Reclaiming Outside
Epiphanies and what not.
The other night, while lying in a bed that wasn’t mine but that of a stranger who offered me a place to sleep on this bike trip of mine from Paris to Porto, I had an epiphany. This is becoming routine now. Not the epiphany, but the being in a stranger’s bed. And as salacious as that sounds, it’s unfortunately not the direction this newsletter is going in, but I digress. Whenever I set out to a new city it’s because I’ve combed through enough Warmshowers profiles to find a host who is available and within the feasible amount of kilometers I can cycle that day, and once my arrival is confirmed, I show up all bright and cheery ready to be shown to their spare room, to have the same conversations about how to eat sustainably on a bike tour, the best routes for site-seeing, and the joys and freedoms of slow-traveling. But, I’m a fraud.
As much as I am grateful for this shower-surfing experience, let’s start with the fact that I’m using it all wrong. It’s designed for serious bike-packers who are more often than not camping in the wild and going days without a proper bed, a proper roof over their heads, and most tragically without running water. It’s how I came to the realization that as adventurous as I am, I had somewhere in my life drawn the line at indoor plumbing and furthermore that I’m not as sustainable as I claim or aspire to be.
And this was the epiphany. I, Dominique, am spoiled. I’m a spoiled—potentially bougie, most certainly wasteful—brat who has just learned how to get by with the bare minimum because it’s what I can afford. In my natural, primal state I could probably eat burgers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I’d be taking hourlong showers, and filling my wardrobe with brand new fashions and toiletries every week just because I wanted to. At my best, I have learned how to quiet the desires when balances are low and to go with the flow of those who have enough balance for the both of us—meaning I’ll dine on bland pasta dishes or use the generic brand soaps available in the shower. But at my worst, I spend money I don’t have trying to keep up with the Joneses—who I still don’t even know—because I think that this is what it means to truly live. To have all the accoutrements of comfort and convenience at my fingertips and then I’ll have self-actualized into the version of myself who can say no to the excess of it all for the minimalist option that’s as or even more expensive.
I say I want the bare minimum but what I really want is the chance to have it all. To have access to all of the things that the Joneses—or whoever they are in 2026—have just so that I can perform the sensible, sustainable thing. To live well, righteously.
This may or may not be connected (that is to say I don’t have a better segue), but before I started my trip I watched a video on YouTube of a guy who traveled by bike across Britain on just £10 for 2 weeks. He scavenged for the bicycle, the sleeping equipment, and he foraged for food by visiting pubs and asking for free meals or relying on the kindness of strangers who offered him food at the grocery store.
I found the whole thing fascinating but my immediate thought for myself was that it was impossible. In talking with other women I’ve met so far on my trip, we all shared the same silent fears that would keep us from doing such a thing and while all of our fears were the same, I realized I had another fear that I wasn’t speaking aloud or even admitting to myself. It wasn’t the fear of being alone in the woods under cover of a thin piece of tarp or someone hearing that I was alone and hungry and taking advantage of this vulnerable state. It was the fear of what “begging” essentially would say about me. He was of course doing this recreationally and this homeless visa that he was on had an expiration date. There was a home to return to. But for me, navigating the uncertainty of my future, it would somehow mean something else. Not just that I didn’t have the means to live with less, but that I was someone in the world without the option of something more.
My fear wasn’t just about who might bother me if I slept outside without the security of lock and key. My fear was what sleeping outside meant about my worth. And what it meant to me was that I was a bum. Even though people all around me were doing this recreationally, I couldn’t shake the shame and that’s when it dawned on me that my greatest fear isn’t losing my life, it’s losing my livelihood. And yet, I keep manifesting unemployment, evictions, and couch-surfing with strangers who are not Michelin-star chefs but who give me the adjacency of stability by inviting me into their guest rooms. Doing the very thing, living the very life, I was hoping to avoid.
Once, a family friend jokingly called me a bum. I think he was looking for the words “starving artist” but seeing as bum is obviously more accessible and rolls off the tongue with precision, I didn’t get visibly offended but it did indeed cut me deep. In my mind, I hadn’t resigned to begging for spare change nor was I sleeping outside because it was my final option for shelter. Yet, in almost every decision I’ve made since that interaction, I think I’ve tried to keep one foot in the world of comforts and conveniences—whether I could afford it or not—for show, and the other foot in the practical reality of my circumstances. Circumstances that continue to teach me just how fulfilling life can still be when I take stock of what I actually have at my disposal.
But back to the trajectory of this epiphany. On the first few days of having paid invoices in my bank account, I’m not thinking anything about sustainability. You will most likely find me at a downtown restaurant ordering a burger and a cocktail because it doesn’t take me long to convince myself that because I’m burning so many calories I don’t have the brainpower, nor the time, to waste on thinking of something more sustainable to eat. I’m also not thinking at all about Warmshowers but checking out which hotels nearby have WiFi and pictures of the coziest, fluffiest beds and pillows and booking it because hey, these muscles deserve to relax too. However, this last paid invoice found me in one of the wealthiest regions in France and my measly little paycheck wasn’t going to cover my extravagant dinner and lodging preferences in the coastal town of Arcachon. So, I decided that staying on a campsite would be my best option, and perhaps would start training me for the possible day that I’d give wild camping a try. That was until the young lady behind the desk of what looked like a treehouse office told me that the price for staying on their campsite was 141€. “To sleep outside?!” I could barely hide my shock, let alone my poverty, when I had to decline that 2-night stay in a tent between the trees and go back to the drawing board of finding food and shelter for the night.
If in that moment I had the bravery of the guy from the YouTube video or the unnamed protagonist in I Who Have Never Known Men, I’d have pitched my hammock in the trees outside of the campsite—as a definitive middle finger to capitalism—and gotten enough sleep to get up and carry on the next day without processing a new fear. But instead, a new anxiety was unlocked with the thought that one day I wouldn’t even be able to afford recreational homelessness.
And it wasn’t just the fault of capitalism, it was because I couldn’t control my own cravings and refused to adhere to the other b-word I have an aversion to: budget. That I too wanted the copious meals of meat, and the luxurious sleeping arrangements, and the trendy clothes and accessories and that if and when I had the funds I would expense it and not think twice about the sustainable thing. The sustainability that wouldn’t just ensure that every human being had access to the basic necessities of a well-balanced meal, a roof over their head, and indoor plumbing, but that I wouldn’t have whiplash days where I lived like a queen and sleepless nights when I had to go without.
Recently, I’ve been slightly repulsed with how often I eat and think about eating burgers. It can’t be healthy to wake up imagining meat and different variations of accoutrements in between buns, but alas the biking and the burning of the calories. I think that if I only subsisted on the peanut butter sandwiches and bananas that make up the entirety of my biking hours I’d turn into a waif and perhaps that’s why the incessant craving for burgers, to balance the scales. I’ve been a vegetarian in the past and while I probably wouldn’t be a full on vegetarian again (commitment issues) my cravings are being altered and perhaps searching for a more sustainable satiation. I’m taking the time to reflect before I rush to consume, before I rush to spend. Not just with food and not just because of affordability, but because I’ve lost a bit of the novelty in my cravings— and the creativity it bought about—to the comfort of conveniences. It’s why I think the 141€ price tag to sleep outside woke something up inside of me. If I don’t start paying attention to the intersection of my cravings and my capabilities, spending the time for as long as it takes on them, I’ll be paying for what’s already free and available to me. Turning shames into fears and locking myself out from the abundance the world promises and provides. All the while, trying to afford comforts that are packaged and marketed as trendy conveniences when I’m more than capable of making it very far on simple carbs and catching a few zzz’s under the stars.
And this, dear reader, is where I begin my advocacy for the basic right of every human being to have their own mattress (air, water, memory foam, you name it) because if I wasn’t sleeping on other people’s mattresses I’d have ended this epiphany a few paragraphs ago with the fairy tale ending of “…and she ate her burger and lived happily ever after.”
As always, thanks for reading and for being here. :)