can no longer sprawl on her side for a nap. She can’t lie underfoot in the kitchen without almost-certain odds of being stepped on or stumbled over. Her choice of sleeping spots, once nearly limitless, now comes down to three: Our bed, her crate, or a front cab chair.

So yes. Our cattle dog has given up many things she used to love.

She’s also given up things that held us back.

When we moved into our yellow van, we lost some comfort—but in the process bade farewell to monotony. We traded the same ol’ walking route at a nearby park for fresh smells across the country. We gave up long hours apart while my partner and I worked traditional office jobs to spend nearly all day every day together. We’ve forgone artificial training setups (and admittedly stressful group classes) in favor of real-world experiences.

We gave up a fenced yard for the freedom to call remote corners of the continent home. Scout no longer sunbathes on the same worn deck boards—instead she flops on Newfoundland’s drizzly coast, basks in Utah’s red sands, frolics through Wisconsin’s northwoods. Less indoor space means we breathe more fresh air. We’re tougher than ever about wind and rain and temperature changes. We gave up being “clean” in the nitpicky sense I once held dear—and it opened us up to greater joy.

Scout no longer has a whole house to wander. But she always has her home within reach.

Of course, many of these things aren’t direct trade offs so much as different versions of the same experience. We had weird neighbors in Florida; now sometimes strangers peer through our windows in a grocery store parking lot. We had maintenance workers barge into our old house; today we have to get our oil changed, sometimes our water pump breaks, maybe we’re forced into a hotel for a night or two.

But the things we’ve truly given up—the ones we can no longer access, can’t recoup without shifting our lifestyle back the other direction—were easy to let go. We said farewell comfort, hello variety. Goodbye stability, greetings quality time.

Years ago I learned about opportunity cost in my intro economics course, and it’s never been more top of mind since hitting the road. Some things just aren’t feasible when your house is less than 70 square feet and fitted to drive down a highway—but the question is if we miss those things. Does it feel like loss? Or making room for something better?

Day in and day out my dog tells me it’s the latter.

But the rejection came after I spent a lethargic day at a public park, feeling simultaneously lonely and observed, and either “I didn’t care much” was a plain lie or reading another canned “our apologies, but…” was one disappointment too many. Regardless, I sputtered inside a rip current of what am I doing and am I any good and do I contribute enough (to my relationship, to my friends, to society) and I’m wasting time spiraling, aren’t I.

So, naturally, I went to the beach.

On my way to pick Sean up from his office, I replayed the opening line of Noah Kahan’s “False Confidence” a dozen times. (I imagined the van’s stereo system was irritated with my constant rewinding. I imagined the whole world was irritated with my existence.)

Don’t take yourself so seriously, sang one of my favorite artists, over and over and over. I started to believe him just a little.

As I waited for Sean to appear in the parking lot, I posted a video talking directly to the camera. This is still uncomfortable for me—I recorded two takes, actually—but I knew I couldn’t be the only one feeling confused and low and in need of connection.

Scout, forever sensitive to my voice’s timbre, nuzzled her head against my chest.

“It’s going to rain soon,” Sean said when we arrived at the beach. “We can make it,” I replied. The storm’s first front had just blown through. Clumps of seagrass littered the shore, adorned not only with man o’ wars and broken shells but hordes of plastic: bottle caps and wrappers and jagged pieces of once-admired sand toys.

We turned around, disgusted. From the van I grabbed two oversized garbage bags.

The work was washed with shame and wonder. I held an old hairbrush with two fingers. I saw the tiniest ghost crab. We discovered not one, not two, but three discarded shoes. I cried both for the havoc my species is wreaking on this ocean I love so much and for the simple joy of walking with toes in the sand, clearing a miniscule stretch of beach on which the pipers might safely scavenge.

The skies opened up as soon as we filled the second garbage bag. We were soaked through and laughing by the time we got back inside.

“Is it cake?!” Mikey Day shouted with entirely too much enthusiasm. Sean and I sat in the van’s cab chairs, finally dry; Scout lounged on the bed. I organized a few emails and shared ramen noodles with my begging dog and most of all laughed at my husband’s enjoyment of the silly Netflix show. He loved it so much more than I thought he would.

I love him so much more than I thought I could.

The next day I watched sunrise over the water amidst a round of tug with Scout. I considered how lucky we were to have a dog-friendly beach. I considered how lucky I was to be there: by the ocean, in the sand, alive at all.

We walked next to the waves three more times before dark. I read a collection of essays start to finish. We fell asleep early, three creatures on one bed, no room to spare, not even for doubt.

Mostly a (somewhat silly) story of trying to make my drops suck less... but as usual the experience did make me think of some real dog connections too.

Related links:

• How We Handle Traveling to See Family With Our Dog — older blog post about our logistics before we lived in a van


• Why I’m Risk Averse With Family Dog-Dog Interactions — recent reflections on separating Scout from my parents' pets


• Why I Love to “Leave The Dog Behind” — sometimes it's best for everyone!


• Leaving Our Dog Alone in Our Van: Safety & Temperature Control — how we keep Scout safe if we do stuff without her

Some blog posts that address similar topics:

• What Level of Obedience is "Good Enough" For My Dog?


• Is My Dog My Mirror? Yes and No


• Worst Moments in My Dog Ownership


• Working Through My Biggest Dog Ownership Flaw


• Why Does Your Dog Need To Do… Well, Anything?

Our "What's Right for YOU" Instagram guide compiles related posts, too.

We reflect on our recent visit to New York City with Scout. Urban dogs & their people face so many challenges every day — it made me think about how adaptable our companions can be, how much work goes into taking good care of a canine in a city, how our environments affect our training goals & choices, and how different our life with Scout might have looked if we lived in a place like that full time.

Related links:

• I summed some of these high level thoughts up in a blog post called "An Ode to Big City Dogs"


• This article shares overall reflections on navigating NYC with our van


• My friend Karoline (Dog Mom Mentality) did a podcast series not too long ago interviewing dog owners who live in a range of different environments — she & her guests provide some much more organized insights!

Related blog links:

• Fulfillment checklist article


• Reasons We Play "Just" to Play


• Our Play blog category


• Q&A From New Cattle Dog Owner on Fulfillment

More about our van life plans and experience so far:

• The Van Life category of our blog


• Van Dog Logistics Instagram guide

We talk about:

• “Let dogs be dogs”


• “Let them sniff”


• “Dogs crave structure”


• “Be a good leader”


• “Don’t coddle your dog"


• “Dogs aren’t humans”


• “This is how it’s done in the wild / this is what’s natural"


• “Dogs do what has been reinforced"

We also roast B.F. Skinner a little at the end. All in good fun, we promise.

While domestic dogs do share many overarching traits, they also each bring their own quirks and preferences to the table. When we make space for that, it can be so fascinating and fun. When we get caught up in expecting all dogs to be a certain way, though (often subconsciously) we can set ourselves up for disappointment, resentment, or unnecessary conflict.

Related links:

• What Colors Our Perceptions of Dog Training Methods? blog article — talks about how our own dogs' preferences can influence how we feel about things as a whole


• Why Does Your Dog Need to Do... Well, Anything? blog article — addressing how every dog, owner, and situation is different


• "It's All in How You Raise Them" Isn't True (and Truly Hurts) blog article


• Don't Compare Your Dog Reactivity Journey to Others blog article


• What's Right For YOU Instagram guide

That said, it's also really important to me that our personal experiences fostering are never used to say "hey this is possible, therefore you have to". Sometimes there can be a lot of pressure in the rescue world — and while I empathize with where those big emotions come from, everyone gets to make the decisions right for their individual pets and situations. We all decide what level of management and risk we're comfortable with. There is no one single way to be a "good" person or animal lover.

In short: The ultimate goal of these rambles is to acknowledge that fostering a dog who is not interacting with resident animals (for whatever reason):

1. Can be very hard. A multi-dog household, even if temporary, is never something I'd expect or force.


2.  But: It also is doable in the right circumstances. Not every animal in a house has to be instant best friends for it to be a successful experience!

Nuance, as always.

We cover: a brief overview of Mystic's condition and what's made this situation challenging, that it's okay to have big emotions and struggle with things (yes, even if you're a self-proclaimed dog person with high standards!), that I've never been more thankful for the strength of my relationships with both Sean and Scout, how we've tried to process our feelings to stay connected as a team, and some logistics of this foster experience overall. Complete with a few other rambles, of course — and gushing about how much we really do love this little dog even if she's given us a run for our money.

Related links:

• Our Foster Mystic story highlight on Instagram details our day-to-day so far


• Our Foster Puppies Instagram guide compiles posts about our initial time with Mystic and her littermate back in July


• The Rescue category of our blog has multiple articles about our fostering journeys

Some specific books that inspired these thoughts:

• Dog is Love by Clive Wynne


• The Genius of Dogs by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods


• Dog Sense by John Bradshaw


• (Highly recommend reading the actual studies discussed for more context; all three of the above titles have nicely organized reference sections specific to dogs)


• Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are by Frans de Waal

Some related links:

• Running list of dog ownership books I recommend overall


• Running list of all the animal-related books I've read recently


• Sean's older blog about "just hanging out" with Scout (talks about social relationships, approaching them in a natural way)


• Blog on if my dog wants to please me or not


• Blog on thinking about my dog as a human friend


• Blog on advocating for my dog


• Blog on the line between advocating and "babying" my dog

We go over:

• Why do we want to pursue van life in the first place?


• Why go through a conversion company for our build insteading of converting a van ourselves?


• Why buy our house a year and a half ago, and why sell it now?


• Why a Promaster?


• How is the van temperature controlled?


• How else have we set the van up with Scout in mind?


• Why include a shower?


• How does internet work?


• What are we most looking forward to?


• What are we most nervous about?

Related links:

• "Van Life" category of our blog

It's been easy for me to feel like a remote work schedule should automatically mean my days are more productive (I don't have a commute to drain my time, I'm with Scout for more of the day so can fit in short frequent play sessions, etc) especially now that I've gone out on my own with a more flexible schedule. On the one hand? I absolutely do want to make sure I use my time wisely and don't take these opportunities for granted! On the other? My own fulfillment and rest are as important as ever. I don't need to constantly self-sacrifice in order to "deserve" the good things in life, and there is no shame in taking time for myself.

Some related links:

• I Quit an Awesome Job to Write About My Dog? (reflections on going out on my own)


• “Just” an Owner: Do I Have Any Right to Talk About Dogs? (relates to imposter syndrome, wondering if I even deserve to get to write about animals for a living)

Sometimes we see animal lovers delving into "folk nonsense" and expecting unfair things from their companions (or creating potentially dangerous situations by assuming our pets automatically understand societal norms, illnesses, or so on in ways they actually might not). On the other hand, we also see trainers try to dismiss the potential depth of connection between dog and owner in favor of a more robotic or negative view of our pets. I personally think the healthiest approach is one in between!

Books mentioned:

• For the Love of a Dog by Patricia McConnell (the first I read this past week)


• Dog Sense by John Bradshaw (the second I read this past week)


• Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are by Frans de Waal (I just can't stop talking about this one!)


• Dog is Love by Clive Wynne (apparently I also can't stop talking about this one...)

Some related blog articles:

• Does My Dog Want to Please Me? Yes and No


• Pros & Cons of Thinking About My Dog as a Human Friend


• What Advocating For My Dog Means & Why It Matters (the first part of this talks about honoring my dog as a canine)


• Imagining My Dog’s “Umwelt” Helps Us Grow as a Team (all about trying to understand how Scout experiences the world)

We discuss why we don't do organized dog sports with Scout (just personal preference and lifestyle!), whether or not we are "against" them (absolutely not!), some things we've observed about different dog sports communities as outsiders (many awesome merits and a few potential cons), and a few overall reflections about being on social media (like how easy it is for content to be perceived in ways differently than the author intends and how much I care about nuance).

We talk about:

• The false idea that "good dogs have to love other dogs and people"


• It's not "all in how you raise them" and the nuance of nature & nurture working together


• How rehoming is sometimes the best option for everyone involved


• Potentially hurtful statements like "your dog won’t have behavioral problems if.... you’re a good enough leader, they trust you, etc" that put all the onus on us humans (who are trying our best and already feel plenty overwhelmed & insecure)


• Similarly, advice like "if you’re calm your dog will be calm" and variations of "just don’t make a big deal out of things"


• The classic dogs on the furniture debate and a bit about our understanding of dominance


• That "you shouldn’t comfort your dog when they’re scared"


• If taking our dogs on a daily walk is the end all be all and generalizations about exercise

Some related links and references:

• One of our first blogs, asking why your dog needs to do... well, anything


• Blog on how we set impactful goals with Scout


• It's all in how you raise them blog


• Ian Dunbar on the TWC podcast (and our running list of podcast notes)


• Puppies born ready to interpret human signals


• Blog on the balance between advocating for vs babying my dog


• Our personal dogs on the furniture rules


• Books I recommend to dog owners (we specifically mention Dog is Love by Clive Wynne and Frans de Waal's works)


• David Mech dominance articles (I pronounce his name wrong twice in this episode — my apologies! I was quite embarrassed when I realized. That's what I get for primary learning through written works. Oops. But the points about his works still stand.)


• Human control of resources / automatic dominance over dogs

Some links:

• Strange Planet comic I reference (unrelated to the actual topic but I said I'd include it, so I did!)


• January Instagram post talking about how I'm no longer completely resisting the "dog mom" label


• July Instagram post about how not wanting my own kids doesn't mean I hate kids


• Books I recommend to fellow dog owners (we mention Dog is Love a few times in this episode)


• My favorite Frans de Waal books for dog owners (seriously, go read Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are!)


• Blog about why it's sometimes helpful to think about my dog as a human friend (tangentially related to the parallels of dogs and kids / us both being social mammals)

There's a lot to unpack! So many confounding variables. Lots of emotions, too. But above all, we're happy about life with Scout today — and that means a lot to us.

I previously wrote about some of the things we discuss in this episode in an article on our blog. If you're looking for an organized, in-writing version, that's a good place to start. As always, happy to answer any questions or just talk dogs!

* Note: “Reactive” is a really broad term. I chose to use it in this episode title since I think it’s the word most fellow owners will resonate with, but it’s important to remember it can mean different things to different people. You can read more of my thoughts on labels in this blog article and more about not comparing our reactivity journey to others in this one!

You can read more of our relationship thoughts in this Instagram guide and articles on pawsandreflect.blog.

Take a listen to our previous Haley-Sean dog chats on Instagram at @paws.andreflect or read some of our writing at pawsandreflect.blog.