Welcome to The Ecstatic Wanderer Substack.
My name is April and I am a writer, wanderer, and photographer. For the past five years I’ve lived on the Road, exploring North America’s wildernesses and culture, seeking meaning. The meaning behind certain chance encounters, exquisite synchronicities, and poetic moments that seem more like something out of a novel, something intentionally composed, than just the stuff of random, secular everyday life. I also seek the meaning of the bigger questions of home, of Americanness, of the unraveling of our times.
At my core, I’m a wanderer like my favorite god, Odin. Odin wandered the world seeking knowledge. I wander the world seeking meaning. A wanderer who is not always ecstatic, but always seeking the ecstatic experience.
I am currently taking a semi-sabbatical from the Road to write my book. I want to give this much-longed for effort as much of a fighting chance as I can through rest, stability, digital detoxing and access to showers. Also by filling the well through devotion to living a wildly creative, inspired lifestyle (which includes – because I can’t help myself – shorter jaunts in the van through the backroads and forests of the Eastern US). I’ll be writing about all of that here, so be sure to subscribe to follow along.
A little backstory, though…
My nomadic adventures began in early 2020, when I got sober and shut the door on nearly a decade in New Orleans. I was searching for something more, but not exactly sure what that was. A lover? True friends? A home that felt bone-deep where I belonged? I wanted to fall in love again. Not with a person, but with a place.
I set off on a solo journey to Mexico to learn Spanish, but ended up in the American West, living and traveling in a beautiful cabin-on-wheels called Firefly. I surprised myself by who I became out on the Road. I learned that I loved to camp solo in the wilderness (I was a city girl who had never even hiked). I also learned that I had the cojones to drive across a continent and international borders, over harrowing mountain passes with no guardrails, and across endless, desolate dirt roads with no cell service - this from a woman who didn’t get her license until she was 30 because she was too scared to drive.
For the past year, I have been sharing stories as well as vulnerable, diary-esque entries here of a life lived on the Road, of searching for my next home, new friends, deeper meaning, romantic partnerships, and the building of a more authentic and creative way of life after a long absence from my art.
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For $6/month or $60/year, receive access to my archive (only available to paid members) and upcoming excerpts of my memoir-in-progress.
Bi-weekly letters sometimes come with paywalls, behind which, include alluring photos and stories of interesting places that I find on my wanders, or sometimes vulnerable writing that I’d like to keep somewhat private, but that may resonate for you and make you feel less alone. Paid subscribers gain access to my inner circle - to the things I’d rather not share as widely.
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